[Discussion] Do data centers need to be merged/allow cross play?

Today i decided i would try and solo nidhogg for some scales since i really wanted the seeing hoard sword for drk. After about 30 mins of trying to solo it and dying to the adds a decided to just party up. Sure i'd have to fight for the scales, but it should be easier and faster, but boy was a wrong-

https://i.ibb.co/FVm9wgW/queue.png

In my ENTIRE time of waiting a single tank never joined, i waited 40 mins before finally giving up. I was even playing healer which should've sped it up.
Now the question has been on my mind for awhile as i watch more and more areas turn into ghost towns on my sever as ShB goes along, which many of the players i see just being afk, but this experience just cemented the thought into my mind: do the NA data centers need to be merged?
Now im sure theres many counter arguments to this idea that are pretty valid, but really, many of the games queue problems could be solved by allowing all severs to play with each other. In that case maybe there just needs to be cross data center play, idk, either way theres a problem here if a healer is waiting 40 mins for a boss in the quote on quote 'second biggest mmo in the world and WoW killer' (sorry for the snark XD). Imagine just being a new player trying to complete the content, these queue times i feel are the reason many players quit (that or ARR's torturous msq)

What does everyone else think? Is this a problem on your sever/data center? Do you think 3 data centers in unnecessary for how underpopulated many of the severs are?

Was this an EX trial?
If so, then your experience only shows that people don't use the Duty Finder to find groups for those. You can't draw any conclusions about the population based on that.

I think they said they wanted to do cross-DC somewhere, right? That big brain drawing Yoshi-P had to do on a piece of parchment? I'd imagine it's something we'll get eventually, and I can definitely see the technical hurdles involved. I imagine, some day, next expansion or the one after that, we'll at least get to buddy up with players on datacentres in the same region.

I will say I don't think the worlds are underpopulated at all. It's hard because some worlds have a different distribution of levelling players VS max players, so a lot of our strongest worlds are actually pretty quiet between content releases.

Yes he did say that, but I wouldn't count on that happening any time soon. I imagine the programming for that to be harder to pull off than it was for world visit.

On the NA datacenters, very few people directly queue for EX trials due to the nature of them being very wipe-festy if people don't learn quick/don't know what they're doing/etc. They instead go to the PF since it allows them to unsync the fights and blitz them in a few minutes while giving little care to adhering to mechanics outside of instant kills due to being 10/20/30 levels higher and 100+ ilvls above the content.

EX primal queue times are a very, very bad metric to use in regards to how populated the game is, since outside of the rare person direct queueing them, the only people that inadvertedly get put into one are people coming through mentor roulette.

Also, Nidhogg can be 2/3 manned quite reasonably if all players are on their game and know what to expect. So you could go into PF or grab 2-3 friends and do some decently quick farms.

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Originally Posted by MistakeNot

Was this an EX trial?
If so, then your experience only shows that people don't use the Duty Finder to find groups for those. You can't draw any conclusions about the population based on that.

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While i was queued for ex and yeah, that is probably half of it (didn't know that people dont usually queue for ex's, i tend to run them with the fc, maybe i'll try pf tomorrow), part of me still wonders as even healer roulette queues have gotten longer. This could just be due to the fact that it's the holidays, and that finals are going on rn (which hey, maybe it is), i just still figured i'd ask what other people thought since everywhere i look Jenova at least seems kinda more dead than usual, and i've seen more than a few people mention it.

Again i could be totally wrong and these past few days could just be a fluke, im just curious that if this is a big problem what do people think would fix it, especially considering NA did only used to have two severs. I find it especially interesting since, at least to me, just primal and aether felt 100% fine and crystal felt kinda pointless, unless there was some issue i just never experienced.

I think they need to merge some of them. Like other day I waited 25 minutes in queue for Heaven on High floors 21 to 30. This was at 11am pst. which always seen queues of less than 5 minutes. Last frontline queue had was 85 minutes.

What's the point of having separate data centers within regions? It just means I have to move servers to play with my friend on Siren but that means I could no longer play with my friend on Coeurl.

Seems like a needless decision to me. Considering that this game still charges a monthly fee and collects microtransactions on top of that...:mad:...that they could swing a way for people on every data center in a region to play with each other.

Nidhogg is doable as WAR and SCH - if you can get one friend to join you unsynced you will be ace.

I understand the vast technical limitations and challenges of making cross-data-center play possible when involving data centers from different physical locations IRL. Square Enix does not want to get ISPs and all of their related issues involved for communication between the data centers.

However, I fail to see why they can not do this for data centers that are located in the same building IRL. Wouldn't it be as simple as just using a wire at that point? Why can't Crystal play with Aether?

The idea behind of splitting DCs for NA and EU was to improve stability and queues during prime periods, like expansion releases, and to accommodate the growing player base. Anyway, Yoshida has already stated that he wants a mega server of shorts so what you are asking will be a reality at some point in the future.

Still, DF is hardly used in NA/EU for Extreme/Savage content so even after a "merge" those queue times are going to be there. In particular during a period like this with low player activity.

Nidhogg EX is a terrible example since it's not current content. Nobody really does the older fights in DF, it's all in party finder. Now if you used Titania or Innocence, you might have a point.

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Originally Posted by DumdogsWorld

I understand the vast technical limitations and challenges of making cross-data-center play possible when involving data centers from different physical locations IRL. Square Enix does not want to get ISPs and all of their related issues involved for communication between the data centers.

However, I fail to see why they can not do this for data centers that are located in the same building IRL. Wouldn't it be as simple as just using a wire at that point? Why can't Crystal play with Aether?

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Oh for sure that Cross regional DC play isn't on their to-do list.


...on the hand other, I've yet to play any MMO where such a thing existed, so.. this gives SE something to work towards I guess lol. FFXI just allowed everyone from all over the world to play together, there was no regional server separations, just the client.

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Originally Posted by JamieRose

What's the point of having separate data centers within regions? It just means I have to move servers to play with my friend on Siren but that means I could no longer play with my friend on Coeurl.

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Technical reasons. In addition to all the world servers each datacenter also includes instance servers that handle all the dungeons and other instanced content that potentially involves people from multiple worlds. There are limits to how much load the instance servers can handle, so they try to keep the datacenter populations at a reasonable size to avoid problems - at some earlier expansion releases the instance servers got overloaded and much instability and complaining ensued.

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Originally Posted by MistakeNot

Technical reasons. In addition to all the world servers each datacenter also includes instance servers that handle all the dungeons and other instanced content that potentially involves people from multiple worlds. There are limits to how much load the instance servers can handle, so they try to keep the datacenter populations at a reasonable size to avoid problems - at some earlier expansion releases the instance servers got overloaded and much instability and complaining ensued.

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Well, they could add more instance servers. But there's also the servers that store character data, and all world and instance servers within the datacenter need to communicate with those. At some point they'll become a bottleneck. Transferring character data would also be one problem to solve in implementing cross-datacenter instances. There needs to be all kinds of safeguards to prevent losing or duplicating items.

They talked about cross-datacenter and the feasibility of it, but are still in the "discussion" phase.


As far as queues, as long as I'm not queuing for the obvious (EX, PVP, etc), I've never waited longer than a couple minutes as a tank/healer, so I don't think the issue is solely related to that.
It could also be time specific as well (depending when you queue, since you posted at 1am my time on a Sunday, perhaps the server pop was low. I know there are less PFs at that time overall as well)

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Originally Posted by hynaku

I think they need to merge some of them. Like other day I waited 25 minutes in queue for Heaven on High floors 21 to 30. This was at 11am pst. which always seen queues of less than 5 minutes. Last frontline queue had was 85 minutes.

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11 am is when most people that play the game are at work/school. not a whole lot of people play the game in off peak hours.

Even for EU I understand why they did it and we don't have enough people for a split but too many for keeping datacentres merged. So the result was generally longer queue times and less people in PF. But even though queue times, escpecially on dps for 4man content, can be annoyingly long I prefer it over a lack of server stability. Escpecially when a new content patch hit, it was too crowded and often causes issues. And if the population slightly grew we'd have trouble even between patches.
If they can find a way to keep datacentres merges without stability issues, I'm all for it. But for now I think it's for the best as it is, even in the relatively small EU zone.

Their long term goal is to allow for party and duty finder across datacenters. World visit may not be possible.

And if you're wanting to do EX trials, use the party finder. EX trials arent shoved into anything except mentor roulette and direct queue'ing, and it wont pull from mentor to fill if its that empty.

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Originally Posted by hynaku

Last frontline queue had was 85 minutes.

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I had a two hour queue earlier this morning. Yesterday I had one three hour queue and a couple 1.5 hour queues. Typically the average wait time during peak hours is like 45 minutes to an hour. I remember when Frontlines used to be almost instant queues. What happened?!? Trying to get that 100 win mount seems to be impossible because of the wait times.

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Originally Posted by ElazulHP

I had a two hour queue earlier this morning. Yesterday I had one three hour queue and a couple 1.5 hour queues. Typically the average wait time during peak hours is like 45 minutes to an hour. I remember when Frontlines used to be almost instant queues. What happened?!? Trying to get that 100 win mount seems to be impossible because of the wait times.

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What happened? A limited time event was almost over and people rushed to get rewards

Plus they removed the actual fun Frontline (24 people) and only left in the cancerous one (72 people). Go figure.

Always use Party Finder for EX trials, not Duty Finder. You'll notice that your Party will fill up quicker.

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Originally Posted by ElazulHP

I had a two hour queue earlier this morning. Yesterday I had one three hour queue and a couple 1.5 hour queues. Typically the average wait time during peak hours is like 45 minutes to an hour. I remember when Frontlines used to be almost instant queues. What happened?!? Trying to get that 100 win mount seems to be impossible because of the wait times.

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Yesterday, and the day before, I was having 5-10min queues in FL roulette. Are you sure you're queuing during peak hours? PvP tends to pop far more often during weekends.

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Originally Posted by Palibun

While i was queued for ex and yeah, that is probably half of it

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It's not half if it, it's 99+% of it. NA doesn't really use DF for Ex and higher content, it's PF to form groups. This is doubly so for old content that can be unsynced.

I'm all for Cross Data Center play. The World Visit system currently in place is amazing and I'm so happy they've done it. I've love to see it expanded.

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Originally Posted by DumdogsWorld

However, I fail to see why they can not do this for data centers that are located in the same building IRL. Wouldn't it be as simple as just using a wire at that point? Why can't Crystal play with Aether?

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How would you propose load balancing that wire? If it was as simple as connecting a wire it would be complete by now. The task actually requires re- architecting their server infrastructure to allow for it and then requires comprehensive testing to make sure it works correctly and doesn't cause problems. When you're talking about a connection point that's managing thousands to tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of concurrent connections it's never a matter of just connecting a wire.

What Aesteval said, their incompetence at not being able to do it by now though is a bit much... The average players shouldn't even know datacenters exist typically if things are being done right. This is usually the default in any other MMORPG with cross server. The average person probably doesn't even know WoW has multiple datacenters since you never even see them.
But yeah, EX content can't be queued using duty finder it's just a bad idea and hardly ever works.