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Yoshi-P Provides Detailed Explanation for Log-in Issues
Strayfe
Member UncommonPosts: 199
From the official forums:
Further Details on Access Restrictions
This is FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn producer and director Naoki Yoshida and I would like to take the time to personally apologize once again to all those players who have been affected by the extended World login and character creation restrictions which have been in place for the past several days. I also understand that apologies will not help you get logged in, so I would like to give you an update on the situation at hand and the various measures we are currently employing to alleviate the situation.
Concurrent Connections
On the night following the announcement of our plans to temporarily limit sales of the download version, A Realm Reborn recorded upwards of 218,000 concurrent connections. This is in spite of the fact that the peak login times for separate regions around the world arrive at differing intervals. We estimate that without time zone differences, the total number of concurrent connections would number anywhere from 300,000 to 350,000.
As many of you know, this is the second launch for FINAL FANTASY XIV?something unprecedented in the MMORPG market. Considering the outcome of our first launch, our sales estimates for this one were decidedly conservative, as we believed that there would be a more gradual rise in users over the opening weeks and months.
Instead, to our pleasant surprise, we experienced tremendous support from a great number of players who were eager to get into the game from day one. To ensure that these players, once logged in, were able to play in a stable environment, we were required to implement login restrictions which kept server population near maximum capacity without exceeding those numbers.
The fact that we had to implement these restrictions is a direct result of my inaccurate sales and login estimates, and as producer, I must accept complete responsibility for this misstep. Each and every player who has been affected has my deepest apologies.
The Reasoning behind Login Restrictions
Each FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn World server has been designed to support a maximum of 5,000 concurrent connections. This is not the maximum number of characters which can be created on a World, however, but the maximum number of characters which can be logged into that World simultaneously. When more than 5,000 characters log into a World at once, there is a higher risk of server crashes and login errors. The restoration of crashed servers is usually followed by a rush of players attempting to log back in, which, in turn, puts a strain on our lobby server, and can ultimately have an adverse affect on all of the Worlds.
To prevent this from happening, we felt that the safest course of action would be to limit logins. However, we would like you to know that the restrictions are under constant surveillance. We are currently monitoring login numbers on all Worlds 24 hours a day, and actively removing/applying restrictions as soon as we detect even the smallest fluctuation in concurrent connection numbers.
Currently, peak login times for each region are occurring from approximately 9:00 p.m. to midnight. During this three-hour window, Worlds are more likely to have login restrictions implemented. These temporary restrictions are expected to continue until the time that we can execute the measures we have planned to alleviate the current situation. Those measures, including the addition of new World servers, are listed, in detail, below.
Character Creation Restrictions
As stated above, the maximum number of simultaneous connections each World server can handle is 5,000, while the number of characters which can be created on a World is several times that amount. This estimate of 5,000, however, is based on those characters being somewhat distributed over all the in-game areas (zones).
At the game’s start, however, while everyone is still at a low level, the majority of players are concentrated in the three city-states and surrounding areas. This can not only lead to a lack of enemies to slay (preventing quest progression), but also see area servers overloaded, and ultimately lead to crashes.
Fortunately, differences in total individual play time, login times, and character/class progression will eventually lead to players being more spread out within each World. Once this happens, there will be less need for both login and character creation restrictions.
As is the case with logins, our team is working around the clock, monitoring the current population of each area in each World, as well as the class level of each character, and adjusting new character creation restrictions based on their findings. Unlike login restrictions, we believe that character creation restrictions may take slightly longer to be removed, as there are still great discrepancies in the distribution of characters across Worlds, and we thank players for their patience and understanding in this issue.
Adding Worlds and Alleviating Server Load Issues
A server is essentially a high-spec PC, with each FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn World being made up of several of these machines. Creating a new World involves physically acquiring the servers, installing the necessary programs, and conducting internal functionality tests...all before opening the World to the public.
As the login data gathered from the Open Beta test (in which anyone, including those who had not purchased the game, could participate) was inconclusive, it was during the Early Access period that we had a clearer picture of the scope with which we would need to increase World capacity, and on the 25th of August began making preparations to do so significantly.
As of this post, the servers have been acquired, the essential programs installed, and we are currently in the process of conducting our internal tests. Once these tests have concluded and the Worlds go live, we believe we will be able to better accommodate a greater number of our players, making logging in less of a hassle.
In addition to increasing the number of Worlds, we are also optimizing the Duty Finder (party matching) management servers in an effort to reduce server load and ensure better stability when using this feature.
Currently, the Duty Finder servers split our data centers into two groups of 25 Worlds, and then do the party matching from players from within the same data center. We have determined that by adding new Worlds, the Duty Finder servers will not be able to process the additional data as long as there are only two pairings of groups to match from. Therefore, we have decided to create additional groups to alleviate this problem before it occurs, and by doing so, reduce the burden on the Duty Finder servers, and ultimately allow more players to access the feature.
The development and operations teams are currently concentrating 100% of their efforts into the aforementioned tasks and are on pace to have both completed by the beginning of next week and then released to the public once our final tests have concluded. Once a date and time for the implementation of the measures have been solidified, we will release another announcement on Lodestone outlining the details. We ask that you bear with us for just a few days longer while we make the final push.
Resolving AFK Character Issues
From several users on some of our more congested Worlds, we have received requests for a feature which automatically logs out characters who are AFK for an extended period of time. We are actively looking into the implementation of such a feature, but have decided to first concentrate our efforts on increasing the number of Worlds and optimizing the Duty Finder servers.
In Conclusion
The development and operations teams are working diligently to combat the login issues which many of our users are currently facing, and ask for your continued patience and understanding over the next several days as we move to solve these problems.
To thank all of you for bearing with us for so long, we will be looking into different ways to reward our loyal fans and customers, such as an extension of the free trial period. Details on the plans we have in the works will be announced shortly.
In conclusion, I would like to say that we have been overwhelmed with the positive response for A realm Reborn, which is why it doubly pains us to implement any sort of measure that may restrict people from joining us in Eorzea. We sincerely apologize for the unwanted stress these restrictions have caused, and thank you immensely for the understanding you have shown over the past week. The fixes are almost in place and we look forward to seeing all of you very, very soon.
Thank you.
FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn Producer & Director Naoki Yoshida
Comments
"Let destruction rain!" from Asbel Tales of Graces f
I have not been able to even buy it.
And I am waiting. Actually saw when they announced they were shutting down digital downloads and thought about running out and grabbing a physical copy, but have decided to just wait and pick a copy up when I happen to be out. Trying to just take my time for a change and just let things work themselves out, both with getting in the game and once I start playing
thats a decent number too
"Small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas."
How about fix your broken queue system instead of creating new servers.
It takes me over an hour each day and up to 2 hours on weekends to even log in because of the 1017 error. I don't even get placed in a queue.
Hmm. The queue system isn't broken. The wait times to login are by design.
Just to summarize....
Sales and General Interest in the game back in June/July( when they had to decide how many servers to buy ) was average.
Open Beta in August brought a HUGE amount of people and Preorders.
On Aug 25th, they saw the HUGE increase in players and ordered a bunch of new servers.
During Early Access, Game worlds kept crashing and having problems because there were more than 5000 players trying to play at the same time, beyond what the hardware was architected to support.
Square Enix imposed a max number of logins per server to stabilize things as they waited for the new server hardware to arrive.
The login delays you feel are because there are 5000+ people trying to play on the same server at the same time. So everyone after the first 5000 players on the world gets an error and told to try again later.
Creating New Servers is the ONLY way to make things better, next week new worlds will launch and probably free server transfers and hopefully they have enough hardware to cover the demand of all the current players that bought he game and are fighting to get in and all the players that are waiting to buy the digital download version as soon as they go back on sale.
Honestly the game is very solid and a ton of fun to play. With new servers people with have the chance for a fresh start with no more login delays.
That's the problem the new servers are for new people .. most are not going care for them long term people want the main 4 or 5 servers cause in 6 months they don't want dead servers and have to pay the cost to transfer and lose a name they may like.. and forget about legacy people our servers are a nightmare of 1017 for hours .. good game but really not sure it is a great company that allows this to taint a remake they worked so hard on.. will wait and see I guess back to 000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 /sigh
Woodstock 69
Turned out to be maybe the single biggest event in music history ever.
I am giving SE a chance to pull it together.
LOL Woodstock is your reason.. well maybe that would help this mess.. after enough boozzze and drugs the 1017 mess will be the coolest game everrrrr.. wow man look I press here and here and look I am back here again cool love this ff 1017 game .. really Woodstock. please .....
You know, I really wanted an official acknowledgement of the problem... but having had it this one leaves a bad taste in my mouth... A couple of things he says bother me.
"A Realm Reborn recorded upwards of 218,000 concurrent connections. This is in spite of the fact that the peak login times for separate regions around the world arrive at differing intervals. We estimate that without time zone differences, the total number of concurrent connections would number anywhere from 300,000 to 350,000."
The vast majority of the players who log in during the "peak" time, don't log out... Yes, it gets better after midnight... but without the permanent AFKers, even the "peak" concurrent users would be lower... And if they didn't have time zone differences and people were all logging in at the same time, first off it would be a lot more than 350k trying to connect(since they have sold a LOT more than 350k), but it would never reach that number because their servers are artificially capped. Assuming we accept the 5k number, that means that the maximum capacity they can handle right now is 250k.
"A server is essentially a high-spec PC, with each FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn World being made up of several of these machines. Creating a new World involves physically acquiring the servers, installing the necessary programs, and conducting internal functionality tests...all before opening the World to the public.
As of this post, the servers have been acquired, the essential programs installed, and we are currently in the process of conducting our internal tests. Once these tests have concluded and the Worlds go live, we believe we will be able to better accommodate a greater number of our players, making logging in less of a hassle."
If they are re-installing the entire system from the ground up every time, no wonder it is so inefficient. I cannot imagine that, from a redundancy and resource efficiency point of view they wouldn't be using virtual servers on physical hosts for this... So assuming that the machines they are talking about deploying would be new physical hosts, they would only need to load the prepped VHDs and then customize whatever settings they need to differentiate it from the other servers.
"From several users on some of our more congested Worlds, we have received requests for a feature which automatically logs out characters who are AFK for an extended period of time. We are actively looking into the implementation of such a feature, but have decided to first concentrate our efforts on increasing the number of Worlds and optimizing the Duty Finder servers."
That is a relatively simple feature, considered basic across most of the genre, that would in and of itself help alleviate a good portion of the problem. The entire community is clamoring for it... but yeah, who cares?
Woodstock hoped for 100,000. They got 400,000. There was no water food or lodging. It rained.
Yet in the end it worked out amazing. It wasn't booze or drugs that made it so either. It was fast work by the logistical staff. That and an attitude of the hippies.
My analogy was an attempt to show some reserve now may yield a pleasant result in the end. If those hippies had showed up, seen those lines for miles, hippie raged out and bailed, it would have been a flop.
I haven't bought ARR. I am not even currently playing anything. Too busy am I. I may pick it up though, as I have nostalgia for the old school group play mechanics. I have choices to make though, priorities to justify, so I am waiting. SE pulls it off I am in, they don't no skin off my nose.
Long ago I learned that MMO launches were crappy. Every one I have done, has been long queues, crashing servers, maintenance downtime. Always. So no I don't preorder, take time off to play launch, any of that silliness. I do wonder though if each launch is filled with those who haven't launched before or those who Einstein would deem insane? (To do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result Albert E. deemed insane)
"The fact that we had to implement these restrictions is a direct result of my inaccurate sales and login estimates, and as producer, I must accept complete responsibility for this misstep. Each and every player who has been affected has my deepest apologies."
You people can say whatever you want, but i miss producer/directors of recent games with launch problems to face their community this way.
The problem is we had the same problems in beta 4, and they didn't bother addressing the population problem and for the network issues they put in a fix that they didn't bother testing. - People still said wait and see, that is still beta.
Then they hit early access and of course STILL had the same problems that they hadn't addressed, and the fix that they didn't bother testing didn't work. - People said wait and see, this isn't really the launch yet, its only Early access.
Now it is launch and from what they've described about the measures they are taking, they may or may not fix the problem(personally I think they are still underestimating the required resources by a lot). At this point, however, people are frustrated because there is no reasonable explanation for why we've reached this point and they are only NOW looking for solutions.
Do I think they will fix it eventually? Yes, I think eventually it will be fixed, even if it is just by enough players getting fed up and quitting that the rest of us who are still here can get in... But what is the likely longevity of the game given that kind of mass exodus?
Edit: TL;DR
Posit Woodstock where they had no food, water, or shelter... And the logistics staff said they were working on it... And then didn't come through till after the last concert...
Phase 4 open beta was free to all, so that's why the need for more power was "inconclusive" from Beta Phase 4.
With that being said, based off open beta however, they should have already had a plan for the "If" Early access (which should be people that bought the game) was more successful than they imaged, imo. Heck, they should have had a plan before even the Early Access period for increasing capacity(hardware on hand) and should have been ready to implement in a day , as well.
TLDR: I agree they had poor contingency planning.
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
So a big fat NO to afk kicks, and an implied NO to implementing a queue system too? Instead we get new servers that we get to eventually pay to xfer to, losing the connections we have made on our current server and risking the possibility that the new server may wither in 6 months?
I dont see the logic that says that creating new servers is a valid alternative to afk kicks.
Did he say they were sorry...because that makes it all ok.
Next time, if there is a next time, have a real stress test, not a pseudo open beta with limited invites and no wipe that's basically early, early access for testers and the few people who randomly noticed to sign up before sign ups were cut off. Oh yeah, and do the stress testing more than a week before launch.
Maybe clean up the account system(s) that require multiple logins, multiple codes, jumping between sites, a hokey 3rd party CC charging entity nobody has heard of. Mmmhmm.
I'm somewhat surprised by the numbers. I expected them to be higher. At this point who knows, one thing SQEN has shown without question is that they're deficient in math and reading (preorder numbers).
The game is fun if not simplistic. I've had it spontaneously crash for seemingly no reason just riding along, as have friends, but it's generally solid and FEELS solid.
Let's hope they did a better job with providing endgame and/or something to justify the sub in a better way than they handle the tech/net side of things.
Premium MMORPGs do not feature built-in cheating via cash for gold pay 2 win. PLAY to win or don't play.
Did FFXI have an auto log out feature? I do remember SWG had one, but that came out after FFXI. I always thought auto log out features were mandatory for MMOs these days.
If I had to guess the fact that it's 2013 and there was even an oversight of an auto log out feature is what has most players butt-tender about the error. Not to mention that this is their second chance to get this right. After all how many MMOs let alone subscription MMOs ever get a second chance?
I didnt play, but iiuc ffxi could not have an afk kick because you could setup your character as a seller while you were afk.
I think you are making a couple incorrect assumptions.
An AFK kick system isn't a solution to the lack of server hardware. Only new servers / new worlds can help.
The underlying Game world tech only scales to about 5000 players so even with an AFK system you will still have people stuck waiting to login given the huge demand being put on the limited number of worlds/servers. Also you run the risk of losing effort coding something when AFK players will just start using twitch macros to keep themselves online while at work ,etc.....Because they don't want to get stuck in queue later when they want to play. The only logic approach is to fix getting stuck in queue then there is no need to AFK.
Once the new servers launch in a few days with some free transfers, the population and spread out and the login problems should be gone. Then people won't feel obligated to stay online AFK because they can actually login whenever they want to play
It did not and as a matter of fact, players stayed logged in for as long as the server stayed up. I only logged off for patches, updates, and expansions.
We actually had guild (LS) spots to stand around and AFK in town when we were asleep or at work. I suppose it was a form of showing off gear that took upwards of years to acquire.
I'm sort of surprised this not logging off has stuck to XIV though since gear seems relatively easy to acquire. It may be just due to the long queue times though.