Regional Servers? (Opinions please)

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Originally Posted by Risae

God damnit people. This isn't about "I wanna have jp's on my server who i will never play with!". This is about the goddamn latency issue that will still be there once 2.0 hits should the servers stay in japan.

Yoshi wants the WoW audience. Should he fail to deliver the same experience WoW gives (gameplay wise), the game will bomb a second time. And the combat NEEDS to be fluent.

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This isn't why Tera bombed nor why SWTOR bombed and they gave better gameplay experience than WoW did -- though SWTOR's issue was it was purely single player experience.

Also, no it's not about latency that will "auto-correct by being next to the servers", what will fix the latency problems ontop of animation lag (both are present) is the new server and client, as YoshiP stated. Wanting regional servers is mainly for wanting to play with people only in your region because I've played some NA/EU/JP region only with servers located locally in my travels and it still had latency problems.

It's all in the infratructure build, not the geographical location if it's not nestled deep in the Himalayas or something.

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Originally Posted by Risae

God damnit people. This isn't about "I wanna have jp's on my server who i will never play with!". This is about the goddamn latency issue that will still be there once 2.0 hits should the servers stay in japan.

Yoshi wants the WoW audience. Should he fail to deliver the same experience WoW gives (gameplay wise), the game will bomb a second time. And the combat NEEDS to be fluent.

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The problem with it is that people on this forums are ignorantly saying they want global servers because they don't care about the latency issue. Which in the end, they are actually asking for the game to do worse.

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Originally Posted by Dawiichan

The problem with it is that people on this forums are ignorantly saying they want global servers because they don't care about the latency issue. Which in the end, they are actually asking for the game to do worse.

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or that this is not an FPS so it doesn't matter if the latency does not effect game play. No, you're right I just want this game to do worse :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by Jennestia

This isn't why Tera bombed nor why SWTOR bombed and they gave better gameplay experience than WoW did -- though SWTOR's issue was it was purely single player experience.

Also, no it's not about latency that will "auto-correct by being next to the servers", what will fix the latency problems ontop of animation lag (both are present) is the new server and client, as YoshiP stated. Wanting regional servers is mainly for wanting to play with people only in your region because I've played some NA/EU/JP region only with servers located locally in my travels and it still had latency problems.

It's all in the infratructure build, not the geographical location if it's not nestled deep in the Himalayas or something.

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Welcome back??? I haven't seen a post from ya for a while, so don't know if I'm looking in the wrong threads or what, but either way, you were gone to me so Welcome back.

I prefer playing with people across the globe. It makes it feel like an actual world with different languages being spoken, even though it's really mainly English, French, and Japanese.

yeah lets all whine about the latency of the new server structure and engine that we all know exactly nothing about...

keep the servers global,
having people from all over the world active 24/7 is worth much more than that stupid milliseconds you think will help you to miraculously play like a god

and the usual "it would be optional" answer is just not realistic in this case, if they made regional servers on top of our global ones right now the current servers will simply die and you will be forced to some stupid regional server that is dead half of the day

i am from Europe, the birthplace of the fabled "WORST LAG" imaginable which is a bunch of BS anyway in my opinion, people will always make excuses

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Originally Posted by Krausus

or that this is not an FPS so it doesn't matter if the latency does not effect game play. No, you're right I just want this game to do worse :rolleyes:

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If you think only FPS games require low latency, you're in for a rude awakening.

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Originally Posted by Yumi_Hibiki

and the usual "it would be optional" answer is just not realistic in this case, if they made regional servers on top of our global ones right now the current servers will simply die and you will be forced to some stupid regional server that is dead half of the day

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Oh my, global servers would be abandoned, you say? If that happened, it couldn't possibly mean that the majority preferred regional servers, right?

Ya, I mean, even the JP seem to think so with their /sh's (JP ONLY).

If you have to advertise that there's a population of the game you dont want to play with, you know there's a problem and its up to SE to fix it, or deal with the bitching until they do.

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Originally Posted by Dawiichan

If you think only FPS games require low latency, you're in for a rude awakening.

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Only FPS require damn near nil latency issues given the nature of the game -- in PvP in MMOs, the games are designed to give much more leeway incase someone has a less than optimal latency while connecting. It's good to have as little latency as possible, but FPS is the main genre that benefits the most from it, because most standard MMOs that rely on PvE content more so than PvP content are designed to handle higher latencies.

XIV is the exception because the foundation was already pretty poorly built.

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Originally Posted by Dawiichan

If you think only FPS games require low latency, you're in for a rude awakening.

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most non FPS games do not require the twitch response that FPS games do, and certainly not this one with its slow combat.

Thanks for all of your opinions, it is greatly appreciated! I am glad it didn't turn out to be a flame war. Now that I understand different viewpoints from other players, I think the players should be able to pick if they want to play on a regional or global server to fit their schedule. I know I shouldn't talk about other MMOs here because this is FFXIV, however, when I played WoW, latency was an issue when I had connection problems. For example, when I was a warlock (dps), it decreased my DPS on an average of 15-20%. If you think about it, if your whole party has latency issues and your party consists of 5-6 DPS, that is a major decrease is damage done. It is game changing.

On the other hand, strong players adapt and overcome their challenges. That is the thing, players shouldn't have to adapt to a game based off of lag or latency issues. It makes the game unenjoyable to me. I know I might be flamed for this, but FFXIV does not require a lot of skill (nor do I think WoW does either). I am not saying I am an expert, but I can handle pressing maybe four buttons to handle my class. When I battle against Ifrit, it feels like I am fighting against the lag / latency issues instead of the boss. Oh well, I guess I will end my rant, sorry for complaining so much. =/

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Originally Posted by Catalyst67

Thanks for all of your opinions, it is greatly appreciated! I am glad it didn't turn out to be a flame war. Know that I understand different viewpoints from other players, I think the players should be able to pick if they want to play on a regional or global server to fit their schedule. I know I shouldn't talk about other MMOs here because this is FFXIV, however, when I played WoW, latency was an issue when I had connection problems. For example, when I was a warlock (dps), it decreased my DPS on an average of 15-20%. If you think about it, if your whole party has latency issues and your party consists of 5-6 DPS, that is a major decrease is damage done. It is game changing.

On the other hand, strong players adapt and overcome their challenges. That is the thing, players shouldn't have to adapt to a game based off of lag or latency issues. It makes the game unenjoyable to me. I know I might be flamed for this, but FFXIV does not require a lot of skill (nor do I think WoW does either). I am not saying I am an expert, but I can handle pressing maybe four buttons to handle my class. When I battle against Ifrit, it feels like I am fighting against the lag / latency issues instead of the boss. Oh well, I guess I will end my rant, sorry for complaining so much. =/

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I think what you are not understanding (which has been mentioned in this thread) is that the main issue isnt that the servers are located in Japan, its the server structure and client itself that is causing the main issue. 2.0 ushers in a new structure and client that is supposed to fix the issues.

It's funny how people still confuse physical server location with how they group people together to form "regions" of players.

SE will probably never have servers physically located outside of Japan. It will be up to their NOC team to optimize network traffic to reduce latency across the globe. (apparently the new server code will help with this too)

SE has stated that they are considering creating servers (still located in Japan mind you) to cater to Global groups (all languages) and maybe other specific languages or regions. (English only, Japanese only, European only)

Ragnarok is the first server they've tried to use to do this ("regional" servers) by encouraging players in Europe to transfer to so that people in that area would be in a similar time zone and be able to get together easier to do things. They weren't REQUIRED to, it was just a suggestion to see how many would, since when people originally created characters, they went to whatever server their friends were at or whatever random one they chose.

Players to Servers in Region
If forced, no thank you, I enjoy my friends from Switzerland, England and France and don't want them being herded onto another server because of where they live.

If this is an option, then I have no strong feelings in any way.

Game Servers In Multiple Regions
This I am all for. POL had servers in US and it was very nice.

POL did, yeah. Too bad the game launched from POL didn't.

I don't think Ragnarok is a good example of a regional server in how it was executed.

Personally, I am very agitated that I get home at 6:30 PM GMT and until I go to sleep each night, I see almost no groups recruiting in Ridill. Why? because the vast majority of players are American or Asian which both have very different time zones.

So... why not move to Ragnarok? Well first of all, I started playing on launch and left a few months afterwards; by time I returned the Ragnarok transfer was said and done. Reroll? And level to 50 all over again? That is not a good solution either.

I sincerely hope that once 2.0 we will get a transfer feature as well as cross server content as I do like this game and have very high hopes for it; but as there is nobody around for me to play with and no linkshells for me to join which run content at my time on my server, I'm stuck doing nothing.

In addition, two of friends recently started playing just over two months ago, neither of them noticed that Ragnarok was a European server. Which indicates that not enough emphasis is given to show that it is recommended for the European time zone.

Granted, I can see this post drawing a lot of hate as it goes against the tide of people demanding global servers. Yes, I agree that it is nice to see people online at all times and to be able to play with people across the globe, however the popularity of this game is very minimal in Europe with little people playing to begin with, if these people are spanned across servers at random (like me and my friends), we are unable to find people to do any meaningful content with and usually just end up looking for members for two hours with nothing to show for it.

This is a large issue, an MMO without having any community to play with is a very boring and tedious experience, the majority of new players who join in 2.0 in Europe and other lesser played regions will leave very quickly if something is not done to accommodate them.

I understand where you're coming from Nushidorei. The campaign to usher EU players to Ragnarok only transpired during the phase when they merged a bunch of the servers together to try to bolster the populations of each world. On top of that, it was pretty much exclusively advertised on Lodestone/Forums, so any new players who didn't know better to look at the game's website was pretty much in the dark on which server to pick.

Also, once the merges happened, the servers were all locked for character creation EXCEPT for Ragnarok, so a lot of new Non-EU players had to join that server by default. Later on once things stabilized they opened up the servers again, but it pretty much screwed people that didn't want to be on Ragnarok and wanted to join friends from other servers and didn't have the option. Either that or they've just refused to play until the servers did open up.

If SE plans to have regional servers at 2.0's launch, I hope that they will be clearly identified WITHIN the game like WoW does. Each server should be labeled whether it's a Global Server, Japanese "Preferred" (emphasized for NOT REQUIRED to reside in Japan or even speak Japanese), English "Preferred", etc.

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Originally Posted by Mirage

Oh my, global servers would be abandoned, you say? If that happened, it couldn't possibly mean that the majority preferred regional servers, right?

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in this case it has nothing to do with preference, its simply the false sirens call of "that precious milliseconds will make you play muuuuch better for really realz" that a lot of people will follow like sheep, and with them the friends and LS's they drag along.

why ruin one of the unique aspects of the game that actually established to be good in over 10 years of FFXI?
not everything has to be straight from the NA players "dear santa yoshi-p" wishlist of run of the mill "MMOs nowadays must have this" stuff

How do you know the siren is false?

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Originally Posted by Krausus

most non FPS games do not require the twitch response that FPS games do, and certainly not this one with its slow combat.

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Well first they said they were making the combat faster, so that knocks out one of your points. Then they also said they wanted to incorporate a good PvP system in this game, so i doubt that having latency unbalance between different regions would help this matter. Then when competitive content appears, the speed of which actions are taken out does actually affect one's gameplay. No, I would have to say latency is important considering the path this game is taking. I mean, we've already seen the outcome of it in Ifrit Extreme. While it is still definitely possible to be beaten, you can't deny the fact that the regional latency difference makes it easier on others.

I don't understand why people are so against it. Some servers are located elsewhere, some are located in Japan. Why do they all have to be in Japan? If you ask me that's just selfish. Even if most people don't go to a global server, doesn't that mean that keeping them all global was a bad idea from the start?

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Originally Posted by Jennestia

Only FPS require damn near nil latency issues given the nature of the game -- in PvP in MMOs, the games are designed to give much more leeway incase someone has a less than optimal latency while connecting. It's good to have as little latency as possible, but FPS is the main genre that benefits the most from it, because most standard MMOs that rely on PvE content more so than PvP content are designed to handle higher latencies.

XIV is the exception because the foundation was already pretty poorly built.

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While this is definitely true, this no where near means that it has no potent affect toward's one gameplay. Ifrit was obviously taken into consideration towards the poorly built foundation of the game, yet we've seen the difference that regions has placed on it. A simple separation from the east coast and the west coast makes almost no noticeable difference to an MMO player. However have you ever seen the difference between an east coast player playing a west coast server, and an east coast player playing in an oceanic server? I have when I played two different servers in Dragonica. The simple fact that the server located so much farther away made it so that some of the "rapid" skills in the game were not able to be used because of the delay experienced.

I'm not saying that close to nil latency is required, but I am saying that it is easier to work on something when there isn't as much latency unbalance. We've already seen how happy people were when XI moved some of their servers over to NA.

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Originally Posted by Dawiichan

I don't understand why people are so against it. Some servers are located elsewhere, some are located in Japan. Why do they all have to be in Japan? If you ask me that's just selfish. Even if most people don't go to a global server, doesn't that mean that keeping them all global was a bad idea from the start?

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It has no reason not to exist in Japan as I can promise you if you load up a Japanese website just as quick as you do a non-japanese based website, physical locations is not the problem.

Fun fact: A lot of website hosting is based in the UK and Canada, hosts a lot of people use and experience no latency problems or bandwidth problems.

It's not "selfishness" -- wanting servers next to you is more selfish than having the servers where the development team is, if anything it's a lot smarter to keep the servers where the dev team is. Keeping them global was a good idea and it worked for FFXI for many years and worked for XIV -- the issue with XIV is, as stated, the client and server infrastructure, not the geographical location.

It's 2012, ever since the late 1990s physical locations of servers had so little impact on services it's almost hard to tell they're not located next to you unless you're on a particularly bad ISP.

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I mean, we've already seen the outcome of it in Ifrit Extreme.

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So all the NA/EU players that happen to have a relic live in Japan...?

Are you seriously comparing website hosting to game server hosting? Lol.

And no one is saying ifrit extreme is impossible outside of Japan. Take your strawmen elsewhere.

As for the FF11 argument, how can you be so sure that it was global serves that kept the game alive? Do you have polls or statistics or something?

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Originally Posted by Mirage

Are you seriously comparing website hosting to game server hosting? Lol.

And no one is saying ifrit extreme is impossible outside of Japan. Take your strawmen elsewhere.

As for the FF11 argument, how can you be so sure that it was global serves that kept the game alive? Do you have polls or statistics or something?

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If geographical location is this big of a problem people are making it out to be, servers that are used for gaming/eCommerce or regular website hosting would all suffer the same problems. I didn't say it was "impossible" so if anyone made a "strawman argument" it would be you adding words to my post, much like no one said "Global servers kept FFXI alive"..actually read the post:

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Keeping them global was a good idea and it worked for FFXI for many years and worked for XIV -- the issue with XIV is, as stated, the client and server infrastructure, not the geographical location.

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Tell me where that stated it kept FFXI alive? I'd love to read it.

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Originally Posted by Mirage

Are you seriously comparing website hosting to game server hosting? Lol.

And no one is saying ifrit extreme is impossible outside of Japan. Take your strawmen elsewhere.

As for the FF11 argument, how can you be so sure that it was global serves that kept the game alive? Do you have polls or statistics or something?

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What kept FFXI alive was by being a good game, a "final fantasy title" and the fact it actually did something different from many MMOs during it's peak. Also I've seen no one stated Ifrit Extreme was impossible, however saying that different regions have different difficulties with it is false because Dawiichan's post basically stated only Japanese living in Japan have an easier time and everyone else has a harder time.

Everyone's been over this time and time again -- latency doesn't change the fight in that significant of a way unless your connection to Square's server is bad like mine tend to be but that's because AT&T etc.

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Originally Posted by Jennestia

So all the NA/EU players that happen to have a relic live in Japan...?

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Most of EU sure didn't do it full EU party. As for "NA", no one cares it means nothing. Latency on US West to Japan is acceptable. (Even if a bit high, still far from anything EU can have.)

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Fun fact: A lot of website hosting is based in the UK and Canada, hosts a lot of people use and experience no latency problems or bandwidth problems.

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Talking about latency for a website :confused: Sure these 200-300ms when clicking on a link will greatly affect the browsing... seriously. You sound like people adding more RAM to their computer thinking YouTube will load faster :[

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It's not "selfishness" -- wanting servers next to you is more selfish than having the servers where the development team is, if anything it's a lot smarter to keep the servers where the dev team is.

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Confirmed for never working with servers. Do you think our game servers are hosted inside SE HQ, "near" the dev team? They're not. They're most likely in a datacenter somewhere in Tokyo but that's about it. They wouldn't be safe inside a normal working environment. (Because of typical hazards risks such as Fire, but also earthquake and so on.) Also using a data center provide a higher scalability depending on the amount of subscribers and the need to get more processing power/clusters quickly. That flexibility cannot be achieved internally and it wouldn't be cost efficient either.

It's 2012, there is absolutely no reason what so ever for a sysadmin to have a physical access to a server. And SE have offices in USA/UK. So even if a member of staff would need for any reason to gain physical access to servers, this could still be done, could it be in LA or London.

So many people on these forums putting words into peoples posts and thoughts into other's heads lol.

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Originally Posted by Jennestia

So all the NA/EU players that happen to have a relic live in Japan...?

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Are you so blind that you can't read what I wrote? I never said that whatsoever. If you look at my history you can already see that I have beaten ifrit extreme and have my own relic(Full NA East Coast/Central Party/1 Australian, the Australian was actually able to see cracks slightly faster than the rest of the party). However to deny the fact that the fight is more lenient towards those in japan is just being ignorant. Try evading a crack that appears while you're in skill lock when playing in NA/EU. It's a much more different experience.

Also, I would have to disagree with the fact that from physical location means nothing. It's already been proved to many the difference, this game is already one of those. Wanting people to have the option to have servers near you is no where near selfish, specially in a game that is said to soon be faster paced and have a good PvP system. People saying "Screw latency, I just want to be with international people" is. If a JP wanted to play with NA people so much, they can always play an NA server. If a NA person wants to play with JP people then they can join a JP server. If you want a mix and match, you can play in a global server. If you think options are selfish, then that is an interesting mindset.

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Originally Posted by Mirage

How do you know the siren is false?

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How do you know latency wont be a non issue for this game with the new server structure regardless where the servers are located?

Id rather put my gil on the devteam to keep their promises than making unreasonable demands,
we haven't even touched upon the issue of the immense cost and problems of multiple international located servers like location cost, 24/7 on location maintenance and development staff on the other side of the globe from the main development team, different laws and guidelines depending on the country its physically located at, the list goes on and on
and for what? some lousy milliseconds ping? seems kinda excessive

As far as I'm concerned Community trumps a few Ms's of ping.

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Originally Posted by Yumi_Hibiki

How do you know latency wont be a non issue for this game with the new server structure regardless where the servers are located?

Id rather put my gil on the devteam to keep their promises than making unreasonable demands,
we haven't even touched upon the issue of the immense cost and problems of multiple international located servers like location cost, 24/7 on location maintenance and development staff on the other side of the globe from the main development team, different laws and guidelines depending on the country its physically located at, the list goes on and on
and for what? some lousy milliseconds ping? seems kinda excessive

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Answering a question with another question. Excellent!

I hope the new servers and client will alleviate a big portion of the lag issues we have now, but at the same time, most of this forum is overestimating how much that can actually fix.

Nothing would make me happier than me being as wrong as I could possibly be, but at the same time, the likelyhood of that happening is... very low. I'm sure the game client will handle NPC shops, trades, and all that other item management and user interface stuff in a way that will feel completely lag-free by smart command queueing and predicting, but that's much simpler than if you wanted to try doing something like that for battle.

Fights will have to be made easier in order to let those with high latencies win. In fact, I'm pretty sure even Ifrit Extreme does that already now. Higher latencies simply put a lower cap on how hard fights the development team can make, and how much of the difficulty would need to be overcome by character stats instead of player skill.

Player skill matters more the lower lag you have. I don't see how this could possibly be a bad thing. Battles balanced for high lag rely on gear stats making up for the player skill that is eaten by lag. But then again, I've always enjoyed fast paced action RPGs more than slow and turn based ones.

If SE is going to the direction of PVP and faster gameplay, latency is a top priority (as well as others, I know). Another thing I think about is the animations of abilities. I can't wait to see live gameplay of v2.0, only a couple more weeks to go!

One of the nice things about the FF MMOs is the lack of segregation.

I say no to segregation.

If they make regional servers they had better not make it mandatory. I enjoy playing with my American friends a lot. I would quit if that were no longer an option.

I can't speak for everyone, but I know several people would quit.

No, just no. Let me play with the US, EU and JP. It's the reason why I loved FFXI to begin with. I made lots of friends back then across the globe. And I still believe that it's one of FFXIV attracting points that differ them from all those other mmorpg's out there. Please don't suggest them to remove one of the few things that makes this game special.

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Originally Posted by Mirage

Answering a question with another question. Excellent!

I hope the new servers and client will alleviate a big portion of the lag issues we have now, but at the same time, most of this forum is overestimating how much that can actually fix.

Nothing would make me happier than me being as wrong as I could possibly be, but at the same time, the likelyhood of that happening is... very low. I'm sure the game client will handle NPC shops, trades, and all that other item management and user interface stuff in a way that will feel completely lag-free by smart command queueing and predicting, but that's much simpler than if you wanted to try doing something like that for battle.

Fights will have to be made easier in order to let those with high latencies win. In fact, I'm pretty sure even Ifrit Extreme does that already now. Higher latencies simply put a lower cap on how hard fights the development team can make, and how much of the difficulty would need to be overcome by character stats instead of player skill.

Player skill matters more the lower lag you have. I don't see how this could possibly be a bad thing. Battles balanced for high lag rely on gear stats making up for the player skill that is eaten by lag. But then again, I've always enjoyed fast paced action RPGs more than slow and turn based ones.

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This.

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Originally Posted by Catalyst67

If SE is going to the direction of PVP and faster gameplay, latency is a top priority (as well as others, I know). Another thing I think about is the animations of abilities. I can't wait to see live gameplay of v2.0, only a couple more weeks to go!

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And even this.

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Originally Posted by Mirage

Answering a question with another question. Excellent!

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You sure dodged that whole uncomfortable point i made of excessive expenses in equipment, location and manpower. Excellent! ^~^

but i am not here to fight, fact is this thread asks for an opinion, i stated mine that it would do a lot more damage than good and rip apart the community, i am done here.

I enjoy being able to play with different people from different places all over the world. I don't care about a little lag. The experience of being around people from all over the world is something that, for me, is a very good thing.

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Originally Posted by Dawiichan

Well first they said they were making the combat faster, so that knocks out one of your points. Then they also said they wanted to incorporate a good PvP system in this game, so i doubt that having latency unbalance between different regions would help this matter. Then when competitive content appears, the speed of which actions are taken out does actually affect one's gameplay. No, I would have to say latency is important considering the path this game is taking. I mean, we've already seen the outcome of it in Ifrit Extreme. While it is still definitely possible to be beaten, you can't deny the fact that the regional latency difference makes it easier on others.

I don't understand why people are so against it. Some servers are located elsewhere, some are located in Japan. Why do they all have to be in Japan? If you ask me that's just selfish. Even if most people don't go to a global server, doesn't that mean that keeping them all global was a bad idea from the start?



While this is definitely true, this no where near means that it has no potent affect toward's one gameplay. Ifrit was obviously taken into consideration towards the poorly built foundation of the game, yet we've seen the difference that regions has placed on it. A simple separation from the east coast and the west coast makes almost no noticeable difference to an MMO player. However have you ever seen the difference between an east coast player playing a west coast server, and an east coast player playing in an oceanic server? I have when I played two different servers in Dragonica. The simple fact that the server located so much farther away made it so that some of the "rapid" skills in the game were not able to be used because of the delay experienced.

I'm not saying that close to nil latency is required, but I am saying that it is easier to work on something when there isn't as much latency unbalance. We've already seen how happy people were when XI moved some of their servers over to NA.

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They would have to greatly greatly increase the speed of combat to make the general latency (and I'm speaking latency only not the current cluster fuck we deal with) an issue. I dont see it happening in fact as long as the game continues to support auto attack I never see it happening.