booting idle players

[bluezeak]

bump - I agree that there should be an afk timer. Unless of course SE fixes the sitaution and everyone can log in, and extra people cause no problems.

But if people just sitting around doing nothing cause server issue - afk timer is needed.

[Malindachan]

I started playing before 2.4, and I had to get up early to create a character on Balmung so I could play with friends.
I recently bought another copy of the game so my husband could play with me, and we spent a week waking up during the recommended hours in hopes of getting him on Balmung as well. We were successful last night a minute before maintenance started, and he was booted off during the opening. I woke up again when maintenance ended just in case, and there was already a queue to get in because the server was too full.

This could have been avoided if there was a limit to how long you could be AFK. I'll see specific players standing in one spot, and they'll still be in that very spot a full day later. It's not fair to players that actually want to play, and it keeps newcomers from being able to play with their friends. We wasted a week of our 30-day trial because we felt it was pointless to start him on another server if we had to pay the fee for either of us to transfer.

[Bacent]

You guys know that some people just go into their FC house/inn room, and then hold down the WASD's to keep the moving and it'll never register them as AFK for it

[Lainmyst]

I guess I am lucky I am on Faerie and never have issues logging in, that said I understand the kind of frustration on servers that are much fuller. SE use to have an idle/AFK limit, however that was removed due to farming for atmas, and also farming fates for animus as well. Many of those fates required sitting around waiting for hours, many times players would go "AFK" while waiting, probably within hearing distance incase the fate popped. Even now some fates you wait for on the daily hunts can be up to an hour or two. This is mainly why the AFK limit is still no longer in place. The AFK limit may come back though as a cost effective way of keeping the server population to healthy levels, rather then having to add new servers. Ten to fifteen minutes is too short though, I would be ok with 30 minutes.

[Lainmyst]

I forgot to mention, that for while now log in issues due to a full server, weren't as much of an issue once things became fairly stable after launch. I do know that there was either a hot fix, or it came with a patch, but it was stated that SE removed the AFK timer because of so many complaining of having to wait 4 hours or more for some fates, and getting logged out and then missing those fates. SE implemented that change due to the servers being stable. Since then though, outside of the gill spammer issue, the population has increased a lot for this game. I recently read that the number of subs has increased to 2.5 million, that has to have an effect. Even though the time for fates has been lessened, I believe a 15-20 minute timer is too short. I would think doing as much as they can to remove gill spammers and introducing a 30 minute AFK time would be a good solution.

[Lycelle]

Does nobody remember the AFK Logout Timer during 2.0 launch? The only way to bypass it was to actually go into a crafting job and start up a synth.

[Lainmyst]

Does nobody remember the AFK Logout Timer during 2.0 launch? The only way to bypass it was to actually go into a crafting job and start up a synth.

I guess you and I are the only ones sadly. The other day I waited for a daily hunt fate for nearly 2 hours, I went afk and got on another computer nearby so I wouldn't miss the fate popping but didn't want my brain to atrophy sitting there staring at the screen for 2 hours. I guess having the AFK timer would mean I would have to walk over and move my character every 10 minutes. I guess I wouldn't totally be upset if it means players are able to log into the game though.