Institute Temporary AFK Kick Timer

[TyloRime]

I think their "Wait and See" approach is beyond ridiculous, seems like they don't value their playerbase.

[MagusVandel]

45 minutes is way to short imo

Realistically, if the AFK timer is set to 45 min, the argument for people getting food is null anyway.

Think about it:

You've already reduced the load of all the people who AFK for 5+ hours. People will be able to get in anyway.

And even if you are grabbing a bite to eat, why not let someone else log in? Since we're assuming most of the traffic issues are now prolific AFKers, leaving for an hour in the game and coming back probably will not affect you as much as you'd think.

I do like your idea for a warning to pop up for the person to move around though(it is sort of like the shutdown message on PS3). Personally, I believe if they have been crafting for 45 minutes straight without moving around, they need to get out of their physical house, let alone move their characters for 2 seconds.

I would argue for the timer to be no more than an hour, with a ten minute call time on the warning system.

[Fenrisen]

Agreed. The only people complaining are the ones abusing the fact that there is no timer. WoW implements the same thing and there are no complaints or issues with it. I think 30 minutes to an hour is sufficient, with a warning ten minutes prior. I've seen far too many AFK players in towns, it's not fair when there's a player cap. If SE doesn't implement a timer I think I'll lose a lot of respect for them.. They are putting more value in a small group of players (Ones that AFK to take up server space), rather than the large one that wants to actively enjoy the game.

[Lasteran]

Simple solution: Pop up timer warnings. Now you're fine.

[Llewelyn]

Please implement this in as unobtrusive a manner as possible! I agree that an AFK kicker under heavy server load is a good idea, but when the server is not under heavy load (in the future), an AFK kicker would be really annoying.

A good fix would be "When the server is full and new players can't get on, kick the person who has been AFK the longest ONLY WHEN a new player trys to log in."

That would allow people to AFK as long as they wanted, unless the server was full, and at that point, it would only kick people as often as people attempted to sign in.

It also would mean that once server traffic decreases in the future, the afk kicker would still be there, but would not be active, since the servers wouldn't be under as much load.

In normal circumstances, an AFK kicker is incredibly annoying. These are not normal circumstances. As long as people can't get in because of AFKers, I support such an AFK kicker, but once that's not an issue, please, please don't leave a kicker active.

[Bakura]

I love Yoshida, you know, but coming back home after 10 hours of work trying to login in and seeing "world full" is just soo frustrating... ._.

[SirDiscoFrog]

Realistically, if the AFK timer is set to 45 min, the argument for people getting food is null anyway.

Think about it:
You've already reduced the load of all the people who AFK for 5+ hours. People will be able to get in anyway.

And even if you are grabbing a bite to eat, why not let someone else log in? Since we're assuming most of the traffic issues are now prolific AFKers, leaving for an hour in the game and coming back probably will not affect you as much as you'd think.

I do like your idea for a warning to pop up for the person to move around though(it is sort of like the shutdown message on PS3). Personally, I believe if they have been crafting for 45 minutes straight without moving around, they need to get out of their physical house, let alone move their characters for 2 seconds.

I would argue for the timer to be no more than an hour, with a ten minute call time on the warning system.

Personally I wouldnt mind logging off to eat but if you think it will be quick it would just be more convenient to stay logged in but thats just me. I would be more concerned with those who are RPing or even the people who might have to all of a sudden walk their pet. It shoundlt take that long but things do happen that could prolong these things.

I could agree with you though that maybe 2 hours is too long, I was being generous. And hr to an hr and a half tops would be optimum. So long as something happens (and it includes the warning timer) I'm happy with it. I'm just tired of seeing tons of people just in the city AFK looking like additional NPCs lol

[oda]

Please implement this in as unobtrusive a manner as possible! I agree that an AFK kicker under heavy server load is a good idea, but when the server is not under heavy load (in the future), an AFK kicker would be really annoying.

...

In normal circumstances, an AFK kicker is incredibly annoying. These are not normal circumstances. As long as people can't get in because of AFKers, I support such an AFK kicker, but once that's not an issue, please, please don't leave a kicker active.

Agreed. I understand why folks want this today, but hopefully next week it'll be a non-issue. As bad as congestion has been this week, I have not had to spam login for more than 20-30 mins (and most of the time its 10 min or less) at a time in order to play even during peak hours (6-10PM US Central Time) periods. Assuming the planned server upgrades are successful, I'd be willing to bet the normal server queue system will do the trick.

[BoomerOU]

I'd rather the datacenter problems get the priority than an afk timer that will be situational at best. Implement it, don't implement it, I don't care. Just don't put in a fix for an effect before fixing the actual cause.

[JillyBean]

Personally I'm glad they aren't rushing into this. It was never in place for FFXI or 1.0. I, myself, do log out at night and I do not log in before work to reserve my spot. We shouldn't have to. THAT needs to be fixed and it sounds like it will. But I don't ever want to ne kicked for inactivity. EVER. If they implement it I would be ok if it was like 2-3 hours at least. JMO.