Having to DC travel to play ranked now?

Can someone confirm that we will have to travel to a designated DC to be able to queue for ranked pvp? Or will the duty finder just move us to the designated DC for the game duration and move us back at the end?

I assume the former since the latter would put serious load on the DC travel system...

What kind of decision is this?? Ranked pvp is THE thing I am looking forward to and you managed to even spoil this for me. Thanks a lot.

They mentioned in the live letter that you need to be in the selected DC in your region to participate.
But you can travel between DC's now so...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Valence

Can someone confirm that we will have to travel to a designated DC to be able to queue for ranked pvp? Or will the duty finder just move us to the designated DC for the game duration and move us back at the end?

I assume the former since the latter would put serious load on the DC travel system...

What kind of decision is this?? Ranked pvp is THE thing I am looking forward to and you managed to even spoil this for me. Thanks a lot.

---

This does seem to be the case. Presumably the idea is to get a critical mass for ranked by moving everyone in a given region to one DC. This strikes me as heavy-handed at best.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Canadane

They mentioned in the live letter that you need to be in the selected DC in your region to participate.
But you can travel between DC's now so...

---

Assuming they aren't locked or have a long queue to even change DCs, sure.

This is honestly just SE doubling down on the DC visit stuff they did earlier in the expansion. Instead of listening to feedback, they're just going to get more and more heavy handed about forcing people off DCs they don't want them on. It's the only reason they would implement this terrible idea instead of just waiting for the cross-DC queuing they hinted at.

This is a really dumb question, but can players on "new" worlds actually do this?

I used to travel between DCs before when I lived on Malboro, but after moving to Maduin a couple months back to get the EXP bonus I don't seem to have that option anymore. Is there something I'm missing?

And if not does this mean I won't be able to play ranked when the new season comes? :( I was really looking forward to my first full season of PVP!

This is such a dumb decision. If congestion hits when you travel then I guess you just don't get to play ranked that day.

Yoshi P knows that people gathering on one single DC to raid is causing problems, so his solution is to force people who don't tend to DC travel to start DC travelling? This is just going to be a disaster.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Aedwyn

This is a really dumb question, but can players on "new" worlds actually do this?

I used to travel between DCs before when I lived on Malboro, but after moving to Maduin a couple months back to get the EXP bonus I don't seem to have that option anymore. Is there something I'm missing?

And if not does this mean I won't be able to play ranked when the new season comes? :( I was really looking forward to my first full season of PVP!

---

You might be confusing with transferring your home world and world visit and possibly DC visit.
To move to Malboro from Maduin, you'd need to move from Dynamis to Crystal from the login screen. Not the aetheryte ingame. They are on separate data centers but you can indeed still do this.

However if you were looking to permanently move your home world back to Maduin you'd be restricted if there hasn't been 90 days since you transferred to your new world.
You can find out more information about the World Transfer process and restrictions here, https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...nsfer_service/
And you can find out more information on the DC visit here, https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...acentertravel/

Also this is entirely speculation here, but this may be the start of their plans for a cross-DC DF/PF.
It just may be that PvP was set to go before the system itself was.

Again, just hopeful speculation. But if true it would mean future seasons wouldn't have an issue as you could queue up from whatever DC even if it's physically being hosted on a specific one.

Imagine not being able to rank on the leaderboard cause the DC you are trying to visit is always locked when you get off work.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Arzalis

This is honestly just SE doubling down on the DC visit stuff they did earlier in the expansion. Instead of listening to feedback, they're just going to get more and more heavy handed about forcing people off DCs they don't want them on. It's the only reason they would implement this terrible idea instead of just waiting for the cross-DC queuing they hinted at.

---

This is some serious head scratcher isn't it? Imagine that Frontlines will have to wait for 4 MORE MONTHS to get their promised role actions because and I quote "they couldn't finish them on time", but instead of you know, inserting those in patch 7.11, 7.15 or whatever, they'll have to wait for 7.2 next year because it wasn't included into the schedule!

Meanwhile they rush this change with queuing in ranked when they're working on a solution for global DC queues. What kind of priorities is this?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Valence

Can someone confirm that we will have to travel to a designated DC to be able to queue for ranked pvp? Or will the duty finder just move us to the designated DC for the game duration and move us back at the end?

I assume the former since the latter would put serious load on the DC travel system...

What kind of decision is this?? Ranked pvp is THE thing I am looking forward to and you managed to even spoil this for me. Thanks a lot.

---

This is likely done to try and reduce everyone pilling onto one DC like they are currently and get some people back to their native DC. ATM loads of people from Chaos are pilling onto Light as it has the better organised raid scene. The same thing is happening in America (with Aether I believe) and Japan. It looks like they have specifically chosen different DC's from the popular ones to be the ranked PVP servers - so if people want to do it they will have to travel and thus ease congestion on Light, Aether etc.

Rather weird. Also odd that for US and JP, instead of 4 x 100 people getting rewards, it's now only 300(-33%). Meanwhile EU jumps from 2 x 100 to 300 (+50%).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by BristolRuss

This is likely done to try and reduce everyone pilling onto one DC like they are currently and get some people back to their native DC. ATM loads of people from Chaos are pilling onto Light as it has the better organised raid scene. The same thing is happening in America (with Aether I believe) and Japan. It looks like they have specifically chosen different DC's from the popular ones to be the ranked PVP servers - so if people want to do it they will have to travel and thus ease congestion on Light, Aether etc.

---

Is the ranked PvP community large enough to make a difference to congestion?

My main takeaway is that cross-DC queues are not remotely close, else they wouldn't have applied this band aid. Be interesting to see if it works.

I feel the primary motivation is to reduce queue times for ranked. In NA there often are not enough players on one DC to pop ranked in the latter half of a season.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by PGuin

I feel the primary motivation is to reduce queue times for ranked. In NA there often are not enough players on one DC to pop ranked in the latter half of a season.

---

I think that's right, in which case this addresses a symptom, not a cause. Why does ranked die after a few weeks?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mawlzy

I think that's right, in which case this addresses a symptom, not a cause. Why does ranked die after a few weeks?

---

*taps at my forum history of talking about the lack of worthwhile, ranked-specific incentives for all skill tiers throughout the season and not just diamond+ at the end of season*

We about to come full circle. <3

Anyways, for the sake of not losing FC access, retainer access, ability to mine unspoiled gathering nodes and other things, now regardless if ranked pvp or high-end raiding - region-wide cross DC matching literally cannot come soon enough.

I don't think this is going to change anything for the latter half of the season. Or even most of it. Ranked peters out after a handful of weeks usually, and that's mostly tied to the model itself, not the population. Not only that, but people also have other things to focus on in the game especially when they continue to release half the seasons right during savage releases or ultimate releases.

People usually reach the rank they aim for (or not), then play a little more for fun and when they've had their fill, the queues start dying until they pick up one week before the end of the season for stragglers or people just waking up there. I really don't see how this is tied to the amount of players. Don't get me wrong though, getting more players is something ranked definitely needs.

As long as the devs is allowing everyone to boost to platinum I hardly see the queue times changing.

Everyone being on one DC feels like a band-aid. You have more people in rank. Yet, you'll still have them small bubbles. Gold and below will probably see no change as far as playtime and body count for that time period is concerned due to boosting.

Will be looking to see how this affects rank going forward. Right now, I'm personally not too convinced and will actively choose to sit out of rank.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by PGuin

I feel the primary motivation is to reduce queue times for ranked. In NA there often are not enough players on one DC to pop ranked in the latter half of a season.

---

It's probably going to backfire and we'll just see less people play ranked instead.

I don't care much about playing ranked, but I did it because there was really no reason not to when I'm grinding new seasons rewards anyway. Now that I have to move DCs? I'll just play unranked.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Aidorouge

As someone who doesn't (and never will) play Ranked, this is just kinda whatever to me.

Though it does remind me of how some people suggested the only way to break community-made labels on data centers is if Square-Enix designated those labels themselves, and this is the closest we're getting to them making a "PVP server".

---

This is bad overall. I have my social circles on the other DC. This means that every time I want to connect to the game and play for ranked when the season releases, I'm essentially cutting myself off everything that makes it a MMO on the other end. Ranked also takes a lot of time and dedication (you legit spend as much time in ranked as you can in savage or ultimates if you're serious about it), which means that much time away from the MMO part of it.

And yes, that it also happens for pve raiders is also problematic when they're forced to go to other DCs because theirs is dead. Fortunately as a raider I have never had to deal with this myself but I can relate.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mawlzy

I think that's right, in which case this addresses a symptom, not a cause. Why does ranked die after a few weeks?

---

This is more of a cause than you'd realize. One of the major reasons some dc's stop popping latter in each season is because most of the players will simply go to the one dc that popped that day to play on alts instead of wait up a few hours to try to pop on their native dc.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Aidorouge

The funniest part is that they chose Primal, which is basically "Aether 2.0" right now when it comes to population because that's where most people go due to the travel restrictions on Aether, instead of say... Dynamis, which not only lacks for player numbers, but is the only NA data center with no community identity or label so everyone on the NA side understandably ignores us/doesn't make characters here/transfers away.

The one time they had the means to help with that, and they still left the dead data center to stay dead, lol. It's even more hilarious because Dynamis has *no* travel restrictions, anyone from anywhere in NA can come here all the time, but depending on the time of day, you can't get into Primal (and it's only going to get more congested from this decision). Always with the one step forward, three steps back.

---

They probably chose primal because it has the higher average ranked activity compared to crystal and dynamis.

Hot take but they shouldn't have let people from other DCs queue in DCs that aren't their homes. Visit? Sure, that's great, but queue up? How did they not expect this to happen in terms of imbalances? They should have waited to have an actual cross DC queue with a shared pool of players like the cross server queue has worked since forever to enable it...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Aidorouge

That still leaves the issue of congestion though, unless they plan on dropping the travel/transfer restrictions for Primal by then.

It also means that Square-Enix is unofficially going along with the community-made labels if they've decided Primal is "PVP" like the players decided, which also means they've probably given up on getting people to stop seeing Aether for "Raiding" and Crystal for "RP". And Dynamis... is just dead weight/future server merge fodder I guess, they have nothing else left to be.

---

I get the concern but the main reason for congestion on primal is mogtomes incentivizing 3 dc's to visit primal at once for easy rw pops. Once mogtomes ends we will return to the norm of primal being *relatively* deserted with anyone looking to pf a fight visiting aether. I'd also prefer square push harder for a functioning cross dc queue but thats likely far in the future, based on the physical dc limitations.

I'm on Primal and I think this is a terrible idea. Nobody should ever be forced to DC travel for anything. I've always been an outspoken critic of the Aether dogpiling and this is even more repugnant since it's being endorsed by the devs themselves and not just players being dumb. Hopefully this change isn't permanent.

I don't think its a great solution for the long term. Short term it just means queues will last a few weeks longer, but it now just introduces all the issues that players have with the current data center travel system. Speaking from experience as a Primal player having to go to Aether because the PF on our data center is just dead, having to give up all the services like Retainers, Housing, etc, just to be able to play the game is incredibly cringe. With this new requirement, they are just forcing this now upon every player with a remote interest in actually doing ranked. It's more of a critique of the data center travel system, but since its being forced on ranked players it just becomes their issue now.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Aidorouge

Would the numbers really go back to "relatively" normal though? Even before the mogtome event I would have to stand outside of Primal until the late-evening to try and squeeze in because Aether was always closed off until well after midnight, as it seemed like everyone decided Primal was the "new Aether" if I wanted to do roulettes (especially Frontlines). I don't know anything about the ranked PVP scene so I don't know how much it would impact congestion (if it does at all).

---

The concern is less "How will this impact congestion?" and more "There's already congestion issues, so if I have to travel to a DC that already has issues, that means I can be hit by congestion and just lose out on a day of ranked matches".

I suppose at least they were mindful enough to not pick the "raider" DCs like Aether, Mana and Light.

It's going to come down to if they lift travel restrictions or not, imo.

If they lift travel restrictions? - Then this was the next best thing they could do while cross-DC DF/PF is still being implemented.

If they don't lift travel restrictions? - My popcorn is ready!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Aidorouge

Would the numbers really go back to "relatively" normal though? Even before the mogtome event I would have to stand outside of Primal until the late-evening to try and squeeze in because Aether was always closed off until well after midnight, as it seemed like everyone decided Primal was the "new Aether" if I wanted to do roulettes (especially Frontlines). I don't know anything about the ranked PVP scene so I don't know how much it would impact congestion (if it does at all).

---

and once again people admit they're complaining about ranked despite having no clue... ranked probably draws like 100-150 people actively per dc max, which is a drop in the bucket in the scheme of xiv's player numbers. Also not all of those players will even be on at the same time to occupy space on primal. for the record I don't blame anyone for being unfamiliar with ranked cc since its a very niche community within the already niche community of active pvpers, but i would appreciate if people took a step back before thowing fuel on the fire when they don't know anything about the pvp scene.