Data Center Expansion - Questions

So, I have a pretty limited understanding of how our Data Centers work and was hoping someone could potentially clear something up for me.

I read that they were Expanding our Data centers for performance reasons and I guess stupidly assumed that we would obtain better performance while expanding our current data centers to allow more players. However, after reading the announcement in detail it appears they're pulling servers from our current Data Centers and redistributing them to new entirely Data Centers. If I'm understanding this correctly the player average base per data center is actually going to decrease, right?

I'm only concerned because if I'm right in my thinking ( And I could be wrong ) the queue times, in theory, could potentially worsen as multiple servers are getting pulled from each Data Center and you cannot queue with people outside of your center. Aether is going from 13 servers down to 8 and queue times can already push 10-20 minutes depending on the duty/raid you select. Can someone reassure/explain to me of what's actually happening and what impact it'll have on us if any?

Thanks!

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Originally Posted by Kyeria

So, I have a pretty limited understanding of how our Data Centers work and was hoping someone could potentially clear something up for me.

I read that they were Expanding our Data centers for performance reasons and I guess stupidly assumed that we would obtain better performance while expanding our current data centers to allow more players. However, after reading the announcement in detail it appears they're pulling servers from our current Data Centers and redistributing them to new entirely Data Centers. If I'm understanding this correctly the player average base per data center is actually going to decrease, right?

I'm only concerned because if I'm right in my thinking ( And I could be wrong ) the queue times, in theory, could potentially worsen as multiple servers are getting pulled from each Data Center and you cannot queue with people outside of your center. Aether is going from 13 servers down to 8 and queue times can already push 10-20 minutes depending on the duty/raid you select. Can someone reassure/explain to me of what's actually happening and what impact it'll have on us if any?

Thanks!

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That is correct. Average queue time is about to increase as the same pool of players will now be spread across 3 data centers instead of 2. They are doing this to grant increased stability of the servers during the expansion rush.

Edit: post cap :(

Others have made points about max number of instances factoring in here. I was unaware that this was affecting queue times given that you can form a premade and instantly queue into anything? This would seem to make it so that max instances isn't the problem.

I could be wrong about this, but my experience up to this point and the logic I just listed doesn't seem to support that being a problem.

Will que times really go down though? Sure we'll have less tanks and healers queing in but we'll also have less dps so it evens out. Unless you're talking about 24 man ques, in which, yeah I feel ya.

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Originally Posted by Wilford111

Will que times really go down though? Sure we'll have less tanks and healers queing in but we'll also have less dps so it evens out. Unless you're talking about 24 man ques, in which, yeah I feel ya.

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**up, not down. Sorry there's no editing on mobile

Apparently though there is only a set number of instances that can be active at one time which adds to queue times. If you have more centres then you can have more instances, which in tail either means the same amount of waiting time or if anything potentially shorter.

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Average queue time is about to increase as the same pool of players will now be spread across 3 data centers instead of 2.

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It's actually not that bad on EU after the split, roughly the same as before anything was changed and we have much less active players than NA.

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Originally Posted by WaterShield

That is correct. Average queue time is about to increase as the same pool of players will now be spread across 3 data centers instead of 2. They are doing this to grant increase stability of the servers during the expansion rush.

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Hmm, thanks for clearing this up for me! I guess we'll just have to see how this pans out, but I'm honestly a little nervous of the long term effects of this decision. However, on the other hand, I'm am glad to see they're trying to remedy the issue that happened with StormBloods launch. I guess there isn't a perfect solution...

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Originally Posted by Wilford111

Will que times really go down though? Sure we'll have less tanks and healers queing in but we'll also have less dps so it evens out. Unless you're talking about 24 man ques, in which, yeah I feel ya.

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Whether it be healers, tanks or dps, a smaller player pool will generally mean longer queue times.

You are correct in your assumption that the amount of servers in each DC and therefor the amount of players is decreasing - in theory.

However I'd expect the actual impact to be very little, at least once we're past the "its the end of the expansion and a lot of people arent playing right now"-time, which currently is your main reason for longer queuetimes. The reason I expect little impact is that they're not doing this split for fun but to add more servers alltogether without creating a negative impact on the overall stability of the game. As it seems to stand right now servers and DCs have reached their capacity and to avoid scenarios like Raubahn Ex and the like they need to offer more server-space if they still want to see this game grow.

Once we're getting a whole new expansion I'd expect queuetimes to still be reasonable - given that you dont queue at odd times or for odd, outdated content (my impression is that most of the time queuetime-issues seem to happen to people who're trying to do T9 through DF on a thursday at 2 a.m. ST...).
Hopefully we'll see lots of new people with 5.0 aswell as the return of veterans who are taking a break right now, getting queuetimes back to a healthy level of "not having to wait for ages for other people" and "not having to wait for ages for serverspace".

(Personally I also consider it easy enough to kill 10-20 minutes in game with all the little sidethings to keep one busy, but hey... or you can always play a tank and enjoy sweet, sweet instaqueues for almost everything)

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Originally Posted by Kyeria

Hmm, thanks for clearing this up for me! I guess we'll just have to see how this pans out, but I'm honestly a little nervous of the long term effects of this decision. However, on the other hand, I'm am glad to see they're trying to remedy the issue that happened with StormBloods launch. I guess there isn't a perfect solution...

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Til Stormblood the EU-DC only had 8 servers aswell and queuetimes werent horrible. Unless you're playing at really weird hours (in which case you should probably consider if a japanese or EU server might fit your time-schedulde better in general) you shouldnt be to worried.
8 servers are still quite a lot of people - assuming that the roughly 250k active characters on the NA-servers are spread out evenly about all 3 DCs that still means that you have about 83k people to play with.

Part of the reason for the split is so that as the game expands, they can add more servers without having to overload the existing datacenters. This gives a bit more breathing room (although I can't help but feel there would probably have been a better way around it), so since it's done to support future expansion of the player base, it's being called a datacenter expansion.

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Originally Posted by Vidu

You are correct in your assumption that the amount of servers in each DC and therefor the amount of players is decreasing - in theory.

However I'd expect the actual impact to be very little, at least once we're past the "its the end of the expansion and a lot of people arent playing right now"-time, which currently is your main reason for longer queuetimes. The reason I expect little impact is that they're not doing this split for fun but to add more servers alltogether without creating a negative impact on the overall stability of the game. As it seems to stand right now servers and DCs have reached their capacity and to avoid scenarios like Raubahn Ex and the like they need to offer more server-space if they still want to see this game grow.

Once we're getting a whole new expansion I'd expect queuetimes to still be reasonable - given that you dont queue at odd times or for odd, outdated content (my impression is that most of the time queuetime-issues seem to happen to people who're trying to do T9 through DF on a thursday at 2 a.m. ST...).
Hopefully we'll see lots of new people with 5.0 aswell as the return of veterans who are taking a break right now, getting queuetimes back to a healthy level of "not having to wait for ages for other people" and "not having to wait for ages for serverspace".

(Personally I also consider it easy enough to kill 10-20 minutes in game with all the little sidethings to keep one busy, but hey... or you can always play a tank and enjoy sweet, sweet instaqueues for almost everything)

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This actually makes a lot of sense and didn't really think about it from that perspective. Hopefully, you're right here and things will smooth themselves out over time during the lifespan of the expansion and hopefully sooner rather than later, lol.
( Also, I'd try your suggestion of playing a Tank, but I know my limits. The amount of knowledge and pressure on them is too high and I would get people killed constantly, lol. XD )

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Originally Posted by Wilford111

**up, not down. Sorry there's no editing on mobile

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You can edit, just use the desktop mode on your phone instead.
And queue times likely won’t change much for content that matters. Party Finder however, will look a bit smaller.

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Originally Posted by Ekinoxe

Whether it be healers, tanks or dps, a smaller player pool will generally mean longer queue times.

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No it won't. With fewer people in the queue, the queue needs to put together fewer groups before getting to newer people in the queue.

An excellent counterexample of your point is the period within the first hour after servers come back up and the number of logged in characters is low. Queues for some content will pop faster in that case.

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Originally Posted by Wilford111

Will que times really go down though? Sure we'll have less tanks and healers queing in but we'll also have less dps so it evens out. Unless you're talking about 24 man ques, in which, yeah I feel ya.

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Well if you look at what people experienced on the EU Datacenters, then yes. Shortly after the split a tank in my fc was cursing that he had to wait a while to get entry for expert roulette, it wasn't to peak times but it is still not normal to have to wait as a tank in the late afternoon. Keep in mind that they halfed the population on EU so it can be different for NA or it can be the same.

When it comes to the PF and 24man raids, you will definitely feel it.

What about for names tho? Cause there's another Athena Harbinger in the NA servers thats a lvl 1 mule or alt...I don't want to change my name cause of that...but if I have to :/

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Originally Posted by DiscoDuck

What about for names tho? Cause there's another Athena Harbinger in the NA servers thats a lvl 1 mule or alt...I don't want to change my name cause of that...but if I have to :/

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Character Names are unique to each Server, not Data Center. So there could be an Athena Harbinger on every single server. It would only be an issue when one of players of Athena Harbinger x tried doing a character transfer between servers. At which point they would be prompted to change their character's name.

This move is shuffling entire servers around to a new Data Center, so character names won't be impacted by that.

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Originally Posted by DiscoDuck

What about for names tho? Cause there's another Athena Harbinger in the NA servers thats a lvl 1 mule or alt...I don't want to change my name cause of that...but if I have to :/

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It's per server, not data center. As long as you aren't moving to another server with someone with the exact same name, it won't matter. When partying with people from other servers on your data center there is a designation of server.. which will likely also be shown if someone is "visiting' from another server on your data center.

EDIT:someone has quicker fingers than I. You get the idea then =]

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Originally Posted by Rongway

No it won't. With fewer people in the queue, the queue needs to put together fewer groups before getting to newer people in the queue.

An excellent counterexample of your point is the period within the first hour after servers come back up and the number of logged in characters is low. Queues for some content will pop faster in that case.

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Your example is extremely circumstantial. From my own experience, as a newb with only a BLM, my queues pop much quicker during prime time. I mean yeah, sure, if the matchmaking system was overflowing with folks to the point where it can't handle the load then less people would be beneficial. But I don't think that's the case. Especially not at this point in the lifecycle of the expansion. So yeah when Shadowbringers launches I'm sure the smaller server pools will be beneficial to some extent. But in the meantime, I'm not so sure. And my original point was, from a logical stand point, the less people you have, the less opportunity for grouping there will be. That's just simple math.

before eu split: 72 pvp frequently popped, after: you wait 10-20 mins for 24s to pop
before: astragalos barely popped, after: 100% dead

there are also way less partys and stuff in partyfinder
queuetimes for roulettes and raids didnt noticeably change, tho

it also hurt eureka a lot, there are less people in instances and people barely manage to enter/clear arsenal anymore,
which wasnt a problem before =/

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Originally Posted by Rowde

Character Names are unique to each Server, not Data Center. So there could be an Athena Harbinger on every single server. It would only be an issue when one of players of Athena Harbinger x tried doing a character transfer between servers. At which point they would be prompted to change their character's name.

This move is shuffling entire servers around to a new Data Center, so character names won't be impacted by that.

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Thanks for the info. I know its not a lore fitting name but I have been working on a story anyways for both my Roes why their names are not of Roe language. But I do plan on changing my Au'ra's name at some point.