A Brief PSA on the issue of clogged worlds.

[No Longer Exists]

*Rises up from beneath the hat on the floor* 

 

Nine out of Ten gamers appear to not realize that the lack of an automatic logout implemented by SE is the cause of the server congestion and character creation restriction. The reason both Balmung and "Greg" (<---- I love this nickname) have brief windows for new character registration is not because of the amount of characters being registered, but because of the congestion on the world at these intervals. Layman's terms: TOO MANY PEOPLE ARE LOGGED IN.

 

No, I am not yelling at you, dear reader. I would like everyone here to consider this though, as I am fairly certain a lot of us users do it (myself included until now); when you don't log off the game when you're finished playing for the day, you are depriving a newbie a chance to get in the world.

 

We've all done it, set a massive craft spam of mats and just walked away from the computer. Three hours later, he or she's probably crying about their bruised knee from being in that position for so long but! What we may not realize is that we're also wasting server populace space. 

 

Botters (Yes, you) are wasting server space. Going afk for hours is wasting server space. Going to sleep for 6-11 hours with your character logged in, pink and red chair floating over their head....is wasting server space.

 

I have no idea if the devs will return the auto-logout feature to the game, but until they do; at the very least, our community can be consciously aware of this very serious issue now for potential players, potential friends, potential positive additions to our lovely community. Three people logging off may not make a difference, but it might. Sixty people logging off probably will.

 

I realize that both worlds share the lands with PvEers and whatnot who will not read this forum post, though I am considering putting it on the official forum as well....just to see what happens. Isn't it worth a shot?

 

Be alert: the world needs more lerts.

 

Or just....log out and shut down when you're done playing, give someone a chance to get on. 

 

Cheers!

[Steel Wolf]

*insert Orson Welles applauding gif*

[Gegenji]

*insert Orson Welles applauding gif*

 

[Warren Castille]

Issue could be addressed by SE allowing newbies to enter the queue just like anyone else, but that's not something they seem interested in doing.

 

That said, I have to wonder about that, or at least where the thresholds are. I've been able to log in without a queue on evenings where Balmung is still closed, much to the chagrin of my newly-playing roommate. Same house, same pipes, one of us could get on fine and the other could not.

[Gegenji]

I just never... "got" the idea of not logging out when you're done for the day. You're done, so just log off and log back in the next time you're ready to play! Does that extra minute or two spent logging in really make that much of a difference?

 

Of course, I can't act like I'm completely clean. There's a couple times where I've set my character to make, like, 99 Ingots for some free EXP and prep for future crafting... and then gone and made a sandwich or tidied up around the room while my little guy hammers away. But I try to at least be around, and I'm usually chatting up folks over LS or FC while doing it... :blush:

[No Longer Exists]

That's exactly where the issue lies and it's rather arbitrary. The dev teams are constantly doing brief maintenances to keep from the world overloading and crapping out, which is why I'm baffled that they removed the inactivity boot. "All World's Maintenance" every seven days just to keep the proverbial hamsters on their wheels, but they don't lighten the load the poor hamsters are hauling. It's very strange.

 

I too haven't had much issue with world cap queues, but if you hearken back to when Yoshida first answered this question; he did make a statement that the character creation restriction was to pre-empt the congestion and overload issue.

 

So look at it this way, your maximum occupancy is 200 (theoretically) and 250 people are trying to log on. So you put an auto-restrict on new occupants at say 150. Now think about how 50 of those occupants are actually afk and not actively playing the game. Hence, constant creation restriction.

[Telluride]

It does my heart good to see someone get the nerve to say what desperately needs to be said about this topic. Having played for so long in games with idle-boot as standard, I never really grasped how this difference affects FFXIV.

 

Of course, my own beef is seeing these long-term AFKers occupying prime RP spaces - many of them deliberately and with apparent trolling purpose - and clustering around the summoning bell or other key clickables en masse.

[Cliodhna Eoghan]

generally i log out when i'm done, however there are occasions where i'll be fishing/spam crafting and i've passed out at my desk for an hour or so....but usually when that happens; i either go back to playing or log off depending on what time it is.

 

what i find slightly annoying are when i see a pc left doing the manderville for two days straight afk simply to keep them logged instead of logging out and jumping in the (normally low) que line when it's time to log back in.

[Kage]

Well don't forget that some people who were logged in over the holidays may have been affected by the PSN issues and as such, will keep themselves logged in any way shape or form.

[Maril]

Back around launch we did actually have an automatic log-out, I believe the timer was 15 minutes AFK. What we had back then instead was queues, very long queues - and people would continuously find ways to keep themselves logged in. Locking yourself in a craft, looking at the marketboard, and such things all prevented the game from booting you. Then, after some time, they removed the automatic boot-feature, the queues went away (mostly, these days you might get a 3 min queue as far as what I have experienced) and that was when Balmung wasn't locked all the time. 

 

It doesn't make the issue less annoying, but out of having queues or the ability to make characters.. I must admit, I prefer not having queues - as well as the fact that they likely never solved the ways people could lock themselves in the game. So if they just re-instate it, we'll end up having long queues and people will try everything to stay on, which makes the queues worse.  

 

What would maybe help, is if they instated some kind of daily "reset" of the server, where the server throws everyone off and then people have to log themselves back in - that would rid the servers of those who's left themselves logged in over night, but it would inconvenience those who're playing at the time, and with Balmungs size there's always going to be someone who's bothered by it cause there's always a billion people on.

 

I don't think we have anyone in my FC that are always online though. I reckon a lot of people still close their computer entirely when they go to bed. Personally I've had slip ups when I have been online before work and then forgotten to close the game before I headed off - or sometimes when I've been up till 5AM and K.O'd in spectacular ways wherein I do not remember how I even got to bed.

[Telluride]

 

what i find slightly annoying are when i see a pc left doing the manderville for two days straight afk simply to keep them logged instead of logging out and jumping in the (normally low) que line when it's time to log back in.

 

You nailed it, Clio.

 

And that's the part I don't get. Yes, I've hit the login queue on a lot of nights, but it has never lasted more than a few minutes, tops. It takes longer for Mor Dhona to completely spawn everyone for me than it does to weather the login queue. :surprise:

[Berrod Armstrong]

 

what i find slightly annoying are when i see a pc left doing the manderville for two days straight afk simply to keep them logged instead of logging out and jumping in the (normally low) que line when it's time to log back in.

 

You nailed it, Clio.

 

And that's the part I don't get. Yes, I've hit the login queue on a lot of nights, but it has never lasted more than a few minutes, tops. It takes longer for Mor Dhona to completely spawn everyone for me than it does to weather the login queue. :surprise:

This. In fact, when I get the login queue, I take a minute to just gaze around, check the phone or maybe hum along to whatever song I'm listening to -- over before I know it.

[Kage]

Mmmhmm I think they removed the auto-log around Spring? Early spring? I was after I joined RPC and had already spent more than just a few months in the game. I think it was -just- after the dances were put in (manderville for example).

 

People locked onto NPCs, the summoning bell, the diary etc.

 

Queues back then used to be 103097 or -60482 etc. The numbers were random. And the queues were longer than the <2 min queue times I have now.

 

Other than the character creation that has gotten harder, the queues to log in have become much better in my opinion. The problem is: Balmung is a very populated server. As time goes on, the popular servers are going to hit max capacity. Is this it? Maybe? More and more people join or create alts. If I were Square, my thoughts wouldn't be 'gosh I should make that one filled up server open more." It'd be "Go create a fun community on the servers we made that aren't having issues."

 

Is that a good idea? IMO no. But it's devoting less of my time on a more... trivial factor when I could be devoting my resources to the expansion etc.

[Gegenji]

What would maybe help, is if they instated some kind of daily "reset" of the server, where the server throws everyone off and then people have to log themselves back in - that would rid the servers of those who's left themselves logged in over night, but it would inconvenience those who're playing at the time, and with Balmungs size there's always going to be someone who's bothered by it cause there's always a billion people on.

 

Yeah, I can only see that causing a horrid influx of hate-posts. People in the middle of a boss fight in a dungeon, finishing up trying to HQ a craft, or just folks who don't like being forcibly removed from a server. So I think it would be quite the large percentage of players that would complain, even if there was a warning beforehand. Which would be something there would need to be in this case, much like the warnings before shutdowns for maintenance.

 

Though, I have to wonder. Were the automatic log-out timers and the increased queue times inter-related? Or were they just both things that happened to exist at the same time, and both changed at around the same time? I mean, it could be possible to both have the automatic log-outs and still not have the huge queues... unless people are consistently timing out and then immediately turning around to log back in.

 

That whole being able to protect yourself by looking at the marketboard or crafting, though... I suppose instituting it again would just mean that all the AFKers would be doing one of those things instead of just standing around. So, not much of a change... save for catching those few folks who AFK without doing that.

[Warren Castille]

The egregiously bad period was just after launch, when servers were not only unstable but there wasn't a queue system in place. You'd try to log in and just get "Game is full. Close? Y/Y" and then you were back at character select.

 

Adding to that problem is that XIV also used to leak memory like it was a smartphone app, and idling for days would keep you logged in but ran a real risk of just making the game unplayable. Of course, you couldn't log in/out to refresh it because of the no queues thing.

 

How is it we've come so far but it feels like we've barely moved?

[Cliodhna Eoghan]

 

what i find slightly annoying are when i see a pc left doing the manderville for two days straight afk simply to keep them logged instead of logging out and jumping in the (normally low) que line when it's time to log back in.

 

You nailed it, Clio.

 

And that's the part I don't get. Yes, I've hit the login queue on a lot of nights, but it has never lasted more than a few minutes, tops. It takes longer for Mor Dhona to completely spawn everyone for me than it does to weather the login queue. :surprise:

 

exactly, usually the que time is in single digits for me when it does happen (3-7 is the usual range for me) there was maybe one or two times i've seen a massively high number (around 130's) and that was the times everyone was getting dc'd and trying to log back in at once.

[Edda]

The egregiously bad period was just after launch, when servers were not only unstable but there wasn't a queue system in place. You'd try to log in and just get "Game is full. Close? Y/Y" and then you were back at character select.

Well, there WAS a queue system, it was just a trial to get to that point. Once you hit the queue you were basically golden, but good luck getting there, especially during peak hours. Your only choice was to sit and spam character select until you finally hit the queue, if you got lucky. Then of course, there were the select few that realized you could make a macro to have your computer spam NumPad 0 over and over and simulate the log-in process... Set up macro. Go make coffee. Welcome to Eorzea.

 

But then the automatic log-out timers came, and the problem died down. Although I do have to wonder why they got rid of the timers at all, especially for higher population servers. Seems like they would still serve a purpose. I don't do alts so I haven't tried making another character on Balmung since beta, but I imagine just after maintenance would be the only chance these days, considering how many people I see afk for fucking days on end.

[Kage]

The thing is that before Christmas, in my experience, I woke up for work... clicked create a new character and would be able to throw a character into Balmung. It was open then. Ever since like the 18th of December it's been an issue.

 

I think they did something during the implementation of the afk=forced logouts because after that there weren't any queues. It's only been since the last 2-3 months now. I never had queue waits until recently (Sept/Oct timing).

 

It's quite possible that we're reaching capacity on the Balmung server, no matter what afkers do.

[Hyrist]

Do we really have that much of an idle issue with our server? Unless they're idling in their own homes/rooms I don't see too many afk people around.

 

I do see a lot of bots going on.

 

We may, at this point, be hitting the genuine congestion point. An Auto-logoff feature would be nice, but I feel it's just a stopgap on the matter at this point. We'd squeeze an extra couple hundred players in before we hit the problem again.

 

Brainstorming on the matter came up with a few solutions, many of them would be far easier if SE would enable free transfers off of Balmung and Gilgamesh

 

Free Transfers off the Server would enable RPC to designate another RP server.

 

If they did that, and designate an 'official rp server' we'd be able to combine communities from Gilgamesh and Balmung - while we have a thriving community, I still don't believe we hold the majority of the populace of either server and would probably benefit to congregate.

 

They could allow the free transfers off and officially designate Blamung and Gilgamesh as RP servers - RPers would be able to keep their housings at that point. A LOT of FCs and players on the RP end are pretty well entrenched in their well-furnished homes. This would hopefully free up existing communities for more people.

 

 

Otherwise, we're waiting for SE to shore up their server-structure (again) to allow more people. Which, really doesn't help shove the problem of underpopulated servers on other data clusters. It's not that we have too many people overall. It's just that we're highly clustered together.

[Sounsyy]

B-but I like it when people AFK for extended periods of time. =(

 

/creeps

[Aduu Avagnar]

Id like to add that yes idlers add to the issue, the other thing to remember is data. Even when a character is not logged in, that server still has to retain the information.

 

We could very well have simply started to reach the point where squeenix dont want one server to get much larger data wise.

[Tiergan]

I was always able to create characters at around 6-7AM PST. Is that not the case anymore? Are there just too many characters now?

[Arrelaine]

I was always able to create characters at around 6-7AM PST.  Is that not the case anymore?  Are there just too many characters now?

You can only do it between Wednesdays and Fridays now I think. No more Mondays or Tuesdays.

[Zakov]

I was always able to create characters at around 6-7AM PST.  Is that not the case anymore?  Are there just too many characters now?

You can only do it between Wednesdays and Fridays now I think. No more Mondays or Tuesdays.

Wait,  seriously? I was banking on being able to make a character on Monday! I tried really,  really early in the morning on a Friday and everything was open besides Balmung. 

Massive bummer to me.  I only have 9 days left of vacation.

[Arrelaine]

I was always able to create characters at around 6-7AM PST.  Is that not the case anymore?  Are there just too many characters now?

You can only do it between Wednesdays and Fridays now I think. No more Mondays or Tuesdays.

Wait,  seriously? I was banking on being able to make a character on Monday! I tried really,  really early in the morning on a Friday and everything was open besides Balmung. 

Massive bummer to me.  I only have 9 days left of vacation.

Yeah, I had to wait until after maintenance on Wednesday to make a new alt.