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

Mercer · **05-22-2017, 12:18 AM**

Thank you for the clarification! And I had forgotten about the zoning issues, hot damn what a mess. I think it's safe to say we should be expecting similar at launch.

Nodem · **05-22-2017, 12:20 AM**

This is why people get locked out of houses and FC workshops all too often...

Nako Vesh · **05-22-2017, 12:21 AM**

(05-22-2017, 12:04 AM)Sig Wrote: I've considered each and every counter argument and disagree.Â

How can you disagree with hardware limitations though? These limits exist whether you believe in them or not. The strain on the entire Aether datacenter continues with or without the power of you imagination.Â

People with expertise are telling you on a concrete, material level that sustaining Balmung is physically impossible. Unless you have invented some quantum servers and are ready to roll them out right now (and even then, I don't know). . .

Fox · **05-22-2017, 12:23 AM**

(05-22-2017, 12:18 AM)Oswin Wrote: Thank you for the clarification! And I had forgotten about the zoning issues, hot damn what a mess. I think it's safe to say we should be expecting similar at launch.

I suspect there will be instancing issues like there was at HW launch. This being said, WoW dealt with massive issues with instancing when they launched their expac in very well the same way as XIV did. So I suspect it will happen again. (Hell, WoW is actually all instanced now aside from the two main cities for the RP servers and people are still having problems with finding rp there sometimes due to it.) So yes, we've got a very bumpy SB launch from the past experiences with instancing and zoning. Reason why I bring this up is because even WoW has had issues with very large servers; ie WRA and MG and did what they could to mitigate it. But in the end it was never IDEAL. But nothing will EVER be ideal and this is the real situation we have found ourselves in.

EliBallard · **05-22-2017, 12:23 AM**

(05-22-2017, 12:21 AM)Nako Vesh Wrote:
(05-22-2017, 12:04 AM)Sig Wrote: I've considered each and every counter argument and disagree.Â

How can you disagree with hardware limitations though? These limits exist whether you believe in them or not. The strain on the entire Aether datacenter continues with or without the power of you imagination.Â

People with expertise are telling you on a concrete, material level that sustaining Balmung is physically impossible. Unless you have invented some quantum servers and are ready to roll them out right now (and even then, I don't know). . .

Yeah, but.. he disagrees.

Max · **05-22-2017, 12:27 AM**

if OP is the same as the OF equivalent of this thread, he suggests increasing monthly sub rates to pay for 'maintaining high population servers'

Kage · **05-22-2017, 12:28 AM**

And even if we concede that OP will say "SE needs to designate another server as an official RP server" to concede to the actual limitations...

Quote:Nothing else will work.

They will work because we must make sure they work and can see that there is considerable effort in making it work. We cannot depend on SE to do something that the roleplayers can and should do.

Val · **05-22-2017, 12:29 AM**

(05-22-2017, 12:23 AM)EliBallard Wrote:
(05-22-2017, 12:21 AM)Nako Vesh Wrote:
(05-22-2017, 12:04 AM)Sig Wrote: I've considered each and every counter argument and disagree.Â

How can you disagree with hardware limitations though? These limits exist whether you believe in them or not. The strain on the entire Aether datacenter continues with or without the power of you imagination.Â

People with expertise are telling you on a concrete, material level that sustaining Balmung is physically impossible. Unless you have invented some quantum servers and are ready to roll them out right now (and even then, I don't know). . .
Yeah, but.. he disagrees.

It's them alternative factsÂ Cactuar

Nodem · **05-22-2017, 12:30 AM**

(05-22-2017, 12:16 AM)Unnamed Mercenary Wrote:
(05-21-2017, 11:28 PM)Oswin Wrote: This is a very good point as well but I would like to clarify that it's on a different server level. Correct me if I'm wrong, Merc, but from my understanding as a Sys Admin the instance servers are more like a server farm that is connected to all the other Aether servers. Realistically, there should be enough servers to handle the load. If we go by the server limit it should be able to handle 7,500 players per server. Divided up Aether should be able to handle that load.

If I had to guess (well, an educated guess based on people's work doing packet analysis and reverse engineering on both 1.0 and 2.0 server architecture), our instance servers are nearly identical to our normal zone servers. They likely just have a different set of scripts on them and the client handles the rest of the connections.

FFXIV utilizes a number of different servers at different stages of gameplay. I'll go over a few in text and then I'll link in a handy picture (and edit the post) for a basic explanation of the server setup that's likely in place.

FFXIV uses the following (and likely more than one)

Authorization Server - your login credentials
Patch Server - self explanatory

Once you've logged in on the launcher, it creates your basic session credentials, which are passed to the FFXIV game client. (Which is why you can't just run ffxiv.exe directly). For security's sake, I'll omit what that looks like. 3rd party launcher do exist (not including bots). They're insecure and not really useful if the real launcher is working.

Once the game is running, you'll notice that it had initially asked you which datacenter you wanted to play on. This is important! It it was brings you to the next step of gameplay.

Lobby Server - This is what loads your account information based off the session created from the Auth server and and game client. Traffic is encrypted now! (Good job SE. Don't turn that off again.)

The Lobby Server handles everything until you actually get in game. It handles selecting other data centers (new lobby server), making/deleting/editing characters, and eventually passing off your session over to the next server in charge of things.

World Server - These are the named worlds. Balmung, Gilgamesh, Mateus, whatever. This server handles global functions in the game for all players connected to it. Things like your linkshells, party, free company, market boards, retainers, and more! You are ALWAYS connected to this server. At the same time, it's rapidly passing data to a series of additional servers you might also be connected to. We're not sure, but status effects are probably stored in this server's working memory, even if they get handled below.

Zone Server - Also known as Map servers, Instance servers, and probably a few more things. This server is where the magic really happens. It's what sends the game client constant updates on what you see and can interact with. All of the game's actors (players, mobs, npcs, interactable objects) exist in this level. It has a TON of things to do and also has to make sure it broadcasts that to every player connected. It's also needs to check in with the World Server to make sure that your chats and party information are synced. And that's on top of running all the events, scripts, monster AI, FATEs, hunts, and other cool things that make the game work.

Now, there are multiple zone servers. There has to be or the game would only be able to support a very meager amount of connections. (Think like less than 1000). If you ever got that error message saying "cannot enter zone" it's because this server's overworked for that area. Most likely, we've got at least one of these for every map in the game and possibly per housing ward, although it's entirely possibly all wards are compressed together and that particular zone server just knows how to keep them separated from each other. (FFXIV supported creating private instance areas layered on top of normal maps. This is how levequests, instance battles, and inn rooms are handled, for example!)

--

Now, what happens when a server's full? There are multiple places this can happen!

The world is full. The world server's unable to handle more connections in a safe manner. This could mean the maximum amount of concurrent connections are all being used, it could mean that it's not able to broadcast packets to all players, and it can also mean that it's getting stressed from too much context switching if it's connecting/disconnections thousands of players at a time to try to keep up with all its global functions.

The zone is full. Mostly explain above already, that particular zone instance is maxed out. It can't reliably broadcast packets for everything it needs to do in a timely manner because of CPU/network constraints.

--

So why can't SE just give a world server or a particular zone server more resources? It doesn't work that way. When the lock these servers down, it's largely due to network contraints. I've explained this in earlier posts already, but there's no way to allocate more or "better" network connections to a server. When a server gets stressed in these situations, that typically means it's time to go into load balancing or to restrict how many connections are allowed. (FFXIV has done both!)

Who remembers the split zones when 3.0 launched? I do! It was a MESS. This was an early attempt from SE to get multiple zone servers handling the same area. (Good on them. Their architecture allowed them to do this!) If any of you remember, it'd arbritrarily select a zone for you. Didn't get grouped with your party? Too bad so sad. The zone servers were split to make sure they could keep running. Not for your party and/or group! In some games, players re given the option to switch between these instances. (Sometimes referred to as a shard or channel). But this only works if the zone server can accept more connections to start.

OK. Picture time. It uses some different names, but I believe you all. Please.

(credit to the FFXIV private server projects. This one came from FFXIV Classic).

This is a basic illustration of only a single World/Zone server cluster. Since at this point in the game, there's no reason to be connecting to the authorization server or lobby server. (But who knows. FFXIV might keep the lobby server too since it likes to kick us back often. ...or the session lasts a REALLY long time and that's how the Chinese bots hacked the game once.)

Here's the entire reason Balmung as the sole RP community will not work.

Also I recall those horrid instanced zones, and then the zone line selection didn't help it any. Killed your chances for doing lots of things.

Val · **05-22-2017, 12:31 AM**

(05-22-2017, 12:16 AM)Unnamed Mercenary Wrote:
(05-21-2017, 11:28 PM)Oswin Wrote: This is a very good point as well but I would like to clarify that it's on a different server level. Correct me if I'm wrong, Merc, but from my understanding as a Sys Admin the instance servers are more like a server farm that is connected to all the other Aether servers. Realistically, there should be enough servers to handle the load. If we go by the server limit it should be able to handle 7,500 players per server. Divided up Aether should be able to handle that load.

If I had to guess (well, an educated guess based on people's work doing packet analysis and reverse engineering on both 1.0 and 2.0 server architecture), our instance servers are nearly identical to our normal zone servers. They likely just have a different set of scripts on them and the client handles the rest of the connections.

FFXIV utilizes a number of different servers at different stages of gameplay. I'll go over a few in text and then I'll link in a handy picture (and edit the post) for a basic explanation of the server setup that's likely in place.

FFXIV uses the following (and likely more than one)

Authorization Server - your login credentials
Patch Server - self explanatory

Once you've logged in on the launcher, it creates your basic session credentials, which are passed to the FFXIV game client. (Which is why you can't just run ffxiv.exe directly). For security's sake, I'll omit what that looks like. 3rd party launcher do exist (not including bots). They're insecure and not really useful if the real launcher is working.

Once the game is running, you'll notice that it had initially asked you which datacenter you wanted to play on. This is important! It it was brings you to the next step of gameplay.

Lobby Server - This is what loads your account information based off the session created from the Auth server and and game client. Traffic is encrypted now! (Good job SE. Don't turn that off again.)

The Lobby Server handles everything until you actually get in game. It handles selecting other data centers (new lobby server), making/deleting/editing characters, and eventually passing off your session over to the next server in charge of things.

World Server - These are the named worlds. Balmung, Gilgamesh, Mateus, whatever. This server handles global functions in the game for all players connected to it. Things like your linkshells, party, free company, market boards, retainers, and more! You are ALWAYS connected to this server. At the same time, it's rapidly passing data to a series of additional servers you might also be connected to. We're not sure, but status effects are probably stored in this server's working memory, even if they get handled below.

Zone Server - Also known as Map servers, Instance servers, and probably a few more things. This server is where the magic really happens. It's what sends the game client constant updates on what you see and can interact with. All of the game's actors (players, mobs, npcs, interactable objects) exist in this level. It has a TON of things to do and also has to make sure it broadcasts that to every player connected. It's also needs to check in with the World Server to make sure that your chats and party information are synced. And that's on top of running all the events, scripts, monster AI, FATEs, hunts, and other cool things that make the game work.

Now, there are multiple zone servers. There has to be or the game would only be able to support a very meager amount of connections. (Think like less than 1000). If you ever got that error message saying "cannot enter zone" it's because this server's overworked for that area. Most likely, we've got at least one of these for every map in the game and possibly per housing ward, although it's entirely possibly all wards are compressed together and that particular zone server just knows how to keep them separated from each other. (FFXIV supported creating private instance areas layered on top of normal maps. This is how levequests, instance battles, and inn rooms are handled, for example!)

--

Now, what happens when a server's full? There are multiple places this can happen!

The world is full. The world server's unable to handle more connections in a safe manner. This could mean the maximum amount of concurrent connections are all being used, it could mean that it's not able to broadcast packets to all players, and it can also mean that it's getting stressed from too much context switching if it's connecting/disconnections thousands of players at a time to try to keep up with all its global functions.

The zone is full. Mostly explain above already, that particular zone instance is maxed out. It can't reliably broadcast packets for everything it needs to do in a timely manner because of CPU/network constraints.

--

So why can't SE just give a world server or a particular zone server more resources? It doesn't work that way. When the lock these servers down, it's largely due to network contraints. I've explained this in earlier posts already, but there's no way to allocate more or "better" network connections to a server. When a server gets stressed in these situations, that typically means it's time to go into load balancing or to restrict how many connections are allowed. (FFXIV has done both!)

Who remembers the split zones when 3.0 launched? I do! It was a MESS. This was an early attempt from SE to get multiple zone servers handling the same area. (Good on them. Their architecture allowed them to do this!) If any of you remember, it'd arbritrarily select a zone for you. Didn't get grouped with your party? Too bad so sad. The zone servers were split to make sure they could keep running. Not for your party and/or group! In some games, players re given the option to switch between these instances. (Sometimes referred to as a shard or channel). But this only works if the zone server can accept more connections to start.

OK. Picture time. It uses some different names, but I believe you all. Please.

(credit to the FFXIV private server projects. This one came from FFXIV Classic).

This is a basic illustration of only a single World/Zone server cluster. Since at this point in the game, there's no reason to be connecting to the authorization server or lobby server. (But who knows. FFXIV might keep the lobby server too since it likes to kick us back often. ...or the session lasts a REALLY long time and that's how the Chinese bots hacked the game once.)

Thanks for this, Merc.

Mercer · **05-22-2017, 12:37 AM**

Another point to make about the coming free transfers.

Guys, they are giving out game time to get off the server. SE is throwing away those of dollars to get the hell off Balmung. They are willing to eat that loss. Let that sink in as well.

Kage · **05-22-2017, 12:42 AM**

(05-22-2017, 12:37 AM)Oswin Wrote: Another point to make about the coming free transfers.

Guys, they are giving out game time to get off the server. SE is throwing away those of dollars to get the hell off Balmung. They are willing to eat that loss. Let that sink in as well.

Yep. Free EXP, GIL, GAME TIME.

They have said they will try to accommodate housing but not how yet. We know they can't just copy them over and done but we can try to see alternatives etc.

I don't feel comfortable making the thread about it myself on the official forums but i'd encourage and help drive the thread.

Fox · **05-22-2017, 12:44 AM**

I realized I didn't actually post concerning my concerns of "everyone should be on xyz server". I come from Besaid, like a lot of the others. I played 1.0; and I will likely always main on whatever remains of Besaid because it is home.

However.

I would never; ever support a mega-server. I have seen the results of mega-servers; rpers get ran out. Rpers are griefed into non existence or into their personal housing etc etc etc. RPers lose everything they've built.

I have seen normal rp severs that are TAGGED <rp> get destroyed by griefers; by people who HATE rpers. It happened in WoW with Thorium Brotherhood, it happened in SWTOR with the west-coast RP server, it happened in GW2, it happened in WS* and it happened in RIFT. I would never support having a server labeled <RP> why?

Because right now the XIV community as a whole is FRUSTRATED and pissed off with the RP community for one reason or another. We know the vitriol for RPers we've seen it in /r/ etc. And the very moment that SE puts up an RP tagged realm you KNOW these people will roll on it to completely -destroy- the rp community. They will make it their goal to destroy the very -function- of the server; as an RP server.

Mercer · **05-22-2017, 02:19 AM**

Strap in for some data folks. It's time for...

The Importance of Diversifying RP Servers!

Show Content

Let's start with the basics. Balmung is the king of RP servers. It is also the co-king of PvE content. This combination of interests has lead to a population...

Â

EXPLOSION! Bomb

Balmung was not the only victim to this population explosion, so were the realms of Bahamut, Chocobo, Mandragora, Shinryu and Gilgamesh. These servers will be important as they serve of a standard of the minimum requirement needed to be over populated by Square Enix standards.

For this exercise I will be referencing Lucky Bancho's Unofficial Census. The numbers here are not exact, and in most criticisms is on the low side of active players. Never the less it is the most accurate representation we have on server populations. This census takes into account HP changes, achievement changes and mount changes between each patch cycle, giving a more clear idea of what characters are actually active over a 5 month span.

Lucky Bancho's Unofficial Census

From our dear friend Bancho's estimates Balmung's active population is 26,432. This is the fourth column on the list and is the active number of characters on a server. This is a very large number but can be attributed to the alt friendly nature of RP as well as people that never level and are more interested in the RP experience.

The next column is the amount of characters that have been created since November. 6,464 new characters have been made! This is a huge number! Â In a 5 months span between November and March we have gained about 1/5th of our total active character population! Whoa!

The fifth column is the number of characters created since 2.55, or the last patch before Heavensward. Holy crap! There have been 19,968 new characters made since Heavensward! That means that 4/5ths of the current population is made up of characters made after 3.0!

Now, let's be fair here. As Balmung is the RP server there are a ton of alts. And you would be right you handsome people reading this post. That's why the important columns are what come next.

ACTIVE PLAYER BASE

The amount of people that have completed ARR or 2.0 is 23,253 characters. That's a fairly large number of people! But I must also remind you, that only active characters are taken into account from this point forward. That means 23,253 characters have been played above level 50 between November 2016 to March 2017.Â

And with each step on the columns we go, the number shrinks and shrinks. But the key here is that there is still an active population far above the rest of the servers. At the most current patch progress, 3.4, Balmung has an active character population of 12,662! Gilgamesh is the next highest with 9,953! That's a difference of nearly 3,000 people!

That number becomes more extreme when you look at the actual active player base through all of the progress. Balmung's active character population is 26,432 while Gilgamesh's is only 18,097. That is a difference of 8,335 characters!

Let me repeat that.

8,335 more active characters than Gilgamesh!

To put that into perspective the lowest populated server on the lock down list is Mandragora with 10,383 active players. Balmung currently has doubleÂ the minimum amount of characters to be server locked. And the difference between Gilgamesh and Balmung could fit an entire fresh server of people!

This is a huge problem for Balmung and RP as a whole. Balmung could be split into two seperate servers of 13,216 players and we would still be population locked. This is an important point so let me bolden that.

Half of Balmung's population is 13,216! Over the limit for a locked server!

This is a major problem. To be blunt, Square Enix's servers can not handle that kind of load. It's why Balmung sees queues every hour of every day of every week. We have been granted some insight to the current limit of concurrent users per server.Â

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/...ba2fe51b35

We know that on the best estimates that Balmung can handle 7,800 concurrent users. Now I will be the first to admit that this data is dated being about 3 years old. However, given the threshold of what Square Enix deems to be an over populated server, it lines right up. So what does this mean? That of the active 26,432 players only 7,800 would be able to access the game.

Right now that doesn't seem that remarkable, but we're also looking forward to Stormblood. The concurrent users will rise dramatically which will make those server limits painful.

How does this effect me?

I'm glad you asked. Let's do some quick math. If 26,432 try to access Stormblood during launch day, only 7,800 people would be able to log in. That means that 18,632 people wouldn't be able to log in! They would be stuck in a queue!

Even if we said half of those players would be trying to log on, we'd still be in a queue! Even if a third were to try and log on there would still be a queue!

Those of you that remember Heavensward would be familiar with the rocky launch weekend. There were server instabilities, crashes and bad queues never mind the awful zoning system that was implemented.

Well let me tell you, you haven't seen anything yet.

The population of Balmung has grown by 19,968 characters since Heavensward came out. Even if that would mean that every new account made 8 characters and played them over the last 5 months that would mean there are 2,496 new accounts on the server. That is about 1/3 of a normal server load folks.

Â At it's current rate Balmung is in serious trouble.Â Tonberry

You might be asking how can I help? Well, the truth of the matter the only way to alleviate server load is to get the hell off of Balmung. Square Enix has shown their hand in this fact with the transfer incentives that will soon be available.

Square is offering free transfers off Balmung. Not only will they be free, but they will apply server wide XP bonuses all the way to 60, Gil and Game Time for new characters. They are also offering full price reimbursement for housing that may be lost in the move.

The key point here is that Square is giving away game time. They are literally throwing away profits just for the opportunity for you to get the hell off Balmung. It shows that Square understands they are in a desperate situation and are willing to let their profits go to give a more stable experience over all.

We still don't know what the server transfer will be, but that does bring us to another important note about the current state of the realms.

Where should I transfer?

That's hard to say. The reality is that for Balmung to be stable at least 1/2 of it's population needs to leave. That's 13,216 characters. If they all went to the same server, we'd be in the same situation we are in now.

Even the lowest populated server in the world, Mateus, has an active population of 4,423 characters. Together that would be 17,639 characters, nearly twice the active server load limit and second only to Gilgamesh in active characters.

And as Mateus would suddenly become another big server, we would run into the same issues that caused Balmung to be in the state it's in. We would be trading in one time bomb for another.

Even if we looked at only RPers and even if we looked at the amount of people that are members of the RP-C we're looking at over 10,000 people. That doesn't include guests and that doesn't include RPers that use Tumblr over the RP-C.

If half of the current RP-C members switched to Mateus that would still put them over that server population limit. That is how extensive the RP community currently is.Â

Enough Doom and Gloom

How do we move forward? Diversifying. There is already a small, but strong RP presence on other servers. Mateus, Jenova, Faerie, Cactaur, Sargatanas and more. What needs to happen is for people to broaden their horizons and join these other servers. There needs to be an active effort to strengthen new communities. It will not be an easy effort, and in reality I don't believe there will be enough effort for Balmung to survive.

You see, this is not the first time this has happened. Back in Final Fantasy XI, Odin and Bahamut servers were going through the same issues. Everyone joined those servers to be with their friends while the other servers suffered from low population. Eventually Square locked up character creation. Then character transfers. Then they offered free transfers away from Odin and Bahamut. Eventually they threatened to split the servers without any input from it's players. Why would players be allowed to choose where they end up? They would only pick one server over the other to be with their friends.

Eventually Odin and Bahamut's populations normalized, but they weren't opened for a long period of time, pushing a year. in the mean time Square merged smaller servers to bring them up to Odin and Bahamut's status until a more normalized population spread was achieved.

Unfortunately, Balmung is much more bloated than Odin and Bahamut ever were. The grim reality is that if something isn't done, it's very possible that Balmung will be broken, shattered into smaller servers without a choice offered to it's players on where they end up.

I implore you to look into the other servers, see if they are the right fit for you. If the option to transfer comes up, please consider what lies on the other side. RP has grown to such a state that it's being crushed by it's own weight.

Information on free server transfers won't be available for sometime. In the mean time, I ask you to look into RP server alternatives, educate yourself on what's out there and maybe roll an alt to meet the rest of the communities. It might just be your new home.

Tyndles · **05-22-2017, 03:09 AM**

I appreciate the need for a new RP server area, but let's not go to the other extreme. The fact is that Balmung will calm down and other than queues, things will be fine after a few weeks, like they were in Heavensward.

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The Importance of Consolidating RP on Balmung and Having One RP Hub

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