[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[Eleccybubb]

Login server can probably only let pass so many people at a time, and with mass-booting from server, everybody is hammering login server at same time hard. Was this system supposed to be useful in any way, who knows.

System is about as useful as Dial Up in 2017.

[Kazgrel]

That's exactly the problem, no one's calling out the ARR Hunts for A-Ranks and S-Ranks are so random I'm not going to camp the game 24/7 just for a chance at some Seals. Nor am I gonna run myself to death looking for them myself. No, this is slower and at times infuriating, but I will get it over with. Just gonna take me a few weeks. And lots of swearing at whatever fucknut thought requiring FATEs for daily tasks was a good idea.

That is definitely more of a problem now, since a level 70 (even in starting gear) can easily solo at least 75-80% of all the ARR A ranks, so you may have people doing just that and they aren't marking any sort of hunt tracker. Balmung, as much fun as it is to pick on the server, is/was really REALLY good about marking those hunts as they died, so the tracker info was very reliable there. So far on Zalera, it hasn't been quite as good...but I attribute that experience to several factors: People focused on leveling and myself not being in as many hunt LSes as I was on Balmung so I'm not quite as in-the-loop.

Those FATE mobs being part of the daily hunt seals for ARR...that was and still is a terrible idea, and I'm glad they didn't do that with HW and SB dailies. Too bad they don't go back and iron those out to where they are just regular mobs.

[Veluren]

Funnily, despite being in a massive queue, it seems like it's passing by much faster, before it would stall on the same number for up to twenty minutes, now it's moving me down a hundred every minute or two

Guess that speaks for how bad the AFKing issue actually was

[Eleccybubb]

Funnily, despite being in a massive queue, it seems like it's passing by much faster, before it would stall on the same number for up to twenty minutes, now it's moving me down a hundred every minute or two

Guess that speaks for how bad the AFKing issue actually was

Tbf I had a horrendous few days of it in PvP. Thankfully a lot of the time if they were in my party I booted them and so did others. Might be playing for that sweet XP but I still want to try and bloody win.

[Anzaman]

Maybe, but now those same AFK'ers will simply log back in and do same thing for next 24 hours until tomorrow's mass-boot.

[Eleccybubb]

Maybe, but now those same AFK'ers will simply log back in and do same thing for next 24 hours until tomorrow's mass-boot.

Exactly. This shit solves nothing. And punishes those doing nothing wrong. Especially smaller servers.

[Kazgrel]

To be fair I don't remember ever seeing the stack icon before (when was it first introduced?). I think first time I saw it was in Nidhogg (as a returning player). Then like once in Susano. However, it is HILARIOUSLY easy to discern what it means to anyone with an MMO background.

I believe that was the first time I encountered it as well..."oh a big glowing bunch of arrows pointing to this one guy...I may wanna stack on them". More or less my thought process when I saw that. Other times I encountered it include Weeping City (Ozma and the first boss), Dun Scaith (3 out of 4 bosses), Sephirot, Zurvan, and now Susano.

Seeing that none of those that I mentioned, aside from Nidhogg, were part of the MSQ...I suppose one can argue that it's not as common as I would like to think. But seeing that it was a big part of the Nidhogg fight, people should remember that much.

[lawow74]

Those FATE mobs being part of the daily hunt seals for ARR...that was and still is a terrible idea, and I'm glad they didn't do that with HW and SB dailies. Too bad they don't go back and iron those out to where they are just regular mobs.

IMO the best solution would be to change the ARR B-Rank Bill to a daily instead of a weekly, since it's little more than a normal mob now to a 70 player. Then you still have the FATEs (many of which are tied to other things like quest chains and Beast Tribe dailies) as they stand without having to completely overhaul things. It makes it easier to get Allied Seals, which are capped at a much higher total than Centurio anyways, and makes it much less frustrating for those after things like the mount speed.

[Kazgrel]

IMO the best solution would be to change the ARR B-Rank Bill to a daily instead of a weekly, since it's little more than a normal mob now to a 70 player. Then you still have the FATEs (many of which are tied to other things like quest chains and Beast Tribe dailies) as they stand without having to completely overhaul things. It makes it easier to get Allied Seals, which are capped at a much higher total than Centurio anyways, and makes it much less frustrating for those after things like the mount speed.

At this point, I don't see an issue with this, since allied seals are mostly used for glamour gear and ventures/tickets, and as of 4.0, the mount speed increases. Heck, I flatten level 50 B ranks faster than regular level 68-69 mobs. It would make earning the Straight B's achievement a bit more palatable, since it's basically a slog to get those 1000 B rank kills (although now that I can basically 2 shot those mobs, it would go a bit quicker...).

[Manabomb]

Or they could just limit it to specific servers. Why should I be booted from an instance because some idiots choose to abuse an anti afk system?

Think I'm just gonna stay away till this goes away. Knowing my luck I'll get booted at the end of an Expert.

I mean, that's the exact same logic as "Why should I have to wait in queue for 3 hours because some idiots chose to abuse the server transfer system?"

They are just reactions to bad system implementations.

[Eleccybubb]

I mean, that's the exact same logic as "Why should I have to wait in queue for 3 hours because some idiots chose to abuse the server transfer system?"

They are just reactions to bad system implementations.

That's not abusing a system. The transfer is intentional to help new servers get a good start. Afking during cutscenes and crafting is not intentional and is an abuse of the system that Square implemented to prevent congestion from idle players.

Right now this solution screws over everyone. And it does nothing to actually stop people just logging back in and afking.

Omega was bound to get an influx for example because people from Balmung were intending to move.

[Granyala]

As such, we’ll be instituting a temporary measure that will log all characters out simultaneously across all Worlds on a data center once a day. Announcement for when this will take place will be made one hour prior via in-game system message. Please note that you will be logged out of the game even while inside of instances or duties.

WTF?!
Forced logout even when I am actively playing?!
Are they serious? How dumb does a game developer get these days?

Gee congrats to people that have limited time to play and who get this forced logout in their session.

Blaming this on AFKing people is dumb. They need to fix the system or upgrade their potato servers if this amount of players lasts.

[Eleccybubb]

WTF?!
Forced logout even when I am actively playing?!
Are they serious? How dumb does a game developer get these days?

Gee congrats to people that have limited time to play and who get this forced logout in their session.

Blaming this on AFKing people is dumb. They need to fix the system or upgrade their potato servers if this amount of players lasts.

Uh no. People shouldn't be abusing the AFK system when it was made to ease congestion. They could try actually playing the game.

But their solution is just as dumb. It doesn't prevent the afking.

So yes I will blame this partially on those AFKing because now I'm forcibly removed because of what they were doing. However Square could have easily provided a better solution.

[Granyala]

Uh no. People shouldn't be abusing the AFK system when it was made to ease congestion.

People will try to stay online, even if it means running against a wall by sticking a fork into the keyboard. There is nothing that can be done about it.

Logging out active players, esp ones that do dungeons etc is so retarded though that I lack any words for it.

[Eleccybubb]

People will try to stay online, even if it means running against a wall by sticking a fork into the keyboard. There is nothing that can be done about it.

Logging out active players, esp ones that do dungeons etc is so retarded though that I lack any words for it.

This bit I agree with you.

But I think we will both just have to say we don't fully agree with each other on the AFK thing. I do agree sort of but my stance is this.

Square could have handled it way better. Add timers to Cutscenes and Crafting like I said. This solution just fucks everyone over.

But people know why it was implemented. If people hadn't been abusing the AFK thing it wouldn't have happened.

I'm not being one sided here. Both sides are stupid as hell imo.

[Kazgrel]

These "forced logouts" just occured starting about a hour ago here for NA datacenters. So it looks like, as many would suspect, they are doing these forced logouts right before prime time arrives here. I'm seeing Balmung players state that their queue time is significantly reduced (although, as expected, they had a queue to get back in after the forced log offs). Basically 100 people per minute getting logged in, which is what I saw when I went to log in at the start of early access the other day.

I'm holding off on the salt over this for now, so long as they're doing it prior to prime time and not smack in the middle of it.

Did our EU folks just get logged out, though? From what I'm gathering, Chaos has not had the forced logouts as of yet.

[RohanV]

Another possibility is that they're having trouble telling how many people are actually AFKing, or whether the server is actually overloaded. After all, if you can identify the people who are AFK, you can improve the auto-kick system.

But doing this, you can go: Population 30m before reset = 10,000. Population 30m after reset = 5,000, therefore about 50% of the server load is AFK people, and auto-kick improvements should be aggressive. But if it turns out that it's more like 2% of the server load is AFK, then improving the auto-kick will only lead to more false positives, and end up kicking people who are not actually AFK, and SE should look at different strategies.

[Eleccybubb]

These "forced logouts" just occured starting about a hour ago here for NA datacenters. So it looks like, as many would suspect, they are doing these forced logouts right before prime time arrives here. I'm seeing Balmung players state that their queue time is significantly reduced (although, as expected, they had a queue to get back in after the forced log offs). Basically 100 people per minute getting logged in, which is what I saw when I went to log in at the start of early access the other day.

I'm holding off on the salt over this for now, so long as they're doing it prior to prime time and not smack in the middle of it.

Did our EU folks just get logged out, though? From what I'm gathering, Chaos has not had the forced logouts as of yet.

If they had them at 12PM wouldn't we have had them at 8PM? Since that's the time over here?

[lawow74]

If they started handing out week-long bans (first offense, permaban second offense) to everyone who's idle crafting or in a cutscene longer than an hour, the problem would correct itself quickly. But that might be easier said than done, I don't know how well they can sort through who's connected and doing what.

[Eleccybubb]

If they started handing out week-long bans (first offense, permaban second offense) to everyone who's idle crafting or in a cutscene longer than an hour, the problem would correct itself quickly. But that might be easier said than done, I don't know how well they can sort through who's connected and doing what.

Let me wield the banhammer against them. I'll frigging bring down the storm on them.

They don't wanna fuck with angry Eleccybubb.