Start forcing logouts after extended playtime (with sufficient warning, of course)

[Raist]

I know ... sounds extreme, but didn't seem to get much response from another idea I've been posting since last night.

Edit: Please keep in mind that this and other ideas we've tried to bring up are meant solely as temporary measures until SE can get a proper fix in place.
(thanks to Supertatortots for helping me realize I neglected to clarify the temporary nature of this idea in the OP)

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ers-free-slots

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ow-to-fix-them.

Seems like no one wants to talk about reasonable solutions, so figured lets try something off the wall to see if anyone gets involved in the conversation.

After a player has been logged in for an extensive amount of time, start issuing them a warning to log out within a certain time frame or they will be automatically logged out.

Once that timer runs down, boot them.

I understand this may be a bother for some players who routinely play long hours, so the trick would be to allow a reasonable amount of time to accommodate those active players, and will need to allow them sufficient time to complete a task they are in like a mission fight, and get to a safe logout location.

It may seem extreme, and it can be altered as SE sees fit, but this approach will help in eliminating a lot of the unnecessary AFK'ing and send them back into the queues behind the people that have been affected by their AFK status.

The original thought was to issue a sort of CAPTCHA call/response mechanism requiring players to respond, designed to deal with AFK activity in a way that may not be easy to bot, but that may require more elaborate coding. This can be a cyclical check against last log-in time and if it's been long enough, start the notices and count down to auto-kick.

[Raist]

Since I saw a couple posts in the main 1017 error thread asking for someone capable of posting some specific fixes, going to try pulling these posts I made the last couple nights back to the top, since the disappeared so fast from the front page. Seriously.. all the new thread spam on existing topics was getting out of hand. A post made 23 hours ago is already buried on page 26.

Things seemed to have slowed down a bit on the forums now... hopefully we can get more conversation going about possible solutions instead of rage posts.

[leonart]

I know ... sounds extreme, but didn't seem to get much response from another idea I've been posting since last night.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ers-free-slots

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ow-to-fix-them.

Seems like no one wants to talk about reasonable solutions, so figured lets try something off the wall to see if anyone gets involved in the conversation.

After a player has been logged in for an extensive amount of time, start issuing them a warning to log out within a certain time frame or they will be automatically logged out.

Once that timer runs down, boot them.

I understand this may be a bother for some players who routinely play long hours, so the trick would be to allow a reasonable amount of time to accommodate those active players, and will need to allow them sufficient time to complete a task they are in like a mission fight, and get to a safe logout location.

It may seem extreme, and it can be altered as SE sees fit, but this approach will help in eliminating a lot of the unnecessary AFK'ing and send them back into the queues behind the people that have been affected by their AFK status.

The original thought was to issue a sort of CAPTCHA call/response mechanism requiring players to respond, designed to deal with AFK activity in a way that may not be easy to bot, but that may require more elaborate coding. This can be a cyclical check against last log-in time and if it's been long enough, start the notices and count down to auto-kick.

this is how it was in beta , idk why they did away with it now.

[Statishido]

Hell No. Silly idea.. Moving on!

[Raist]

Hell No. Silly idea.. Moving on!

Care to offer any supporting reasons why you think it's a bad idea, or perhaps offer a suggestion of your own?

Trying to get an exchange of ideas going.. seems like the only way to get anyones attention is to put up a wacky proposal.....

[Acrimonia]

I know ... sounds extreme, but didn't seem to get much response from another idea I've been posting since last night.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ers-free-slots

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ow-to-fix-them.

Seems like no one wants to talk about reasonable solutions, so figured lets try something off the wall to see if anyone gets involved in the conversation.

After a player has been logged in for an extensive amount of time, start issuing them a warning to log out within a certain time frame or they will be automatically logged out.

Once that timer runs down, boot them.

I understand this may be a bother for some players who routinely play long hours, so the trick would be to allow a reasonable amount of time to accommodate those active players, and will need to allow them sufficient time to complete a task they are in like a mission fight, and get to a safe logout location.

It may seem extreme, and it can be altered as SE sees fit, but this approach will help in eliminating a lot of the unnecessary AFK'ing and send them back into the queues behind the people that have been affected by their AFK status.

The original thought was to issue a sort of CAPTCHA call/response mechanism requiring players to respond, designed to deal with AFK activity in a way that may not be easy to bot, but that may require more elaborate coding. This can be a cyclical check against last log-in time and if it's been long enough, start the notices and count down to auto-kick.

Is it horrible that I had a similar idea? Granted I was also in favour of bringing all the servers down until you could let EVERYONE play! But both ideas were strictly temporary use only. But seriously, why should some be able to log long play times and hog the servers when the rest of us just want to get in an play for a change? The only times I can log are at 6am MDT, with no chance when I can get home from work unless I play the spam "0" mini game :3

Just a frustration vent. I'm really hoping they'll most things sorted by next week, I do like the fact that they've *finally* tried to communicate to us what they are trying to do instead of leaving us high and dry.

[supertatortots]

I disagree. While it might work in the short term, it REALLY can piss off customers if they're told how much they can play a day. Just because the company severely underestimated the amount of people going into their servers, it shouldn't punish people who want to play a long time. People's time are precious and limited. Yes, it is frustrating that a player can't login into a server, a player that's been playing for a long time is just as much as a customer as the guy trying to log-in. He shouldn't have to compromise his time because the servers aren't prepared to handle that much traffic and some other guy wants to play.

It might seem reasonable to say "Hey, you've been playing for 10 hours, time to get off in a hour!" it's entirely possible that he has work in a day or two and just wants to spend his weekend or vacation time playing FF14.

If anything that needs to be fixed, it's the server queue cap (I think it only goes up to 250 or so, which is abysmally small for the amount of people playing, after that you encounter that 1017 error) and the server capacity.

I do believe that there should be a proper auto-afk kicking system however, if someone is gone for more than 30 minutes without movement, they should be booted. Probably will be ways around it, but it would be better than nothing.

[Vexray]

Petition for queue system, logouts, etc help us open their eyes ----> http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...06#post1103706 <----

[Raist]

I disagree. While it might work in the short term, it REALLY can piss off customers if they're told how much they can play a day. Just because the company severely underestimated the amount of people going into their servers, it shouldn't punish people who want to play a long time. People's time are precious and limited. Yes, it is frustrating that a player can't login into a server, a player that's been playing for a long time is just as much as a customer as the guy trying to log-in. He shouldn't have to compromise his time because the servers aren't prepared to handle that much traffic and some other guy wants to play.

It might seem reasonable to say "Hey, you've been playing for 10 hours, time to get off in a hour!" it's entirely possible that he has work in a day or two and just wants to spend his weekend or vacation time playing FF14.

If anything that needs to be fixed, it's the server queue cap (I think it only goes up to 250 or so, which is abysmally small for the amount of people playing, after that you encounter that 1017 error) and the server capacity.

I do believe that there should be a proper auto-afk kicking system however, if someone is gone for more than 30 minutes without movement, they should be booted. Probably will be ways around it, but it would be better than nothing.

oops.. my bad... forgot to put in there that it was meant as a temporary fix. I made that distinction in my other threads with ideas. Will update the OP to reflect that.

Thanks for catching that. ^-^

[supertatortots]

It's no problem. I assumed temporary because it wouldn't seem reasonable to keep this for a long time.

Still, I don't think this solution would work. Even if it seems like a simple fix, it would take time to program and implement it, and by then the servers would likely be unclogged by then.

Launches for MMOs is usually super rocky because it's everyone is trying to get into the server and the company pretty much always underestimates the amount of server pressure being put on the login servers.

The most we can hope for is that they turn off the servers and do a upgrade relatively quickly and boost the cap size. It's a good thing to keep in mind though for future expansions and large updates.