Institute Temporary AFK Kick Timer

[Quesse]

SE please spend your time fixing the server problems so logging in will work fine instead of wasting your time implementing this useless solution.

[Sebazy]

It's not just a "short term" solution. It will ease server congestion by cycling through those that aren't actively playing. It will also help those with lag issues since their graphics card won't have to render a hundred characters standing in the middle of Ul'dah with their thumbs up their butts.

It'll ease the load on one portion of the server cluster that isn't being stretched. A higher percentage of active players will equate to more CPU load on the servers that are in trouble, the end result will be a lower player cap with very little getting achieved. This is why SE haven't worried about an auto-kick.

WoW needed it because the modest hardware requirements wouldn't cope with Ragnarok Onlinesque towns that the huge subscriber numbers would bring.

Your energy would be far better spent petitioning SE to get the queueing system working as it should, that would go a long long way to alleviating this frustration.

[Hexy]

There's no way to know if someone is AFK unless you're standing there and observing each and every person playing

Tell that to the other MMO's out there. In WoW for example, after 5 minutes of being idle, you go "afk". After 30 minutes of "afk" status, the game logs you out. Sorry, but if you're going to be afk for longer than 30 minutes, you really shouldn't be logged in the game anyways. Let people in that actually WANT to play the game and not just stand there herp derping.

[Vallenthalas]

Agreed, this is something desperately needed to help with server issues.

[seikenflash]

I disagree

-1 bump

[El_Brujo]

if you login in never log out period....

[Vertisce]

I can't stand the ignorant people in here advocating for people to be able to stay in the game 24/7 afk. Seriously? If you aren't playing then you should be kicked out of the server. If you are going to just stand there all day, you aren't doing anything but wasting server resources and making everybody's game slower. Not to mention you are taking up a slot that someone who want's to actually play can't use.

Quit being stupid. If you aren't going to actually play then you have no reason to be in the game.

15 minutes is more than enough time for an AFK kick timer. If you get kicked and still want to play then you can log back in. In the meantime it will fix the congestion issues and allow everybody to actually play the game.

[Kaes]

A fair way to discourage AFK without kicking:

Only accumulate rested EXP bonus while the character is logged out.

Look around Eorzea and notice where all the idle characters are standing around. Most of them are either in a sanctuary gathered near the aetheryte crystal or in an inn room where you can't see them. They are resting there so they can accumulate a rested EXP bonus and not get aggro'd while their players are out shopping for orange juice.

If you eliminate or reduce the rested bonus for characters who are logged in, it will reward those who log out of the Worlds when they are not playing.

It is a fair tradeoff: you can stay logged in to avoid 1017 and not receive any EXP bonus, or you can log out at the inn and level faster once you are able to log back in.

[Drako]

This is not a problem, just a symptom.

People do it in the first place because SE chose to not take the sensible route of queues, so they have to sit for an hour staring at the log in screen spamming zero or design a keyboard macro to do so. If people didn't need to do this kind of crap they would not be trying to keep their character logged in.

I'm not sure if you understand, but this feature is pretty standard for mmos. And if it was implemented you wouldn't be spamming "zero" to get in nearly as long, if at all. Also a macro wouldn't do you any good, especially if you get put in queue, because your spamming would result in you hitting "cancel" on the queue message that pops up. Like others have stated though, its definitely a great temporary step if anything, it would definitely improve our ability to get in.

There may be some stress if you go to take a really long duke and come back and you have to try getting in the game again, but again it wouldn't take you nearly as long, so it would be worth it for everyone i believe.
The only thing this would hurt is people that have like materia or repair requests on their character, afk in town hoping someone will get it done for them. To that situation, SE could create a option to toggle the AFK off. It wouldn't be self defeating, the games I played that had it as a option was good for those that really needed it to be off. Others that didn't care, or didn't know any better it accomplished what it was meant to.

[Eclipsed]

I would bet that the vast majority of people afk'ing currently would not do so if the queue system just worked like every other mmo on the market. Unfortunately logging out currently just means hours of spamming login trying to beat the 1017 error.