Suggestion: Shut Down DC Travel for Dawntrails Launch.

So, this is not a lack of faith in CBU3 being able to deal with the surge of not only returning players for DT, but ofc our new Xbox Friends. And after experiencing all of the server issues XIV has had on launches, this is my suggestion.

Pre-warn players of a 1-2 week shut down the DC traveling for DTs Launch so that way people can pre-emptively go to the server they wanna play on with their friends, and so that people can play peacefully.

My reasoning for this? I feel like we'll see a LOT of people trying to rush going to play with friends, or go to "better" servers for content reasons, here in NA we'll see a surge of players heading to Aether, and possibly in turn as a knock on effect, players from Aether will surge places like Dynamis and Crystal which quiets down on expansion launches.

Not only will this clog up things and make something as simple as queueing for content abyssmal, servers will be congested interally, by the people already in game, and externally, by people trying to get in game. This isn't even mentioning the usual Early launch DDoS and Launch Day DDoS attacks.

I feel like this will be the best choice for player to play peacefully and only have to deal with minimal server queues.

And I know people will disagree, but this is just my 2 cents.

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Originally Posted by strawberrycake

My reasoning for this? I feel like we'll see a LOT of people trying to rush going to play with friends, or go to "better" servers for content reasons, here in NA we'll see a surge of players heading to Aether, and possibly in turn as a knock on effect, players from Aether will surge places like Dynamis and Crystal which quiets down on expansion launches.

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I'm not agreeing or disagreeing yet because I didn't understand the reasoning. Do you mean players will accumulate to a specific data center and abandon another? Using your example, one player from Dynamis and one player from Aether swapping places has a net zero effect on the internal congestion of both data centers.

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Originally Posted by Reinha

I'm not agreeing or disagreeing yet because I didn't understand the reasoning. Do you mean players will accumulate to a specific data center and abandon another? Using your example, one player from Dynamis and one player from Aether swapping places has a net zero effect on the internal congestion of both data centers.

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Specifically players from the other 3 DCs surging to Aether and Aether players Surging to the precieved No population Dynamis

They probably will because of congestion. If log in queues are long which is to be expected they'll suspend it like they did with Endwalker.

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Originally Posted by strawberrycake

Specifically players from the other 3 DCs surging to Aether and Aether players Surging to the precieved No population Dynamis

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What's the harm in the same number of players surging to and from Aether?

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Originally Posted by LaylaTsarra

They probably will because of congestion. If log in queues are long which is to be expected they'll suspend it like they did with Endwalker.

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Wasn't that because everyone and their cat was trying the new feature when it was added in patch 6.18? DC travel didn't exist yet for Endwalker launch.

Yes EW launch was awful. It was a perfect storm type deal. Yet we shouldn't need to worry as I'd be surprised if they didn't enable cloud servers or only allow travel to less populated data centers for those who are from more populated ones. So Dynamis and OCE would be allowed to be traveled to and if those don't do the work of alleviating the strain on the log in servers then I'm sure they'll as I've said bring back on line a few cloud servers. There shouldn't be this much fear in experiencing the same problems we did in past launchs.

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Originally Posted by Reinha

What's the harm in the same number of players surging to and from Aether?.

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The issue is that a bunch of people will congest the game, we'll have new players, returning players, and those of us who play regularly. My point is that XIV launches are always huge turn outs. This coupled with the DDoS attacks we've gotten every launch, it will probably be better to have people stay on their prefered servers ahead of time to mitigate larger issues from impatient players, inconsiderate players, and people who will maliciously make things worse for fun, which is all sadly a norm along with the increaded populationsize.

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Originally Posted by SannaR

Yes EW launch was awful. It was a perfect storm type deal. Yet we shouldn't need to worry as I'd be surprised if they didn't enable cloud servers or only allow travel to less populated data centers for those who are from more populated ones. So Dynamis and OCE would be allowed to be traveled to and if those don't do the work of alleviating the strain on the log in servers then I'm sure they'll as I've said bring back on line a few cloud servers. There shouldn't be this much fear in experiencing the same problems we did in past launchs.

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I have faith that CBU3 can handle this launch well with the Cloud servers in place, but i also think avoiding uneeded stress works just as well.

They plan to use DC travel as a way to reduce congestion by allowing people to go to less populated locations, such as Dynamis, Materia and the Cloud Data Center that was previously setup if it's needed.

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Originally Posted by strawberrycake

I feel like we'll see a LOT of people trying to rush going to play with friends, or go to "better" servers for content reasons

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I think we will see a surge either way or a lot of congestion that will render DC travel unusable anyway, despite the aforementioned intentions that SE has for Dynamis, Materia and the Cloud DC. However, I could be wrong, especially if travel to a low-population DC does not suffer from congestion.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

They plan to use DC travel as a way to reduce congestion by allowing people to go to less populated locations, such as Dynamis, Materia and the Cloud Data Center that was previously setup if it's needed.

I think we will see a surge either way or a lot of congestion that will render DC travel unusable anyway, despite the aforementioned intentions that SE has for Dynamis, Materia and the Cloud DC. However, I could be wrong, especially if travel to a low-population DC does not suffer from congestion.

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Yeah, I'm specifically thinking back to prior expansions and telling FC members to stay and let others muck it up because they will and low and behold thats what did happen. And it's not that the Cloud servers won;t help. I def think they will, but I'm also aware of how impatient and unwilling to work together any MMOs community can be and ours isnt any different in that regard and people tend to exacerbate it more then they need to. In fact we have a tendency to go above and beyond at times with these type of situations.

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Originally Posted by strawberrycake

it will probably be better to have people stay on their prefered servers ahead of time to mitigate larger issues

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You haven't explained how locking players would mitigate the issue of congestion. The act of traveling to a different data center doesn't involve logging in so it doesn't affect server login queues until the transfer is finalized and the player wants to login to the new server. It's a separate process you do before you choose to log in.

So if 500 Dynamis players move to Aether servers to play with their friends, 500 Aether players move to Dynamis servers to avoid login queues, and all of this takes place before those players even join the login queue, then no one is being impacted except those 500+500 players who get to play where they want. You're still going to have the same amount of congestion.

There's no reason to go to Aether on expansion launch. Raid doesn't start for a whole month afterwards.


If anything, there'd be people flooding Dynamis and Materia for better queues.


Shutting down DC travel at this point would be counter productive.


Also, locking you out of a DC for weeks is a bad idea, especially if you aren't on your own.

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Originally Posted by strawberrycake

Yeah, I'm specifically thinking back to prior expansions and telling FC members to stay and let others muck it up because they will and low and behold thats what did happen.

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I avoided DC travel myself when it released because I knew it would become congested and I'd be stuck in travel. I felt this was obvious, personally, but a lot of people didn't and unfortunately they missed their raids etc.

As long as there is full queue priority to the players' home DC during launch I don't care.
Server residents should be able to completely skip travelers queues.

Blocking DC travel would be counter productive. I think they WANT it to be available. And in fact might stress using it if you can't stand your current world's que. It would make ques much easier to deal with if people went to Dynamis and filled in the gaps there, therefore shortening the ques here. Heck I'd go to Dynamis to play if there was shorter ques just for the day.

Agreed, shut it down for Dawntrail launch and keep it shut down forever thereafter. :)

This suggestion will greatly interfere with the ability of our troopers to deploy to Lalafell Menace contested areas, citizen. I say no.




The strongest spirits will always triumph.

They'll shut data center travel down if they feel it will help.

I don't think they need to shut down completely, though. What they need to do is similar to what they're doing with the cross-region test. Set certain data centers, such as Materia and Dynamis, as available destinations. Set the congested data centers to home traffic only.

That keeps players from other data centers from adding to the congestion we know that Aether and some additional NA worlds will have. At the same time, it gives the players on the Congested worlds the option to play on less Congested data centers and worlds at launch but still return back to their home worlds.

Considering that the return trip home will still likely result in a several hour queue, most players will choose to remain on their home worlds unless they prepare in advance to be offworld for 1-2 weeks.

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Originally Posted by WeebPolice

This suggestion will greatly interfere with the ability of our troopers to deploy to Lalafell Menace contested areas, citizen. I say no.

The strongest spirits will always triumph.

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I don't think your troopers will be needed during the first 2-3 weeks of Dawntrail. The Lalafells will be gathered at their secret central headquarters plotting your downfall scattered by the confusion of new content. It will take them a while to return to the contested areas.

Here's a nice knee-hug for you!

"Please come to my DC and deprive yourself of access to your retainer or MB sales for 2 weeks, friends!"

not entirely sure why people would conglomerate on Aether.

I am perfectly happy on Crystal and have zero desire to see Aether... launch or not

If anything, shutting down travel will result MORE congestion. Most people will flock to emptier DCs to try and get better connection while going through the story.

Didn't the post about the regional travel test directly mention that this would be useful to spread people out during high-congestion periods?

I haven't checked it, but that's what I thought I remember reading.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Didn't the post about the regional travel test directly mention that this would be useful to spread people out during high-congestion periods?

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Yes, it did. Specifically, in relation to login queues. Original Lodestone post (emphasis mine):

On the other hand, many Worlds may experience login queues following the upcoming release of Dawntrail, especially during peak times. With this situation in mind, we are considering a temporary option in which a limited form of cross-region travel would allow players to play on a less-populated physical data center.

If I remember. When endwalker came out, they suspended any travel for like 2 weeks to a month. So o suspect they would do the same here

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Originally Posted by Ravenblade1979

If I remember. When endwalker came out, they suspended any travel for like 2 weeks to a month.

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That was not the case. We only had World Visit then. Login queues are prioritised over World Visit queues. Therefore, it was impossible to visit other worlds except when everyone was sleeping.

But when people were sleeping, it was fine!