I’ve come to realise that materia needs help

I strongly debated if I actually wanted to post this or not because the last thing the data centre needs is more doom posting but I think at this point awareness is worth it

I was a day 1 migrator of my legacy main to materia; I wanted the server to flourish and I knew that would require effort on the part of the experienced playerbase to get the server up and running, however what I began to notice in my time on materia is that once people got to a sufficiently high level they would flee to JP or NA in order to be able to clear a wider variety of content (for those who have never experienced materia, peak time is roughly about 3 hours and that peak time will generally only let you complete required content, even in the middle of weekend peak you will need to party finder eden normal raids and half the time they won’t even fill)

This has now gotten worse with the new data centre travel, for better or for worse for people not on aether/mana/light the ability to travel means that you now have the entire region to fill your queues, I chose to move back to my old home of jenova and I queued for euphrosyne at 3am NA time Monday night and it procced in about 15 minutes, I couldn’t even get euphrosyne to proc at peak time week 2 on reset day on materia

If you can’t get anything to pop outside of the MSQ and you are forced to unsync PF basic duties are you really even playing the game anymore

I appreciate all the work the materia discords and FC’s do (I worked with a lot of them to try to bring people into eureka and Bozja since they are my passion) but I kinda eventually realised it wasn’t working

So that’s why I kinda came to realise that with another expansion unlikely to reach the level of EW that materia desperately needs help, I don’t think the server will die because it generally gets a good inflow of newer players but with its capped playerbase fleeing constantly I think something needs to change

I don’t know what that change exactly would be, if they added data centre travel to say NA then you would just be obligated to travel to aether to do anything; they could bump up incentives but what can you offer a capped older player to move to a quest data centre

I really don’t want to sound like I’m dooming the data centre because if it came back and ended up like say….crystal before data centre travel I’d move back in a heartbeat but I just can’t continue to play on materia as it is

Solution: Community outreach, OCE specific events and promotions... Oh what am I saying, they can't even deal with the forums.

I'm stubborn; I queue my alt characters into duty finder for clearing content. It takes some patience and usually results in "wait, this isn't Snowcloak/Alexander/Thornmarch..." but I get in there.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

I'm stubborn; I queue my alt characters into duty finder for clearing content. It takes some patience and usually results in "wait, this isn't Snowcloak/Alexander/Thornmarch..." but I get in there.

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I’m considering levelling up an alt so I don’t feel like I’m abandoning the data centre but as someone who’s favourite content in the game is optional content I just couldn’t do it any longer

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

I’m considering levelling up an alt so I don’t feel like I’m abandoning the data centre but as someone who’s favourite content in the game is optional content I just couldn’t do it any longer

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I do optional content on all my characters, to varying degrees – they're primarily for playing with glamours, so I'll do any content with outfits I want for them. I like replaying the story a few times anyway, although if I'm not in the mood and start skipping things, raid unlocks and such are only a few minutes between fights.

The problem is not the datacentre. The issue can be boiled down into two words:

Critical mass.

Materia is isolated from every single other data centre. Even with new worlds elsewhere, they are attached to established datacentres and servers with large, burgeoning populations. It is noted that JP has its own large English speaking population which will, to some extent at least, serve to address the language barrier issues.

Even with lower population on Zurvan for example, foot traffic from connected servers and datacentres will ensure an ebb and flow each day.

Materia is self contained, which in itself is an anomaly as it is the ONLY datacentre not connected to anyone. Why this was done, whether this was intentional is unknown. The planned intent of regional DC travel may have been a factor.

What we may be seeing is an unintended developement owing to regional DC travel being either delayed or cancelled outright. Without further communication, there is no way to be certain.

Until some redress, some kind of adaptation to allow interaction with much larger server populations is implemented, the problem remains unresolved.

Further to this, the two hour "window" when content can be completed is not an answer, is not feasible, and to all intents and purposes may very well be an example of why Duty Support has evolved to its current form and scope.

People want to address and complete content at all hours of the day, limiting group focussed activities to a small timeframe is a self defeating exercise. I would expect that an extension of the duty support system to cater for raids and trials will eventuate.

Whilst I have seen a lot of pushback on the so called "focus on single player experience" for FF 14, the fact remains that a lack of population or available groups at all hours is one reason the duty support system is being expanded.

The solution is to either implement regional data centre travel as originally planned, or to connect Materia to existing datacentres. NA may be an option, the latency differential notwithstanding.

I am well aware of sentiment against the latter, however this may become necessary if Materia is to remain a viable concern.

100% agree. I don't understand why they introduced the DC, to have it go stand off on it's own with no link to anywhere else. I love being in Materia with other AU/NZ people. I love the banter and humor, that is particular to our region. But it is getting increasingly frustrating, with how low the overall pop is. And while there are those willing to help and join any PFs that show up, if you aren't current, it can be hard to get others through the older content.

I would have an alt, but Square don't like us having them, cause we can't carry anything over. I'm not going to grind again for hairstyles, emotes, titles. So the only other option is to leave Materia, which I don't want to do yet.

Just give us DC travel, we'll deal with the ping. I don't see any other viable option.

Well, not sure about the state of the data center, but I've been trying to queue for Void Ark since finishing HW (now I just finished Doma Castle) and never actually seen it pop off once during my play session. Sometimes I wonder if people in OCE actually run Alliance Raids at all besides occasional Crystal Tower for MSQ.

Chrys, I am going to comment on this and bear in mind I am working from what I know, which is very little.

The past two years have been extremely trying for Square Enix. It may indeed be possible that regional datacentre travel was planned.

However, what may have eventuated is the system itself was not ready for implementation. It is also very likely that system errors and issues made it not possible without extra work and error resolution.

Imagine a player losing an eight year character in transit and not recoverable. Worst case scenario, I grant, but the fact remains that testing may have identified a high percentage of errors, or that further testing needs to be completed in order to eliminate identified issues.

That leads us to the option of datacentre connection, however I know nothing of what technical limitations may be involved without possibly relocating the actual datacentre. It may be the case that Materia CANNOT be connected to JP or NA without physical relocation. The logistics involved are unknown to us. Cost may be a factor but this is conjecture only.

Without further communication on the issue, the problem will remain unresolved.

Data Centre travel with NA please!!!

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Originally Posted by Zexhar

Well, not sure about the state of the data center, but I've been trying to queue for Void Ark since finishing HW (now I just finished Doma Castle) and never actually seen it pop off once during my play session. Sometimes I wonder if people in OCE actually run Alliance Raids at all besides occasional Crystal Tower for MSQ.

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There might be some doing it. I rarely touched Alliance Roulette, cause I just can't deal with CT any more. You will have more luck in setting up a PF for it.

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Originally Posted by tsuchii

Data Centre travel with NA please!!!

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God no please.

7 months playing on NA made me realize that i NEVER want to play with NA again.

Data center travel will not solve the issues with Materia, it will destroy it entirely.
People will go to JP/NA to do content and Materia will be more of a ghost town than it already is.

The ONLY solution to Materia is to region lock JP servers to JP only so the SEA playerbase are forced to populate Materia. It's not a good solution, but its about the only thing that can happen to make Materia grow.

I'm hoping one day they start implementing Super Servers much like in GW2. When an area is low in population you just phase shift into a more popular one. When you party up with friends you will phase shift into the same server. You don't even need to log out.

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Originally Posted by VelKallor

Chrys, I am going to comment on this and bear in mind I am working from what I know, which is very little.

The past two years have been extremely trying for Square Enix. It may indeed be possible that regional datacentre travel was planned.

However, what may have eventuated is the system itself was not ready for implementation. It is also very likely that system errors and issues made it not possible without extra work and error resolution.

Imagine a player losing an eight year character in transit and not recoverable. Worst case scenario, I grant, but the fact remains that testing may have identified a high percentage of errors, or that further testing needs to be completed in order to eliminate identified issues.

That leads us to the option of datacentre connection, however I know nothing of what technical limitations may be involved without possibly relocating the actual datacentre. It may be the case that Materia CANNOT be connected to JP or NA without physical relocation. The logistics involved are unknown to us. Cost may be a factor but this is conjecture only.

Without further communication on the issue, the problem will remain unresolved.

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Sure, and I understand that there could be technical limitations and there was the covid delay and there's old coding. But, while I do understand that those are factors, the situation with Materia is just unsatisfying. I think, probably with so many issues, if they would just communicate. Tell us that they recognize and are aware of our concerns. That they have concerns. Surely, they didn't go to the expense of setting up a whole DC, just to have it sit and quietly fester away? What are their plans to grow the DC? Just have us as on new world status, perpetually?

With DC travel being a thing, tying Materia to another region won't solve the issue completely, if anything it'll just be another Dynamis where everyone just goes to *insert another DC here* whenever they want to queue for something. There's just no good reason to do content on a DC without an established playerbase if there's a choice to do it elsewhere.

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Originally Posted by DixieBellOCE

God no please.

7 months playing on NA made me realize that i NEVER want to play with NA again.

Data center travel will not solve the issues with Materia, it will destroy it entirely.
People will go to JP/NA to do content and Materia will be more of a ghost town than it already is.

The ONLY solution to Materia is to region lock JP servers to JP only so the SEA playerbase are forced to populate Materia. It's not a good solution, but its about the only thing that can happen to make Materia grow.

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The proposal you make is untenable. Region locks, even if they are possible, would create much larger problems. Your proposal also ignores the effect this would have on the very large non jp population.

Solving one smaller problem by creating a much larger one is not an option. You are also ignoring the latency issue for SEA populations. This alone would serve as a deterrent which would defeat the intended purpose .

Data centre travel may actually have the opposite effect you believe.

There was a thread discussing cross region data center travel a few months back. Some think it will not happen because JP players are too opposed to playing with non-JP players. The general feeling in the thread seemed to be leave JP out of it in that case. Let NA, EU and OCE play together.

What's SE's current position on cross region travel? Have no idea, it's been radio silence. Maybe it will get mentioned at FanFest on Friday or Saturday.

On the cross data center travel issue in general, that's a hard one to solve. Clearly some incentive would be required to get players to travel to (or stay on) the worlds with low population online but too big an incentive might reverse the problem. The Moogle Tomestone event is always popular so maybe something along those lines but make it a permanent shop and possibly cap the amount of currency that could be earned in a day. That would likely help with roulettes but it may not work to solve the PF issue.

I'm really not certain what would help. Probably the best thing would be to ask players what they think would be sufficient incentive to get them to play on the low population worlds occasionally.

Jojoya, please see my earlier post. What we want or suggest may not be reflected in what is technically possible. As stated earlier, cross region travel may have been delayed for good reason. Data or character loss in transit may have occurred during testing. Consider also what errors or issues could occur with high volume traffic in both directions.

Until we get more information, we will need to wait.

I mean, Luckybancho updated 4 days ago with the new census data.
https://luckybancho.ldblog.jp/wsurve...?world=Materia

(Please remember that the Data only includes players that have a level 70 job, or a gunbreaker/dancer at level 60) ~This is to avoid free trial/bots being counted in the census.

Materia is a sample size of 18,982 players that met the criteria for the Materia census.

Around ~1700 of those characters existed before 2021. meaning the majority of Materia are either New players, or Alt Characters.

The population of the previous Census 3 months ago was 24,053 Characters. That is a loss of 5,071 characters in the 3 month period.

https://i.postimg.cc/5NttgbfC/image-...-132710017.png

The above image shows the shift in players over the 3 month period.


What does this tell us about Materia?
1) The majoirty of the player base are new or alt characters.
2) Player retention is very low, at around 78%
3) More players are transferring in, than transferring out, but more people are leaving the game than joining.


Some additional Information:
1) 55.2% of players have never touched eureka.
2) 55.1% of players have never touched Bozja.
3) There is a staggering 970 free companies with 1 character in them (Gold bots/farmers/sellers).
4) The average FC size is 1-3 players.
5) 8.2% of players obtained the 6.2 Savage mount.
6) 61.4% of players have completed the 6.0 Endwalker MSQ (Based on having the Argos mount unlocked from the final 6.0 MSQ)

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There is a staggering 970 free companies with 1 character in them (Gold bots/farmers/sellers).

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Assuming facts not in evidence. Solo FCs are nothing new. Id argue this with you further, but experience has shown that option to be futile.

Now if you will excuse me, I have a relic to complete.

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Originally Posted by DixieBellOCE

I mean, Luckybancho updated 4 days ago with the new census data.
https://luckybancho.ldblog.jp/wsurve...?world=Materia

(Please remember that the Data only includes players that have a level 70 job, or a gunbreaker/dancer at level 60) ~This is to avoid free trial/bots being counted in the census.

Materia is a sample size of 18,982 players that met the criteria for the Materia census.

Around ~1700 of those characters existed before 2021. meaning the majority of Materia are either New players, or Alt Characters.

The population of the previous Census 3 months ago was 24,053 Characters. That is a loss of 5,071 characters in the 3 month period.

https://i.postimg.cc/5NttgbfC/image-...-132710017.png

The above image shows the shift in players over the 3 month period.


What does this tell us about Materia?
1) The majoirty of the player base are new or alt characters.
2) Player retention is very low, at around 78%
3) More players are transferring in, than transferring out, but more people are leaving the game than joining.


Some additional Information:
1) 55.2% of players have never touched eureka.
2) 55.1% of players have never touched Bozja.
3) There is a staggering 970 free companies with 1 character in them (Gold bots/farmers/sellers).
4) The average FC size is 1-3 players.
5) 8.2% of players obtained the 6.2 Savage mount.
6) 61.4% of players have completed the 6.0 Endwalker MSQ (Based on having the Argos mount unlocked from the final 6.0 MSQ)

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This kinda plays into what I made the post about

People make new accounts on materia, level up then transfer away from materia so it’s basically perpetual new people

I did a random test and asked 15 instances of people in the MSQ roulette who remembers the old MSQ roulette, of the 23 answers I got only 2 remembered the old MSQ roulette

I guess I just got burned out on assisting the constantly cycling population meaning the high level content never popped

the main issue i see linking Materia to other datacentres in going to be the latency.

oceanic players have gotten used to playing at high (~200ms) latency becuase they're wasnt an option for otherwise.

opening access to other DCs wont realistically solve many issues. non-materia players wont come over to experience higher latency, and most likely non-materia player will prefer players from their own data centres to avoid latency based issues.

as far as alliance raids, i feel materia has mostly settled upon using partyfinder to make groups for these, often you'll see party finders up for raids and these will fill quickly when compared to queing it as a roullette.

speaking from personal experience, myself and many of the people i play with dont que for alliance raid in duty finder soley because we're all sick of crystal tower

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Originally Posted by Scruit_Bigtime

the main issue i see linking Materia to other datacentres in going to be the latency.

oceanic players have gotten used to playing at high (~200ms) latency becuase they're wasnt an option for otherwise.

opening access to other DCs wont realistically solve many issues. non-materia players wont come over to experience higher latency, and most likely non-materia player will prefer players from their own data centres to avoid latency based issues.

as far as alliance raids, i feel materia has mostly settled upon using partyfinder to make groups for these, often you'll see party finders up for raids and these will fill quickly when compared to queing it as a roullette.

speaking from personal experience, myself and many of the people i play with dont que for alliance raid in duty finder soley because we're all sick of crystal tower

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That was part of my problem I couldn’t even get PF’s for the alliance raids besides void ark to pop

My experience was basically
-boot scooting roulette- you will get a level 50 dungeon
-levelling- hope you like sub 50 dungeons
-alliance- crystal tower
-trials- Ramuh or titan
-normal raids- A1 or A2


Even if I wanted to do something else trying to queue for it manually was pointless but PF rarely wanted to sync content even if you could fill it

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

I guess I just got burned out on assisting the constantly cycling population meaning the high level content never popped

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This is basically how it felt playing on Materia, The constant burnout of repeating the same instances over and over again in the hopes that some of the players will make it into current expansion content, but either quit or leave the server before they get there.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

People make new accounts on materia, level up then transfer away from materia so it’s basically perpetual new people

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That's sadly to be expected. Materia is not a desirable place to be for people doing higher level content, so when people get to the point where they want/need to do that, they can't so they transfer away, thus keeping the higher level content barren. It's a cycle, but I can't say I blame anyone for leaving.

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Originally Posted by AwesomeJr44

That's sadly to be expected. Materia is not a desirable place to be for people doing higher level content, so when people get to the point where they want/need to do that, they can't so they transfer away, thus keeping the higher level content barren. It's a cycle, but I can't say I blame anyone for leaving.

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It was to be expected I totally agree (I mean I myself chose to leave), I just didn’t expect it would affect me so quickly and so harshly

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Originally Posted by AwesomeJr44

That's sadly to be expected. Materia is not a desirable place to be for people doing higher level content, so when people get to the point where they want/need to do that, they can't so they transfer away, thus keeping the higher level content barren. It's a cycle, but I can't say I blame anyone for leaving.

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Yeah i cannot blame the players for wanting to leave when i, myself, left after 11 months of hell.

Spent the next 3 months raiding on JP and then moved to NA for a while, spent 7 months there and actually hated it more than Materia.

I parked my main account back on Materia with some IRL friends and took a break from the game, still not sure if ill be back for the final patch or just come back in 7.0 when we might see another small population boom.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

That was part of my problem I couldn’t even get PF’s for the alliance raids besides void ark to pop

My experience was basically
-boot scooting roulette- you will get a level 50 dungeon
-levelling- hope you like sub 50 dungeons
-alliance- crystal tower
-trials- Ramuh or titan
-normal raids- A1 or A2


Even if I wanted to do something else trying to queue for it manually was pointless but PF rarely wanted to sync content even if you could fill it

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I don't think I got much better than that in Elemental, really. I think the extended free trial has skewed it everywhere.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

I don't think I got much better than that in Elemental, really. I think the extended free trial has skewed it everywhere.

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Oh I agree it still skews strongly that way on the busy servers but the difference is the other options do pop on occasion and if they don’t you can queue directly for them

It speaks alot in 15 months on materia I have literally never had a single alliance raid because CT pop except a single time where we got void ark and someone outright said “we are here because I queued for this directly” on the busy servers at worst you will get a non CT raid maybe once per 10 days or so

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

It speaks alot in 15 months on materia I have literally never had a single alliance raid because CT pop except a single time where we got void ark and someone outright said “we are here because I queued for this directly” on the busy servers at worst you will get a non CT raid maybe once per 10 days or so

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Was that like a month ago? I remember that happening. Rare occasion I queued for AR, for a Bozja relic, and we got Void Ark. Everyone was thanking whoever queued Void Ark directly. The stars aligned on that occasion, even though I actually wanted CT lol
Then I came back to my senses, went back to Bozja and just farmed what I needed the long way.

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Originally Posted by VelKallor

Jojoya, please see my earlier post. What we want or suggest may not be reflected in what is technically possible. As stated earlier, cross region travel may have been delayed for good reason. Data or character loss in transit may have occurred during testing. Consider also what errors or issues could occur with high volume traffic in both directions.

Until we get more information, we will need to wait.

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https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...8a3986554a2#03

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As I previously mentioned in a Live Letter, while the system has been designed to allow cross-region travel, we'll be limiting it to travel between logical data centers within a physical data center at first due in part to differences in game economy and values. We’ll be paying keen attention to the opinions of players as we consider whether or not to introduce cross-region travel in the future.

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This doesn't make it sound like they were still trying to work out technical issues. This sounds like they've held it back because they are uncertain of the economic and social effects. If it truly was a technical issue, there would be no reason not to say so. They've given us that as the outright reason for many other things we've expected to get over the years.

He said they're monitoring player feedback. I've seen very little pushback against enabling cross region travel in the EN community. We've got the new concerns about players congregating on a single data center for PF but that's a situation of the cat already being let out of the bag. Allowing cross region travel between Materia and other regions isn't going to make that worse.

If there are concerns about what might happen if NA and EU could travel between each other, they should at least pair Materia up with one other region whether that is EU or NA. JP's apparent xenophobia (assuming that hasn't been greatly exaggerated) leaves them out of the picture. Players that have friends on JP can still create characters there to play with them.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

This sounds like they've held it back because they are uncertain of the economic and social effects.

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This is the exact reason why cross-region isn't out.

The Japanese playerbase went into an uproar when they found out that more foreigners could come to their servers and potentially cause issues.
I don't blame them in the slightest either, Raiding on NA was a nightmare compared to the social etiquette that the JP community has built.

I do think there is a level of them realising with the way data centre travel has worked out that if they were to exclude JP and have travel between the other 3 every data centre besides aether would die overnight

Maybe light may hang on since it’s EU’s aether but materia, chaos and the other 3 NA data centres would basically just become “if you want to do anything go to aether”

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

It speaks alot in 15 months on materia I have literally never had a single alliance raid because CT pop except a single time where we got void ark and someone outright said “we are here because I queued for this directly” on the busy servers at worst you will get a non CT raid maybe once per 10 days or so

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Well yeah, you probably need at least one person direct-queuing to prompt the game to gather an alliance that are all eligible to run Void Ark at once.

Unfortunately, PF is treated as the solution while actually being part of the problem itself. Nobody sticks around, they get told to use PF instead, and even the willing helpers end up spending their time waiting for a PF group to gather and might not get to (or bother with) roulettes that day, where otherwise they might have gone for alliance roulette.

I also think they really messed up the handling of inserting the Mhach/Ivalice raids into the Bozja relic. They didn't incentivise unlocking all three raids and they made it so you have to rush through multiple times to get on with your next step, then never touch it again. It should have been something to encourage regular participation in all the raids – they had the system already worked out in ARR rewarding a unique token for each one. There should have been a token from each of the other raids and you need all six as a step for each relic. (With some less re-re-running of Delubrum as balance.)

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Originally Posted by tsuchii

Data Centre travel with NA please!!!

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DC travel period. Materia can not be left in the state it is and waiting for some type of miraculous 7.0 xpac rescue is ridiculous. This needs to be addressed by the development team it should not be left to fester.

DC travel won't fix it
it'll just make materia dynamis 2.0 which is bound to happen with the inevitable cross DC travel.

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This doesn't make it sound like they were still trying to work out technical issues. This sounds like they've held it back because they are uncertain of the economic and social effects. If it truly was a technical issue, there would be no reason not to say so. They've given us that as the outright reason for many other things we've expected to get over the years.

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I said "may" Jojoya, I am just highlighting the fact we dont know what is going on behind the scenes.

The low latency I get on Materia is what gives this MMO an edge over others for me (given that my options are somewhat limited on console), but yep: it's dead as a doornail. I won't go back to the latency I 'enjoyed' on the JP servers, I'll just go play some other MMO... Which is what I've been doing anyway.

Left a PF up on Materia for Euphrosyne from 8pm to Midnight (GMT+10) And got a total of 7 people join over the 4 hours of refreshing the PF.

If we can't have DC travel due to JP, can we at least get cross-server duty finder?

We might see a region travel announcement at fanfest over the next 2 days because of some evidence and interviews recently, but no guarantee.