Why did they stop kicking out afks like they used to

[Noox-115]

10m is only necessary when there's been an expansion drop. Outside of that, a 60m timer would be best. It wouldn't kick people out for going out to make food, but it'll also kick out players that go to sleep ingame.

that I completely agree I think it's a great idea

[Jojoya]

It's surprising usually online games kick people out to prevents that from even happening in the first place? I know when I started playing 2 years ago it was 10 min afk = kick

It's never been as low as 10 minutes. It's always been a 30 minute cutoff for autokick when active.

I'm going to guess that you started around Endwalker launch. New expansion released are the one period when they automatically use the auto-kick. How long it remains active depends on how long the congestion continues across the different worlds. Generally it will be 1-2 months.

Outside of the periods of extreme congestion, it's rarely the number of players already online that are causing the log-in queues. The log-in queues are caused by SE throttling how many log-ins are being processed at the same time to keep the log-in servers stable.

Unless world servers are so packed that more players are unable to get onto the servers, the autokick isn't needed. A lot of players prefer seeing the cities crowded even if many of those players are AFK.

[TaleraRistain]

Cause it doesn't need it. They only turn it on when it's close to expansion launch and people staying online is congesting the servers so other people can't log in. Once it dies down, they turn the auto-kick off again.

[NekoMataMata]

Not for SE. SE wants FFXIV to have the image that the game is alive and bustling with players so they can attract new players (for more money). They'll do what they can to achieve that even if it means creating that image artificially via players being allowed to stand around for an indefinite amount of time.

This makes logical sense but you can't really blame them for it. Pretty sure anyone in their position would do the same. Games, forums, discords, whatever. People in charge of most anything like to boost the activity by any means possible.

[sindriiisgaming]

Not for SE. SE wants FFXIV to have the image that the game is alive and bustling with players so they can attract new players (for more money). They'll do what they can to achieve that even if it means creating that image artificially via players being allowed to stand around for an indefinite amount of time.

guy in my fc used to afk in grid for a week straight

[Sebazy]

Because this late in an expansion it's arguably counter productive for an MMO to start kicking even the most afk of bodies.

First off, from a technical perspective:

Modern online games use a multitude of measures to minimise network utilisation wherever possible. A big part of that is simply not updating player positional and velocity data until they actually start moving.

Moreover, as far as server CPU load goes, again there are a ton of measures taken to minimize the effect of idle players and this isn't anything new by any stretch. Even Quakeworld had this down, testing a server by connecting 32 idle clients was a waste of time as it would use a fraction of the CPU resources that an active 32 player scrum would eat back in the day. This is something that's easy enough to test for yourself.

With that in mind, why the auto afk kick at the start of the expansion and not now? Simple, at the start of the expansion a higher percentage of players are active running around and doing content. Fast forward to now and jobs are levelled, reps are maxed, hunts are done and dusted and Chocobo companions are stabled. There's simply a much lower percentage of people actually running around doing stuff in the overworld now vs then.

Outside of the above, the only other issue with massive player counts in a single area is the client character gear reconstruction thread. All PCs and NPCs appear to be combined on a single thread which can cause weird single thread biased loads as you hit the cap. This only really starts to become an issue in areas like the Bozja entrance unless your PC is particularly potato though (Granted no idea what sort of an issue it is on console) and as it's not really impactful even when it does bite, not to mention it's entirely a client side thing and doesn't affect the server performance I don't think it's an 'issue' that SE are interested in addressing specifically.

As for why it's counter productive for an MMO to afk kick. Simple really, a lot of people use MMOs as a glorified chatroom, that breeds strong communities which in turn helps with player retention even if the content isn't quite doing the job. A lot of people are super social creatures in these sort of games and booting them breaks that.

[Jeeqbit]

This game has never kicked out afk people except for up to 4 months after an expansion launch due to congestion and one time when popular streamers started playing it causing it to go viral and get congested.

The director of this game knows that afk timers are not fun and only uses them when they think it's absolutely necessary.

[Mostly_Raxus]

lets be real 90% of you use an addon to prevent it anyways..

quick question? how many zones are there in game? and how many people in a zone before it become congested? and multiply that by how many servers there are..
the active player numbers are no where near what people think, and after wow banned the multi-boxers they found a new game, now if square starts a crusade against their armys of afk pose girlfriends mules, well i suspect we would loose close to 40% of the "active" player base..

aka square is only going to go after addons and botters in show, they cant afford to mass flag everyone running a mod or launcher or parser or even a bot... the floor lala's are here to stay.

[SamSmoot]

I just wish they'd keep enough kicked to maintain at least 100 open login spaces available. During non-peak periods, I shouldn't be facing a 10-20 queue every time I log in.

[Jeeqbit]

I just wish they'd keep enough kicked to maintain at least 100 open login spaces available. During non-peak periods, I shouldn't be facing a 10-20 queue every time I log in.

That's normal. It processes queues in waves. Sometimes I've seen long queues process 50 at a time and sometimes I've seen them process 100 at a time and it can take up to 2 minutes to get through the amount it's processing. It has seemed to vary how many it actually processes at a time.