I'd like cross server friends, please!

I have a love-hate relationship with the DF.

It's fantastic that it makes it easy to get into content. And because it pulls from a large pool of servers, it helps keep old content alive that you'd never get a full PF group for.

But when you meet some really great people, people that you would like to play with again.... you never get to see them again. Ever.*

To the community reps: Can we get the ability to befriend, /tell, and queue with cross server friends? Guesting would be awesome but really it's those first three that would make a world of difference.

*Yeah ok, technically if you queue the same thing repeatedly, sometimes you'll see people from the last attempt, but after that... that's it.

FF14 is one of the only modern MMOs that DOESN'T allow cross-server interaction. I don't get it.

I miss this from other MMOs it'd be nice even if it was limited to just our server cluster, even if we don't get this the option to re-queue with the same party at the end of an instance would be nice as well.

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Originally Posted by Eissels

FF14 is one of the only modern MMOs that DOESN'T allow cross-server interaction. I don't get it.

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Right? Except for the complete randoms from the DF. It's weird.

I'd figure that DF would be easier queue but its not. #DPSstruggle

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Originally Posted by Jeannes

I'd figure that DF would be easier queue but its not. #DPSstruggle

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Adding more servers to the DF will not solve that problem. Sure you would be adding additional tanks and healers to the queue from those servers but you would also be adding the additional DPS from it as well, meaning the percentages of each type wouldn't change. Only thing that is going to change DPS struggles is making tanking/healing more attractive so more people play it, or changing the party composition (to say 1 tank, 3 DPS, 1 healer or such).

I've met quite a few awesome people from other servers.
It's a shame that this isn't a thing already.

Greetings,

As it would be very difficult to register friends across Worlds we do not currently have any plans to introduce this feature.

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Originally Posted by Grekumah

Greetings,

As it would be very difficult to register friends across Worlds we do not currently have any plans to introduce this feature.

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I dunno since Duty Finder is limited via x number of servers how hard would this actually be?

Bout 8-12 servers per DF group so let's say even if you don't make something in game why not something online?

DF ticket reserve. For friends on different servers that would like to play together (because servers were full and getting groups to actually get into certain servers became an issue because SE never really setup a way for friends just entering a game to join servers with 1.0 players stuck on 1.0 servers) It would be nice if there was a method to create tickets for DF and then have the player insert the code and then you just wait for the other players to put in the code and then everyone can play together even if they are on different servers.

Something like this.


Instance(with dungeon do you want to reserve)
Party Members(amount of players being invite to this instance)
Player name/Server/Role:(Player name on this line, then a server drop list on the line next to it, Drop list of which role the player would be using)

"Register"

The system will put in the variables and create a code for all players to use to enter the same instance or instead of making a code the system could register and place a "premade" instance in game and once the player logs in they can select DF and select the "DF Reservation"

Upon clicking it the info would look as followed

"Duty Name, Players involved, amount of time left on registration"

Each Registration would stay active for 1-2hrs depending on the restrirction but honestly I feel like a website/in game integration would be better than nothing. I can understand them not wanting to put everything into the game itself because it would be a bit harder to keep having to do the checks and send the info between servers however with DF and servers being in the same cluster, this system would just imo use less resources checking for 1-7 players in xyz server rather than DF which currently checks for x amount of players and attempts to properly set them up together.

All they would have to do in game is create a code to alter the DF to have a check for reserved instances that a player could click on and "ready" themselves for and when the player "readies" themselves it would just keep waiting til the other members were rdy and once everyone was ready it would start the instance.

why is it difficult? maybe not cross all servers and data centers but perhaps just within the designated data center, since they are already connected via roulette friends list could for instance look like (character name - siren) instead of just a characters name. then you could allow people to add within their given data center and que up together. leave out the allowing other players to "zone" in to another server that would make it very difficult and create stability problems, wow did this instead of merging servers and imo failed everything lags because of it. But being able to communicate and que up since the system is already in place defiantly should be worth looking in to.

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Originally Posted by Grekumah

Greetings,

As it would be very difficult to register friends across Worlds we do not currently have any plans to introduce this feature.

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Maybe you could suggest working on it to the dev team it would be a good feature. This is a standard feature in a lot of mmos. In that you can put in someones user id or email that they gave you and add them to your friendlist which is cross server. Then you can invite them to your server and they are teleported temporary to your server so you can play do dungeons and raids together.

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Originally Posted by Grekumah

Greetings,

As it would be very difficult to register friends across Worlds we do not currently have any plans to introduce this feature.

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Can we at least have the team look into the possibility of either re-queuing the same instance or queuing for another with the same party that the Duty Finder has matched us with?

This would greatly help out groups that have found compatible players who may wish to do multiple dungeons together or give players a better chance in runs of Primals that make significant progress but run out of time, instead players are basically left to start over with a fresh group when they have to re-queue.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

Maybe you could suggest working on it to the dev team it would be a good feature. This is a standard feature in a lot of mmos. In that you can put in someones user id or email that they gave you and add them to your friendlist which is cross server. Then you can invite them to your server and they are teleported temporary to your server so you can play do dungeons and raids together.

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A feature that is built in from the start. If the framework for it isn't there, then it takes years to implement properly.

BTW boys and girls "we do not currently have any plans to" is not "no". It's MMO speak for "maybe, but not right now".

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Originally Posted by Zumi

Maybe you could suggest working on it to the dev team it would be a good feature. This is a standard feature in a lot of mmos. In that you can put in someones user id or email that they gave you and add them to your friendlist which is cross server. Then you can invite them to your server and they are teleported temporary to your server so you can play do dungeons and raids together.

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Remember Zumi: FFXI let you chat with your cross world friends via messaging and I thought we wanted nothing XI did in this game? :)

FFXI's Friend List was also handled differently though - it was part of the external Playonline Viewer and not the game client itself, so it could connect remotely to all servers (and even cross game, well, the few games that actually used POL that is.

So unless SE similarly moved the Friend List into the launcher client (which would probably just be too much trouble than it's worth), I don't see it happening sadly. It would be great if SE could do this though - I've met lots of friendly people through Duty Finder which I would have loved to have connected with but couldn't due to being on other servers.

Similar to what WoW did... instead of friend list they had "Real ID", which is basically now your battle net account ID. So if S/E could create a system where you could create another alias for your account outside of your email and create an S/E account friend list, it'd be possible. But that would require them to work with more than just the FF14 team probably.

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Originally Posted by Baneus

A feature that is built in from the start. If the framework for it isn't there, then it takes years to implement properly.

BTW boys and girls "we do not currently have any plans to" is not "no". It's MMO speak for "maybe, but not right now".

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In fact I interpret it as "our current plan is just no" ^^;
maybe the requested feature is beyond the original system design...

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Originally Posted by Grekumah

Greetings,

As it would be very difficult to register friends across Worlds we do not currently have any plans to introduce this feature.

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Then tell SE to hire people from other companies because clearly there are plenty of MMORPGs that have this feature.

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Originally Posted by Fated

Then tell SE to hire people from other companies because clearly there are plenty of MMORPGs that have this feature.

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Many of which are structurally different than FFXIV. How would you suggest they handle a situation where your friend on the other server shares a name with one on your home server? Duty Finder likely does this by simply having a condition that doesn't allow for identical names to be matched, but the way people are describing what they want you'd be able to force a party with two people with identical names. Many of the MMOs that allow this sort of thing reserve your name across ALL servers and for some the "servers" are more like channels. The only tool they have to link Worlds right now is the Lodestone and that doesn't interact with the game other than to ping the database for character sheets.

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Originally Posted by Arrak

Similar to what WoW did... instead of friend list they had "Real ID", which is basically now your battle net account ID. So if S/E could create a system where you could create another alias for your account outside of your email and create an S/E account friend list, it'd be possible. But that would require them to work with more than just the FF14 team probably.

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This would be a feature added to the Lodestone and wouldn't be useful in-game at all without expanding the Lodestone beyond a simple webservice.

http://guildwork.com/
You should try it, OP.

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Originally Posted by Valthein

why is it difficult? maybe not cross all servers and data centers but perhaps just within the designated data center, since they are already connected via roulette friends list could for instance look like (character name - siren) instead of just a characters name. then you could allow people to add within their given data center and que up together. leave out the allowing other players to "zone" in to another server that would make it very difficult and create stability problems, wow did this instead of merging servers and imo failed everything lags because of it. But being able to communicate and que up since the system is already in place defiantly should be worth looking in to.

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"Difficult" doesn't mean "impossible". The question is whether the cost of adding this feature justifies moving resources off of a different, possibly-more-important feature. Is it worth it for them to solve the problem, or not.

What a shame - GW2 had this and it was nice. I could invite my friends to a server instance and not have to worry about missing out.

Maybe far far into the game's future - hopefully I'll be around then still

I would at least like a system like the POL Friends List. As antiquated as the system is, it allowed for adding friends and sending messages while in game even when the person was on another server.

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Originally Posted by EinherjarLucian

"Difficult" doesn't mean "impossible". The question is whether the cost of adding this feature justifies moving resources off of a different, possibly-more-important feature. Is it worth it for them to solve the problem, or not.

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Sadly, this game has WAY more issues that are 100x more important to fix than this. Nothing is impossible, however their whole goal was to hurt RMT from the start so they'd have to revise the core pretty much which isn't worth doing. As said it's literally:

"Do we revise the core and bring them better gameplay?"

or

"Do we revise the core and allow them cross world friendlist?"

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Originally Posted by EinherjarLucian

"Difficult" doesn't mean "impossible". The question is whether the cost of adding this feature justifies moving resources off of a different, possibly-more-important feature. Is it worth it for them to solve the problem, or not.

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Considering the fact that a strong community is the single most important aspect of maintaining long term subscribers, there's nothing more important than this type of thing.

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Originally Posted by Eissels

FF14 is one of the only modern MMOs that DOESN'T allow cross-server interaction. I don't get it.

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Cross server ruins the game. It ruins the community. If you think people dont talk now. Wait till Cross server happens.

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Originally Posted by Atrious

Cross server ruins the game. It ruins the community. If you think people dont talk now. Wait till Cross server happens.

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Cross-server ruins the community, because people are not held accountable for their actions. If SE added a cross-server friend/black list, and did not allow trolls to join parties with people who've black listed them before, they would eventually stop being awful in dungeons or be forced to leave the game. Also, enhancing the likelihood of people on each other's cross server friend list joining the same dungeons will strengthen the global community as a whole.

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Originally Posted by Grekumah

Greetings,

As it would be very difficult to register friends across Worlds we do not currently have any plans to introduce this feature.

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Hi Grekumah,

This is very unfortunate. Can you please pass along our reaction to their reply that we *would* like them to seriously consider this in the future?

One of the most critical aspects of a successful MMORPG is a strong COMMUNITY. We already know how Instancing and Duty Finder have made FFXIV feel a lot more empty and lifeless in a lot of ways. But with a real Cross-Server Friends List and Cross-Server Parties w/ Friends, etc., this would be a huge boon to the feeling of Community and create stronger bonds, especially for those that had to make a difficult choice to go to different servers for Latency choices (or other reasons).

Yoshi P and the Dev Team are always looking to other MMOs for interesting / innovative things to adapt into FF XIV. Cross-Server Friends Lists, Cross-Server Parties are things many MMOs have, like Guild Wars 2.

I know it was PlayOnline, but back in FF XI, *years ago* Square-Enix already had the ability to message your Friends on Other Servers.

It may seem like something not worth doing, but in reality this would be HUGE if Square could implement it.

Thanks.

But WoW can do it......

Perhaps it is a programing standpoint that people are not seeing that allows cross server freinds, for the people saying "oh it's not that hard just hire people to do it! some decade old games like wow do it, why not this!" maybe they understand how the programing works.

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Originally Posted by EinherjarLucian

"Difficult" doesn't mean "impossible". The question is whether the cost of adding this feature justifies moving resources off of a different, possibly-more-important feature. Is it worth it for them to solve the problem, or not.

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exactly, which is why i pose the question why? and it should be in squares favor, If players have access to people they enjoyed running one thing or another in DF then it expands that players social network and maybe keep them more involved with the game. Look at the demand for people who want to have their chocobo out while in que. this is a huge thing that should have been resolved before launch but its the same thing the sooner they get this done the better it is for the game. I would rather have all these things taken care of before new content release and i know im not alone. honestly the game still feels so incomplete without things like this that its hard to believe they're even talking about an actual expansion.

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Originally Posted by Akira_Tenshi

But WoW can do it......

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And one of the number one complaints about the community in WoW is that it is no longer server based. As soon as you open up a community to everyone you pretty much just end up with Internet 2.0 and all the consequences of there being no real consequences.

I've met amazing people in df. Some even where I got a little teary when realizing our run was unfortunately coming to an end. I'd love to see them again and honestly moments like those is why im a little hesitant when it comes to joining df. It's sad knowing you will probably never see those people again.:(

I support cross-server friend lists and the ability to /tell them and queue for duty together.

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Originally Posted by Lithera

This would be a feature added to the Lodestone and wouldn't be useful in-game at all without expanding the Lodestone beyond a simple webservice.

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S/E account isn't lodestone. But that's one of this game's issues. Your game characters, S/E account, and lodestone/forums (for each game) are all separate. The S/E account webpage is horribly confusing, especially if you still play FF11. S/E, not the FF14 dev team, needs a complete overhaul of their account system. And if they consolidate it appropriately, they could add the ability to communicate between accounts in their games.

And yeah, WoW did it. Cross Realm Zones, ability to queue to certain things cross realm, and cross realm/game communication. They're all good things. The FC I was recently in just left our low-med pop server for better raid opportunities on a high pop server. Its like losing an entire group of friends. I'm happy that WoW is going to a design where servers are only meant to separate the load and not the community. Hell, even Runescape does it lol. It'd be a huge technical challenge for FF14, but so was rebuilding the entire game.

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Originally Posted by Grekumah

Greetings,

As it would be very difficult to register friends across Worlds we do not currently have any plans to introduce this feature.

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Thanks for the reply. Given the way servers are so highly isolated I suspected this might be the case (in a way, it's weird that the DF even exists in this architecture). All the same, it's a pretty notable feature of modern MMOs and I feel it can add a lot to the game (or more specifically, the game's community).

Even though it won't be easy and may well require some changes to the base architecture, I hope you & the team will consider it in the long term.