Already a way to game afk timerFollow

No. By my logic, SE should assume that you want to be able to log into the game when you want to and log out of the game when you want to. You paid for the time so how you use it should be up to you. I still have yet to see a valid reason to implement an AFK timer that wouldn't be remedied instead, by increasing server capacity.

It costs them money to increase server capacity, but it also allows more people to play and probably might have saved quite a few people who just got fed up and stopped trying altogether; people who also would have paid for their play time. How much money do you think it cost them to shut down digital sales for all that time? How much money do you think it cost them losing all the players who quit because of issues related to this?

tl;dr
Refusing sales and limiting service to 'keep costs down' and people trying to make a case for that... really?

I can only think of a couple of games off hand that don't have a afk timer, Eve and FFXI. I really don't see the big deal behind it. In fact I kind of like it since when I come back to my PC I get to watch the awesome cinematic.

How do you know that those 100+ people aren't simply chatting with their LS/FC while they're waiting on Duty Finder to line them up for a dungeon?

I would agree they didn't have the server capacity needed, which was shortsightedness on their part, and the shut down on digital sales did cost them money.

I played WoW with my brother and some of his friends who wont even look at this game just because all they have heard is bad things about it, namely the issues they had at launch,

There is nothing SE can do about it now. I'm also sure their is alot of people who just got feed up and quit. Hopefully they push out some good content patches in the next year and can keep the player base they have now and draw back in some of the people they lost.

But, I still believe that if they had an implemented an AFK timer at launch, some, not all, of these issues could have been avoided. At least more people would have probably gotten to play during the first week.

Edit cause I didn't see this



Well for one thing, considering I couldn't log in for 3 days, along with a few of my friends, that points to the obvious that people were just afking to hold spots. I mean unless they were having a three day philosophical debate on the properties of Cactuar ****

On top of that, if their had been an AFK timer, then I would have know, because the afk'ers would have been kicked



Edited, Sep 20th 2013 5:39pm by Jeskradha

I was number 84 in que. Guess its all the gill sellers. I still log out though, cause I want to give my ps3 a rest. The ole gal needs to last longer, so I get my moneys worth!

Cheers!

Is there also an AFK timer currently in place, yes, I fail to see your point in this. Yeah, they expanded their servers, opened more worlds, I get that. But it doesn't change the fact that people staying AFK was part of the initial problem.

I never said it would have fixed the issues, I'm pretty sure I said,

I don't blame people for staying logged in that first week, it was a mistake on SE part to allow that to happen in the first place, as is them not having enough server space to begin with. 100% of everything that has happened with this launch has been SE fault.

Not sure how I come off selfish? Because I payed for a game and was upset by the fact that me, and a number of my friends, were unable to play it. I have never been on the official forums, I am not a fan of huge forums that mostly get cluttered up with useless information. Do I take my pix-elated characters seriously, not so much. But seeing that I was pretty excited to play this game, I was a little disappointed that I wasn't able to play.
Personally I consider an AFK timer to be a pretty standard practice(again, even netflix has one). Would I have been able to log in if their had been one in place from the start? We will never know now, but I'm willing to bet that I would have been able to get in at least once out of the 3 days that I couldn't

cool story bro

I get it, you need to monitor your chat log. Apparently there are ways around the timer, there is in almost any MMO. Do you think SE will do anything about this? No probably not, because the number of people who will actually go to the trouble of doing this is probably marginal at this point.

I didn't generalize your whole FC, only kids who like to argue in games. I play a BLM, and I've read through all of your posts in the BLM forums. I don't doubt that you are in intelligent player, and I'm sure you have a great group of players in your FC, But if I've learned anything from being in guilds, you either find the people who cause drama and get rid of them, or they eventually weed themselves out cause no one wants to play with them.

Have we meet? Pretty sure I've never seen you in game.
Do I like to argue? Do you? Seems you've been responding to my posts so???????

Again, cool story bro.

So, do you smoke then? Not sure what your getting at, I thought we were discussing an AFK timer.

Do you have kids? My guess is no, so you have no idea WTF your talking about at this point.

I take care of my family. That fact that your making jabs at my personal life and my family is a little pathetic.


Edited, Sep 22nd 2013 2:02am by Jeskradha

See: this is what I mean by critical thinking. We need more of this in 14, less of you.

An AFK timer would have done nothing. You know why? Exactly why this thread was created. When people were receiving 1017s and decided that they really wanted to play, not only would they have AFK'd but they would have also moved their character every x amount of minutes just to stay online. How? Probably through illegal means that would not easily be detected. You know how scripting works, right?

It's a bandaid: nothing more. There are still server issues even with the AFK timer in place (unrelated to login issues, actually) with frequent 90k's for some people.

Do you want them to decrease the amount of time to 10 minutes? Surely that MUST fix something.

Yet it won't. The only thing that will do something substantial is continuing to increase server capacity and split the DF servers up. You don't even have to be any sort of computer technician, network admin., or engineer to see what is blatantly painted on the wall.



You see where you said some? Yeah...maybe you should read the above, reflect on it a moment, then realize just how useless an AFK timer would have been to fix the much larger issue: server capacitance.

Some? No. If 'some' were fixed, we would not be having this discussion right now in a thread about getting around the AFK timer.



Yep it has and yet they've already fixed the problem within a week of realizing it.

See, you come from WoW. You're at a disadvantage here. Most of us know what SE is like. In fact, most of us were quite surprised when the problem was not only addressed 5 days after it became evident it was a problem, but we were most surprised by the fact that Yoshi went into a detailed explanation about everything that went on.

Do you think this was the case in 11? Do you think they would have moved as quickly? You wouldn't know because this is your first time dealing with them.

And of course you've blamed people for logging in and AFKing during the first week:





Well for one you've complained about not being able to play your video game over the course of two weeks due to server strain. I'm sure there are plenty of other people who have bigger issues than logging into their online game and playing their virtual character. You are not adult enough to realize how childish this temper tantrum is and cannot forgive people for mistakes. It's selfish behavior.

While I am not condoning SE's actions because I do agree they should have been more prepared, they have gone to great lengths to apologize to their consumer base, amend things as quick as possible, and provide compensation in return. Yet, none of this registers in that think pan of yours. It's all about mememe up there.



First let's make it clear: you pay for a game. You are not guaranteed playtime at all. You did read the ToS, right? No? Well that may be why I am under the impression that you are ignorant to many things involving this game.

Yet you're able to play now on a regular basis. And what do you think? And more importantly: why haven't you left this game and gone back to WoW if the development and community team are as evil and corrupt as you make them out to be.

And the bolded is quite humorous. You have a full time job and raise twins. I'm told this is infinitely more difficult than anything I can imagine. Well, what I can imagine is studying for 5 hours a day on the weekends/weekdays, working part time during the weekdays while going to school full time, and looking for internships/co-ops in the mean time. This leaves me with time to play FFXIV yet I still prioritize all of that over this game. I'm glad FFXIV is so casual that I can easily get to endgame with minimal effort and still have fun even with a tight schedule.

However, you still devote an abnormal amount of time to gaming. Your task is apparently infinitely more difficult than mine so to me that says you should probably not even consider gaming at the moment.

Let me define it more explicitly for you:

If my play time allows me to play a small amount with a tight schedule and your tasks are infinitely more time consuming than mine are with my tight schedule, then it follows that you do not have enough time to be playing a game.

Less you were mistaken and somehow misjudged the difficulties in your real life.



Personally, I wouldn't presume to know how to do another person's job if I wasn't qualified in that field myself.

It's pretty easy to figure out why your line of reasoning is flawed. It's pretty difficult to impart this upon you.



They were reluctant to place an AFK timer in the game to begin with because they realized that this would not solve the problem in the long run.

So they did the intelligent thing: ordered more servers instead of wasting time programming an AFK timer into their game. You know: because taking the freeze off their sales would be the intelligent thing for any company to do and the only way they were going to do this was with more servers: not a bandaid AFK timer.



I don't think we've had an outbreak of 'drama' in the past week. You know what else I've learned bout WoW guilds? They generally aren't as large as FCs. Determining who is problematic and who is not is a little more difficult given that it takes a while to learn what types of personalities people have.



See this wasn't the point. You stated the following:



Just a little bit of contradiction on your part. You're arguing online about a game with pixels. By your own classification, you would fall in this 'immature' category of players. Hence, the point of quoting it and pointing to the fact that you're arguing over an online forum about remedial issues.

I never said anything about my tendency to argue online/offline. It's true: I do. So if it's true you do and I do, I think your attack is a little off the mark. It doesn't make a player immature to want to argue online and that is what you have to deal with in such a large FC. Can you boot people for wanting to argue? Sure if it gets excessive. What's excessive?

Well this is my problem and not yours. Point: it's not as easy as you think it is to eliminate said immature players if they haven't shown their true colors yet or border on immaturity. And keeping track of 250 of them? Yeah, good luck.

As for your question: at what point do you think it's required that we meet to know where you stand on an issue when it's just as easy to assess your personality based off of your responses? Are you trying to tell me you don't act like this in-game?

Interesting. If you concede that you do not act like this in game, that means you're pretty much arguing over a non-issue at the moment: one you started by attacking someone with a legitimate reason for wanting to stay logged on for longer than 30 minutes despite being away from the computer for short amounts of time.

I'll tell you something interesting, though: not once have I left my game on over night or held a spot for myself during the first two weeks by AFKing. It's not needed for a number of reasons already listed.

However, the ones I listed are legitimate. Settings reset, chat logs are lost, and you must requeue for a dungeon again (repeating the cycle over and over).



It's a pretty cool story. If I didn't know you and you joined my FC then decided to spam FC chat with all this whining you're currently doing over login issues that no longer exist, we'd probably tell you to tone it down. But you don't seem to want to back down therefore wouldn't we just label you as an immature player and remove you? At least, that's what you're suggesting above.

[quote=Jeskradha]So, do you smoke then? Not sure what your getting at, I thought we were discussing an AFK timer.[/quote]

No you decided to attack me based on wanting to study while I'm in queue. You stated:

[quote=Jeskradha]Again, how hard is it to remember to move your character?

If I'm going to Que up for something, I usually Que and then find something else to do IN GAME so I don't miss my timers, but I dunno, maybe I'm alone on this.[/quote]

See? You forget so easily. Short term memory loss.

Let me just spell the analogy out:

It's as easy to forget about a queue timer in a game as it is to forget to stick your post in a browser, have spell check tell you exactly what's wrong, and forget to amend the mistakes it has told you you've made before you hit post.

You neglect the fact that WoW's queue system has a very loud sound as soon as it pops. You've played WoW: you know this. I'm sure you've missed queues too because your twins have caught you at a bad time. You're not perfect (see: above) and neither is anyone else. Attacking someone because you think they should be glued to their monitor when you yourself do not abide by the same principles is hypocritical.

Now, you wish to talk about how this relates to an AFK timer.

If you're at the end of the game, you'd know that we have this 'wonderful' dungeon that we need to run each week to cap our tomes of mythology. It's regularly a long queue. Around 30 minutes I'd say if not 45 to an hour.

Now, when NA prime time comes around, this queue time becomes longer because even full groups are not able to enter. Know why? Well, that's because there aren't enough instances for everyone to reserve. This causes the queue time to shoot up even further. Sometimes an hour for a solo DPS class.

I don't know about you, but I don't have much else to do in-game while I'm waiting on a queue. Crafting/gathering? Working on it. Can only handle it in small doses. Can't do level quests. Can't level my chocobo. Can't assist FC members with things they need. You could go quest...but the quests are limited so it's best to save them for other jobs. You could go level other jobs in FATEs but I prefer dungeon grinding. I can't queue for two dungeons at the same time for two different jobs.

I'm pretty much left with: sit in town and wait for queue to pop. I can surf the web if I want but there's a chance I still will miss the queue. I'd rather do something useful with my time where I have a chance to hear the queue pop and that's simply study to the right of my monitor with the speakers on full blast. Sometimes I will miss it because the sound is very light and I'll be too involved in other things. My primary goal was to queue for a dungeon but things do come up. Should I just sit in town twiddling my thumbs? Sounds like an enormous waste of time to me.

Why do you fail to see why it is idiotic to have an AFK timer in place that is shorter than the average AK queue time during NA prime time for a DPS?

[quote=Jeskradha]Do you have kids? My guess is no, so you have no idea WTF your talking about at this point.[/quote]

I can't have kids.

My mom raised my sister and I while working full time as a nurse while my dad worked full time as a detective. Yet, when she looks at the things I study, I realize she can't begin to fathom just how complicated the subject matter can be.

Dismissing someone else's work load as trivial when it's clear you cannot even grasp the mechanics behind something as basic as a server is what is so disturbing. My degree deals with this type of thing. This is why I can understand the difficulty that SE had to deal with: why I used patience and understanding to get through the short amount of time it took them to get things in order and why you act like a raging mongrel when you can't play your game for 2 weeks.

[quote=Jeskradha]Again, are you acting like a pedant, arguing over an online forum about an issue that no longer exists or do you legitimately have a point?[/quote]

While I do have a point, it's clear you'll never understand it no matter if I write a few lines of text or a thesis.

[quote=Jeskradha]If your not actually playing do everyone else a favor and just @#%^ing log out. I played WoW for 7+ years and never once had a problem with their AFK timer. I can't think of one good reason at this point you would need to leave your character logged in for any extended period of time while your not actually "playing" (as in actually doing something) the game. It just makes sense that they would want to reduce the stress on their servers by not having 10000 characters just standing around. If that bothers you then honestly your just selfish. [/quote]

So this is your point. You played WoW for 7+ years and never once had a problem with their AFK timer. I'm glad.

This isn't WoW. But it's funny:

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/3313036722

It seems that, despite having no reason for staying logged into WoW, their players also have no problem circumventing the auto disconnect, consuming these valuable server resources that you speak of.

Your 'point' illustrates your ignorance about server mechanics as well. One, we already know the server cap which you pointed out incorrectly. Two, as someone has already told you in this thread, a stationery player's stress on the server is negligible compared to those performing more complicated tasks like crafting, leveling, interacting with NPCs, MOVING, etc.

You know how programming works? Let's just say it takes a considerable amount of computational power to, say, walk around town compared to someone sitting there motionless. If I were to ask you: which do you think is more difficult? Using the distance equation to calculate player movement and vector calculations to determine direction and magnitude of the player's movement (walking or running) or using the distance equation to calculate stationary player movement and vector calculations to determine the direction and magnitude of a stationary player?

A stationary player doesn't move. The calculations are simple because, you know, the 3D coordinate system for the dist. eqn with a bunch of 0s ends up being 0 and determining the magnitude of a directional vector when someone isn't moving is also pretty simplistic. Want a direction? Well, which way is the player facing? Is he facing that direction for a long period of time? Yes.

So when the server goes to recheck the status of that player, he hasn't done anything. Nothing changes. Few computations needed. None if their programmers are intelligent.

Different case with a moving player. How about a player crafting? And one in battle? Yeah a little more complex.

[quote=Jeskradha]Pretty sure yours was[/quote]

Citation needed. I don't think you've understood my point at all.

[quote=Jeskradha]Which I still think is stupid.[/quote]

Will you raise your children to act in this manner towards other people?

[quote=Jeskradha]I take care of my family. That fact that your making jabs at my personal life and my family is a little pathetic.[/quote]

You mean like the plethora of 'jabs' you've made at my own.

Edited, Sep 23rd 2013 4:35am by HitomeOfBismarck

And this is why I love pointless threads. *Noms on some popcorn* Someone wanna grab me some Skittles from the candy store? *Waves around a few dollars* I'll pay for you to get a bag too. Get the yogurt ones, those are good. *Opens a comic* Now to continue reading my comic while watching the thread fester still.

Sigh...I fear we've just misunderstood each other and have been running in circles. Let's just see what we can see eye to eye on and agree to disagree with the rest.



It's a little funny talking about this subject in this thread in particular. You know it's about circumventing the AFK timer. Plenty of people would have done so just to stay logged on. Many people would resort to cheating if they had to just to play this game it would seem.

It is very plausible to believe that the AFK timer would have let people in that would not have been due to AFKs. At the same time, it's also plausible that they were focusing on how to fix the base issue instead of just applying bandaids.

My question to you: why is this so important? What did you want to do during the first two weeks?

I don't understand how such a small amount of time you've spent focusing on this game is relevant when you (and me) will most likely spend the next 1~3+ years here if Yoshi keeps it up. What have you really lost?

We get your point: AFK timer would have fixed a few issues. My question is: we no longer have those issues so why bother obsessing over them? Not only can we login due to more servers but we also have the AFK timer you wished for.

Is your opinion of this game rooted in the first two weeks? You've stated it is an amazing game. Wasn't it worth just a little bit of hassle to experience it?



Of course not which is why most of us could see the painting on the wall and just rode out the storm. No need for irrationality when it's clear that they are doing everything to fix things. Reading some of Yoshi's developer blog entries makes you really wonder how he can still function when he seems to have been working non-stop since the launch. I even thought it was rather admirable that he wouldn't play the game when many customers could not do so during the first two weeks.



My apologies, then. I assumed you were part of the irrational crowd.



Then we have just misunderstood each other and, like you, I apologize.



It wouldn't be possible unless you've logged in recently. Even though I only quit in the spring, my armory for my mage is no longer available. I'm glad you and your brother have some formal education regarding electronics and networks. Why, though, did your brother decide to stay away from a game simply due to problems within the first two weeks? As a software engineer (or engineer of any sort), I'm sure he knew that these problems were short term and actually expected.

And while we three have technical backgrounds, many of the problems listed here pertain to player mentality and sociology.



It's fine to disagree with a person's opinion. Hell, you could have just stated so and I wouldn't have minded.

But you singled my post out, quoted it, and then said, "That's the stupidest thing I've read in this thread."

You didn't even care about my reasoning or any possible implications: just that it was stupid.

Another player asked me the same question you did in this thread. He asked me to explain my post because one part made some sense but another didn't. I would have happily explained my rationale to him (and you) if you had just asked instead of lighting a fire under me.

This AFK timer currently runs the risk of losing data that I potentially would like to record. I could have just gotten out of a really bad AK group. IIRC, we can't BLIST players across servers. How else are we to remember their names if not to log them in a text document or a screenshot?

The same goes for FC chat and tells.

I'll give you a scenario. I'm in Ul'dah looking for a group. I can't find one so I'll go study for a few minutes. Someone on my FLIST /tells me and asks me if I want to go do coils with them. Well, I'm AFK so I don't respond. Studying 'for a few minutes' turns into 30 and I'm booted for being AFK. I log back in and am now oblivious to any tells I have received in the past 30 minutes.

This includes: RMT /tells that I'd like to BLIST, FC chat, officer chat, tells from other random players, etc.

It's ok to not think the above is a big deal.

However, what about the queue time for a DPS for AK during prime time. You seem to want SE to use logic (see: AFK timer during first two weeks) but they seem to have gone overboard and made it shorter than the average wait time. What logic is there behind this? I see that you think they may have went overboard in this regard too.

So it's ok for you to express annoyance about lack of an AFK timer during the first two weeks but not ok for someone else to express annoyance over a short AFK timer?

We both support the AFK timer but have differing views on how (and when) it should have been implemented. Instead of insulting me, you should have just asked me what logic I had to justify my position just as I did in the above paragraph in regards to why you are lingering on past issues.



For the same reason you feel it necessary to tell me your life seems to be infinitely more challenging compared to what I'm currently doing in mine.



I assumed so because it seems like you had some misconceptions about programming and how servers functioned. And yes: part of it was because you were upset about not being able to log in for two weeks.

I support the AFK timer so if you're ignorant in that regard, then so am I.

Your argument is rational. The question I answered was in response to, "Why would you stay logged in 14 when there is no purpose to it?" I just provided some examples as to why some people may want to remain logged in despite being AFK. These people aren't too lazy to log out: they have a reason.

Then you ranted angrily at me about how these reasons were not legitimate to you and that it was stupid reasoning.

Let me put it this way: I see it as irrational to complain about not being able to log in for two weeks just as you see it as irrational for me to want to stay logged in for longer than 30 minutes for a number of reasons listed.

Overall, I do not think either of us are irrational humans after reading this response of yours. You could have easily gone on the offensive and turned this into a big quote war but decided to act like an adult.

I think, as two adults, we can forgive each other for wrong doings and easily agree to disagree I hope?




There is still much to be done. I wish more people would post in that forum. :)

If you have to use more than 3 quotes in a post, you're trying to address too many things in a single post.