Balmung Restriction Discussion

[Vanyris]

So, what is the alternative to the character restrictions? Yeah, the restrictions suck but they are there for a reason. Capped servers are...well...capped and they depend on restrictions to avoid things like 2 hour long wait times or server crashes. 

 

Previous MMOs had different but similar restrictions that IMO were not better than ffxiv's. Moon Guard would be locked several times. While old members could make alts freely, no new people to the server could roll there. Though, WoW servers probably have a higher cap overall.

 

Simply increasing server capacity is ideal but unrealistic and probably not going to happen since they built ffxiv on dated tech.

 

Interested to hear from you guys: What alternatives are there? Realistic alternatives.

Honestly, I was shocked that they don't use WoW's system. When a large server is locked, rather than going to your character select screen and logging in, you wait at server select screen and you wait in line there. Then, once it's you're turn and you're into the server, you can log in or create as many characters as your heart desires.

 

It's similar enough to FFXIV's system, wait in line for your turn, but people who want to make characters there can also wait in line. Seems a good system to me. Failing that, at least put the AFK timer back into the game.

[Branson Thorne]

*equips shield of fire resist*

 

As much as they suck, I'm all for the server restrictions.

 

That being said.....I have all 8 slots occupied on Balmung

Eat your hearts out......lol

[Vanyris]

*equips shield of fire resist*

 

As much as they suck, I'm all for the server restrictions.

 

That being said.....I have all 8 slots occupied on Balmung

Eat your hearts out......lol

I can see why you don't mind them, considering they don't really affect you as you've filled up all eight of your slots, but would you feel the same if you were trying to bring friends that're new to the game onto the server?

[Branson Thorne]

*equips shield of fire resist*

 

As much as they suck, I'm all for the server restrictions.

 

That being said.....I have all 8 slots occupied on Balmung

Eat your hearts out......lol

I can see why you don't mind them, considering they don't really affect you as you've filled up all eight of your slots, but would you feel the same if you were trying to bring friends that're new to the game onto the server?

I get what you are saying, but I'd be even more pissed with laggy unplayable servers.

 

Now sure, they could deff. ease up a bit on the restrictions, but by no way remove them.

 

And don't be fooled, I've waited my fair share of late nights / early mornings to get in:)

[Vanyris]

*equips shield of fire resist*

 

As much as they suck, I'm all for the server restrictions.

 

That being said.....I have all 8 slots occupied on Balmung

Eat your hearts out......lol

I can see why you don't mind them, considering they don't really affect you as you've filled up all eight of your slots, but would you feel the same if you were trying to bring friends that're new to the game onto the server?

I get what you are saying, but I'd be even more pissed with laggy unplayable servers.

 

Now sure, they could deff. ease up a bit on the restrictions, but by no way remove them.

 

And don't be fooled, I've waited my fair share of late nights / early mornings to get in:)

Fair enough! 

 

I think part of the issue is that waiting doesn't really do it, anymore. Nowadays you have to wait for maintenance to get in, because the mornings just don't open up, probably partially due to the fact that a lot of people just stay logged in overnight. Maintenance isn't a regular thing, either, like it is in some MMOs. I've seen some people get fed up and just pay the eighteen bucks to transfer, which is, imo, ridiculous and supporting a bad policy.

[Branson Thorne]

Yeah the only times I got in was for maintenance.

[Vulture]

You're finding causation when there's only correlation. Balmung is a legacy server and when ARR launched had the benefit of retaining its 1.0 RP community. Gilgamesh had to start from scratch. It makes perfect sense then that Balmung has a larger, more entrenched RP community and is thus seen as the more desirable server to be on from a roleplayer perspective.

 

The creation restrictions hurt everyone, not just non-RPers. Potential roleplayers and current roleplayers who desperately want to make alts are all harmed by the policy, and that's just not a good thing.

Judging people and wanting them to stay out of your "super awesome RPers-only fort" is a bit much.

 

Elitist attitude is not something to be proud of; it is a harmful ideology that you belong on a pedestal and others are not valued as high as you or your friends are.  Someone can't contribute as much to the RP community as you, so you think they should be barred entirely or thrown out because that makes them a "parasite"?

 

It is the patience, understanding, and cooperation of a community that makes it strong - we do not live in times that require a "thinning the herd" mentality, especially in regards to an extra curricular in a game.

 

We are not blindly accepting non-RPers, we are rightfully accepting them.  This server and this game were not made for RPers only, and if you're willing to bar "non-RPers", then I assume that attitude will extend to "bad RPers" and "RPers I don't like".

 

A slippery slope, indeed.

I've had this conversation so many times before in so many MMOs I'm not even angry at the inevitable responses. That picture I posted? I made it in MSpaint 15 years ago when I was playing Everquest. It always goes the same way: I plead for RPers to have a place of their own, I'm accused of being an elitist and having a bad attitude, I say "You'll see, RP will disappear and I'll say I told you so", RPers continue to welcome their own destroyers with a smile, non-RPers vastly out number RPers, RP is relegated to specific guilds, there's nobody around for me to say "I told you so". Rinse and repeat

 

The disturbing thing here is this topics existance is essentially agreeing with me.

People want on on Balmung sooooo bad and most RPers here are already on Balmung. Why? Gilgamesh's RP scene is identical to Balmung and it's much easier to get on right? It's not like the difficulty in getting a spot on the server somehow filters out people that aren't dedicated right? It's rather weird that you're expending so much effort to get what you insist is the same result.

 

It's not the same and you darn well know it.

 

EDIT: Oh and QueenFrejyalen, I said nothing of RP quality. Your "slippery slope" is one of your own creation.

[Vanyris]

You're finding causation when there's only correlation. Balmung is a legacy server and when ARR launched had the benefit of retaining its 1.0 RP community. Gilgamesh had to start from scratch. It makes perfect sense then that Balmung has a larger, more entrenched RP community and is thus seen as the more desirable server to be on from a roleplayer perspective.

 

The creation restrictions hurt everyone, not just non-RPers. Potential roleplayers and current roleplayers who desperately want to make alts are all harmed by the policy, and that's just not a good thing.

Judging people and wanting them to stay out of your "super awesome RPers-only fort" is a bit much.

 

Elitist attitude is not something to be proud of; it is a harmful ideology that you belong on a pedestal and others are not valued as high as you or your friends are.  Someone can't contribute as much to the RP community as you, so you think they should be barred entirely or thrown out because that makes them a "parasite"?

 

It is the patience, understanding, and cooperation of a community that makes it strong - we do not live in times that require a "thinning the herd" mentality, especially in regards to an extra curricular in a game.

 

We are not blindly accepting non-RPers, we are rightfully accepting them.  This server and this game were not made for RPers only, and if you're willing to bar "non-RPers", then I assume that attitude will extend to "bad RPers" and "RPers I don't like".

 

A slippery slope, indeed.

I've had this conversation so many times before in so many MMOs I'm not even angry at the inevitable responses. That picture I posted? I made it in MSpaint 15 years ago when I was playing Everquest. It always goes the same way: I plead for RPers to have a place of their own, I'm accused of being an elitist and having a bad attitude, I say "You'll see, RP will disappear and I'll say I told you so", RPers continue to welcome their own destroyers with a smile, non-RPers vastly out number RPers, RP is relegated to specific guilds, there's nobody around for me to say "I told you so". Rinse and repeat

 

The disturbing thing here is this topics existance is essentially agreeing with me.

People want on on Balmung sooooo bad and most RPers here are already on Balmung. Why? Gilgamesh's RP scene is identical to Balmung and it's much easier to get on right? It's not like the difficulty in getting a spot on the server somehow filters out people that aren't dedicated right? It's rather weird that you're expending so much effort to get what you insist is the same result.

 

It's not the same and you darn well know it.

 

EDIT: Oh and QueenFrejyalen, I said nothing of RP quality. Your "slippery slope" is one of your own creation.

ONC52indu4Q

[Kellach Woods]

this thread went from 0 to honk in no time flat.

 

All right, let me lay it down for most of you because you don't seem to understand this little thing.

 

WE DO NOT OWN BALMUNG.

 

Get it? Got it? Good.

 

Anyone saying that the restrictions are good because they keep the riff-raff off the server hasn't yet realized that the riff-raff is already here, they were here before they themselves were here chances are. If you were here from day 1, they got into Beta.

 

Anyone saying that we'd be caving in to non-RPers or whatever have you needs to stop that right now because it's not our server. It's an UNofficial RP server, and UN doesn't stand for United Nations in this. It stands for "non" as in "not" as in "SE don't owe us shit".

 

With that said, I feel the need to address another thing.

 

* * *

 

Chances are, if you want a smooth gameplay experience, it's not on their toaster of a login server, it's on your toaster of a computer (worse still, PS3) or your line being ass (and this has SO MANY possible reasons for it I'm not going to fault you if it is). I have a computer that is severely hampered by my graphics card and the only time I have problems are twofold - Odin and Hunts.

 

Their instance server being atrocious is already documented but that has nothing to do with the restrictions on Balmung since that combines people on the same Data Center.

 

The problem is that we can't devise proper workarounds beyond transferring onto Balmung because we have no idea what the hell is going on in those locks. If it's the botters ruining it, then yeah there's not much we can do about that except double down on the reports and essentially help SE catch them in the act so they can actually do something about it. If it's AFKers we can do our part in logging out. If it's all on their end we can raise the issue often and loudly that they start thinking it's a good idea to not run their login server on a toaster.

 

More importantly, we have an expac launching with a new race. Imagine how hard it's gonna be to make your inevitable Au Ra alt.

[Vanyris]

More importantly, we have an expac launching with a new race. Imagine how hard it's gonna be to make your inevitable Au Ra alt.

Yeah, that's why I've already rolled an Au Ra nameholder and I'm just gonna fantasia them. Save myself the headache.

[QueenFrejyalen]

You're finding causation when there's only correlation. Balmung is a legacy server and when ARR launched had the benefit of retaining its 1.0 RP community. Gilgamesh had to start from scratch. It makes perfect sense then that Balmung has a larger, more entrenched RP community and is thus seen as the more desirable server to be on from a roleplayer perspective.

 

The creation restrictions hurt everyone, not just non-RPers. Potential roleplayers and current roleplayers who desperately want to make alts are all harmed by the policy, and that's just not a good thing.

Judging people and wanting them to stay out of your "super awesome RPers-only fort" is a bit much.

 

Elitist attitude is not something to be proud of; it is a harmful ideology that you belong on a pedestal and others are not valued as high as you or your friends are.  Someone can't contribute as much to the RP community as you, so you think they should be barred entirely or thrown out because that makes them a "parasite"?

 

It is the patience, understanding, and cooperation of a community that makes it strong - we do not live in times that require a "thinning the herd" mentality, especially in regards to an extra curricular in a game.

 

We are not blindly accepting non-RPers, we are rightfully accepting them.  This server and this game were not made for RPers only, and if you're willing to bar "non-RPers", then I assume that attitude will extend to "bad RPers" and "RPers I don't like".

 

A slippery slope, indeed.

I've had this conversation so many times before in so many MMOs I'm not even angry at the inevitable responses. That picture I posted? I made it in MSpaint 15 years ago when I was playing Everquest. It always goes the same way: I plead for RPers to have a place of their own, I'm accused of being an elitist and having a bad attitude, I say "You'll see, RP will disappear and I'll say I told you so", RPers continue to welcome their own destroyers with a smile, non-RPers vastly out number RPers, RP is relegated to specific guilds, there's nobody around for me to say "I told you so". Rinse and repeat

 

The disturbing thing here is this topics existance is essentially agreeing with me.

People want on on Balmung sooooo bad and most RPers here are already on Balmung. Why? Gilgamesh's RP scene is identical to Balmung and it's much easier to get on right? It's not like the difficulty in getting a spot on the server somehow filters out people that aren't dedicated right? It's rather weird that you're expending so much effort to get what you insist is the same result.

 

It's not the same and you darn well know it.

 

EDIT: Oh and QueenFrejyalen, I said nothing of RP quality. Your "slippery slope" is one of your own creation.

 

All I have to say to that is..

 

lol

[QueenFrejyalen]

Though I will say I support the restrictions in terms of keeping up server health.

 

I would rather have it really tough to get onto the server than have insane lag.

 

But I think that perhaps they should re-evaluate which servers get the most "support" I suppose you could say?  I think I need to know more about servers before saying any more on that but that's just my basic opinion on it.

[Kellach Woods]

I'm not super familiar with server structures beyond what I've gleamed playing MMOs and through my job, but it really feels it's less of a problem with the server than a design decision when it comes to the lock.

 

Is there any difference between creating a character and logging on one? There shouldn't be that much of a difference.

[Vanyris]

I'm not super familiar with server structures beyond what I've gleamed playing MMOs and through my job, but it really feels it's less of a problem with the server than a design decision when it comes to the lock.

 

Is there any difference between creating a character and logging on one? There shouldn't be that much of a difference.

They should honestly just add a queue for character creation, the same as logging in. Bam, problem solved.

[QueenFrejyalen]

I'm not super familiar with server structures beyond what I've gleamed playing MMOs and through my job, but it really feels it's less of a problem with the server than a design decision when it comes to the lock.

 

Is there any difference between creating a character and logging on one? There shouldn't be that much of a difference.

 

Hmm yeah if there were a different between logged in characters and ones that were simply created, that could be a better use of the server restriction.

 

I think some more people were talking about that above and I agree with that idea.

[Unnamed Mercenary]

I'm not super familiar with server structures beyond what I've gleamed playing MMOs and through my job, but it really feels it's less of a problem with the server than a design decision when it comes to the lock.

 

Is there any difference between creating a character and logging on one? There shouldn't be that much of a difference.

 

Hmm yeah if there were a different between logged in characters and ones that were simply created, that could be a better use of the server restriction.

 

I think some more people were talking about that above and I agree with that idea.

 

I think part of the issue with that is that characters are created locally on the machine first. THat's why we can save appearance data and then select a server. SE would need to factor that in, which would require a recode of the lobby server. (maybe for the better?)

 

It should be noted, there have been times when a map has been so congested, new people cannot enter it. Most recently, Mor Dhona when 2.5 hit. So we definitely can have map-wide congestion problems. I don't know much about how the underlying architecture of the servers was designed, but assuming we can't instance each zone to multiple servers, we'll keep running into this as an issue as time progresses. Who knows if say, Northern Shroud and East Thanalan are on the same server or not?  The only possible fix I could see would be to try to separate each zone to a different server, but that wouldn't really work either because a given zone's population could spike. It wouldn't be a proper use of resources. Especially if we assume more fights like Behemoth or Odin could happen. 

 

I am assuming that we'll be getting a server overhaul when 3.0 launches, however. First, because the EU datacenter. Second, for all those new maps. I'd say a large population of the PVE-only players will likely AFK there, reducing load on our main cities and surrounding area. And, assuming the 3.0 content is indeed housed on different servers, that should increase the server capacity for new characters. Maybe.

[Kinono]

Is there any difference between creating a character and logging on one? There shouldn't be that much of a difference.

 

Ahh... I can see it now... SE caves and decides to "make character creation as easy as logging in," but wait! Something is lost in translation! Suddenly people have to wait until 4 in the morning to log in, going afk while at work or school during the day, clogging up the server, making the entire world seem a ghost town.

 

"But this is what you wanted!" cries SE.

 

"Not like this," we collectively whimper. "No, not like this."

 

Just like launch... fun times.

[Kage]

Nope. I'm sorry. But if the fix turns it into a clusterfuck of being able to log in I will not be happy with this game by any means. Nope. Nope. Nope.

[Vanyris]

Nope. I'm sorry. But if the fix turns it into a clusterfuck of being able to log in I will not be happy with this game by any means. Nope. Nope. Nope.

It really doesn't need to, though. SE can improve the system or their server infrastructure without making the waits absolutely intolerable. Mind you, Balmung is the largest server on the NA data center, so some waiting is inevitable, but.

[Dis]

An easy fix for server congestion would probably be an idle timer log-out feature.  AFK/inactive for more than 20 minutes? Automatically disconnected to make way for other individuals.  It would definitely stop the people who AFK all hours of the day in Mor Dhona, which would ease up server load in general.

[BumblingSeaBiscuit]

An easy fix for server congestion would probably be an idle timer log-out feature.  AFK/inactive for more than 20 minutes? Automatically disconnected to make way for other individuals.  It would definitely stop the people who AFK all hours of the day in Mor Dhona, which would ease up server load in general.

 

If they factored in the use of the chat feature I would be okay with this. Otherwise, you get a repeat of the GW2 system and that was (is) frustrating.

[T'shina]

As much as I'd hate it, I would say the AFK timer needs to be back for a place like Balmung. It could help... it could not but we won't know.

[Unnamed Mercenary]

An easy fix for server congestion would probably be an idle timer log-out feature.  AFK/inactive for more than 20 minutes? Automatically disconnected to make way for other individuals.  It would definitely stop the people who AFK all hours of the day in Mor Dhona, which would ease up server load in general.

 

They had this for a short while after 2.0 launched. People found ways around it, like staying in them middle of a craft, starting a gather, or talking to an npc. 

 

If you had the away/afk chair icon for 30 minutes, it'd boot someone out. The feature was removed when the server architecture got a massive change in 2.1, I believe.

[Kellach Woods]

I am assuming that we'll be getting a server overhaul when 3.0 launches, however. First, because the EU datacenter. Second, for all those new maps. I'd say a large population of the PVE-only players will likely AFK there, reducing load on our main cities and surrounding area. And, assuming the 3.0 content is indeed housed on different servers, that should increase the server capacity for new characters. Maybe.

 

You know reading that post made me think.

 

It might actually be the Instance Server that's being a dick.

 

Hear me out - When you first start a new character... you're in an instanced version of the cities. Something akin to a Class/Job quest duty. I don't know what structure handles that, but if they beefed that up we could probably have a better attempt at logging in. As in, maybe go back to the "you can log in early mornings" days of yore.

 

Honestly I don't think anyone'd complain about that.

[Kage]

Bringing back the AFK kick would maybe alleviate it but you'd probably find more people stuck in crafts, speaking to an NPC, or speaking to an aetheryte etc.

 

Hell you may not even see them at all. I used to use the cutscene journal when I needed to get dinner or take a shower. During the time I had to pick my aunt up from work I'd do it too.

 

First need to identify, concretely, what contributes to the character creation restrictions. We see login queues for high activity, assuming it's for logged in people. Then what contributes exactly to character creation issues? It's obviously different otherwise we'd have queues back to pre-2.2? when the queues stopped being -100502 and it didn't take 5 minutes to login.