(05-21-2017, 11:26 PM)Sig Wrote:

(05-21-2017, 11:09 PM)Val Wrote:

(05-21-2017, 10:40 PM)Sig Wrote:

(05-21-2017, 10:39 PM)Kage Wrote:

(05-21-2017, 10:35 PM)Sig Wrote: The 25 thumbs up have to count for something?  And yes, a fine petition, I daresay.  I'm surprised the PVEers didn't burn me alive.

I've had better with less page count.

Correct ideas are not always popular.

oh my god could you not

You're not Martin Luther King. You're some guy that's trying to talk about things he obviously has no idea on how they work, both from a common sense point of view and an infrastructure one.

"Hey this restriction you have sucks. I need you to lift it.'
"But if we do it'll keep breaking things and the economy will continue to be awful."
"Yeah well I need you to lift it."
"But th---"
"I need you to lift it. IT'S FOR THE GOOD OF (ME) THE PEOPLE"

Dissenting (and entirely valid) opinions over the internet sometimes attract vitriol.  See post above.  The points raised in the OP are both coherent, achievable, and would benefit RPers the most.  It's not the easy option, but it is correct the one that will benefit the overwhelming majority of RPers.

(05-21-2017, 11:07 PM)Leggerless Wrote:

(05-21-2017, 11:04 PM)Oswin Wrote: So, thank you Kage for linking the official forum posts. It allowed me to go a bit deeper on the current problems facing Balmung on a hardware level.

I refer to this post from 2013:

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/news/detail/dba4c2a0cdfc83e184ee0eaac3ab27ba2fe51b35

This post details what we currently know of the queue system and login information. 7,500-7,800 simultaneous logins. To put that into perspective...

That means that right now Balmung has over 7,500 people logged in at all times. There is always a queue, no matter how minor. We know the current active population to be around 22,000 players thanks to previous processing of characters on the lodestone cross referenced with achievements and changes between patches.  There are flaws in such an estimate, but they are usually seen as being on the low end of estimation. It is also inline with the login limits compared to where the other locked servers are sitting at. 

If we take the hopeful approach that SE doubled their server ability to 15,000 in the span of three years, we are still looking at a huge number of people trying to log in. And considering the 7,500 limit is close to what the smallest locked server is, I can't see that even being possible.

So we're looking at during the biggest down time in the expansion 22,000 active players or more. That is going to increase with Stormblood and more people will be on for longer.

I want to hammer that point down. 22,000+ trying to log on to Balmung at the same time. The queue times alone would be staggering. The stability of the realm and data center is going to be flaky. We have seen this happen with Heavensward. The population has grown by over 6,000 since 3.0.

To be perfectly frank, I think shit is more real than we've given credit for.

Welp.

Shit.

That's basically what this means to me the more I read it again and again.

Also OP, hope you didn't skim over those poll results

EDIT: Don't forget about Gilgamesh's population *and* the other servers all on the same datacenter. Not just Balmung players connecting in either.

(05-21-2017, 11:26 PM)Sig Wrote:

(05-21-2017, 11:09 PM)Val Wrote:

(05-21-2017, 10:40 PM)Sig Wrote:

(05-21-2017, 10:39 PM)Kage Wrote:

(05-21-2017, 10:35 PM)Sig Wrote: The 25 thumbs up have to count for something?  And yes, a fine petition, I daresay.  I'm surprised the PVEers didn't burn me alive.

I've had better with less page count.

Correct ideas are not always popular.

oh my god could you not

You're not Martin Luther King. You're some guy that's trying to talk about things he obviously has no idea on how they work, both from a common sense point of view and an infrastructure one.

"Hey this restriction you have sucks. I need you to lift it.'
"But if we do it'll keep breaking things and the economy will continue to be awful."
"Yeah well I need you to lift it."
"But th---"
"I need you to lift it. IT'S FOR THE GOOD OF (ME) THE PEOPLE"

Dissenting (and entirely valid) opinions over the internet sometimes attract vitriol.  See post above.  Honestly, Val -- you're a good roleplayer.  I expected more than petty personal attacks.  The points raised in the OP are both coherent, achievable, and would benefit RPers the most.  It's not the easy option, but it is correct the one that will benefit the overwhelming majority of RPers.

(05-21-2017, 11:26 PM)Sig Wrote:

(05-21-2017, 11:09 PM)Val Wrote:

(05-21-2017, 10:40 PM)Sig Wrote:

(05-21-2017, 10:39 PM)Kage Wrote:

(05-21-2017, 10:35 PM)Sig Wrote: The 25 thumbs up have to count for something?  And yes, a fine petition, I daresay.  I'm surprised the PVEers didn't burn me alive.

I've had better with less page count.

Correct ideas are not always popular.

oh my god could you not

You're not Martin Luther King. You're some guy that's trying to talk about things he obviously has no idea on how they work, both from a common sense point of view and an infrastructure one.

"Hey this restriction you have sucks. I need you to lift it.'
"But if we do it'll keep breaking things and the economy will continue to be awful."
"Yeah well I need you to lift it."
"But th---"
"I need you to lift it. IT'S FOR THE GOOD OF (ME) THE PEOPLE"

Dissenting (and entirely valid) opinions over the internet sometimes attract vitriol.  See post above.  Honestly, Val -- you're a good roleplayer. I expected more than petty personal attacks. The points raised in the OP are both coherent, achievable, and would benefit RPers the most.  It's not the easy option, but it is correct the one that will benefit the overwhelming majority of RPers.

(05-21-2017, 11:38 PM)Val Wrote:

(05-21-2017, 11:26 PM)Sig Wrote:

(05-21-2017, 11:09 PM)Val Wrote:

(05-21-2017, 10:40 PM)Sig Wrote:

(05-21-2017, 10:39 PM)Kage Wrote: I've had better with less page count.

Correct ideas are not always popular.

oh my god could you not

You're not Martin Luther King. You're some guy that's trying to talk about things he obviously has no idea on how they work, both from a common sense point of view and an infrastructure one.

"Hey this restriction you have sucks. I need you to lift it.'
"But if we do it'll keep breaking things and the economy will continue to be awful."
"Yeah well I need you to lift it."
"But th---"
"I need you to lift it. IT'S FOR THE GOOD OF (ME) THE PEOPLE"

Dissenting (and entirely valid) opinions over the internet sometimes attract vitriol.  See post above.  Honestly, Val -- you're a good roleplayer.  I expected more than petty personal attacks.  The points raised in the OP are both coherent, achievable, and would benefit RPers the most.  It's not the easy option, but it is correct the one that will benefit the overwhelming majority of RPers.

The problem with your argument is that you're not listening to anyone's opinion. You're taking what you say as fact and not remotely considering the truths of what anyone else is saying to you. 

I--and pretty much literally everyone else here--have told you time and time again that while your ideas are great, they cannot be achieved for multiple reasons. And yet, you choose to ignore it with simple responses that more or less boil down to "because i want it to happen". It's not realistic. Expecting them to shit out a new RP server isn't realistic. Thinking that it costs nothing isn't realistic.

Personal attacks? No. I have not attacked you personally. I refuse to do so. I will, however, point out how incredibly unrealistic/ridiculous your arguments and responses have become. This isn't some sort of heroic "let's band together friends!!!!" moment. This is real. You have a handful of options. Nothing is going to change. You can try to change it, but expecting it is a fool's errand. People have tried telling you this over and over and over, and yet you bullheadedly rush through and dismiss literally any valid option they're offering, sometimes even going so far as just ignoring it outright. You take whatever common sense they give you, consider it a personal attack (like I assume you're going to do with this), and push past it. And yet, even if we try to tell you "Hey that's not what we mean" it doesn't matter.

It's not even an issue with "well this community will break apart." The servers literally can not handle the stress. It's just how it is. That's not even touching on the subject of social and economic issues that Balmung is facing because of the overpopulation, both in RP and PvE. To assume that none of them exist is another issue altogether.

(05-22-2017, 12:04 AM)Sig Wrote:

(05-21-2017, 11:38 PM)Val Wrote:

(05-21-2017, 11:26 PM)Sig Wrote:

(05-21-2017, 11:09 PM)Val Wrote:

(05-21-2017, 10:40 PM)Sig Wrote: Correct ideas are not always popular.

oh my god could you not

You're not Martin Luther King. You're some guy that's trying to talk about things he obviously has no idea on how they work, both from a common sense point of view and an infrastructure one.

"Hey this restriction you have sucks. I need you to lift it.'
"But if we do it'll keep breaking things and the economy will continue to be awful."
"Yeah well I need you to lift it."
"But th---"
"I need you to lift it. IT'S FOR THE GOOD OF (ME) THE PEOPLE"

Dissenting (and entirely valid) opinions over the internet sometimes attract vitriol.  See post above.  Honestly, Val -- you're a good roleplayer.  I expected more than petty personal attacks.  The points raised in the OP are both coherent, achievable, and would benefit RPers the most.  It's not the easy option, but it is correct the one that will benefit the overwhelming majority of RPers.

The problem with your argument is that you're not listening to anyone's opinion. You're taking what you say as fact and not remotely considering the truths of what anyone else is saying to you. 

I--and pretty much literally everyone else here--have told you time and time again that while your ideas are great, they cannot be achieved for multiple reasons. And yet, you choose to ignore it with simple responses that more or less boil down to "because i want it to happen". It's not realistic. Expecting them to shit out a new RP server isn't realistic. Thinking that it costs nothing isn't realistic.

Personal attacks? No. I have not attacked you personally. I refuse to do so. I will, however, point out how incredibly unrealistic/ridiculous your arguments and responses have become. This isn't some sort of heroic "let's band together friends!!!!" moment. This is real. You have a handful of options. Nothing is going to change. You can try to change it, but expecting it is a fool's errand. People have tried telling you this over and over and over, and yet you bullheadedly rush through and dismiss literally any valid option they're offering, sometimes even going so far as just ignoring it outright. You take whatever common sense they give you, consider it a personal attack (like I assume you're going to do with this), and push past it. And yet, even if we try to tell you "Hey that's not what we mean" it doesn't matter.

It's not even an issue with "well this community will break apart." The servers literally can not handle the stress. It's just how it is. That's not even touching on the subject of social and economic issues that Balmung is facing because of the overpopulation, both in RP and PvE. To assume that none of them exist is another issue altogether.

You seem to appear to confuse disagreement with the ability to understand and process arguments.  I've considered each and every counter argument and disagree. I don't exactly take posts offered by at most 15 people to refute basic, intuitive arguments we all take for granted.

Think about this: would we have anywhere near as vibrant, healthy, sustainable, and diverse an RP community if Balmung was not a centralized RP hub?  The answer is no.  We have enjoyed the benefits of a centralized RP hub for years.  Reversing this and fragmenting the community could harm RP for all roleplayers for the reasons stated in the OP.  No one is standing in line to transfer from Balmung right now for this very reason; at most people are rolling alts to show support.  The vast majority of the FFXIV RP community depends on a centralized RP hub.  They may not advocate for this expressly, but it's something most value.

I've already pointed out a dozen times how SE could alleviate this problem in a way that would not harm the RP community: reverse the transfer restriction (and implement alternative population control measures) or simply designate an official RP server.  Nothing else will work.

(05-22-2017, 12:04 AM)Sig Wrote: Nothing else will work.

(05-22-2017, 12:04 AM)Sig Wrote: You seem to appear to confuse disagreement with the ability to understand and process arguments.  I've considered each and every counter argument and disagree. I don't exactly take posts offered by at most 15 people to refute basic, intuitive arguments we all take for granted.

Think about this: would we have anywhere near as vibrant, healthy, sustainable, and diverse an RP community if Balmung was not a centralized RP hub?  The answer is no.  We have enjoyed the benefits of a centralized RP hub for years.  Reversing this and fragmenting the community could harm RP for all roleplayers for the reasons stated in the OP.  No one is standing in line to transfer from Balmung right now for this very reason; at most people are rolling alts to show support.  The vast majority of the FFXIV RP community depends on a centralized RP hub.  They may not advocate for this expressly, but it's something most value.

I've already pointed out a dozen times how SE could alleviate this problem in a way that would not harm the RP community: reverse the transfer restriction (and implement alternative population control measures) or simply designate an official RP server.  Nothing else will work.

(05-22-2017, 12:04 AM)Sig Wrote: I've already pointed out a dozen times how SE could alleviate this problem in a way that would not harm the RP community: reverse the transfer restriction (and implement alternative population control measures) or simply designate an official RP server.  Nothing else will work.

(05-21-2017, 09:43 PM)Unnamed Mercenary Wrote:

(05-21-2017, 08:39 PM)Sig Wrote: (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.

Gonna try to answer some of these points as someone who works in the "manages servers" industry. Yes. That's my job. I babysit servers. And their connections. And their CPU usage. And network availability. And network usage. My department gets to make lovely trips to our datacenter to even swap out tape backups (because yes, that's still a thing).


Things before numbers:
It's not a matter of getting "better/newer" servers. Or a different datacenter. Or even faster internet. (Aside from the fact that you won't find faster internet than the connections inside a datacenter anyways).

Quote: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.

Servers don't work that way. SE could increase the CPU/RAM/data storage all they want and it wouldn't help the issue one bit. Those are allocatable resources. You can't reallocate network connections from an empty server to a busy server. They just don't work that way.

1) This could help convince some people to not transfer to Balmung. It'd probably do wonders for that. Especially if we took your words from earlier and tried to convince everyone on other servers to somehow transfer into Balmung if it opens.

2) SE appears to already be doing this. They've never offered incentives in FFXIV before. If it's a big enough issue, they'll probably get more extreme, like removing gil limits altogether. (Which will wreck economies if some ass goes and buys gil from a cheap server and then transgers.)

3) SE is already doing this. If anything, closing Balmung means the time is NOW to report as many bots as possible. I was telling this to people in another thread elsewhere.

4) This doesn't work. The cost of running a "full" server is identical to running a server with nobody playing on it. See answer for 1).

5) This could work, but it's unlikely. SE has made it a point to not designate servers officially. Aside from there being no real way to "require" the designated server actually be used for the designation, this really is honestly something best left to players.

6) This comes and goes every patch. It's easily exploited, as people did before. It might help clear up a few connections, but it won't help during primetime hours, which is where the issue's coming from. For everything else, there's "talk to NPC/retainer/market board/aetheryte" or "start a craft and purposely not finish." You'll never be marked as idle in the game. I'm certain I'm not the only person who tested this personally.

(05-21-2017, 11:28 PM)Oswin Wrote: This is a very good point as well but I would like to clarify that it's on a different server level. Correct me if I'm wrong, Merc, but from my understanding as a Sys Admin the instance servers are more like a server farm that is connected to all the other Aether servers. Realistically, there should be enough servers to handle the load. If we go by the server limit it should be able to handle 7,500 players per server. Divided up Aether should be able to handle that load.