Why are we still perpetuating this server congestion meme?

[localareanetwork]

>game is at its lowest population in literal years
>supposed to believe log in queues are 30+
>supposed to believe in sudden server "congestion" rendering many servers, and an entire data center (aether (the only place you can really raid in FP)) inaccessible for most of the day (so fuck you if you have a job or something and play at normal hours)

do you guys think the devs will ever address how the game blatantly has less players than in Endwalker (where you could freely go anywhere with 0 congestion issues) and fix it or is this garbage they've done arbitrarily just the new norm going forward?

[Saraide]

It not the game server being congested, it's just the login servers being very slow.

[Jeeqbit]

30+ just means that around 30 people are trying to login at that moment. It processes them 1-by-1, rather than all at once. There tends to be a sort of frequency limit that they adjust as well. For example, I've seen the queue go down by 50 per 2 minutes, and other times by 100 per 2 minutes. The closer I am to being first in the queue, the quicker it lets me in. So if, say, I was 49 it takes me longer than if I'm 2 in the queue.

It will be a safety feature. Just to make sure there are no issues with player data due to trying to process multiple players at the same moment.

Sudden server congestion is probably particularly happening due to people trying to Data Center Travel to Aether from 3 different data centers. They have limited slots for travelers now. My guess is this is partially meant to make it hard for DC travel to be viable for raiding purposes. Once people get a feeling that they can't rely on traveling for that purpose, they might decide to setup a PF on their own DC instead.

As for congestion in a character creation sense, while the game might be at a lower population, that does not mean that individual servers cannot be experiencing congestion. Certain servers tend to get congested at raid patches or when certain streamers play.

[MsQi]

Small Indie Company ™

[CapaxInfiniti]

I have a theory that I'm sure the white knights are going to laugh at and defend SE's honor.

The "server congestion" is completely artificial. The servers are being labeled as congested for two reasons:

1: To continue to try and push the absolute failure that is Dynamis. Dynamis is too little, far too late. It needed to happen during the big endwalker surge. It didnt. They released it several months too late for it to make an impact. It might have been successful back when people had 2-3 hour login queue times. But they did absolutely nothing for months and months, and by the time it came out, the queue times were gone and no one had any reason to go to dynamis.

2: They are trying to hide the fact that the playerbase is in freefall. Disguising a rapidly diminishing playerbase by pretending that servers are so crowded they are ready to burst over with the unimaginable horde of players they have on them. This is incredibly disingenuous when you can quite literally visually see the diminishing playerbase with how empty the towns look now, with how empty your friends list has become, and how many fcs are struggling to get literally anything going at all because there just isnt anyone left outside of "mega-fcs" now.

It feels like they are pushing this narrative for optics, because otherwise they would have to swallow their pride for 5 minutes and admit that the game is in full on stagnation mode which means having to actually do more than just copy+paste content over and over.
This is the lowest playerbase since SB, and it's well on it's way to going right back to HW/ARR numbers.

But hey, keep those servers locked and pretend nothing is wrong.

[Jeeqbit]

To continue to try and push the absolute failure that is Dynamis.

I don't disagree that this is a reason, but so are the other reasons I mentioned. Also, there may be a security element since if their servers crash because of everyone congregating on one DC and they want to prevent that being possible, that can be achieved with arbitrary limits. There were quite an unusually high number of server crashes in the last year or two so I don't know what they exactly pinpointed the causes as.

They are trying to hide the fact that the playerbase is in freefall.

It's not even possible to hide that, so this is just a redundant point.

[Kandraxx]

I have a theory that I'm sure the white knights are going to laugh at and defend SE's honor.

The "server congestion" is completely artificial. The servers are being labeled as congested for two reasons:

1: To continue to try and push the absolute failure that is Dynamis. Dynamis is too little, far too late. It needed to happen during the big endwalker surge. It didnt. They released it several months too late for it to make an impact. It might have been successful back when people had 2-3 hour login queue times. But they did absolutely nothing for months and months, and by the time it came out, the queue times were gone and no one had any reason to go to dynamis.

2: They are trying to hide the fact that the playerbase is in freefall. Disguising a rapidly diminishing playerbase by pretending that servers are so crowded they are ready to burst over with the unimaginable horde of players they have on them. This is incredibly disingenuous when you can quite literally visually see the diminishing playerbase with how empty the towns look now, with how empty your friends list has become, and how many fcs are struggling to get literally anything going at all because there just isnt anyone left outside of "mega-fcs" now.

It feels like they are pushing this narrative for optics, because otherwise they would have to swallow their pride for 5 minutes and admit that the game is in full on stagnation mode which means having to actually do more than just copy+paste content over and over.
This is the lowest playerbase since SB, and it's well on it's way to going right back to HW/ARR numbers.

But hey, keep those servers locked and pretend nothing is wrong.

Ngl, 2 made me laugh.

[SophiaDL]

The game is oh so full ! There's no space to go anywhere anymore because its just bursting with players this much ! /s

Real talk, I have no idea why they even try this congestion stuff, it's obviously false and a blatant lie to pretend that the game is booming with players while it's very much in freefall since the beginning of this expansion, Aether being closed is nothing but a bad look at the raiding scene of this game since because of server choice you are barred from going there except if you park your character there in very early hours, and it's pretty much the only worth it DC for raiding, venues on Aether have completely dried out because they cant have people coming over from other dc's amongst multiple other issues related to congestion.

All in all it's very ridiculous, but up to par with SE's behavior about keeping face and acting as if everything is fine on a sinking ship.

[CNitsah]

Those were not always there. They were added after the EW launch fiasco.

[SophiaDL]

Those were not always there. They were added after the EW launch fiasco.

Doesnt change the fact the so called congestion doesnt exist.