Datacenters: A Plea For Community Building, Not Fracturing

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Originally Posted by Hamada

HOW? how does it effect someone who does not have a house vs someone that owns 700 + furnishings "equal"?

You want to talk about selfish? ok, whining about 2 weeks of congestion so we need smaller dead DCs just so some "Special snowflakes" (a term you used) don't have to wait for to access an instance while demanding others lose their house and friendship ties is how I define selfish.

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Yep I value "having a good start and less problems" during an expansion higher than people who could lose their plots. There are people like me who are working, having a real life even and some even reserve their few days for vacation to play the game during early access. Its kinda funny that you bring up housing as a strong argument, while lets be honest - housing is empty as it is, the majority is afking in main cities and sub-cities (Rhalgr's Reach). Only a handful of players are owning plots.

You mention PVP and que times in general but whats the problem with that? PVP is done by a small portion anyway. And que times? It will be like before, you have to wait as a dps most while tanks or healers get insta-pop. Always been, no big change. In my opinion this shuffle had to be done at some point, because as it seems that 2 DC on NA and 1 DC in EU was not enough. And opening brand new data centers with only new servers would lead to one thing > closing the older ones.

Also I didnt mention the aspect "friends" on purpose, because I can relate to people giving up a lot of friendships and I dont see a good solution for that either. All I could advice people in this case is, to either decide if a friendship outweighs giving up a plot and move to 1 server all together. Or if not, add yourself on other platforms - discord for example. Friends come and go, and Im sure everyone will eventually make new friends on their new DC's as well.

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Originally Posted by Alien_Gamer

Your ping time is a result of many different things, only one of which are the servers themselves; by far the vast majority of what affects your ping is the ISP networks your data travels across and how they chose to route your data which SE has no control over. Using a VPN is a player choice to bypass that and hopefully get a better ping, its not something SE forces them to do.

The only burden on the playerbase is the sub fee, everything else is optional for the players. You don't have to transfer servers at any point nor do you have to use a VPN. Those are personal choices for personal gains but they are not mandatory to play the game.

SE has a proper server infrastructure. They're leasing rackspace from the ISP to host their games and ISPs typically have a 3 to 5 year refresh cycle for internal hardware which means FF14 is not running on antiquated hardware or poor infrastructure. If you wanted to blame SE for how inefficient their game engine is and how it handles network traffic or their decisions for back up times or character updates, that would be fair but none of that is server infrastructure.

This new DC is new physical rackspace and server blades to host the game. Its balancing the load across more hardware leaving more room for overhead and growth which means the servers are more stable and have less issues with bottlenecks and server slowdowns. Each DC will have more room for instances preventing things like Raubahn EX at the beginning of SB, more room for housing wards, more room for dungeon/trial instances, more room for inventory, etc. This move sucks for statics, and people that try to play with others who will no longer be on the same DC but ultimately this is a huge benefit to everyone in the game and for the game in and of itself. Your request to merge the DCs would only exacerbate every issue people have had with the servers for literally no benefit to the game or players.

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I should mention I feared the new data center causing a split between West and East Coast North America, meaning an even worse split on worlds. When the servers were in Montreal, I had bad pings. Now that thy are in California, I have good pings. Why? Because I'm on the West Coast. You look at other games and they have East and West Coast data centers, something Final Fantasy XIV does not. A split with Crystal being on the East Coast and Primal being on the West Coast would have meant for logistics I'd need to leave my world as we are being moved too.

And if anyone is saying that all the Primal worlds coming are dead, I had a que (be it 7 people) of world full yesterday. I wouldn't exactly say that is a dead server and we are known on Primal as being the one for crafters and gatherers. I welcome people coming to visit and buying the 380 gear I make as that is a larger market.

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Originally Posted by xbahax92

Yep I value "having a good start and less problems" during an expansion higher than people who could lose their plots. There are people like me who are working, having a real life even and some even reserve their few days for vacation to play the game during early access. Its kinda funny that you bring up housing as a strong argument, while lets be honest - housing is empty as it is, the majority is afking in main cities and sub-cities (Rhalgr's Reach). Only a handful of players are owning plots.

You mention PVP and que times in general but whats the problem with that? PVP is done by a small portion anyway. And que times? It will be like before, you have to wait as a dps most while a tanks or healers get insta-pop. Always been, no big change. In my opinion this shuffle had to be done at some point, because as it seems that 2 DC on NA and 1 DC in EU was not enough. And opening brand new data centers with only new servers would lead to one thing > closing the older ones.

Also I didnt mention the aspect "friends" on purpose, because I can relate to people giving up a lot of friendships and I dont see a good solution for that either. All I could advice people in this case is, to either decide if a friendship overweights giving up their plot and move to 1 server all together. If not keep, add yourself on other platforms - discord for example. Friends come and go, and Im sure everyone will eventually make new friends on their new DC's as well.

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You are missing the point, this should not be a debate at all (friends vs housing). SE should be upgrading their servers and addressing their netcode. I am so sick of bandaid fixes to things, and this is one thing that should be addressed properly. Also SE should of done housing properly by now.

I noticed you withdrew your selfish and snowflake argument. It is good seeing you took a look in the mirror on that idea. I can't believe people think this is SE's only solution, it isn't it is just their cheapest while making the playerbase suffer, they only are about money, not the playerbase.

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Originally Posted by Rosa_Frandlia

I should mention I feared the new data center causing a split between West and East Coast North America, meaning an even worse split on worlds. When the servers were in Montreal, I had bad pings. Now that thy are in California, I have good pings. Why? Because I'm on the West Coast. You look at other games and they have East and West Coast data centers, something Final Fantasy XIV does not. A split with Crystal being on the East Coast and Primal being on the West Coast would have meant for logistics I'd need to leave my world as we are being moved too.

And if anyone is saying that all the Primal worlds coming are dead, I had a que (be it 7 people) of world full yesterday. I wouldn't exactly say that is a dead server and we are known on Primal as being the one for crafters and gatherers. I welcome people coming to visit and buying the 380 gear I make as that is a larger market.

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What about all the people that had good pings on the east coast that now has bad pings?

the buy only for the markets is also a very bad idea, you will not sell anything if you are in a DC with a crafter bot, like what Cactuar complained about.

SE should look into newer tech that other games use like mega servers. They can expand areas to as many zones, and instances that are needed based on player demand. That way you can play with everyone in their region. With a 3rd data center and the way the game currently works it feels like we are going from being split in half to split into 1/3 of the people we can play with.

I'm REAL sick of DC'ing. Split up the data centers more.

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Originally Posted by dragonseth07

I'm REAL sick of DC'ing. Split up the data centers more.

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I'm REAL sick of long queues and empty party finder. Merge up the data centers more.

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Originally Posted by Alien_Gamer

Your ping time is a result of many different things, only one of which are the servers themselves; by far the vast majority of what affects your ping is the ISP networks your data travels across and how they chose to route your data which SE has no control over. Using a VPN is a player choice to bypass that and hopefully get a better ping, its not something SE forces them to do.

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The servers can be unreliable during peak hours (the routing from certain regions gets bottlenecked -- maybe it's a fault of the US's infrastructure) and the go to suggestion by the player base is to get a vpn. It is a choice to get a vpn, but at the same time, a better host for the servers would appease their customers.

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Originally Posted by Alien_Gamer

Moving servers is a player choice, nothing SE does forces a player to move. Blaming SE for the cost of transfers is simply not taking responsibility for your own choices.

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I wasn't really blaming them, but stating they have made money from their server transfers due to the instability.

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Originally Posted by Alien_Gamer

If you wanted to blame SE for how inefficient their game engine is and how it handles network traffic or their decisions for back up times or character updates, that would be fair but none of that is server infrastructure.

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I feel the backend management software would be included in the infrastructure. Load balancing based on demand (beginning of an expansion). If we are being nitpicky though, I will just concede.

Throwing more hardware at it seems backwards. Aether most likely will have another (or few) mega servers that will cause the same issues Balmung has.

Advancing their tech to support a united North American playerbase is where most companies start or have moved towards.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

This happened for only two weeks over a two year span.

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For only two weeks? Really? That's acceptable to you?

No it's not acceptable in my opinion and that's not to mention the fact that many after waiting forever in queues of over 3000 to get in only to get kicked and to have to get back into line again. I applaud SE for taking measures to try and prevent that from happening again. One can hope that this will in fact work and I'll guess we'll find out when expansion hits.

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Originally Posted by Nalien

I'm REAL sick of long queues and empty party finder.

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Unless you are trying to queue at 3am when it's dead or you go as DPS, then there shouldn't be long queues at all. Same with the Party Finder, I see dozens up every day, but if something isn't there for what you need, make your own or pre-form. Just don't lie and say it's empty.

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Originally Posted by LaylaTsarra

For only two weeks? Really? That's acceptable to you?

No it's not acceptable in my opinion and that's not to mention the fact that many after waiting forever in queues of over 3000 to get in only to get kicked and to have to get back into line again. I applaud SE for taking measures to try and prevent that from happening again. One can hope that this will in fact work and I'll guess we'll find out when expansion hits.

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Except this won't prevent it from happening again because most players refuse to make smart choices. They'll once again zerg the game at release, causing bottlenecks and crashes.