How Square Enix can solve both data center travel and ping/routing issues for NA

TL;DR: Spread NA DCs out. The playerbase will naturally distribute itself evenly for better ping so Aether is no longer the PF hub. Nobody is punished and everybody wins.

The Problem - Half-assed solutions to what was a small inconvenience result in new issues and exacerbate the original problem in the long run:

Ever since data center travel was implemented, raiders have gravitated towards Aether in search of a livelier party finder and many players from Dynamis, the newest data center, regularly traveled away for faster duty finder queues. Unfortunately, this mindset of Aether being the raider server and Dynamis being dead was a self-fulfilling prophecy, and so it became difficult for many people to do some activities on their home servers. It wasn't a terrible system because the process of traveling between any data centers was generally quick and easy, but there were some small inconveniences like not having access to retainers or linkshells that many players would endlessly complain about. Square Enix has made attempts to solve this that haven't panned out.

In 7.0, Square Enix temporarily limited data center travel for North American players so that they could only access Dynamis and Materia. This had the benefit of making Dynamis and Materia more active than they have ever been and it worked fine in the interim before the savage patch. However it could never last. You can't introduce a feature like the ability to play on any server in the region and then gut it permanently like that. For example, roleplayers might be able to meet up with their RP partners on Dynamis or Materia, but they would be disappointed if they permanently lost access to RP venues that they spent the last two years socializing in. Although obviously this was only intended as a temporary measure during the new expansion.

With the release of 7.05 they rolled back the 7.0 restrictions and introduced a new system in which servers categorized as "congested" have a drastically reduced capacity for wanderers and travelers. This makes it practically impossible to travel to many servers during most of the day. Even a standard world can become restricted during peak hours for travelers if it is on the same logical data center as a congested world. While it did keep party finder active outside of Aether for the recent savage tier a bit longer than normal, there are some serious long-term concerns to be had about this.

Unlike when Dynamis was the only NA data center available to all NA players, any server is now technically "accessible" even while congested. This has resulted in Aether reclaiming its status as the de facto party finder hub while Dynamis dies again and Primal/Crystal slowly dwindle back to their pre-7.0 state. Now that the PF hub is very difficult to access it somehow feels even more restrictive than when the only options were Dynamis and Materia, because at least everybody else was going there too.

However, the biggest issue with this system is that Aether cannot stay congested forever. The native population will slowly shrink while server transfer and character creation is unavailable. It could happen in 7.1, or it could take well over a year like with Balmung and Mateus but eventually enough existing players on Aether will have taken a break or quit the game that Square Enix will need to open access for new players. When that happens there will undoubtedly be a massive flood of raiders from Crystal, Primal, and Dynamis wanting to permanently secure access before the entire data center is inevitably congested again. So many raiders moving to Aether will make PF on other data centers worse than it was in Endwalker.

The Solution - Moving North American data centers to different regions within North America:

Over the past two years I've read many suggestions on how SE should fix the data center problem but the common theme with most of them seems to be imposing new restrictions on the player that make data center travel almost pointless. The best way to have players distributed across all servers is to make them feel rewarded if they comply rather than punished if they don't. Square Enix already does this by making transfers to new/preferred servers free as well as rewarding players with feathers to be exchanged for items in-game, but the rewards can be earned through other means and aren't worth leaving your home server for a potentially dead one. And now that data center travel is a thing it doesn't even incentivize playing on the server you transferred to anymore since you can immediately leave. A much better incentive would be low latency.

Currently, the North American servers are located in California. It might be the most populated state in the USA but about 80% of the country lives in the eastern half. And of course there's a noticeable amount of ping over this distance. In addition, when there's a node having issues near the FFXIV servers it means a significant amount of the playerbase is going to be affected. Many people affected by this end up paying for a service to reroute traffic on top of the FFXIV subscription. Many of us had a blast in November 2023 during the cloud test from experiencing normal latency after going through those issues for years. As someone whose ping can vary from 70ms to 100ms (120ms lately) I didn't even know that the game could feel so good at 20-40ms. It's a completely different, better, and snappier game.

Anyway to bring this back to data center populations, Square Enix just needs to move each DC to a different location. They could keep one server in California, move one to the central United States (perhaps Texas), place one in the Canadian data center where the cloud test took place, and move the last one to the south eastern United States. I guarantee that if Dynamis was in Atlanta so many players in the region would swap to it that you would think it was around for as long as Aether or Primal, even if the transfer wasn't free. Are you having issues with a node again? Now instead of paying for a VPN you can DC travel to the second closest data center in a different physical location until the problem ends. Is half your static split between east and west? Don't worry, you can still meet in the middle with the central US DC while spending the rest of your time at home.

This post is pretty US-centric but it would also improve the experience of the Brazilian playerbase and the data centers in EU and JP could probably do something similar to better serve players in those regions.

Other Proposed Solutions:

Lastly I wanted to talk about why I'm not a fan of some of the more common proposals from the community.

1. Implement cross-DC party finder & duty finder.
   Unfortunately there seem to be some big technical hurdles that need to be tackled first
   
   Quote:

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   Originally Posted by Famitsu

   Would it be possible for you to consider [...] a content finder registration system that transcends regions?

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   Originally Posted by Yoshi'P

   a matching system across all regions and a content finder registration system are also being considered for implementation. However, the super server engineer on the development team and I have had many meetings, and at the end of each meeting, I find myself saying, “U～～～～～～～～, let's talk about it again at the next meeting” (smiles). (wry laugh). It is very difficult in terms of both technical and infrastructure, but I think it is a good thing that the “FFXIV” team never gives up on a challenge, so I would like to continue to think of ways to make it work without giving up.

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   Since CS3 are attempting other solutions I doubt they're still considering this. But any time Yoshi'P gives an answer like "it would be very difficult" I'm inclined to believe that the chances of it happening are very slim. Obviously I wouldn't be opposed to cross-DC grouping if it were to happen but latency would still be an issue for east coast players.
   
2. Remove data center travel.
   We can't go back after pandora's box has been opened. Many players have made friends and joined communities/statics across data centers. Most would not be happy to have that suddenly taken away from them.
   
3. Restrict access to party finder, duty finder, and other content when traveling.
   This is almost as bad as removing data center travel. What good is being able to meet friends on other servers if you can't do anything together? You might as well find a different game to play together at that point.
   
4. Reduce rewards when playing on other data centers.
   Data center travel was implemented so we could game together. It would be awful if every time you played with your friend you had a nagging feeling in the back of your mind about the rewards you're missing out on. This would also break up a lot of statics if it meant reduced gear.

If you have any other ideas please feel free to share them. The more we talk about it the more likely SE will try a proper solution instead of this god awful congestion based system.

Surely Cross-DC Party & Duty Finder would be easier to implement, and cheaper, than physically moving servers across a country and all the logistics issues(safety in transportation, required game downtime, possibly rent of physical locations, possible costs in hiring and paying additional maintenance teams, so on) that come with that, right? sure there are technical limitations around it, your solution would infer a much greater financial strain on the studio, which Square would likely veto immediately as it would cut down profits, plus, you are ignoring the possibility that the physical proximity of the server racks, and them being physically connected to each other, is why DC traveling is even possible, doing so over the internet could range from being significantly slower to outright impossible, at least under the system implemented.

People were already paying to transfer to Greg as the 'raid server' long before datacenter travel existed.

Crystal PF has improved a great deal lately, just judging by the amount of listings… but I do fondly remember how much smoother the game played on the cloud server (after a few initial hiccups), and a DC with a better ping (and/or less NTT node issues) would definitely be attractive. Not having to suffer the random lag spikes and DCs would be nice!

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Originally Posted by mana-burner

Restrict access to party finder, duty finder, and other content when traveling.
This is almost as bad as removing data center travel. What good is being able to meet friends on other servers if you can't do anything together?

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There is a better solution to this, which is:

Restrict access to the public High-End category in Party Finder for Travelers.

This would prevent people traveling to PUG, but would not prevent them from:

• Joining private static parties (so statics can remain cross-DC)
• Joining hunt parties
• Joining map parties
• Joining Other parties

Quote:

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Originally Posted by VeyaAkemi

Surely Cross-DC Party & Duty Finder would be easier to implement, and cheaper, than physically moving servers across a country and all the logistics issues(safety in transportation, required game downtime, possibly rent of physical locations, possible costs in hiring and paying additional maintenance teams, so on) that come with that, right?

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I say this as someone with technical and programming knowledge - I actually think it would be easier to setup a new DC than to implement cross-DC PF and DF. Especially when they already tested an NA cloud DC.

Now sure, if it were me personally, I am sure I would find a way to make cross-DC PF and DF work relatively fast, but I'd have to admit some things:

• It's complex and messing up anything could result in character data loss. That they even dared to go ahead with World Visit and DC travel impressed me because it was very risky and complicated stuff behind the scenes.
• It's communication between multiple servers and regions, which can be complex, including from a security standpoint.
• It would need thoroughly testing due to its behind-the-scenes complexity.
• It's probably a lot more complicated for them due to spaghetti code, their hardware arrangements or their interpretation of their hardware situation.
• It's probably harder for them because they split jobs between different team members, whereas an indepedent developer could probably do certain things faster if they did it all alone, due to the task not having to be passed along to different teams at different stages of its development, which is a bit like a bill being passed around by politicians - it can make things take longer than they should (but in other cases it can speed them up so it's not always bad).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by VeyaAkemi

Surely Cross-DC Party & Duty Finder would be easier to implement, and cheaper, than physically moving servers across a country and all the logistics issues(safety in transportation, required game downtime, possibly rent of physical locations, possible costs in hiring and paying additional maintenance teams, so on) that come with that, right? sure there are technical limitations around it, your solution would infer a much greater financial strain on the studio, which Square would likely veto immediately as it would cut down profits

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In the past, all NA and EU servers were located in Montreal. Then around Heavensward, they moved Chaos to Germany. Aether and Primal were also moved to California.
https://eu.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...8c71cb4be72616
https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...0716040e34a5b6
It might require a longer downtime but just like back then they can offer a day of playtime to each active subscription.

I can't give you the exact cost of everything but given the fact that they were able to do this back when the game wasn't as financially successful as it currently is and the fact that Yoshi'P said recently cross-datacenter party finder and duty finder would be a massive technical hurdle that would take years to tackle I think spreading out data centers is actually the easier and cheaper option.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by VeyaAkemi

plus, you are ignoring the possibility that the physical proximity of the server racks, and them being physically connected to each other, is why DC traveling is even possible, doing so over the internet could range from being significantly slower to outright impossible, at least under the system implemented.

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We know this isn't true because anybody from NA, EU, or JP can travel to Materia, a data center located in Australia.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

There is a better solution to this, which is:

Restrict access to the public High-End category in Party Finder for Travelers.

This would prevent people traveling to PUG, but would not prevent them from:

• Joining private static parties (so statics can remain cross-DC)
• Joining hunt parties
• Joining map parties
• Joining Other parties

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This still isn't ideal. A lot of people solely play this game for high-end content. Someone might have friends on other DCs they want to practice savage or even farm a current extreme trial with but now they wouldn't be able to because they don't have 7 friends available and they can't fill the remaining slots in PF. Even for non-high-end raiders, restricting where players can do current extreme trials would be felt by most of the playerbase.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mana-burner

The playerbase will naturally distribute itself evenly for better ping

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They dont, even if the DC gets split, people will still flock towards a single one. Just because 1 has a better reputation. People dont care about ping that much as the game is gracefull enough to not make it matter.

The best solution is to make cross-dc PF possible, so those on an other DC are also revealed on the "main". No travel requirements for anyone anymore.
That is what they should aim for.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mana-burner

Someone might have friends on other DCs they want to practice savage or even farm a current extreme trial with but now they wouldn't be able to because they don't have 7 friends available and they can't fill the remaining slots in PF.

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Usually, a static would DC travel to a given data center because the "leader" of the static resides on that data center. So all the friends need to do is get the "leader" that is "native" to that data center to recruit in PF, since the option would be available exclusively to them.

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restricting where players can do current extreme trials would be felt by most of the playerbase.

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In a positive way... people would be able to actually PF raid content on Primal, Crystal and Dynamis. I remember seeing people say how positive it was for Dynamis when they couldn't travel away to raid.

Aether really wouldn't miss an odd 100 raid PFs out of its 200 PFs in some cases.

Especially since that other 100 don't even load in the PF list so nobody even sees them, resulting in them not even filling.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by UkcsAlias

They dont, even if the DC gets split, people will still flock towards a single one. Just because 1 has a better reputation. People dont care about ping that much as the game is gracefull enough to not make it matter.

The best solution is to make cross-dc PF possible, so those on an other DC are also revealed on the "main". No travel requirements for anyone anymore.
That is what they should aim for.

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Other games with multiple server locations within a region don't have this issue. The only reason it's a problem here is because every NA data center is in the same physical location so if you're getting the same ping everywhere you might as well play on the one that's better for the content you're interested in. FFXIV might be playable up to a certain point but as proven by the cloud test it's still a noticeably better experience to play on a closer server and when node issues pop up it can very easily become unplayable for many people.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Usually, a static would DC travel to a given data center because the "leader" of the static resides on that data center. So all the friends need to do is get the "leader" that is "native" to that data center to recruit in PF, since the option would be available exclusively to them.
In a positive way... people would be able to actually PF raid content on Primal, Crystal and Dynamis. I remember seeing people say how positive it was for Dynamis when they couldn't travel away to raid.

Aether really wouldn't miss an odd 100 raid PFs out of its 200 PFs in some cases.

Especially since that other 100 don't even load in the PF list so nobody even sees them, resulting in them not even filling.

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If simple workarounds like this are possible then it's not going to have much of an effect because everyone will just use the workaround. For example, even if someone doesnt have a friend on another datacenter they could easily whisper party leaders asking them to personally invite them and then relist the party.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mana-burner

If simple workarounds like this are possible then it's not going to have much of an effect because everyone will just use the workaround.

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Statics and people with friends will use the workaround, sure.

The entire point is to stop people just visiting another data center alone to PUG, which will help create a culture of pugging on other data centers again. Then this will in turn stop people traveling away due to no PFs.

Quote:

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For example, even if someone doesnt have a friend on another datacenter they could easily whisper party leaders asking them to personally invite them and then relist the party.

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Well they could but I don't think all party leaders would bother with the hassle, especially since I think it would involve canceling the PF and world visiting to the same world to send the invite(?) I also think a very significant amount of the playerbase have anxiety that would prevent them sending the message (it already prevents a lot of people from raiding or pugging altogether).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Statics and people with friends will use the workaround, sure.

The entire point is to stop people just visiting another data center alone to PUG, which will help create a culture of pugging on other data centers again. Then this will in turn stop people traveling away due to no PFs.
Well they could but I don't think all party leaders would bother with the hassle, especially since I think it would involve canceling the PF and world visiting to the same world to send the invite(?) I also think a very significant amount of the playerbase have anxiety that would prevent them sending the message (it already prevents a lot of people from raiding or pugging altogether).

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That is something that already happens for "Duty Complete" parties. Someone who is clear ready might struggle to find a clear group that can actually clear a fight. So they message party leaders for reclear parties explaining their situation and asking to be let in.

Another potential workaround that I could see taking off is people using the normal tabs to recruit for high-end content. For example, someone who wants to run M4S could make an M4N party on Aether and write in the description that the group is for M4S. If a few people started doing this then it wouldn't take long for others to notice and make it the norm. One issue with this might be someone seeing an M4N party and joining it without reading the description but using party finder for current normal content is unusual when they could simply queue for it. ilevel requirements could also be set to require some savage gear and make this less likely. Another issue would be the inability to use duty completion settings to filter players who haven't cleared out of your clear group but rather than discourage people from dc traveling to raid, party leaders would probably check logs more often resulting in some toxicity as players who have cleared but lack any logs are unfairly kicked.

Right now, on a Sunday afternoon, I only see 4 PF listings on the high-end tab for Crystal and when I was on Aether an hour ago there were 40-50 listings. A strategy that more people are using to play on Aether is to wait until very late at night to transfer over and then park your character there until you feel like playing. I strongly believe that if someone thinks their raid experience will be improved on another server they will do whatever they can to get on that server, even if it means losing sleep or talking to people.

There does seem to be many anxious players in the playerbase but I think people who are so anxious they can't even speak with someone are less willing to do high-end content in the first place.

It's been suggested 1000 times that DCs should be in physically different locations, but as the Gongcha and other collaborations have shown, SE only really knows about the west coast in NA. Every other part might as well not exist.
We will continue to have all our servers in California because that's where SE wants their HQ to be and it's cheaper to rent racks in 1 data center than in 4 different data centers or in the cloud.

The Cloud DC test where it was east coast was much better for ping than we have currently, but they were quick to tell us this does not mean anything and they are not going to be moving any DCs to other locations any time soon.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by VerdeLuck

It's been suggested 1000 times that DCs should be in physically different locations, but as the Gongcha and other collaborations have shown, SE only really knows about the west coast in NA. Every other part might as well not exist.
We will continue to have all our servers in California because that's where SE wants their HQ to be and it's cheaper to rent racks in 1 data center than in 4 different data centers or in the cloud.

The Cloud DC test where it was east coast was much better for ping than we have currently, but they were quick to tell us this does not mean anything and they are not going to be moving any DCs to other locations any time soon.

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If enough people are vocal they will eventually act accordingly. I know that the original purpose of the cloud server test was to test the viability of the service, but since most of the feedback was regarding how good the connection was from the east coast and South America I'm hopeful that they're considering it. The problem with SE is that they move very fucking slow when it comes to this kind of thing so it could be a while before they even mention their findings from the cloud server tests.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by VerdeLuck

they were quick to tell us this does not mean anything and they are not going to be moving any DCs to other locations any time soon.

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When did they say this?

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Originally Posted by mana-burner

If enough people are vocal they will eventually act accordingly. I know that the original purpose of the cloud server test was to test the viability of the service, but since most of the feedback was regarding how good the connection was from the east coast and South America I'm hopeful that they're considering it. The problem with SE is that they move very fucking slow when it comes to this kind of thing so it could be a while before they even mention their findings from the cloud server tests.



When did they say this?

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The cloud server test was not to test the viability of other data center locations, it was to test the viability of spinning up AWS servers to meet demand before bringing them back down, basically what Shadow in EU was for Dawntrain launch. They were pretty clear the entire time that this was not a plan to move any existing DCs into the cloud or move them between data centers.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mana-burner

Another potential workaround that I could see taking off is people using the normal tabs to recruit for high-end content.

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Maybe but it's still worth a try. They could block off normal versions of those to travelers as well.

Even if it doesn't prevent everyone traveling, prevent some wanting to travel is half the battle because there are people that travel reluctantly (they want to stay on their Home DC, but because everyone left, they feel pressured to as well). It's an exponential problem.

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I strongly believe that if someone thinks their raid experience will be improved on another server they will do whatever they can to get on that server, even if it means losing sleep

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A lot of people can't do that due to work and stuff like that.

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There does seem to be many anxious players in the playerbase but I think people who are so anxious they can't even speak with someone are less willing to do high-end content in the first place.

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Less but some do. It's really such a common thing that I once filled a linkshell in 2 days with people who felt that way. 128 people in 2 days. There are a threshold of people who break through the initial anxiety and join a [Practice] party but it's not like it completely vanishes.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mana-burner

Other games with multiple server locations within a region don't have this issue. The only reason it's a problem here is because every NA data center is in the same physical location so if you're getting the same ping everywhere you might as well play on the one that's better for the content you're interested in. FFXIV might be playable up to a certain point but as proven by the cloud test it's still a noticeably better experience to play on a closer server and when node issues pop up it can very easily become unplayable for many people.

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We already know this won’t work because of materia. Oceania got a DC with good ping, and even most aussies didn’t transfer to it, because why would they, they’d been raiding just fine on the JP ones for years.

The issue is that there's insufficient raider population on Crystal, Dynamis, and Primal for raiders to meaningfully engage with the content on these servers.

Adding more servers would make the issue significantly worse. Just add cross-dc pf. Yoshi-p says "spaghetti code" instead of "no comment", it means nothing.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by VerdeLuck

The cloud server test was not to test the viability of other data center locations, it was to test the viability of spinning up AWS servers to meet demand before bringing them back down, basically what Shadow in EU was for Dawntrain launch. They were pretty clear the entire time that this was not a plan to move any existing DCs into the cloud or move them between data centers.

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I know, I was saying it's to test the viability of those services, not that it was to test an east coast server. Point is that despite that the majority of the feedback was regarding how well the game played from the east coast. And I can't recall a time where they explicitly said moving locations would never happen. Given the positive feedback I wouldn't write off the possibility.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Maybe but it's still worth a try. They could block off normal versions of those to travelers as well.

Even if it doesn't prevent everyone traveling, prevent some wanting to travel is half the battle because there are people that travel reluctantly (they want to stay on their Home DC, but because everyone left, they feel pressured to as well). It's an exponential problem.
A lot of people can't do that due to work and stuff like that.
Less but some do. It's really such a common thing that I once filled a linkshell in 2 days with people who felt that way. 128 people in 2 days. There are a threshold of people who break through the initial anxiety and join a [Practice] party but it's not like it completely vanishes.

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It doesn't really make sense to me that you say preventing some people from moving will fix things and then acknowledge that there are already people who are reluctant to travel. To me this just goes to show that you can't just stop some people from transferring. Because those who really want to do it anyway will do it, and then everyone that's left will feel like they have to follow just like they have been.

Anyway I'm just not a fan of this type of solution, where the devs have to keep coming up with different limitations to adjust for how players work around the system. If party finder is neutered people will find other ways to make grouping work like LFG discord servers and if they went further than this we'll end up with a system where you can't do shit outside of your home server and DC travel becomes pointless.

I'd much prefer physically moving data centers. You don't lose access to anything you previously had. Instead of forcing them with shitty restrictions people go to the server that works for them because they want to be there.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

We already know this won’t work because of materia. Oceania got a DC with good ping, and even most aussies didn’t transfer to it, because why would they, they’d been raiding just fine on the JP ones for years.

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From the Aussies I've spoken with, ping to JP is only somewhat manageable and the main reason many of them aren't transferring is because they would be completely abandoning their old friends and communities. Even now that DC travel to materia is possible it only works one way so it isn't ideal.

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Originally Posted by shiftweave

The issue is that there's insufficient raider population on Crystal, Dynamis, and Primal for raiders to meaningfully engage with the content on these servers.

Adding more servers would make the issue significantly worse. Just add cross-dc pf. Yoshi-p says "spaghetti code" instead of "no comment", it means nothing.

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I don't know if you played before DC travel was implemented but PF outside of Aether was fine back then.

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Originally Posted by mana-burner

I don't know if you played before DC travel was implemented but PF outside of Aether was fine back then.

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Firstly - no it wasn't. Crystal was widely regarded as a total meme, and Primal players regarded as the strange ones who did weird strats. Crystal still to this day held onto that reputation.

Secondly, even if it was, then they did implement DC travel. Aether became the absolute hub, and just removing our access to that space does nothing to fix that. There are 11 DSR parties up on Aether right now. There's ONE party up on ANY OTHER NA dc. With Cross-DC pf, every NA player would have access to twelve parties. Adding more DCs without adding cross-dc pf would just add more zeroes to the board.

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Originally Posted by shiftweave

Firstly - no it wasn't. Crystal was widely regarded as a total meme, and Primal players regarded as the strange ones who did weird strats. Crystal still to this day held onto that reputation.

Secondly, even if it was, then they did implement DC travel. Aether became the absolute hub, and just removing our access to that space does nothing to fix that. There are 11 DSR parties up on Aether right now. There's ONE party up on ANY OTHER NA dc. With Cross-DC pf, every NA player would have access to twelve parties.

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I raided on Crystal before DC travel came out and it was fine. I also did the current tier on Crystal and the experience was still fine. There are definitely enough raiders on Crystal and the perception of it being a total meme is itself a total meme. As for Ultimate raids, party finder is a bad option no matter where you go.

Anyway, my suggestion was not to add new servers or remove access to Aether, only to spread the raider population with ping as the incentive.

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Originally Posted by shiftweave

Yoshi-p says "spaghetti code" instead of "no comment", it means nothing.

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That's not the reason. It's a genuinely complicated and risky feature on the backend like DC travel and world visit is.

I like that you have thoughtful solutions. I just don't trust players to not shoot themselves in the foot. That's why cross DC PF/DF is a necessity. We need to remove the server completely to remove the problem. If playing on Dynamis or Aether becomes meaningless, you've solved the issue. The problem chiefly is the players. You have to remove the barrier. Granted, it will make the community worse as a whole, but to be fair, it kinda already is. You have players selfishly moving to better suit them over their own server health. You're splitting hairs to keep the server communities. They died the second DC travel became a thing. Let's be honest with ourselves.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

Considering I'm on Dynamis but live in Oregon... it would suck *massively* to have my data center end up on the other side of the country, so now I have to deal with a dead server *and* endless lag, so that's definitely a "nay" from me.

If they're going to do a bunch of data center moving of any kind, it should be merging Dynamis into Aether/Primal/Crystal. Give the 2 least populated worlds to Aether, split the remaining 6 into 3 each for Primal & Crystal, and then give Aether a new world later on (when Primal & Crystal population has stabilized) thus bringing all of the data centers that people actually play on up to 11. And just to avoid the same mishap that happened when they created Crystal; Put it to community vote as to which of the 6 remaining Dynamis worlds go where between Primal & Crystal, while also offering people on all 8 of its worlds the ability to free transfer prior to the merge just in case their home world ended up going somewhere they didn't want. Top it off with some official stance on how *none* of the worlds are designated as this or that so people shouldn't feel like they *need* to go to Aether for raiding/Primal for PVP/Crystal for RP because ultimately the labeling issue is the fault of the PLAYERBASE and not Square-Enix, meaning we're mostly to blame for why Aether became too congested in the first place and we really need to break that habit.

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At least you would have the option of moving to a server closer to you. Those of us on the east coast don't currently have that choice. And moving Dynamis to the east coast would probably grow the population significantly. I know I'd transfer in a heartbeat.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

Considering I'm on Dynamis but live in Oregon... it would suck *massively* to have my data center end up on the other side of the country, so now I have to deal with a dead server *and* endless lag, so that's definitely a "nay" from me.

If they're going to do a bunch of data center moving of any kind, it should be merging Dynamis into Aether/Primal/Crystal. Give the 2 least populated worlds to Aether, split the remaining 6 into 3 each for Primal & Crystal, and then give Aether a new world later on (when Primal & Crystal population has stabilized) thus bringing all of the data centers that people actually play on up to 11. And just to avoid the same mishap that happened when they created Crystal; Put it to community vote as to which of the 6 remaining Dynamis worlds go where between Primal & Crystal, while also offering people on all 8 of its worlds the ability to free transfer prior to the merge just in case their home world ended up going somewhere they didn't want. Top it off with some official stance on how *none* of the worlds are designated as this or that so people shouldn't feel like they *need* to go to Aether for raiding/Primal for PVP/Crystal for RP because ultimately the labeling issue is the fault of the PLAYERBASE and not Square-Enix, meaning we're mostly to blame for why Aether became too congested in the first place and we really need to break that habit.

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This is what everyone not living on the west coast has to experience so what you'd go through is what we have to go through every time we log in and have 100+ ping to the server and trouble double weaving. I don't have a lot of sympathy when west coast players have told anyone from the east coast or midwest "suck it up" and "skill issue" for years.

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Originally Posted by VerdeLuck

This is what everyone not living on the west coast has to experience so what you'd go through is what we have to go through every time we log in and have 100+ ping to the server and trouble double weaving. I don't have a lot of sympathy when west coast players have told anyone from the east coast or midwest "suck it up" and "skill issue" for years.

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(east coast here) I remember when I started the game on GNB and found out about double weaving, and I thought it was just my internet dipping temporarly when I randomly couldn't double weave as I was progressing and changing gear frequently (not even materia usage). Wasn't until I played MNK/SAM that I realized my GCD speed played that important of a role under my ping tier for something I saw everyone doing casually everywhere on youtube. Only now as a growing/semi-veteran that I know 80% of those people I saw with no issues are PC using software or West Coast privelege. Actually an even more problematic issue for PvP because your sustain on healing, burst sync'ing to lower reaction, etc. are all ping tied so different jobs have different playstyles and reactions based on how their kit is personally cripled by ping. And it's a "well, I just objectively can't heal as fast, burst as fast, guard as fast, as anyone West Coast without cheating and risking my account, well that's not a fun choice to make."

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

Technically there's nothing stopping you from transferring now, given your ping would be the same regardless, but I don't blame anyone from Crystal wanting to stay put instead given the low-activity state of Dynamis, or how you might have friends/venues you can't get back to easily due to the travel restrictions.

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I don't think you got my point so I'll restate it.
Currently, SE has all NA data centers on the same coast. East coast players don't have a choice in terms of location. The four data centers are effectively the same choice.
In this hypothetical situation where you get moved to the opposite coast you would have choices. There would still be servers near you and you could travel there or get a transfer.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

I'm quite familiar with it actually because for the longest time I lived in Houston, TX which was considered "East Coast" when games like World of Warcraft and Star Wars the Old Republic recommended servers for me, and now that I'm in Eugene, OR my long-time characters were effectively left stranded on less than ideal servers unless I was willing to pay to move them to West Coast ones, and since I didn't want to re-roll entirely, I just quit.

This would basically be the same thing, but instead of it being the result of my real life moving around, it would be Square-Enix forcing my character elsewhere, and what are the odds I'm expected to pay to fix that issue too? Unless by some generosity SE allows me to free transfer to whatever the remaining West Coast server is, assuming they would even let me. Say for example... Aether was the one they left over there, but they still labeled it "Congested" and therefore not eligible for transfers (or even new character creation).

Not that East Coast players should be made to suffer if it's really that bad (I wasn't aware until now), I just don't know how making other people suffer in your place (as you would have your East Coast servers but now West Coasters are stuck in it) is supposed to help the situation unless Square-Enix allows for free transfers so people can regionally resettle, otherwise it's just going to end up a clown fiesta of stranded or even quitting players. In fact, they already had a similar incident in the past when they created the Crystal data center and forced certain then-Aether and Primal worlds into it to serve as an initial grow bed, and this was *before* data center travel so if you ended up Crystal when you didn't want to be... best pony up the dough for a transfer or "deal with it".

Regardless of whether SE goes with data center physical relocation or actual merges, it's important that they let people migrate effortlessly during such a transitional period.

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They could easily provide free server transfers and make sure non-congested servers are available on each data center. It would be like when they gave every character a free fantasia for the graphics update in case players wanted to make adjustments.
Speaking of congested servers, one goal of this whole thing is reducing congestion. If Aether stays on the west coast then most east coast players are probably going to move to the east coast which will free some space for you.
Even if they didn't provide free transfers, your situation wouldn't be as bad as it currently is for us. You wouldn't be "stuck", because as I said above you'd have the option of DC traveling or transferring. Hell, right now I'd happily pay for a transfer if I had a low ping option.

I mentioned this but it bears repeating that ~80% of the US lives in the eastern half of the country.
Personally, I think slightly inconveniencing 20% of the playerbase to make 80% happier is worth it!

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Originally Posted by mana-burner

TL;DR: Spread NA DCs out. The playerbase will naturally distribute itself evenly for better ping so Aether is no longer the PF hub. Nobody is punished and everybody wins.

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No they won't. They'll go where their friends or streamers they simp for are, and that's Aether, with RP alts on Crystal if that's their thing. They'll accept bad ping if it means being where the activity is. All more DCs will lead to is longer queues.

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Originally Posted by Drimn

No they won't. They'll go where their friends or streamers they simp for are, and that's Aether, with RP alts on Crystal if that's their thing. They'll accept bad ping if it means being where the activity is. All more DCs will lead to is longer queues.

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Buddy, it's not 2021 anymore. Also nowhere in the OP did I mention making more DCs, so I don't know why people keep bringing that up.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

They could, but would they? Transferring is a much more involved and complicated process than simply letting someone back into the character creator to make adjustments, including the checklist of things you need to do just to be eligible for a transfer at all.

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They already let people transfer for free.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

Speaking of which... forcing people to transfer due to the newfound physical locations would have immediate consequences on people's friend groups and free companies (...and then there's the housing). Sure, the East Coaster now finding themselves on a East Coast server is happy, but all of their West Coast buddies not so much, and they may transfer away (one way or another) for the same reason you're trying to drive home: Better ping is what/only matters. Data center travel wouldn't be the solution for fractured groups either, given that we've established that trying to play from too far away has a crippling effect on performance, so some of those WC's players aren't going to suddenly come back to play on the EC side, friends or not. And if there's one central data center that's ideal for everyone on both coasts to travel to? Well, now it's the new Aether, and all the current problems that come with current Aether.

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I think if this is enough to ruin your relationships then you probably weren't that close. Pretty much everybody I know from FFXIV talks on discord anyway because the in-game social systems are awful.
Even if it isn't ideal, east coast players manage to do all levels of content from the opposite coast so I don't see why you couldn't travel to play together. Take turns playing with worse ping. It'll be like using the shitty player 2 controller.
Most of your issues are mild inconveniences at worst which aren't very compelling. You raised a good point with housing but Square Enix came up with a solution for this a while ago:
https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...5d22338cf55ce7

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

For one thing, that's US population and not NA player numbers, so I don't rightly know how many are playing from where.

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Mexico seems somewhat even
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._by_population
However 60% of Canada resides in Ontario and Quebec alone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popula..._and_territory
There are also a significant amount of South Americans on NA that are obviously closer to the east coast.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

Secondly, I'm not too fond of being screwed over like that especially when, again, it sounds like trying to play on an East Coast data center would be as terrible for me as it is for East Coast players right now

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I've explained multiple times why it's currently worse for east coast players than it would be for you and I feel like I'm talking to a brick wall at this point.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

Even my own idea of merging Dynamis into Aether/Primal/Crystal would have radical affects on friend groups, free companies, housing, and though it would certainly make *me* happy, and I still need to acknowledge why it could also be pretty bad for everyone that's not me even if the percentage of those inconvenienced by a merge might be low.

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For a person who prides theirself on understanding other perspectives you don't seem to want to acknowledge that the situation you're afraid of is still better than the current situation for the majority of the NA playerbase.
If you have a better solution with 0 displacement that would result in looser travel restrictions and a better connection then I'd like to hear it. If not then you should consider how many people this would benefit even if it doesn't make *you* happy.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

...
Now this is just gaslighting...
....

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Americans really need to stop misusing the concept "gaslighting" for every time someone tries to persuade them that pineapple is good on pizza, however patently ridiculous that might be to the majority of well reasoned people. (I kind of mean that seriously, gaslighting is phenomenally corrosive and it shouldn't be used lightly)

Also, I think you need a hug Aidorouge.
Here is a hug...
/hug
https://media.tenor.com/Z7lccs-igsMA...ll-hug-hug.gif

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

...What? Your whole argument is that East Coast players attempting to play on West Coast servers currently causes performance issues for them, so it would stand to reason that West Coast players attempting to play on East Coast servers would encounter THE EXACT SAME ISSUE.

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I think the point was, that if they had multiple server locations, everyone could have the opportunity to move to a location closer to them and have nice performance you currently enjoy.

West coast players would still have DCs there, but East coast could get some too. If they moved Dynamis somewhere Central or East, I’m sure it would be a lot more attractive to people than it is now.

I’d be interested to see just how many subscribers there are in each geographical region of NA… because it seems atrocious that only the West coast gets good, smooth gameplay.

Remember when it was hosted in Quebec?
Man those were good times.

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Originally Posted by Canadane

Remember when it was hosted in Quebec?
Man those were good times.

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Were they? I seem to remember people complaining about lag constantly because level3 sucks and had a bad node on the Canadian border.

So on the subject of cross-DC PF/DF, from 7.1 onward, PvP rankings will be region wide, and YoshiP further had this to say:

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Y "This is not entirely what I want to do [regarding designated “ranked” DCs per region].... Like Ideally you should just match from wherever right?"
Y "But.... I can't say this yet"
Y "We are working on a matching system that involves every kind of content"
Y "As soon as I have more news, I will make the announcement"

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A lot of people are interpreting this as "We are working on it, we just can't be fully certain if it is going to work out yet", so I guess it's as good an update as any.