Board 8 > FFXIV Topic 11 - Fly Me to the Moon

(+) Yeah! (+)

I tragically need to go to sleep now right before the final trial

This is true despair. You might even say its such devastation!

Started playing around with Reaper a bit last night, and it's pretty fun, if not a bit button mash-y.

Had to start work in the middle of the cutscene after the 89 dungeon. Thank god for remote play.

Did the expansion really do so well that they literally had to stop selling it due to server congestion?

ExThaNemesis posted...

Did the expansion really do so well that they literally had to stop selling it due to server congestion?

Players are currently experiencing extremely long wait times due to the dense concentration of play hours which far exceed our server capacity, especially during the peak times, and so we have decided to temporarily suspend the sale and delivery of FINAL FANTASY XIV Starter Edition and Complete Edition. Additionally, although those with an active subscription are prioritized to log in, Free Trial players are unable to log in outside of late night and early morning hours, and so we will also temporarily suspend new registrations for the Free Trial.

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/news/detail/e7388986bc24d5a1337e0beed057f7b5b78b9bb3

Good lord that's fucking amazing.

I have no idea what hosting an online game is like as far as server setup goes, but I'm guessing it's not as simple as "buy more hardware and set it up" lol

ExThaNemesis posted...

Good lord that's fucking amazing.

I have no idea what hosting an online game is like as far as server setup goes, but I'm guessing it's not as simple as "buy more hardware and set it up" lol

They actually tried to do that but couldn't get the hardware to set up, even offering to pay well over market price for the servers.

ExThaNemesis posted...

Good lord that's fucking amazing.

I have no idea what hosting an online game is like as far as server setup goes, but I'm guessing it's not as simple as "buy more hardware and set it up" lol

Normally it would have, based on the current success of the game and the support it's getting internally they would have been able to the additional servers needed without much hassle.

But with the chip shortages, they could offer to pay double but those servers are still going to go to medical facilities.

I'm gonna hazard a shot in the dark here and say I doubt that FF14 was working with the latest and greatest server tech before this, too. The devs have a pretty frugal and meticulous way of upgrading tech. The issues with instanced player housing for example is something devs and players both point to as an indicator of resource priorities. I think comparing 4.0 to 5.0 launch shows they are very good now at estimating the maximum they need and minimum they can get away with for a normal expansion.

It's just...this was not a normal expansion so it wasn't nearly good enough!

Or more succinctly, yeah it's not nearly as simple as throwing more money at the problem but it does help and man do I hope the suits at squeenix HQ let them splurge a little in the future!

With a larger heads up it may have turned out better, but I don't think anybody could have predicted the WoW exodus being as overwhelming as it was. It's not like it ever slowed down, they gained 1 million new PAID players in the last month before release, between the media tour and launch, going from 24 million to 25 million.

I think they realized they were in trouble when they sold out of digital copies all those months ago.

Well yes I'm saying they would have had to do future proofing and invested in going beyond their expected baseline. Which is not their MO. Hell, doing the opposite and tweaking what they have is the only reason the game still exists.

I don't really blame them for that choice. Just saying that given how the game has been consistently successful for years now, they expanded the free trial to get more players, and also that Yoshi-P seems to want to keep FF14 going until he dies, it wouldn't have been unreasonable to do some big upgrades just in case. But that's hindsight.

They haven't upgraded their login servers for a long time, yeah. It's a shame they haven't been willing to invest more in it. Europe's needed a new world for a couple years, too.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

It's not like it ever slowed down, they gained 1 million new PAID players in the last month before release, between the media tour and launch, going from 24 million to 25 million.

Are you sure about that? I was under the impression they have under 2 million paid players total. 25 million is the total number of accounts that have been made.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/8/5/9/AADcu0AACtD7.jpg

Merry (early) Christmas

Hit level 90 during the preparations to head off to the final zone. 89 trial ended up being exactly what I was expecting. So that was nice.

Mac Arrowny posted...

Are you sure about that? I was under the impression they have under 2 million paid players total. 25 million is the total number of accounts that have been made.

Yeah this too, it's hard to speculate on numbers because square only puts them out for marketing basically.

There are some fanmade censuses (luckybancho) which use lodestone data on character (not account) level and story progress (basically out of free trial range) which is very nebulous but better than nothing? But according to those the game hovered between 900k-1.2m during Shadowbringers, then peaked at 1.6m at the start of last month. It's not unreasonable to think that's an underestimate and we are around the 2m active players range. If true that would be almost a doubling of activity.

It's worth pointing out also that games that have a subscription model that run on a consistent, predictable release schedule, like FFXIV, typically have an active userbase that ebbs and flows as major patches come out. A lot of players will resubscribe for a month at a time when new content comes out, then leave until the next major patch. Generally, XIV reaches it's absolute lowest numbers in the months following an X.55 patch up until a new expansion where it peaks again. Clearly what happened this time around was very atypical and kind of came out of nowhere, so it's difficult to blame SE for being unprepared, particular since the level of activity between February and June of this year was very much as expected. I'm sure they were anticipating their highest ever numbers this year, but it came several months before they were anticipating it to, and it still blew away their predicted figures.

My understanding is that they reached 24 lifetime active subscribers by the media tour, and then reached 25 million upon Endwalker launch. Obviously that such less ACTIVE subscribers than 25 million (worded poorly), but the lifetime subscribers jumping by 1 million over 1 month still implies the obvious.

Now it's possible they were underreporting during the media tour, "reached 24 million" could me they were at 24.9 million, but that's not a clean number but they also don't want to lie and say 25 million right then and there.

If nothing else, at least the FFXIV community's meme game remains on point:

https://twitter.com/stalala_/status/1471523910600458244?s=20

ExThaNemesis posted...

Did the expansion really do so well that they literally had to stop selling it due to server congestion?

The expansion release was the culmination point, but another big factor was Blizzard imploding culturally, WoW apparently getting really uninspired gameplay-wise for a while coinciding with that, and a bunch of famous streamers moving from WoW to FFXIV because of those things over the past year.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/9/4/5/AAeolZAACtFR.jpg

Zone 6 spoilers: These descriptions of the busted dragon eggs are turning my stomach real hard thanks to an incident I had back when we raised chickens - I had one that I cracked into the skillet to make for lunch one day, only it turned out to have been gathered really late and the dead chick was mostly-formed. Couldn't eat eggs for months after that.

I pretty much just leveled Disciples in Shadowbringers to get everything capped out, so it's the first time I've actually used them to try and cash in. I've casually made 2 million in 2 days. Feels good fam.

Yeah, I've just been farming cloth mats while I'm waiting in queues and it's a pretty easy couple hundred k every day.

Right now the high end Gathering gear tends to be going for the most, consistentally, at least on Midgarsormmr. Guess it makes sense, it's possible to make decent money leveling Gathers but not Crafters, but not so much vice versa, so probably quite a few people only leveling Gatherers.

In the queue for the last trial now!

MSQ beated! Time to finally look at the other topic...

Having sat on it for a bit, decided I didn't really like the Endwalker MSQ story all that much.

It basically turned into the game writing itself into a bunch of different corners, hastily writing out all of those corners, and then trying tell a completely different self-contained story at the same time.

There were satisfying moments, but ultimately Endwalker is just the writers trying to open the game to move in a different direction than we've been going since its inception.

Probably better than Stormblood, but definitely nowhere near as solid as Shadowbringers.

Also I've got fully geared WHM/SCH/SMN, BTN leveled and in all blue gear, working on leveling GNB and then maybe seeing about getting my crafters up.

Lv. 90 MSQ: This is where the path ends. There is no way to reach our nest. Bitch, Im a dragoon. I make jumps like that every day before breakfast.

On the one hand, sitting in the pre-final trial area has some really good music. On the other, it's gonna be a few hours until I have the time to actually queue up for it, so I guess I should go do some other stuff in the meantime. Maybe I'll finish off the melee DPS role quests.

Also - despite running with trusts and thus getting 100% of the loot I didn't get a single accessory I can use in that dungeon.

Got most of the way through 5.5 last night, I am almost ready to walk ends

33 in queue at 1PM O_O

FINALLY booted up and played again yesterday for the first time in a while. Queued in around 11:45 central, barely a queue at all. Played off and on, keeping it logged in. Before dinner, I logged out, then tried logging back in just to see what my queue would've been. Was about 700 people, and I play on Primal (Lamia).

Anyway, I'm currently in the Stormblood MSQ. Had to brush up on a few things in terms of where I'm at and such. Every time I hear "Doma Castle", I keep expecting to see Cyan, or perhaps Kefka looking to poison/murder everyone there.

Did the duty where Yugiri tries to assassinate Zenos. That was fun, and a nice refresher for me for my bard actions. I found most of it was muscle memory, so that was good.

Gonna try and catch up as quick as I can, though I'm quite a ways behind lol. Feels nice to be playing this again though!

Doma Castle is basically my second favorite Stormblood dungeon, because it's Yanxia music, but funky.

Dumb question, when do collectable appraisers change what they'll accept? I picked up some rarefied coconuts running leves to level botany and they're not taking them right now.

JonThePenguin posted...

Dumb question, when do collectable appraisers change what they'll accept? I picked up some rarefied coconuts running leves to level botany and they're not taking them right now.

When you're a high enough level. The coconuts require you to be a level 85 Botanist, for example.

Ah, nice. Should be there momentarily.

Edit: Yep, there it is.

Hit 90 as BTN just in time for my lunch break, for which my plan is to finally run the 90 trial and be done with this MSQ. Then I can spend the rest of my shift figuring out what I should do from there.

Are level 90 ventures not showing for my Retainers yet because I need to increase their gear level, or because they aren't out yet? I seem to remember level 80 ventures showing when I was undergeared in Shadowbringers, they were just grayed out and I couldn't select them.

How should I be levelling Miner from 80-90?

GANON1025 posted...

How should I be levelling Miner from 80-90?

Leves are very fast but mining is good gil these days too

leves (sharlayan) and collectables (radz)

Leves are a waste of time. Hit up the timed nodes for collectables while mining for items in between. Can do 80-90 in a few hours.

Leves are better for crafters than gatherers once you have collectibles.

hit the level 89 wall in the msq with about 2 mil more exp to go

god dammit I guess I might as well talk to hien

HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

hit the level 89 wall in the msq with about 2 mil more exp to go

god dammit I guess I might as well talk to hien

Lol that ain't gonna get you there.

Don't make me post the picture again.

Yeah that alone won't get you there

You'll either need to do that + some fates/sidequests or just do a dungeon.

I mean I can do quests...while queuing for things.

Role quests give EXP about on par with MSQ ones so that and trials is going to get me there before leveling even pops.

Complete the role quests and go into the final battle in a violently hot pink dyed job gear

I still have a level to go before 90 so we'll see if I hit the other wall and if I even like the gear enough