Do you think implementing a AFK Kick outside of Expansion Releases would do anything?

[Gurgeh]

The truth is they are being really pathetic about this problem.
CROSS DC PF. JUST USE THE TRAVEL YOU ALREADY HAVE. FORGET ABOUT CHAT FOR NOW.
My gods anyone would think the database and transistor hadn't been invented yet, and everything was still stored on punch cards.
It's just pathetic.
_
Or at this stage explain in some detail, why your game can't cope with the one real obstacle, which is increased needed character travel bandwidth.

[VerdeLuck]

Even during expansion release, people use bots or plugins to get around the AFK kick. It wouldn't do much

[Eraden]

Mao wonderings what is point of this. Mao already seeing very few peoples in places where Mao hangs out. Mao nots know about Greasy Place (Limsa) though. Mao usually tries avoid that place.

[Gurgeh]

Not on Spriggan it wouldn't. You can't be AFK from Spriggan if you've transferred or traveled to Light, or your not at all logged in in the first place. And it hardly seems fair to kick people who are AFK waiting for PF, and can't play the bits of the game they want to because they've had to travel, because your Home DC has been murdered by lack of cross DC PF, or for that matter your just there to Duty Finder regular content, becuase all you can fill back home is Temple of Quarn and Labarythn of the Ancients.
But hey at least they are putting effort into the Solo game! /indifferent-shrug
(I'm only posting because I'm hoping Square Enix will make sure I'm wrong before continuing to do nothing)

[Syln]

You know what's more boring than a hub ? A deserted hub.

This game feel already empty enough when you go around in the world and you want people to get disconnected when they afk ? come on

[Archeron]

It's completely pointless once the initial hype has died down, and I wouldn't even think it necessary during patches.

The content droughts are long enough to ensure the game is desolate between patches. I doubt Aether is even having exceptionally long log in queues, doesn't need to exist. I don't even think the 7-10 alt characters standing around are even that much of a problem unless they're on a highly populated world.

[Hasrat]

Everyone kinda glossing over the fact that purging the servers would do literally nothing to the "short wait" OP notices on login. That has nothing to do with how many players are online, it's simply due to the login server processing in batches. You're still going to have a short wait to log in, and in fact, may even make the waits slightly worse by forcing more players into the login servers more frequently, rather than having them already processed and online on servers with capacity to handle everyone currently.

[Jeeqbit]

As a residential Aether Player, I very much often come into the game with a short wait ahead of me which isn't an issue

The AFK kick certainly isn't needed outside of expansion launches (or that one time the game went viral on twitch and Asmongold played). As you said, there are short queues except those times.

unless you also consider all the friends outside of Aether that are almost incapable of touching Aether.

I think the limit on DC travel to each world is a "cap" on the number of travelers and the cap is different depending on if the world is congested or not. There seems to be a separate cap for World Visiting which is also affected by if it's congested or not.

I think it is likely that if they are kicked for being AFK that it would allow others to travel, but once they return from being AFK they wouldn't be able to login.

Perhaps the AFK kick could apply to travelers only or when the world is actually Congested? This would prevent it being of inconvenience when it's not needed.

would it really hurt if they added in an AFK timer

The most annoying part about it is when you have been logged in for 2 days or more, the game forcefully exits after being kicked and that means entering passwords and 2FA all over again.

Am I just not seeing the real issue somewhere, is an AFK timer somehow stupid of an idea?

It's just seen as annoying in other games. Yoshi-P, who oversees the game, is a gamer and knows it's annoying so only puts it there when it's absolutely needed.

Most likely the travel limits are there to get people to form parties on other data centers instead, to help solve the lack of PFs on other data centers.

[DendrielConcade]

Various Good Points Potentially Too Long To List Here

Like I said, my issue isn't the personal edge of logging in but it feels like a product of it, but as others have stated it could be as a sort of "Batch Login" process. I also didn't entirely stand with the idea and was open to see how actual people would feel about this which I appreciate since you can only go so far with your own thought you know?

If the issues for other world travelers was due to a limited amount of slots for specific people to be in other DCs, then for sure measures to prevent someone from AFKing and idling to take up slots in other DCs could actually be something to implement than a blanket thing over everyone. I don't particularly see an issue with re-entering your password and 2FA though, that's quite a simple process in the grand scheme of things via copying your password if really needed due to password complexity, and 2FA is never too long for a string of numbers.

Either way, I appreciate the discussion and some diverse takes and things I haven't pondered before here, which just makes me shift my opinion of it all a bit more reasonably.