Server Congestion and Trial Period Extensions (09/03/2013)Follow

This is a good point but perhaps the increased concurrent connections will make the queue limit more reasonable now, or at least somewhat. I think everyone understands that this is a WIP but we should see some kind of improvement I would think.

Oh i completely understand there are ways around the afk boot mob. However, if there is no fear of never getting to log in again, and the rumor spreads that people are logging in whenever they can, or even into a more appropriate queue, then more people won't be apt to try and stay in game. Right now, the whole reason it's an issue is because no one can log in, which I fault with SE for having that tied to the DF (which involves everything that is instanced in the game). Once this reason goes away or calms into a dull roar, afking in general become a non-issue.

Sorry. i should have been more clear on how FFXI did it. But yes. that is true. The option was there to stay online non stop. or to log off after a period of time. I just preferred to stay online. But, you are 100% right. If XIV brought that option into the game. It would have fixed the issue for sure. It may have gave us this issue a bit further down the road. but maybe by that time they would have fixed the problem anyhow.

My edumacaded guess would be that SE would do this round of server fixes, then see if the problem lessens to the point of just sub-maddness. If it is still a large issue, then open up transfers, hopefully a 1 time freebee to destination servers and not servers of your choosing. If the server modifications work, then transfers should be as previously stated.... paid and sometime a little later down the road.

Man, I really REALLY hope this fixes the login problems. Not for me, cause I'll be here anyway but I have 3 real life friends who also played WoW with me that want to come to XIV. Unfortunately they can't right now with the new character restrictions, and it sucks. They're still interested as of this moment, but much longer and they're out. I don't want that to happen.

While I find your optimism refreshing, I have to say I am still rather sceptical about just how much of an effect the maintenance will have. Personally, I don't think we have seen the last of the 1017 errors. I do hope that they offer us free world transfers as a part of the deal, so that we can try and thin the herd by transferring to the new servers.

What I'd really like to know, is some statistics. Just how are players spread out at the moment? I know Yoshi mentioned there were over 230,000 concurrent connections at peak times, and there are currently 50 worlds. If the players were spread out over all the servers evenly, that's 4600 connections per world, and since a world can handle 5000, we'd be golden. The problem is though, there are way more NA and EU players than there are JP players, so that's why I'd love to see some actual proper numbers from SE.

Wouldn't SE be able to see "there are x number of players in their Inn rooms who haven't left in 3 hours" and just kick them? I mean there is nothing that exciting in an Inn room that will take up that much time, so anyone who's been in there for too long should just get booted regardless if they're moving or not.

Do people still not know how easy it is to skirt an AKF kicker/timer?

I think todays maintenance will resolve the issues and this discussion will be moot...however I just want to point out for all the people who are suggesting AFK timers as the miracle pill that will cure the disease of not having enough servers some how....people who stay logged in to avoid any login issues...are just going to use one of many programs that create "activity". Ive seen in other games people suggesting the use of an autoclicker (simple program that "clicks" your mouse ever so often) or even the low tech such as attaching your mouse to an oscillating fan though various means in order to move the mouse..

My point is...you are really naïve if you think an arbitrary afk kicker is going to get these people off the server. Personally haven't had much more than 15minuets of holding down 0 to get into the game...so this issue doesn't effect me...im not afraid to log off as ive always been able to get on within 15-30 min. Also I hate AFK timers as sometimes I like to step away and don't want to deal with reclogging. Not to mention its quite nice to see player character sitting around in chairs who are most likely afk.

Again this is all moot if the addition of new servers and raising the individual server capacity fixes the issue...which it will unless the game doubles in population over night (which I doubt)

Oh and ive been playing FFXIV a lot lately...even early morning and late at night. People who are obviously AFK are a tiny percent of the people I see, most are active and playing. So even if they were able to get all AFK people off the servers, I think it would have been a drop in the hat so to speak.

Anyway heres to hoping the game loses this login issue, which has been tarnishing the reputation of an otherwise flawless and polished game launch.

I agree that increasing world numbers and capacity is the way to go along with free world transfers to spread the population a bit. I just figured my 'kicking people in the inn rooms" would be an interesting contribution to the conversation :P

I posted this last night..

Let me tell you, this better make thing significantly better because if they don't people are going to go ballistic. For those that sat and said wait for Wednesday and defended SE if its not better, you better go hide in the corner because you think it was bad before, just wait.

And if it is better you probably never hear anything again from anyone... LOL . They will be playing the game...

Edited, Sep 3rd 2013 7:57pm by Nashred

Yes, but it was optional as you mentioned. Besides, you had to disable it in order to stand around in Rolanberry Fields all night selling your Dynamis drops and looking like a zombie.

The image of someone doing this made me LOL.

I have to say the idea of a character in an Inn loading down the server doesn't make much sense to me. You're not passing data to other players, they are not passing data to your system. Interaction with the environment & mobs is non-existent. The server is basically setting aside some memory to store your character data. If I understand the game's main population issues it revolves around the ability of the Duty Finder (DF) to process instance runs. This means (if I have that correct) that only the active players are to blame for the population limits.

SE probably monitors Duty Finder loading and correlates that to server population. They have said they were adjusting concurrent logins based on server loading, so they have probably upped the login allowance when more characters were trending afk. I do doubt kicking AFK characters would alleviate the DF hardly at all. In fact SE would probably have to reduce the server login limit if most players were running around active and doing instance runs.

Honestly, the AFK thing is probably much ado about nothing. The real issue is getting the server infrastructure to support all of us active players. That is what SE needs to address, and hopefully the new worlds and added DF servers (and reduced DF loading by spreading instance runs apart in more than 2 groups) will fix the root of that problem.

Optimism aside, there were no issues with everyone being able to log in during the first day or two of early release. The real problem was that instances were crashing, and people were getting stuck in loading screens when zoning. Then, when they'd try restarting their clients, they weren't able to log back in, because the game thought they were still instanced/zoning. This was the duty finder/instance server being overwhelmed by the number of people logged into the game.

So, to stop the bleeding, the 1017 was born.

The 1017 isn't a glitch... it's a solution. A bad solution, yes... but it was intentional. The real problem was never the existing worlds being full... the problem was (and is) that the duty finder can't handle full worlds.

That said, I believe the XIV team projected that, eventually, servers would become overwhelmed by character volume, which is why they're adding the new servers. That, along with the duty finder server fixes, really should address all of the issues we're having now. I'm expecting some 1017s for a day or two, because I believe SE would be wise to slowly lift the login restrictions to make sure the servers aren't overwhelmed. This really should be fixed, though.