RPC has moved! These pages have been kept for historical purposes

Lydia Lightfoot · **05-17-2017, 02:57 PM**

Personally, I'm just loving the number of know-it-alls who are citing hardware performance as a factor in the situation. They clearly have no idea how the hardware in a server farm works. There's not one box sitting there with a sticky note that says "Balmung" on it. The term "server" for an in-game server is very misleading in that regard, because people confuse the concept of a physical server with the concept of a software server. The datacenter is a cluster of physical servers which collectively operate as a single ultra-powerful unit, on which the various software servers are run. Transferring characters from one software server to another doesn't in any way affect the performance of the hardware - it's not functionally much different than moving files to different folders on your local machine's hard drive. It's a simplified explanation but it gets the job done.

edit: Excepting, of course, if there is a limit to the size in which a given database file can remain error-free, in which case it's still not a hardware performance issue, but, transferring from one software server to another would at least potentially re-stabilize a database which was nearing critical mass.

However, evidence suggests that transferring off of a server doesn't actually reduce the database size of the server...

The evidence: If you transfer off of a server, it renders the friend list of those who had you listed as "(Unable to Retrieve)" rather than your character name, which suggests your character was removed from the server's database... however, it's a fake. All it actually does is dummy out the ability for others to see when the character is logged in or be able to message them, because as soon as you transfer back - even if you did it weeks later, and even if you renamed the character - if someone didn't remove that "(Unable to Retrieve)" from their friend list, your character will show up on their list again and they can go right back to seeing you online and messaging you (though they might be a little confused if you changed your name). This means that once a character is created in a given position on the database, that database ID belongs to the character forever.

So... really, transferring off a server doesn't appear to do anything at all, in terms of the hardware performance or database stability.

Cinaust · **05-17-2017, 03:03 PM**

Hm, this is a little disappointing seeing as I was all prepared to go to Balmung, but I also see why it's necessary. I've been worried about how other RP communities would flourish if everyone just kept going to Balmung.

At the same time, this means I'm at a bit of a loss for where to go. I've seen Mateus, Siren, and Faerie mentioned. Are any of the RP communities in those servers big enough to have a reputation / certain roleplay style that I should be aware of before I commit?

Should I just make one character in each of them?

EliBallard · **05-17-2017, 03:04 PM**

(05-17-2017, 03:03 PM)Cinaust Wrote: Hm, this is a little disappointing seeing as I was all prepared to go to Balmung, but I also see why it's necessary. I've been worried about how other RP communities would flourish if everyone just kept going to Balmung.

At the same time, this means I'm at a bit of a loss for where to go. I've seen Mateus, Siren, and Faerie mentioned. Are any of the RP communities in those servers big enough to have a reputation / certain roleplay style that I should be aware of before I commit?

Should I just make one character in each of them?

Mateus.

Kage · **05-17-2017, 03:05 PM**

Quote:Moreover, players who to transfer to or create new characters on designated Worlds across all data centers will receive special bonuses as described below.
* Pleased be advised the bonuses planned for implementation are subject to change.

Bonuses
*Transfers to designated Worlds will be free of charge.
*EXP bonuses will be applied to designated Worlds (up to level 60).
*Gil and free play time will be awarded to newly created characters that reach a certain level on designated Worlds.
*EXP bonuses will be applied to newly established Worlds (up to level 60).
*Gil and free play time will be awarded to newly created characters that reach a certain level on newly established Worlds.
*For players who own personal housing, we are planning a number of provisions including a reimbursement for the full price of the estate, and compensation for the cost of furnishings which we will add in subsequent updates moving forward. We also plan to accommodate free companies members that plan to move together with or without a free company estate.

I am going to quote this once more.

Of these bonuses, how many fit your incentives for a mass-exodus. They haven't stated their designated worlds yet. What stops you from choosing this option. If they cannot give you everything (ie Housing), will you still stay?

Max · **05-17-2017, 03:16 PM**

Great news, imo. I was worried that there would be stability issues due to Balmung's staggering population come Stormblood launch. There will probably still be some (+ long queues), but anything that even slightly mitigates the issues I faced during HW launch would be amazing.

(05-17-2017, 02:33 PM)Nigerian-Scam-Artist Wrote: Having a large role play community is a GOOD thing.Â

-snip-
On Balmung, thanks to our HUGE buffet population, we can find these people.

I mean, Balmung's RP community is going to remain large and diverse regardless of the anti-transfers. It's not as if they're forcing us off the server.

People have been circumventing Balmung's highly congested status through server transfers since forever. It was only a matter of time. Yeah it sucks for new players wanting to roleplay with a large & diverse community, but I'm assuming this decision is being made to put OUR quality of experience to the forefront.

And by our I mean we the players already on the server who'd have to deal with the negative effects of server congestion when SB hits.

Berrod Armstrong · **05-17-2017, 03:21 PM**

I'm outfitting one of my alts to go exploring in one of the low pop servers. Can't hurt to run around and help out a budding community here and there. And maybe also colonize a house or something. I've been curious for some time.

Momo · **05-17-2017, 03:24 PM**

(05-17-2017, 03:16 PM)Max Wrote: Great news, imo. I was worried that there would be stability issues due to Balmung's staggering population come Stormblood launch. There will probably still be some (+ long queues), but anything that even slightly mitigates the issues I faced during HW launch would be amazing.

(05-17-2017, 02:33 PM)Nigerian-Scam-Artist Wrote: Having a large role play community is a GOOD thing.Â

-snip-
On Balmung, thanks to our HUGE buffet population, we can find these people.

I mean, Balmung's RP community is going to remain large and diverse regardless of the anti-transfers. It's not as if they're forcing us off the server.

People have been circumventing Balmung's highly congested status through server transfers since forever. It was only a matter of time. Yeah it sucks for new players wanting to roleplay with a large & diverse community, but I'm assuming this decision is being made to put OUR quality of experience to the forefront.

And by our I mean we the players already on the server who'd have to deal with the negative effects of server congestion when SB hits.

I support our community, but that means also supporting the future of it, and that is what this whole debate is about. Yes, I want things to run smoothly for SB, but I also know a closed server will cause new players to go elsewhere, and over time as RPers leave naturally, no one will come to replace them. This isn't about the cares of a single person, it is about helping the community continue as it has for 5 years, something that many of us have put forth a lot of effort and work to grow into what it is now.

The point is, SE should have never let it get this far in the first place, but now that it has, we need to put forth as much effort as we can to help figure out a solution, and if SE recognized us other than a simple tag, that would help a great deal in doing so.

zaviire · **05-17-2017, 03:36 PM**

As someone who kinda has feet on both sides of the fence, I actually like this lock-down a lot, though I think they should have given a bit of warning first. I started out playing this game on a smaller server (Malboro) and I really loved it when I first started, because even though it was small, there were a lot of people that I managed to gather up that I could hang out with and do content with. I have a personal and FC house, so until recently there was never really much of an incentive for me to transfer to Balmung. But then people started leaving to larger servers in general, some of them to Balmung. Malboro is technically a midpop server and when I started I could believe it, but as time went on, more and more people just transferred off for greener pastures and the RMT bots became our only company. Half the people I know and was on good terms with transferred to various other servers. Even my best friend who I started playing with (and who got me into XIV to begin with) briefly transferred to Lamia. They came back, but that was because according to them, Lamia's economy sucked even worse than Malboro's!

Things got really noticeable after my static broke up on bad terms, because 6 of the 10 people idling in Idyllshire would usually be my former static-mates who I really had (and have) no vested interest in seeing or speaking to. The server was effectively dead and I started spending more time on my Balmung character because frankly it was kind of depressing even back when we were together, because I'd only log on my Malboro character to raid or do Wonderous Tails because it was so empty. These past two months, I logged on pretty much for the express reason of keeping my houses from being autoreclaimed. I decided to liquidate my assets, and transfer to Balmung where I had people to actually play with. I planned on making the move when Stormblood dropped, so that I could do the MSQ with people I knew and do some RP with a new/different character. But because of the new transfer restriction I can't do that, so I'm going to look into holding onto what I have and actually seeing what the expansion brings to my home server. Who knows! Maybe I won't want to bring this character to Balmung after all, though I'd still love to give my Balmung character a care package of sorts since I'm basically set for life on Malboro. Laugh

As far as RP goes, before I came to the server I viewed Balmung largely as a parasite that kinda just sucked the life out of other RP communities on other servers. To be honest, I still kind of think of it that way; I have a lot of... fun (sometimes I'm not sure that's the word to use...) on Balmung but if my home server were viable for RP of PvE then I would spend a lot more time there, and my time would probably be split roughly 50/50. Leonnaux on Balmung wouldn't have become my main if it and other similarly large servers didn't suck all my friends off of my dying home server. They're all kinda scattered now so I don't think I'd bother tracking them down or joining them. I think part of the reason that other servers have had trouble establishing RP communities too is because why would you put in effort to get people interested and gather up people to RP with when you could just transfer to Balmung for the low, low price of $18 where everything is done for you? So while this might be "bad" for Balmung because no new players can come in and Balmung players may get a little tilted that they can't bring their friends over (though Balmungites could always just... Make an alt to play with friends on other servers... because servers that aren't Balmung open up fairly regularly for character creation... There are some where you have to catch it at an odd hour, but at least they open at all), I think this is a good change in the long run and hope they don't reopen transfers to Balmung until at least like, 4.1.

Balmung's size is definitely an attractive feature of its community but it's pretty much the sole reason I'm on the server as much as I am. I feel like I've gotten more than my money's worth at this point, and I genuinely like a lot of people I've met, but it's frustrating sometimes being unable to move through zones because there are so many people that I pull 5fps and NPCs don't load for like a solid minute (which is an issue with my laptop, not my internet or ping). I dislike many of the big RP trends, and I find it difficult to deal with the chat scroll in many populated areas. The economy is relatively good though, except for the housing market. Things are better now since they implemented cross-world stuff; if I had my home server on Aether then I would have started playing on it again when that was implemented, but my home server is on Primal so I can't reap the benefits. I understand why cross-datacenter stuff isn't a thing (yet), though, but the fact that both of NA's megaworlds are on the same datacenter kind of punctuates the problem. Aether during prime-time is a lot different than Primal during prime-time. Primal during prime-time, for example, is what Balmung prime-time before crossworld was. 20-30 PFs going, across the whole datacenter, which is more or less what I saw on Balmung prime-time before crossworld PF (if not more; on REALLY good days before the lull hit I distinctly recall there being 50+ at some point or another!). After cross-world PF, I've seen upwards of 60 on Aether. I'm not entirely sure that people who've been on Balmung for the whole time that they've been playing FFXIV realize that Balmung as compared to any "midpop" server, let alone a lowpop one is like night and day, and in a lot of cases that's not really a good thing. Because everyone's always encouraged just to come and transfer to Balmung or other similarly huge servers, the mid and lowpop servers that the people are leaving (without even trying, because why try when you can just transfer?) kinda suffer.

Anyway that's my two cents since I kinda have a vested interest on both sides of the fence. I was planning on transferring my character to Balmung to give my functional-new-main's funds a little boost (along with some items that I can make/get for free or cheap on my home server due to circumstances) and get a taste for what kind of stuff my other character, who is drastically different in terms of priorities, personality, and aesthetic could get into, but I still love my home server and if this is what it takes to get people to stop going to the megaservers and look at what can be scrounged up closer to home then I'm all for it. Maybe it'll breathe some life into the smaller servers, which in my opinion should be the main concern/benefit besides the obvious issue of server stability during the rush to play and complete Stormblood content, rather than "oh no, Balmung's closed; what ever are we going to do?!" Given that Balmung is larger than a lot of smaller servers would be combined, I don't think that its RP community is in any sort of existential crisis for the time being. It'll open back up for transfers before that happens, at which point we'll probably be back to square one... But eh.

EliBallard · **05-17-2017, 03:57 PM**

I hope people realize how "fuck you, got mine" they sound when they say this is a good thing while already safely on Balmung.

Narissis · **05-17-2017, 04:04 PM**

(05-17-2017, 03:57 PM)EliBallard Wrote: I hope people realize how "fuck you, got mine" they sound when they say this is a good thing while already safely on Balmung.

I transferred 8 characters onto Balmung last week and my sentiment is something more akin to this scene, from the 33s mark:

https://youtu.be/Fv4nGAqybU4?t=33s

Redariesye · **05-17-2017, 04:04 PM**

(05-17-2017, 03:57 PM)EliBallard Wrote: I hope people realize how "fuck you, got mine" they sound when they say this is a good thing while already safely on Balmung.

Says one from Balmung, I jest of coarse.

Honestly though I can say there are obvious pros and cons that have been pointed out from many different angles at this point. Truth be told, what needs to happen now is how to deal with whats has happened, now that Balmung is locked away for gods know how long, how do we start growing communities elsewhere and support those growing currently?

Cato · **05-17-2017, 04:06 PM**

(05-17-2017, 03:57 PM)EliBallard Wrote: I hope people realize how "fuck you, got mine" they sound when they say this is a good thing while already safely on Balmung.

If you believe it is entitlement then that has to go both ways - and those seeking to get onto Balmung at any cost despite it being very bloated in terms of population are also very entitled as well. It's not as if there's infinite space on Balmung, after all.

The situation isn't ideal but this is a direct consequence of Balmung and Gilgamesh sucking up a lot of people who otherwise might have settled elsewhere. It's an emotionally charged issue and there's plenty of great, valid points being raised on both sides of the debate.

Kilieit · **05-17-2017, 04:07 PM**

I come from a small pop RP server in WoW. I played there for almost 10 years, and roleplayed there for over 8. Here's my 2p (more like Â£2... oops) on the challenges you need to be addressing and the things you need to consider moving forward if you (any of you) want to make a genuine, valid alternative community to Balmung.

Here is the shape I've seen small communities take. At the beginning, everyone is really excited about the opportunity to have a fresh start. There's a boom in RP guilds, events, and community get-togethers, there's some method of communication established like a chat channel or a forum or both. People usually think this is the hard part, because it takes a lot of effort and promotion and logging in every day and it is hard, no doubt about it. But by comparison, it is the easy part. The hard part comes a year later.

By this stage, the original person or people (usually a group of 5 people or less) who began the community have begun to burn out. When someone burns out, what happens is they pull back their operations and start mostly doing their in-game stuff, or their personal RP plots, or just stop logging in as much. And the thing is... there's nothing bad about this! It's a healthy, good reaction to burn-out. Pushing through burn-out without heed to your own mental limits is a recipe for shitty events and shitty relations, because you start to resent the hobby, and inevitably lash out at the people related to it. So pulling back and doing something else for a bit is absolutely the right answer. But here's what you need to recall. Who is going to provide roleplay for people in your stead when that happens?

Here's my key point: roleplay communities under a certain size are NOT SUSTAINABLE. Let's say you're the singular leader of the entire RP community on a given server. You will reach burn-out. Maybe this year, maybe next year, maybe next month. It's going to happen. What next? If your answer to "who is going to provide RP" is "one of my friends who's been helping me so far", that is not adequate. Your friend's probably been working just as hard as you! Maybe even harder, depending on the systems you're using and how easy they make it for non-leaders to do stuff like set calendar events. There's only so many friends in a friend group - and if you go through all of them without the first guy feeling like he wants to come back, then you're screwed. If your answer is "I don't know but I'm sure someone will step forward", I have a little spoiler for you: no one is going to take over. That won't happen. Sorry. This is my experience: during their leisure time, people naturally gravitate towards either leader or follower roles, because they will have a preference (either conscious or subconscious) for which one they enjoy performing more. If no one has made themself apparent as enjoying the leader role so far, it's a vanishingly small chance that they're suddenly going to leap forward and take it up. So, then... things fizzle out... or people start getting upset that there's "no roleplay any more", and turn on each other in blame.

What you need is another group who's been running RP separately but concurrently to you. Let's take three Balmung events I attend regularly, and which I know have no overlap in leadership: Matron's Reach on Mondays, Stellazio Pizzaria on Wednesdays, and Fight Club on Thursdays. What happens if the leader of, say, Matron's Reach burns out and doesn't want to lead it any more, and nobody steps forward? Then I suppose that event would stop running. But what happens to Stellazio Pizzaria and Thursday Fight Club? Absolutely nothing. And if someone wants healer-based RP after that? Then there are three free companies I can think of off the top of my head that could scratch that itch, also not dependent on the Matron's Reach in any fashion whatsoever. Because these RP outlets are concurrent and separate, the overall community is stable. One person dropping out won't kill the whole community, no matter who it is.

That is the thing you need to strive for, even in a small server. If one person or FC stops operating, the overall community needs to have the stability and breadth to continue without them (maybe in a different fashion, but still to continue). Because if it doesn't, then this starts happening:

foxfirestorm Wrote:Mateus has a great deal of potential to become something AMAZING. We do have an active community here, but as of recent times (and why I went on my vacation), we have an issue where this... Large group of individuals (Not going to say names) are very entwined into their own little spot and due to the small nature of the RP community right now, this is effecting those that are not in this circle.

As the one in charge, I voice time and time again that my officers need to do more world RP and actually go out and do things, however, they seem very convinced to remain in that circle and some of my own officers have been pulled into this little group-- which makes matters WORSE.

I'm not trying to single you out. I'm using this quote because it is so accurate to what happened to my server's community, in another realm, on another game, 5+ years ago. My guild was in the position "your guild" is in. We were the pillar upon which the rest of the community depended to initiate RP. Then our leader burned out, and took a break from big RP events. His inner circle closed ranks around him... excluding most of the members of his actual guild, including me, despite the fact that I was far and away the second-most active in organising things next to him. That's the familiar part - the part that sounds like it's happening to you. Here's the rest of my cautionary tale about the original community on my small server.

Show Content

A Cautionary TaleThe rest of the community turned to our entire guild, even though it was just the one guy who'd pulled back (and we had as little idea about why as they did!), and started to demand why we weren't making RP events any more? Had we abandoned them? Did we think we were too good for them?

And of course it was none of these things. But even though there were a good 100+ people in the community, the fact that none of them were running independent, concurrent things meant people got angry at us for "making him quit" and "taking away their RP". People started to reroll or transfer, and those that didn't grew bitter. Even though it was just our leader that had burned out and I was still running RP events for people just like he had, on a similar schedule, with a similar quality, they were received with nothing but hostility. People either didn't see the point in putting their faith in someone who wasn't our leader, or they were too upset about our leader "abandoning" everyone to trust anyone with the same guild tag, or they were just apathetic in general and about to drift off to a PvE server. Eventually, I stopped trying. No one wants to put their heart and soul into something only to be called names because they have the wrong nametag above their head.

A few guilds tried to step up and fill the void. The problem was they were all either underestimating how hard it was to actually coordinate a "community-wide" event, or they were too consumed with anger over what had happened before to really make much good out of it (too focussed on trying to copy or be "different from" before, rather than just focussing on doing something that was good). I can think of three who tried, and two fell to in-fighting and either completely rebranded, disbanded, or both... the third's leader was perma-banned over something unrelated, and the guild fell apart shortly after. Our leader finally quit completely, I assumed his mantle on a formal basis rather than the de-facto one I'd been in before, and we actually changed our guild tag last year because years later, people were still blaming my members for the "death" of the original community. All because one guy had made a fixture of himself and then quit.

You'll notice I said "original", so here's the thing. I have word from my friends that the community is actually doing fine these days, although I'm not part of it any more (so I can't personally verify). What changed? Server merges. It was merged with two other RP servers, and although there were initial hiccoughs of people being territorial, these days it's stabilised into a much more sustainable, larger community. People were introduced from a friendlier neighbour-server, and diluted the bitterness in the community. If one guy doesn't like you, it's no longer the end of the world. And if one guy quits, there are a half-dozen others you can seek RP from instead.

Here is what I think y'all need to do if you seriously, actually want to make a solid alternative to Balmung.

Pick one server and pool your efforts. Work together with other people who are currently running small alternative RP communities to bring your efforts together in one place. It seems like there are a good handful of you guys, all with 20-100 people each, who all had the initial thought of "why don't we go somewhere other than Balmung? I'll just pick any low-pop server/the server I initially happened to roll on". If you seriously want to make a valid, serious, stable alternative, then I think you need to start bringing yourselves together with one another. Set aside your pride, stump up the cash to move if you must, and create one, unified RP community on an otherwise low-population server. Do your own thing there! You don't necessarily need to be in communication and coordination with everyone on that server, so place the logistical fears out of your mind - in fact, if there's so many people that you can't, that's a healthy sign that you're on your way to sustainability. Just do it all in the same place so people know where to go.

That way, new players aren't looking at entering one of a number of single FCs or small clusters of FCs where if they don't like the OOC culture, or the stance on lore, the genre of RP, or one of the people there just plain ol' dislikes them, they have to move or reroll again. There should be a choice within a single World, both in terms of what content is on offer and what people are offering it. That would be forming the basis of a genuine Balmung alternative, where people who would otherwise have moved to Balmung will actually want to go.

My summarised opinion/advice to people who want to create a Balmung alternative: I really, really want to see you guys succeed in creating a valid alternative... but I really fear it's not possible to achieve that with single-leader communities. Single-leader communities are great. While they last. But there's no longevity there. You need to consolidate into a multi-leader playerbase if you're going to create something sustainable, that will survive in the long term, and provide a genuine alternative to Balmung. Contact leaders of other alternative communities, pool your efforts on one server, and go on from there.

Gabineaux · **05-17-2017, 04:19 PM**

I don't forsee anyone really leaving and if they do leave, they'll be back the second they can get back.

SE doesn't let people take their plots with them, a refund on their house isn't much when to buy the house on Balmung from a flipper in the first place is insane. And there's no keeping your pvp rank when you move. The gil is a good start, but people will still see a loss with moving and therefore.. won't do it.

I guess the stop of new people flowing onto the server is a start, but honestly I am not going anywhere. Some warning would have been nice though.

Roscoe Rackham · **05-17-2017, 04:27 PM**

...I only just set up an account a few days ago in anticipation of playing with some friends and this really blindsided me. I don't know where to go now...

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Balmung Transfer Restriction Megathread

RPC has moved! These pages have been kept for historical purposes