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

[Val]

 

Requesting for developers to implement changes that will improve the game for a substantial amount of users doesn't make someone a "entitled, pretentious prick."  Asking for a RP server -- which will take almost no resources -- isn't unreasonable.

 

RPers are not the majority.  But we are a substantial number of players, and it is reasonable for RPers to desire an official, designated server, as shown by the number of MMORPGS that support such a thing.

 

Snipped to prevent the quote spam

 

 

You can request it, sure. But expecting it is something else. Claiming that it's never been done because you personally didn't see it is another something else. Assuming that constant whining/crying about it will get it done faster when there are things far more important than you/RPers(of which I am) that need to be handled is super snowflakey and absurd. 

 

Yes, make a post about it. No, don't expect it to get things done. Hope and find an alternate solution. Telling people to hop on Balmung regardless is just going to make things worse for both the community that decides to play on Mateus and the people staying on Balmung thanks to how ridiculously overpopulated it already is. It isn't helping as much as you think it is.

[Nero]

This is a gentle Sunday reminder for everyone: remain civil.

 

Disagreeing with someone's opinion is fine. Insulting someone for having an opinion is not.

 

Only you can prevent thread locking.

[Vexander]

As someone who's been on Balmung since they started playing FFXIV, I think its time for RP'ers to free themselves from it. I recently moved to Mateus, and its just become such a better experience for me. I've got a house now, which I never had before with Balmung, nor could I ever have dreamed of getting a house on Balmung. As I'm leveling my crafters, I suddenly find myself more inspired to actually do more than level them to cap for the sake of Repairs in dungeons/raids. The economy isn't as bad as Balmung's is, and as more RP'ers come here, there's more demand in the market.

 

Balmung's greatest strength was its RP community, the size of it. Its greatest weakness was the overpopulation caused by RP'ers and Non-RP'ers alike. More FCs are showing up each day now for Mateus, and I think people are beginning to see it as the successor to Balmung, and that seems like a good thing to me. I think its time to move on. We've outgrown Balmung, we did so long ago. We'll never forget out origins, but we should move forward.

[Unnamed Mercenary]

(1) Convincing SE to lift the server transfer restriction; or

 

(2) Convincing SE to designate an official RP server.

 

1. This is NOT going to happen. I'm not sure how many times it can be said.

 

Unless we see some large, and I mean truly LARGE number of players either stop logging to Balmung or leave, it's going to stay at a "highly congested" status in SE's eyes and remain locked. Maybe the PVE-only people will get fed up with it and leave. Maybe some RPers will do it. If we look at the other servers SE locked down, it's obvious that their "too many people" number is over 8000 (because I'm gonna round up and overshoot).

 

Balmung has way more than that. Active. During the slowest part of the 3.X patch series.

 

I'm not sure how much of a tech background you have, if any, but you can't just throw money or complaints at a problem like this. And that's what this is. An actual server problem. There are physical limits to how much data can be processed in a timely manner on a network. Data transfer on a network is SLOW compared to what a computer can actually handle.

 

We're at the point where server stability is affected when too many people login to Balmung. Its map/zone/instance servers can't handle that load while maintaining gampleplay functions. This stuuff isn't just about your specific connection to the server. Everything your player character does has to be broadcasted to every other player around you. And in FFXIV, that generally means per zone. Everything.

 

Every time you move.

Every time you chat.

Every object your character interacts with.

Every item.

Every design decision in your character.

Every skill, with its animations and targets.

Every monster.

Every NPC.

 

For every character on the map. It's not a lot of data for a single character, but it scales up MASSIVELY per character. And imagine this. They're all doing something different. And all that data has to make it to every other person on the map. And for some pieces of data like a linkshell, theoretically the entire server.

 

There are hard limits to how much data can move while keeping gameplay consistent. Otherwise, it's not synchronized and there are major stability issues, lag, etc.

 

That is Balmung right now. That is Balmung's reality right now. I'd love it if it were not the case. I'd love for all the RPers to be on a single server. But that's just not realistic given the population size right now.

 

2. They're probably not going to do this. People have been asking since 1.0 and their official stance then was "we'll let the players decide." Their official stance in 2.0 was "we want the players to decide." In 3.0, they panicked and implemented some of the worst zone instancing I've ever seen in a game. And there was still no official RP server then either. They want the players to figure out which servers they want to RP on. It's not changing in the foreseeable future. Asking that people randomly pick a server to play on and RP on only to tell them they should just pay to move to a closed server if they want RP isn't a viable solution. A coordinated effort is needed for somewhere NOT BALMUNG for these people to go and RP on if they want. Maybe they will transfer if Balmung ever opens. We can't count on it until it's actually open.

[Sig]

 

Requesting for developers to implement changes that will improve the game for a substantial amount of users doesn't make someone a "entitled, pretentious prick."  Asking for a RP server -- which will take almost no resources -- isn't unreasonable.

 

RPers are not the majority.  But we are a substantial number of players, and it is reasonable for RPers to desire an official, designated server, as shown by the number of MMORPGS that support such a thing.

 

Snipped to prevent the quote spam

 

 

You can request it, sure. But expecting it is something else. Claiming that it's never been done because you personally didn't see it is another something else. Assuming that constant whining/crying about it will get it done faster when there are things far more important than you/RPers(of which I am) that need to be handled is super snowflakey and absurd. 

 

Yes, make a post about it. No, don't expect it to get things done. Hope and find an alternate solution. Telling people to hop on Balmung regardless is just going to make things worse for both the community that decides to play on Mateus and the people staying on Balmung thanks to how ridiculously overpopulated it already is. It isn't helping as much as you think it is.

 

Advocating for complete inaction and casting the efforts of people who are actually trying to encourage SE to designate an official server as "whining/crying" is extremely counterproductive.  Things will not change unless people advise SE that a substantial number of subscribers desire an official RP server.

 

Putting on blinders and pretending that attempt 232054587 to create a second alternative RP server will result in anything more than 50-100 RPers scattered over 2-5 FC cliques is not ideal.

[Mercer]

RPers are a niche. If we all cancelled our subscriptions Balmung would still be over populated. We do not have that kind of power. 

 

Refer to Unnamed Mercenary's post for an explanation of why this is happening and why this is not going to improve without drastic action on either players part of SE's part. New hardware servers on Balmung are not going to fix the issue. Petitioning them to open up the server isn't going to happen. They have already taken the stance of the community doing it's own thing with RP and has 5 years of examples of them telling us to do our own thing.

 

Balmung is not going to reopen per the numbers cited here, in Unnamed Mercenary's post and throughout the general thread. It is not realistic to look to Square Enix to reopen the server or put a label on a different server.

 

Just like it's always been with the XIV RP-C, it is up to the players to create answers to the problems Square and our own player base has created.

[ArmachiA]

There's nothing wrong with trying. Let me repeat that:

 

There's nothing wrong with trying.

 

The problem is your arguing it as FACT that if we're loud enough we WILL get a server and that's just untrue. You're saying we need to plan for it happening and no one should do anything and that's damaging to the people who don't know what to do right now.

[Flynn Bladebreaker]

Speaking of choice, it would be nice if an EU server gets picked soon and has as much attention/promotion as Balmung does. And don't say there shouldn't be one, because most MMOs out there usually have at least one EU and NA server for RP (official and unofficial) and they've done well. 

 

Sure, it sounds fine and dandy if we could all be on one server, but latency does play into it. Some of us aren't just here for RP, we also want to raid and play fluently and it can be laggy from the other side of the pond. I might as well repeat myself too, you don't have to move, you can stay, that's fine, no one is telling you, new people will continue to join and build otherwise, blablabla.

 

There's nothing wrong with trying. Let me repeat that:

 

There's nothing wrong with trying.

[Momo]

We don't need to hit their source of money on this one. Some of the bigger time and effort grabs in this game, have been born from people just saying they want something and never letting up, no matter how few of them there were.

 

We need to organize, twitter, Reddit, live letter questions, interview questions, just more and more, and don't let up for a while. They may weed out the questions from the live stuff, but if we keep asking, they will know we are serious. I was hoping before now, that someone would set up a single thread, maybe even a pinned one, with premade statements with @'s included that can be copy and pasted and then a link above them where people can just click it to be taken to their own account and then copy paste in the text and just do it everyday.

 

Enough things like this, and threads in reddit and OF, that have traffic, even traffic against it, will help immensely...so who wants to start?...>.>;;;

[Vexander]

I'm a bit wary of putting a lot of pressure on SE, personally. They've been fairly supportive of the RP community compared to other games. The Lorebook, the RP tag in-game, etc... A lot of the game's systems are well tooled to support RP, and there aren't a lot of games which do that anymore.

 

I would sadden me greatly if at a Fanfest Yoshi P was asked about an official RP server and he just walked off the stage in disgust like when someone asked for the umpteenth-thousandth-time about Parsers. I don't want to see the RP community become THAT.

[Momo]

I'm a bit wary of putting a lot of pressure on SE, personally. They've been fairly supportive of the RP community compared to other games. The Lorebook, the RP tag in-game, etc... A lot of the game's systems are well tooled to support RP, and there aren't a lot of games which do that anymore.

 

I would sadden me greatly if at a Fanfest Yoshi P was asked about an official RP server and he just walked off the stage in disgust like when someone asked for the umpteenth-thousandth-time about Parsers. I don't want to see the RP community become THAT.

 

So you don't want us to be visible because we may hurt Yoshi's feelings while we ask for something not unreasonable as dedicated group of players...yeah I don't really get that feeling, as parsers aren't a necessity to help people, they are often a tool for the opposite.

 

We don't need to hit their source of money on this one. Some of the bigger time and effort grabs in this game, have been born from people just saying they want something and never letting up, no matter how few of them there were.

 

We need to organize, twitter, Reddit, live letter questions, interview questions, just more and more, and don't let up for a while. They may weed out the questions from the live stuff, but if we keep asking, they will know we are serious. I was hoping before now, that someone would set up a single thread, maybe even a pinned one, with premade statements with @'s included that can be copy and pasted and then a link above them where people can just click it to be taken to their own account and then copy paste in the text and just do it everyday.

 

Enough things like this, and threads in reddit and OF, that have traffic, even traffic against it, will help immensely...so who wants to start?...>.>;;;

[Mercer]

We don't need to hit their source of money on this one. Some of the bigger time and effort grabs in this game, have been born from people just saying they want something and never letting up, no matter how few of them there were.

 

We need to organize, twitter, Reddit, live letter questions, interview questions, just more and more, and don't let up for a while. They may weed out the questions from the live stuff, but if we keep asking, they will know we are serious. I was hoping before now, that someone would set up a single thread, maybe even a pinned one, with premade statements with @'s included that can be copy and pasted and then a link above them where people can just click it to be taken to their own account and then copy paste in the text and just do it everyday.

 

Enough things like this, and threads in reddit and OF, that have traffic, even traffic against it, will help immensely...so who wants to start?...>.>;;;

 

Then I suggest you organize and do it. If that is what you feel like needs to be done, then please do it. But to be fair, the outlook on Balmung and the RP community outside of the RP-C and tumbler is pretty bleak. There was a recent Reddit thread about this infact.

 

 

That was four days ago, and was hostile in the first place. That's generally how things are on /ffxiv, outright hostility to sub optimal playstyles and RP.

[Vexander]

So you don't want us to be visible because we may hurt Yoshi's feelings while we ask for something not unreasonable as dedicated group of players...yeah I don't really get that feeling, as parsers aren't a necessity to help people, they are often a tool for the opposite.

Its not that I don't want us to be visible (we are), but that I want us to be respectful. If after 5 years the stance from Square hasn't changed, I don't think its really reasonable to keep pushing it. They've made it clear they want such things like this to be a community effort. I'd like to think the RP community is mature enough and organized enough to be able to accept that challenge and rise to it. I'd like to think we're a group of players Square could be proud of for not needing to have their hands held.

[Momo]

 

Then I suggest you organize and do it. If that is what you feel like needs to be done, then please do it. But to be fair, the outlook on Balmung and the RP community outside of the RP-C and tumbler is pretty bleak. There was a recent Reddit thread about this infact.

 

 

That was four days ago, and was hostile in the first place. That's generally how things are on /ffxiv, outright hostility to sub optimal playstyles and RP.

 

Then why don't we frame it as a chance for Non-RPers who don't like us, to be rid of us fully? I mean, it wouldn't be every RPer, but it would likely mean a thinning of RPers on every server as they move and new ones only goto the new RP server?

[Flynn Bladebreaker]

"Non-RPers need to GTFO Balmung"

 

 

This is why no one likes us.

[Mercer]

As a follow up to my earlier post, a thread was made when the server restrictions were put into place. It was about talking to SE and organizing an RP alternative or having an alternate server labeled as RP.

 

The poster was bullied so bad he deleted the topic and made another, asking why the community is so abusive. He was bullied again so bad he deleted his account.

 

The meta topic still remains and if you would like some insight on how Reddit treats itself and the RP community it's good insight.

 

 

EDIT:

 

But my original point still stands. Momo, if this is what you think is best then you need to organize it. It's as simple as that.

[Sig]

If only time were not scarce, I'd reply to everything, but to hit a few points [apologies for crappy prose - pounding this stuff out]:

 

(1) It is reasonable and ascertainable to expect that SE will designated an official RP server.  For this to happen, it will likely take organized community involvement.  Requesting an official RP server isn't "whining" or "unreasonable" - it's an extremely basic, simple feature to implement.  RPers are customers of SE and have every right to request reasonable revisions to the game.

 

(2) We should not presume that SE is utterly incapable of handling the population size on Balmung.  Resources could likely be allocated to handle the increased load, and there are a variety of less intrusive remedies that could have mitigated any over population problem.  SE for example could: (1) assess a higher server transfer fee for high-population servers; (2) provide additional in-game incentives to encourage players to transfer from high-population servers; (3) devote additional resources to banning bots and RMT schemes; (4) raise monthly subscription rates to compensate for the cost of maintaining high population servers; (5) designate official roleplay, hardcore raiding, and special interest servers to encourage certain player groups to transfer from over-populated worlds; (6) implement anti-idling features that disconnect players who idle for extended amounts of time.

 

Those are only ideas.  The point is that SE implemented an overly broad, ineffective remedy that will do little to actually alleviate the strain on high population servers come SB.  To make matters work, the restriction may very well harm the RP community in the aggregate for the reasons stated in the OP.

 

(3) Server demographics have changed so much that drawing analogies between SE's former perception towards an RP server and its current is not persuasive.  No one knows whether SE would actually implement an official RP server.  That is precisely why we should be taking steps to request that SE designate an official RP server.

[Momo]

So you don't want us to be visible because we may hurt Yoshi's feelings while we ask for something not unreasonable as dedicated group of players...yeah I don't really get that feeling, as parsers aren't a necessity to help people, they are often a tool for the opposite.

Its not that I don't want us to be visible (we are), but that I want us to be respectful. If after 5 years the stance from Square hasn't changed, I don't think its really reasonable to keep pushing it. They've made it clear they want such things like this to be a community effort. I'd like to think the RP community is mature enough and organized enough to be able to accept that challenge and rise to it. I'd like to think we're a group of players Square could be proud of for not needing to have their hands held.

 

The question hasn't been asked in years, and the unique situation this time around calls for it...I really don't know where you're coming from with these ideas. It isn't disrespectful to ask for something that many want which would improve gameplay for and continued subscription. You may like to think that the community will come together, but there aren't as few of us as there were the first time they called on us, things are much more complicated and on a bigger scale now. If you don't want to support the effort, that's fine, but don't tell others it is hurting some imagined sense of pride that the Dev team has, it's not like Yoshi-P runs every account and reads every question, tweet, or email.

[Kaiser]

Hmmm... Wow.

 

I never reply here. I hate typing to mass groups like this but this is the dumbest argument I have ever seen. There's literally not one valid point made by anyone and it's turned into a demand that Balmung be the one RP hub. YOU WILL TAKE OUR RP AND LIKE IT! While I enjoy Balmung enough I'm certainly glad there are other servers with rp communities. Balmung is great for mass events like the Grindstone but damn it's nice to go to a smaller server for lighter stuff.

 

If you really want to identify one server as the RP HUB then use one of the newer servers they talked about offering transfers too and everyone agree on a specific one but I'm sure those will fill up fairly quickly with people from Balmung and Gligamesh since they are offering gil, game time etc etc to do it.

[Mercer]

If only time were not scarce, I'd reply to everything, but to hit a few points [apologies for crappy prose - pounding this stuff out]:

 

(1) It is reasonable and ascertainable to expect that SE will designated an official RP server.  For this to happen, it will likely take organized community involvement.  Requesting an official RP server isn't "whining" or "unreasonable" - it's an extremely basic, simple feature to implement.  RPers are customers of SE and have every right to request reasonable revisions to the game.

 

(2) We should not presume that SE is utterly incapable of handling the population size on Balmung.  Resources could likely be allocated to handle the increased load, and there are a variety of less intrusive remedies that could have mitigated any over population problem.  SE for example could: (1) assess a higher server transfer fee for high-population servers; (2) provide additional in-game incentives to encourage players to transfer from high-population servers; (3) devote additional resources to banning bots and RMT schemes; (4) raise monthly subscription rates to compensate for the cost of maintaining high population servers; (5) designate official roleplay, hardcore raiding, and special interest servers to encourage certain player groups to transfer from over-populated worlds; (6) implement anti-idling features that disconnect players who idle for extended amounts of time.

 

Those are only ideas.  The point is that SE implemented an overly broad, ineffective remedy that will do little to actually alleviate the strain on high population servers come SB.  To make matters work, the restriction may very well harm the RP community in the aggregate for the reasons stated in the OP.

 

(3) Server demographics have changed so much that drawing analogies between SE's former perception towards an RP server and its current is not persuasive.  No one knows whether SE would actually implement an official RP server.  That is precisely why we should be taking steps to request that SE designate an official RP server.

 

Sig, what evidence do you have to support any of this outside of hopeful idealism?

 

There are people more experienced than you in actual network/software administration. There are people here who have attempted to do the very thing you have for years. There are people here who have brought numbers to show that Balmung can not continue how it is and the likely outcome if things continue.

 

This is from multiple sources from varied backgrounds providing actual evidence to why action needs to be taken now. Is it possible SE will change their stance? Yes, but they have not with the RP community in the past.

[Flynn Bladebreaker]

If you really want to identify one server as the RP HUB then use one of the newer servers they talked about offering transfers too and everyone agree on a specific one 

This is something part of the EU community is at least trying to achieve here, or that's what is most voted for on that thread. The issue is there'll be more than one so we really don't know which one to pick right now. SE have yet to release a list of servers to freely transfer to, either.

[ArmachiA]

The OP told us it's completely reasonable to expect SE to make an RP server. Honestly, he's not listening to anyone with a counterarguments at this point. We're just talking to a wall.

 

For future reference if you want people to rally behind you for a cause, it's best not to dismiss good arguments from people who are just trying to find the best compromise. Just gonna turn them against you.

 

I.E this thread.

[Askier]

I'm not sure if this has been brought up before and I just missed it but WoW, and other MMO's have or have had, multiple rp servers.  I mean when Emerald Dream filled up, rpers just went and filled up another server and so on.  I don't see why that can't happen with Realm.  Sure we do it unofficially, but that hasn't stopped us on Balmung, why should that stop us on Gilgamesh, or any other servers? I recall Gilgamesh having a decent amount of rp once upon a time.

[Sig]

Hmmm... Wow.

 

I never reply here. I hate typing to mass groups like this but this is the dumbest argument I have ever seen. There's literally not one valid point made by anyone and it's turned into a demand that Balmung be the one RP hub. YOU WILL TAKE OUR RP AND LIKE IT! While I enjoy Balmung enough I'm certainly glad there are other servers with rp communities. Balmung is great for mass events like the Grindstone but damn it's nice to go to a smaller server for lighter stuff.

 

If you really want to identify one server as the RP HUB then use one of the newer servers they talked about offering transfers too and everyone agree on a specific one but I'm sure those will fill up fairly quickly with people from Balmung and Gligamesh since they are offering gil, game time etc etc to do it.

 

You presuppose the state of FFXIV if Balmung did not exist and there was no centralized RP hub.  If there were no such hub, FFXIV roleplay would either be dead, minute in scale, or based entirely around isolated 20-40 person cliques. 

 

There are dearths of "lighter stuff" that gets RPed on Balmung every day.  The same can't be said for smaller servers.  Balmung is already the RP hub, and it should continue being that hub until SE designated an official RP server.

[Sig]

The OP told us it's completely reasonable to expect SE to make an RP server. Honestly, he's not listening to anyone with a counterarguments at this point. We're just talking to a wall.

 

Because I disagree with the presumption that it is unreasonable for us to expect SE will make an RP server, and I haven't heard a valid argument for why SE would not make a dedicated RP server if the community advocated for it enough.