DC Travel and its decimation of non-Aether NA PF

I want someone at Fanfest to convince Yoshi-P to play on Crystal for a few weeks.

All these well-intentioned ideas wind up being disasters for us because they just don't seem to comprehend the extent to which the culture - not just NA, but its component DCs - diverges, both willfully and unknowingly.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

I don't think we should be unable to DC travel, but a cross-DC Party Finder and a cross-DC matching system could be designed. What it would have to do is automatically choose which data center to switch everyone to before entering the duty. It could just go to the party leader's one for pre-formed parties.

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I guess I'd be worried about how that would track for ping, but otherwise some kind of cross-DC PF seems like a decent thought on this.

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Originally Posted by Nav_Fae

Hot take: DC travel was a mistake. But we're here now so I wouldn't revert it back.

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Like I said, it was great for the social aspect, but yeah, in hindsight they shouldn't have unleashed it without any restrictions. Hell, on Dynamis you can barely run normal content because so many people travel out, nevermind any effects on the overall raiding scene.

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Originally Posted by Nav_Fae

Hot take: DC travel was a mistake. But we're here now so I wouldn't revert it back.

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It's not necessarily that DC travel itself is bad. People just weren't ready for it.

I mean the NA community already had these preconceived notions that Aether was for raiding, Crystal was for RP, and Primal was for PVP. Even when 7.0 pushes the population of Dynamis up to something healthy, our server will still struggle in the future as we won't have any niche.

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Originally Posted by NekoMataMata

It's not necessarily that DC travel itself is bad. People just weren't ready for it.

I mean the NA community already had these preconceived notions that Aether was for raiding, Crystal was for RP, and Primal was for PVP. Even when 7.0 pushes the population of Dynamis up to something healthy, our server will still struggle in the future as we won't have any niche.

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Originally Posted by Sindele

I want someone at Fanfest to convince Yoshi-P to play on Crystal for a few weeks.

All these well-intentioned ideas wind up being disasters for us because they just don't seem to comprehend the extent to which the culture - not just NA, but its component DCs - diverges, both willfully and unknowingly.

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JP is actually worse. I don't have all the tweets and discussions about it on hand, but reports are the non-raiding DCs make Crystal look like PF paradise. It's fostering a lot of resentment and it's actually so bad now, that the main raiding DC is kicking people from parties if they aren't from the raiding DC. It's - No Elemental, No Gaia, No Meteor, No ENG.

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Good thing is because it's so bad on JP, we might actually see drastic changes.

Edit: Quick Link just to get you started here.

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Originally Posted by littlehobbit13

I guess I'd be worried about how that would track for ping

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The ping would be the same within-region. If we get region travel, then the ping would be different but it could just decide based on the party leader's region.

Man, I kinda wonder how bad the raiding scenes were on other servers that everyone feels like they HAVE to come to Aether. Did PF use different strats than we do, are people generally "worse", or was it purely "oh that's the raiding DC we should go there to raid"?

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Originally Posted by Zebraoracle

Man, I kinda wonder how bad the raiding scenes were on other servers that everyone feels like they HAVE to come to Aether. Did PF use different strats than we do, are people generally "worse", or was it purely "oh that's the raiding DC we should go there to raid"?

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The last one.

Although at the more quiet hours when most people sleep, it is definitely useful to all go to one data center and combine all the 2-3 person parties together.

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Originally Posted by Zebraoracle

Man, I kinda wonder how bad the raiding scenes were on other servers that everyone feels like they HAVE to come to Aether. Did PF use different strats than we do, are people generally "worse", or was it purely "oh that's the raiding DC we should go there to raid"?

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It was "that's the raiding DC we should go there".

Crystal PF was in some ways, actually better. The community was much smaller and you could effectively cull out all the bad people (edit: and by this I mean you could quickly find people you enjoyed playing with that were at your skill level) and only ever play with people at your speed. I PF'd through all of Verse, all of Promise, UWU, and all of Asphodelos and it was smoother than anything I've experienced in Aether.

It was also full of good players who didn't feel the need to swap to "the raiding DC" during the split because they were confident in their abilities to clear and to foster a new raiding scene.

It was slowly becoming a very decent raiding scene with Ultimate PFs actually clearing and everything. Its weakness was the population and the constant parroting of "if you want to raid, join Aether".

Also, Crystal adopted Sharingan LR first.

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Originally Posted by Tsumdere

It was "that's the raiding DC we should go there".

Crystal PF was in some ways, actually better. The community was much smaller and you could effectively cull out all the bad people (edit: and by this I mean you could quickly find people you enjoyed playing with that were at your skill level) and only ever play with people at your speed. I PF'd through all of Verse, all of Promise, UWU, and all of Asphodelos and it was smoother than anything I've experienced in Aether.

It was also full of good players who didn't feel the need to swap to "the raiding DC" during the split because they were confident in their abilities to clear and to foster a new raiding scene.

It was slowly becoming a very decent raiding scene with Ultimate PFs actually clearing and everything. Its weakness was the population and the constant parroting of "if you want to raid, join Aether".

Also, Crystal adopted Sharingan LR first.

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Yeah, I actually didn't have a bad experience raiding on Crystal in the last two tiers, even new to the raiding scene as I was. There were lots of very competent raiders in PF, and good structure about stuff like "3 wipes, disband" to keep people in check from trying to get a carry ahead of their prog point. Conversely, my experience with Aether so far as been a TON of trap parties for P9S, plenty of them full of people who didn't travel to be there. I've yet to be convinced that Aether has an inherently better raiding scene, it just has a larger population.

You used to be able to find a decent number of parties until like 2am est on Crystal, and now you're lucky if there's even one party for an instance after 10pm. Not great for chill evening or late night prog. That's why I feel like I'd like for them to restrict current content. If you wanna run roulettes with your buddies on another DC, more power to you, but current content that typically drives server activity and the return of players should be restricted to your home DC, I think.

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Originally Posted by littlehobbit13

I've yet to be convinced that Aether has an inherently better raiding scene, it just has a larger population.

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That's exactly it really. It was never that it was bad. Just smaller. The people who actually cared enough to do extreme and savage did the same stuff people on Aether are doing - watching a guide and jumping into PF.