Limited Cross Region DC Travel

Link to the announcement for the 24th of March:

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...def5ddcd343779

I'm glad it's happening. The cloud test showed that all the regions can play together and this will be another opportunity to show that.

If it goes well, they could apply the same rules to Dynamis on 7.0 release.

YAAAAY ... i mean ... NOOOOOO! My alts will become unnecessary now. xD




Cheers

Can't wait for the rest of the planet to be forced to DC travel to Aether just to have an active PF too.

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Originally Posted by Oizen

Can't wait for the rest of the planet to be forced to DC travel to Aether just to have an active PF too.

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The Aetherial Manipulation of PF is real. This is true Despair... q_q

...

/j

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Originally Posted by Oizen

Can't wait for the rest of the planet to be forced to DC travel to Aether just to have an active PF too.

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We on aether didn't deem is the content DC lol. If people learned to stay away then it would be fine. I want to see the system tweaked so savages, ultimates and latest extremes cant be done off your native data center

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Originally Posted by Ryvick

Link to the announcement for the 24th of March:

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...def5ddcd343779

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The cloud data center I think was the true test. Multi regions swarmed it and we had a blast.

This is just not needed. Bring in the cloud data centers and let us have fun that way.

What an absolute waste of resources.

We don't need cross DC travel*. We need cross DC party finders. Servers going to blow up when Dawntrail raids hit and everyone is overloading 1 DC in each region.

*- Hilarious that the one DC that DOES actually need regional travel (Oceana) is the one DC that can't travel in this test. They should have always let them travel to JPN DCs where they started.

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Originally Posted by DrForester

What an absolute waste of resources.

We don't need cross DC travel*. We need cross DC party finders. Servers going to blow up when Dawntrail raids hit and everyone is overloading 1 DC in each region.

*- Hilarious that the one DC that DOES actually need regional travel (Oceana) is the one DC that can't travel in this test. They should have always let them travel to JPN DCs where they started.

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This way works better, it encourages people to mingle on OCE (even if you have no interest in OCE itself you can intermingle with people from the other regions together on OCE), letting people from materia travel out of materia (to either aether or elemental) just makes materia an extension of said DC for no benefit like dynamis currently is for aether

This is exciting, and I hope they expand it to be permanent and accessible for all regions. I think the Cloud Test Servers showed that when people are willing to give one another basic respect and be decent and communicative, we can work together regardless of where we come from because we all share the same baseline experience of loving the game and wanting to enjoy it with other players!

I really hope this test winds up being a success and puts to bed the myth and weird rhetoric of cultural differences being so strong that we need to wall off specific regions from one another.

That said, I think that Cross DC Party Finder/Duty Finder is probably far more important to the health of the game, and should be prioritized as such, as currently every region in the game seems to have one Data Center that has kind of become the "go to" place to get any content done that isn't just roulettes (or even roulettes, if you're from Dynamis.)

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Originally Posted by DrForester

What an absolute waste of resources.

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I highly doubt it, that it costs them resources. Because the general functionality for DC travel is already implemented. Maybe they have to adjust some other things like rollback timeouts etc. because of the much higher network latencies.


Cheers

I hope this test is a success.

As i've always said on this, i strongly suspect the 'cultural issues' the team are worried about is backlash from the Japanese playerbase, if thats the issue then just make it so Japan can't be cross region dc travelled to.

I'm excited for this, as others have said, I think the cloud DC tests have shown that people can coexist normally without having huge issues. I hope eventually they will let us travel to other places aside from Oceania, because I have friends on EU servers that I want to hangout with again easier than with my alt.

I also feel like, that they probably will end up enabling the cross-DC party finder stuff eventually, because people are going to give their feedback once they open up this test, and I am sure people are going to mention it. I also want to assume they probably already know people want this because of how many people have suggested it.

Either way I feel like this could be a nice thing implemented, would just need some tweaking and feedback.

I'm glad that they mentioned server economy and they're aware of the economy difference between regions. I think that's a much larger issue to solve rather than cultural differences as an economic crash would directly affect the gameplay for crafters.

I'm shocked by how many replies -- given the shit show that DC travel become in killing whole PFs -- are like "omg this sounds like the best thing ever I can't foresee any way this wouldn't just be an overall win".

Honestly, this just sounds like opening Pandora's box to me. They haven't finished working out issues for the problems players are expressing concerns over with DC travel, but they're like "region travel is the answer"? I don't have the warm fuzzies from this news, and I think doing it with OCE to start is going to give some false positives about how well a full implementation would go.

More people can come to Dynamis!!!


:)

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Originally Posted by WillIrishclover

I hope this test is a success.

As i've always said on this, i strongly suspect the 'cultural issues' the team are worried about is backlash from the Japanese playerbase, if thats the issue then just make it so Japan can't be cross region dc travelled to.

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It could also be that this test is designed to give flawed results. "We're opening the gates (to OCE) so everyone can experience regional mixing!" JP players: "Why would I want to go region traveling when I have everything I need on home DC?"

Almost like it's set up for demonstrating "ok, all the other data centers can get along fine, we'll just keep JP locked and isolated."

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

It could also be that this test is designed to give flawed results. "We're opening the gates (to OCE) so everyone can experience regional mixing!" JP players: "Why would I want to go region traveling when I have everything I need on home DC?"

Almost like it's set up for demonstrating "ok, all the other data centers can get along fine, we'll just keep JP locked and isolated."

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Basically/Effectively making JP just like KR/CN or other locked off regions.
[Except they aren't, but for some actual reasons, and mostly unreasonable points they believe it'll be hell in their servers.

<Can't Blame them with how a bunch if "Tourists" have been trashing their other entertainment mediums with BS> ]

Europe to Oceania is probably the worst idea for cross-region travel... The latency from EU to NA isn't always even great, going an even bigger distance isn't going to help...

I too hope that the barriers between data centers fall completely. We're in 2024 and we live in a globalized world. It's absolutely nonsensical to keep players segregated by region.

Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XIV 1.0 had no such issue, and their communities absolutely benefited from it. I was there for both since the very start and I can testify to that. As a matter of fact, they both had better communities than FFXIV post-2.0.

Cultural differences should be embraced, not shunned. They're an added value and not a liability.

As for the differences in economy, that's absolutely irrelevant. There are plenty of differences in economy between data centers of the same region, and even between servers of the same data center. That did not discourage them from opening world travel and then data center travel, making that objection to cross-region travel simply an excuse.

That's even more obvious when they open the Oceanian data center to everyone, and that's the one with the biggest difference since it's the newest.

Back in 2019, I interviewed Yoshi-P, and he drew this.

https://techraptor.net/sites/default...?itok=UC43DwFv

It's exactly what you think it is, as an illustration of what he told me, that the ultimate goal was to remove all barriers between regions.

I hope we still get that, because in 2024 these barriers make absolutely zero sense.

All paths will end up leading to the same result: Aether Supremacy

Oh cool, this will increase the Venue and RP experience in Oceania without actually improving or addressing any of the actual problems the Data Center faces. Why go to Oceania to queue content when we can still go to Aether for a faster experience?

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Originally Posted by DrForester

What an absolute waste of resources.

We don't need cross DC travel*. We need cross DC party finders. Servers going to blow up when Dawntrail raids hit and everyone is overloading 1 DC in each region.

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Yoshi-P has already mentioned that he wants to figure out how to make cross DC duty finder/party finder work, but that it's gonna require development of a new system to link players from different data centers.

Meanwhile, cross-region travel as a functionality was already included in the overall development for Data Center Travel. Yoshi-P even mentioned that travel between physical data centers was "technically possible" back in January 2022, in the lodestone post confirming the launch date of the Data Center Travel system.
All they're doing with this test is enabling this functionality, with a limit on what physical data center can be traveled to.

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Originally Posted by DrForester

*- Hilarious that the one DC that DOES actually need regional travel (Oceana) is the one DC that can't travel in this test. They should have always let them travel to JPN DCs where they started.

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It's almost like this is a test, and they're using the least populated datacenter to lessen any possible impact when shit hits the fan.

ugh this is not the way to fix this dc prob. It really doesn't matter to me to cross dc travel to oceanic. The problem is more i shouldn't have to go to aether for doing content. At the very least before dawntrail you could link the dc pf so i don't have travel over to see it. I would rather do everything on primal like i have been doing.

Now primal is the go to place for hunts so cross server should not be 5min transfer. It should be instantaneous for those not cross dcing. Hunts do not last 5 min. Either the server waits or some dummy pulls it before hand.

Honestly they need to link all na servers together , link eu servers together and then the jpn servers together

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Originally Posted by DrForester

What an absolute waste of resources.

We don't need cross DC travel*. We need cross DC party finders. Servers going to blow up when Dawntrail raids hit and everyone is overloading 1 DC in each region.

*- Hilarious that the one DC that DOES actually need regional travel (Oceana) is the one DC that can't travel in this test. They should have always let them travel to JPN DCs where they started.

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Oh yeah just imagine all the Oceanic alts that people will dump their gil on to suddenly populate the housing districts of Oceania. That's what I foresee happening in EU

They need to delete DC travel, not expand it.

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Originally Posted by CidHeiral

They need to delete DC travel, not expand it.

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Oh yeah, being able to play with your friends anywhere they are without needing to make a new character is such a terrible thing :rolleyes:

Imagine thinking we should be confined to our datacenters and regions in 2024.

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Originally Posted by Abriael

Imagine thinking we should be confined to our datacenters and regions in 2024.

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Imagine thinking they should be expanding to region travel when they haven't even worked out the problems from their first attempt with DC travel.

I'd much rather see them address the issues with DC travel first, hammer out the details to restore the full play experience to travelers before they take a crack at region travel. Make it first so people have cross-DC comms, or can reach at least the inventory of their retainers, or can access timed nodes or their islands, etc. Don't continue to build on top of a weak foundation. Stabilize what you have, THEN do something bigger.

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Originally Posted by littlehobbit13

Imagine thinking they should be expanding to region travel when they haven't even worked out the problems from their first attempt with DC travel.

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Imagine that they can't do both, or the idea that in the end, they do things for what they plan.

It's easy for us as consumers to give the obvious answer, or symptoms that lead to the hidden answer.

Instead of shooting this down, we need to just push "Respectfully" harder on what we want.

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Originally Posted by littlehobbit13

Imagine thinking they should be expanding to region travel when they haven't even worked out the problems from their first attempt with DC travel.

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And pray tell, which oh-so-massive problems should they solve that can't be solved with region travel enabled, considering that *it already works* and doesn't need further implementation? :rolleyes:

Advocating for artificial borders splitting a MMORPG's community in 2024 is entirely anachronistic. This isn't 1999 (and it was a terrible idea even in 1999).

Na i pass. Personal i dont need it :)

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Originally Posted by Abriael

As for the differences in economy, that's absolutely irrelevant. There are plenty of differences in economy between data centers of the same region, and even between servers of the same data center. That did not discourage them from opening world travel and then data center travel, making that objection to cross-region travel simply an excuse.

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It's easy to say economic differences don't matter when you compare within the region, there's never been a massive difference in economy between DCs in a region.

The problem is that prices on JP are about 5 times cheaper than NA/EU, opening the gates without addressing that issue would allow NA/EU players to buy out the JP market to make profit on their home world, which makes the game worse for players on JP while bringing zero benefit to them.

Like it or not, that has to be addressed before cross region can be implemented.

This is huge!! - But it really should also come with cross-DC party-finder / duty finder in the long run, otherwise this will only exacerbate existing issues.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

It's easy to say economic differences don't matter when you compare within the region, there's never been a massive difference in economy between DCs in a region.

The problem is that prices on JP are about 5 times cheaper than NA/EU, opening the gates without addressing that issue would allow NA/EU players to buy out the JP market to make profit on their home world, which makes the game worse for players on JP while bringing zero benefit to them.

Like it or not, that has to be addressed before cross region can be implemented.

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Repeat with me:

They. Are. Opening. Access. For. Everyone. To. The. Newest. Region.

That 100% invalidates the economic concern and identifies it as an excuse.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

It's easy to say economic differences don't matter when you compare within the region, there's never been a massive difference in economy between DCs in a region.

The problem is that prices on JP are about 5 times cheaper than NA/EU, opening the gates without addressing that issue would allow NA/EU players to buy out the JP market to make profit on their home world, which makes the game worse for players on JP while bringing zero benefit to them.

Like it or not, that has to be addressed before cross region can be implemented.

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The Market Controls.

They lose all their products, Crafters make more, charge more.

Players they spread the money around, and then it reaches balance.

Even though it isn't free game to heading everywhere/anywhere.

If it did include JP, JP would benefit the crafters.

AND SEEING AS JP LOVES to level characters.

it's not like those who do play, would automatically be out of materials, ingredients, crafts, mats.(difference you know)
They would gain much from outsiders in a instant.

Assuming they weren't smart and stockpiled, then raised the Anchor Price.

Markets overtime as self correcting.

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Originally Posted by Abriael

Oh yeah, being able to play with your friends anywhere they are without needing to make a new character is such a terrible thing :rolleyes:

Imagine thinking we should be confined to our datacenters and regions in 2024.

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Yeah it's definitely worth destroying every DC that isn't Aether just so you can pretend you have friends.

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Originally Posted by GTK0HLK

Markets overtime as self correcting.

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You're talking from the perspective of the stronger economy, what about the non-crafters who can no longer afford things when prices get raised up?

Despite a lot of people having everything levelled on JP, not everyone crafts for profit, you'd be unbalanced the economy by introducing a bunch of gil that shouldn't be there.

But you have a different perspective, that's fine. The fact though, is that the announcement did mention economic differences, so the dev team is actually taking it into account that there might be a potential destabilisation of the market.

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Originally Posted by CidHeiral

Yeah it's definitely worth destroying every DC that isn't Aether just so you can pretend you have friends.

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Ah, the drama. Imagine thinking that removing artificial barriers that should have never existed and giving people options would "destroy every DC that isn't Aether." Do you have any more scaremongering to share with us today? :rolleyes:

I've had friends in this game since the beta of 1.0 on Mysidia and then all the way through 1.X on Gungnir, when you likely didn't even know FFXIV existed, and before Square Enix decided to make the extremely silly move of splitting regions with 2.0 and sending us all our separate ways. So much for "pretending." :rolleyes:

My concern is whether enough players will travel to Materia to give SE the data they need from the test. With it being an existing data center, some of the craziness that players were able to engage in during the cloud data center test wouldn't be tolerated. That would deter some participation.

I can see some hunters going to Materia to get away from NA hunt congestion. Those with friends on Materia would also have reason to travel. But what would entice other players during the test?

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Originally Posted by Oizen

Can't wait for the rest of the planet to be forced to DC travel to Aether just to have an active PF too.

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If it goes live, there's always the possibility that SE will set things up to work as they will during the test.

What if players will be able to only travel to designated regions/data centers based on current online populations and return to their home worlds instead of to any region/data center?

I could easily see this happening in an attempt to balance congestion issues. We know that SE can shut down travel to specific worlds/data centers if there is a need. It wouldn't prevent friends from playing with friends - they would just need to meet on a world open to Travelers.

Just like character creation locks, they can rotate which data centers are open to Travelers.

I could honestly see them leaving it the way it is in the full version later

Materia is perfect as the global trading hub server, nobody is at a particular advantage nor disadvantage based on ping as everyone besides Australians will get mildly bad ping to Sydney, so raiding will stay on the local data centres (aether mana and light) but if you want to play casually with people from other regions you can meet and play with them on materia who can also act as the marketboard balancer between the worlds

There is no real need for you to be able to travel directly from light to aether for example and doing so risks all content concentrating on aether (and aether is bad enough as it is), if you want to RP or do casual content with worldwide friends then you can just all do it on materia