Balmung Transfer Restriction Megathread

[Momoka]

I actually have some alts on mateus that I HAD planned to move to balmung, I might actually keep them on Mateus and see what I can find.

[Helmheid]

So until 20th June you can still transfer onto high pops? A few friends of mine may want onto Balmung, if it's still a possibility, but I wouldn't make them buy the game only to find out transfers are closed.

[Redariesye]

So until 20th June you can still transfer onto high pops? A few friends of mine may want onto Balmung, if it's still a possibility, but I wouldn't make them buy the game only to find out transfers are closed.

As someone who just checked it, no they don't even list the servers on the service right now.

[Helmheid]

It's a bit misleading, since the article says it'll be locked on 20th, but says nothing about it being locked right now.

[Kilieit]

No, the article says it is locked now. I can forgive people being confused, because it took me two or three read-throughs to comprehend this, but I'll try to explain.

 

Here I will use two separate concepts: character login (accessing the game on a given server through a character that's already on that server), and character addition (placing a new character onto that server by way of transfer or character creation).

 

The timeline is essentially:

 

• On the 20th June, they will be adding new EU servers, with bonuses to incentivise people adding characters to them (by transfer or creation).

 

• On the 20th June, they will be restricting login for high pop servers, i.e. throttling the number of people able to log in to the World at once. This is nothing to do with addition of new characters to the server (by transfer or creation).

 

• Because they want to reduce the number of players affected by this login restriction, by increasing the proportion of players who are on servers not affected by the login restriction...

 

• ... AS OF RIGHT NOW, as a preventative measure for login congestion on the 20th, they have begun preventing ANY new characters from being added to the server BY ANY METHOD (either transfer or creation). You will note the sections regarding transfer and creation are written in the past tense.

 

• FURTHERMORE, they are adding some incentives for people to transfer away (i.e. raised gil cap).

 

• This is a measure intended to ensure that between now and 20th June, the population on the overpopulated servers can ONLY GO DOWN.

[Kage]

They most likely are talking about the afk auto-logouts when they talk about the character login restrictions.

 

Which is not at all unexpected.

[Dravus]

I have my doubts that the developers will change their stance on this. I'll be very surprised if they do. I also suspect that this is very much a necessity - for the sake of keeping Balmung stable. There's been a lot of problems over time, including a dubious economy, a lack of player housing and major issues whenever new content is added due to too many people rushing to get online at once. Aether has crashed more than once in recent months and that isn't entirely the fault of the development team.

 

Far too many people here and elsewhere have been constantly urging more people to transfer over to Balmung. I get it, a lot of people want their friends to be here too - and I've done as much myself. All the same, there's definitely valid concerns about the server being too bloated at this point.

 

Bigger isn't necessarily better. Technically there's 'more role-play' here than elsewhere. In large part that is due to Balmung serving as a vacuum which indirectly hampers attempts for other servers to truly thrive as legitimate alternative options. Let's be honest here, 99% of the time if someone has the choice between a huge server bustling with players and a smaller, much tighter knit server where more effort to find role-play is required they're going to go for the easiest option.

 

I expect the developers to continue offering incentives to players to transfer elsewhere and consider making use of other servers.

[Lydia Lightfoot]

Yep, the post on the official forums is already getting anti-roleplayer pushback from people. Hooray.

[Literal-Ghost]

I sort of feel this was a long time coming, it's not unexpected. One of the reasons I moved 8 placeholder alts over to Balmung is because I suspected SE would probably be doing this at one point, it's surprising that the announcement was so sudden but I kind f think they were trying to avoid a lot of last minute rush transfers. While high population is good for RP i feel it's reached a critical mass where it's starting to hurt gameplay. Housing is not so much as a long shot as it is a lottery and while the new move may help with loading issues piling on more transfers to an overpopulated server could exhaust the capabilities of what it can support. The bonus is I don't have to witness a general f#$*ton of bots every time the server restarts.

 

I also think that the overemphasis on Balmung has caused smaller communities such as Faerie, Mates and Jenova to be passed over to  everyone's​ loss.

 

This is pretty much how I feel about it, too. The staff has been trying to nudge people into dispersing out into other servers for quite some time now, and it doesn't make much practical sense to make changes that accommodate the needs of overly populated servers while there are so many others that are near desolate by comparison.

 

Though it would be nice to be able to have the option to guest to other servers, and/or temporarily making transferring to lower pop servers free.

 

To be honest? I really hope that smaller servers see an increase in interest, especially for roleplayers. The general environment for Balmung has felt kind of unwelcoming for new players as of the past few months, especially if a new person's avatar starts out in Ul'Dah and their first litmus test to the server community is yet another shout chat discussion about futas. It can feel hard to get a foothold unless you already have friends you know in the game.

 

The people who are solidly sunk in Balmung are going to stay solidly sunk in Balmung, and the only real negative effect this change has on them is that a) they can't make new alts on Bal without fanting an old one, or b) if they have friends they want to introduce to the game, they have to make a new alt on another server with them. Both of those problems are probably largely inconsequential to most people who already have alts and already have a network of friends in game.

[Aegir]

I didn't know Balmung's population is what's been causing the aether data center crashes.

[Mipo]

I actually have some alts on mateus that I HAD planned to move to balmung, I might actually keep them on Mateus and see what I can find.

 

Hello, someone from Mateus here! If you're planning on keeping your alt-characters on Mateus, there's actually a growing community of roleplayers. If you're around, feel free to message me (Miah Aliapoh is my main, but you can also find me on Leiah Tayuun). I've an FC I'm a part of, and we have roleplaying set as optional, and we've been been trying to get it back into full gear.

 

If people plan on moving to Mateus? That would be wonderful, and I look forward to  (trying) to meet everyone that decides to come over and give it a shot. There are plenty of people around that have the RP tag up, a lot of friendly folks, and people usually seem pretty happy to just ... play.

 

I'm really bad at this. I'm sorry.

[Lydia Lightfoot]

I was just discussing with a friend, and one of the main issues is that even if they offered transfers off Balmung completely for free, and made incentives on low-pop servers with exp and the like, it wouldn't work very well due to "anchor" players: those who have spent resources on a gil sink that they wouldn't get back, such as a house or apartment, FC airships, or even just an FC chamber (300k gil is a lot of gil to lose for a lot of players). 

 

When we played ArcheAge and they had some server issues, one of the ways they tried to mitigate the anchoring issue was to offer a token item to anchor players which would let them reacquire a similar gil sink (not the exact same spot, but, for example, a medium house to a medium house) on their destination server. They'd made some new servers, and temporarily made it so that land could only be bought via those tokens (not by the normal currency), so that the anchor players who opted to "lead the way" with their transfer would have their pick of the choicest locations using their token. 

 

Even outside of RP, one anchor player who owns a house and refuses to leave and lose the gil they'd spent on it... well, if they're important to a big raid group, or a big PVP group, then their friends will be disinclined to leave them behind, and suddenly you have a big chunk of players who won't leave just because one or two among them have an anchor. Give them the option to pick up that anchor and drop it on the new server, and they might.

[Virella]

Got to love delusional people on the OF.

 

"Why not start another RP server." "You can just try to make one."

 

It has been tried and it failed before. But alas, don't let people hear about Gilgamesh.

 

I honestly wish it was realistic to start another RP server, and I support any attempt. But I'm cynical about the situation for a heap of reasons. I hope I'm proven wrong though!

[Nigerian-Scam-Artist]

Having a large role play community is a GOOD thing. 

 

What population issues are we actually concerned about? Housing? Apartments? If you consider that to be a problem, go to any housing ward and check the housing list. How many of those houses belong to single players? How many are being utilized on a regular basis? Now, if you are a person who thinks a single player should be allowed to have a house as well as enjoy a FC house and also a personal apartment, maybe that is a valid argument for you. But if you make an alt on any medium sized server, you're going to find the same situation. With the exception of the very low population servers: people have bought houses. Houses are an issue for them too.

 

The economy? If anything, Balmung has the most stable economy for middle income players. Yes, the big name crafters cannot gouge prices like other servers can. But there is also a huge variety of goods available and at a stable market price. 

 

Being on a small role play server is miserable. Finding like minded roleplayers is a shot in the dark. Everyone has their own preference. These preferences include tolerance to violence, language, sex, opinion on lore, sense of humor, schedule, posting length preference - and then you have to agree on what you want to role play. Some people want to do slice-of-life stories, some people want to do tavern/forest rps, some people want long, epic adventures. Some people just want sex. Some people want to RP politics in Ishgard, some people want to RP the tribal life of a Miqote. Some people want to rp the tribal life of an Au Ra. 

 

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

 

On smaller servers where you might have... 100-200 role players - all with different preferences, regards to lore, and availability ... you probably aren't going to find these people. 

 

This restriction might personally benefit YOU, because maybe it spurs YOU to transfer and meet new people on a smaller server but that should be your choice. Just like it should be MY choice if I choose to go to a small server where I might not jive with other role players, but I might be able to buy a house or an apartment. Or MY choice to go to the giant server, where on any given hour I can find someone to RP with. But I won't be able to get an apartment. Do not support taking away other people's choices to force your personal preference. 

 

I doubt this restriction will last long. Maybe a month or two after the release of Stormblood. They should have given us warning that they were going to do it, so those who wanted to get into Balmung had a chance to before they closed their gates for an indefinite period of time.

[Koti Nexus]

Got to love delusional people on the OF.

 

"Why not start another RP server." "You can just try to make one."

 

It has been tried and it failed before. But alas, don't let people hear about Gilgamesh.

 

I honestly wish it was realistic to start another RP server, and I support any attempt. But I'm cynical about the situation for a heap of reasons. I hope I'm proven wrong though!

 

Given Mateus has been going on for nearly-- 4-7 months now?? I think you already are.

[Nero]

Anyone who makes fun of my OF username gets banned. No exceptions.

 

Kidding, of course. For those interested, here is a relevant thread from two years ago that sort of addresses this topic.

 

In short: transferring is too expensive with not enough incentive. A mass exodus doesn't really need a coordinated effort, honestly.

 

The key to this is twofold: transferring needs to be completely free with no loss of any assets except for time, and there'd need to be some kind of official designation in order to facilitate the segregation of RPers and non-RPers.

 

That means transferring needs to be completely free at the minimum. Housing needs to be guaranteed. Things like FC airships need to be guaranteed, or adequately compensated in gil and materials.

 

At the same time, they should offer free transfers away from whatever the designated RP server is so that non-RPers can choose their environment.

 

I really don't see any downside to this, unless you're a corporate executive that only cares about quarterly profits and want to milk transfer money as much as possible. Which, I mean, it's Square Enix so...

[savail]

My spouse has been playing with some friends on Phoenix.  Been contemplating transferring off Bal to join them (I made an alt over there, but I'm struggling getting both ready for Stormblood given I've been slacking with HW).  Apparently, there's a decent-sized linkshell for RP over there that he got an invite to.

 

Do you know what the name of the Linkshell is? I've been checking around on Phoenix and haven't seen anything really. Phoenix is a great server, busy but not to busy.

 

I know the people in charge have another LS listed here, but don't know if that one is active.  Looked it up on the Lodestone, and this is it:

 

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/linkshell/15762598695872350/

[Kage]

Yep, the post on the official forums is already getting anti-roleplayer pushback from people. Hooray.

Unsurprising. The general populace on the official forums views Balmung's issues as a problem of Balmung's own making.

[Virella]

Got to love delusional people on the OF.

 

"Why not start another RP server." "You can just try to make one."

 

It has been tried and it failed before. But alas, don't let people hear about Gilgamesh.

 

I honestly wish it was realistic to start another RP server, and I support any attempt. But I'm cynical about the situation for a heap of reasons. I hope I'm proven wrong though!

 

Given Mateus has been going on for nearly-- 4-7 months now?? I think you already are.

I'm curious how many people there are though. If you know the majority, I'd still say it's not... what people are looking for.

[Kage]

Got to love delusional people on the OF.

 

"Why not start another RP server." "You can just try to make one."

 

It has been tried and it failed before. But alas, don't let people hear about Gilgamesh.

 

I honestly wish it was realistic to start another RP server, and I support any attempt. But I'm cynical about the situation for a heap of reasons. I hope I'm proven wrong though!

 

Given Mateus has been going on for nearly-- 4-7 months now?? I think you already are.

I'm curious how many people there are though. If you know the majority, I'd still say it's not... what people are looking for.

How big is the 'web' so to speak? How large is the network?

[Lydia Lightfoot]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

 

Having a large role play community is a GOOD thing. 

 

-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.