Incentives for moving Data Center

I will preempt this with:
I know congestion should not be this bad to begin with given the player number drop. This is not about that. My dream would be more capacity on the busy DCs but since that just is not happening as they would rather close them down than upgrade them let's look at what can be done with the options available.


Currently, I'll be real, moving to the preferred worlds is a joke despite it being free of charge.
Dynamis in particular is so dead it's known across all DCs that the poor sods need to migrate for group content. I just checked the housing market there again and it's just sad. You can really tell just how dead that DC is by how many available plots there are, even the coveted larges.

That said, I could - and I think others might as well - be swayed if there was a better incentives system in place to move to that DC in particular. This would also require streamlining of other systems ofc.


Starting with existing FCs:
Let FC leaders move the existing FC. Especially small groups or solo players will struggle to quickly recover from a move and the storage space in the vault is not to be underestimated. This leads me into point two.

Housing:
I mean look at Dynamis. I already mentioned it is empty. Give people the option to move their existing home to a free plot of the same size without bids. FC owners in particular will be hesitant to let go of a FC home that took hours or weeks to decorate and they are attached to. Not to mention the items would all need to be moved, too. Having to pay for extra retainers just to hold everything is going to stop any plan to move instantly. Not to mention losing the money invested in a house only to have to instantly spend it again... yeah no.
We have the space. Just give it to people that want it. On top of that this may incentivize friends without a home to follow suit since there will be a much better chance of them winning the lottery finally.

Group finder:
Instance finding in general needs to be made better. Just allow all DCs to play together via both the roulette and group finder. It would solve a lot of these instance tourism problems, but I believe this has also been discussed to death.

Market:
This one would hurt me too as someone who has made most of their money from the MB but a globalized marketplace within each region would also counteract the lack of supply and demand on a low pop world. I can see this speeding up sales and making everything more affordable, something that would play in the favor of especially newer players.

Happy to hear other's additions but I believe those are some of the biggest issues I have been grappling with as I watch the worlds go down time and time again.

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Originally Posted by FeyFavilla

Give people the option to move their existing home to a free plot of the same size without bids

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Why would ANYONE with a house on a populated data center would want to move to a dead data center while keeping house of the same size? It has to be a significant upgrade like random small house in Ul'dah to guaranteed Mist 35 house to be justified.

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Originally Posted by Alicie

Why would ANYONE with a house on a populated data center would want to move to a dead data center while keeping house of the same size? It has to be a significant upgrade like random small house in Ul'dah to guaranteed Mist 35 house to be justified.

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Amber Draught Chocobo was a pretty nice argument for me.

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Originally Posted by Alicie

Why would ANYONE with a house on a populated data center would want to move to a dead data center while keeping house of the same size? It has to be a significant upgrade like random small house in Ul'dah to guaranteed Mist 35 house to be justified.

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Space. Congestion. The high pop servers are unstable and given that the wards, outside of venues, are quite empty at any hour of the day it really does not matter if my home is on this or that world. Playing on a less populated space has its benefits as well. Smaller, closer knit communities for example. If there were better incentives and more people decided to move the worlds would no longer be dead. That is the entire point of the incentives. Up the population number.

Currently as it stands if you are on a locked world and try to bring in a friend you can barely play together since a lot of content is world-restricted, from retainer bells to instanced stuff like the cosmic explorations. Recruit-a-friend may as well not exist if there is no reason to bring a friend in to play with you in the current state of things.

Plus... as I mentioned in the OP there are things you can do to make less populated worlds not have as many downsides. If there was a more interconnected system for gameplay many issues that come from being on a low pop server would be solved.

At this point, Dynamis should just be merged with the other DCs. It's never going to get popular. I get some people like being on a dead DC because it's quiet, but it's a failed effort. With the drop in popularity of the game since DT, I think the other 3 DCs would benefit from Dynamis people moving over to Aether/Primal/Crystal

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Originally Posted by OliverQ

At this point, Dynamis should just be merged with the other DCs. It's never going to get popular. I get some people like being on a dead DC because it's quiet, but it's a failed effort. With the drop in popularity of the game since DT, I think the other 3 DCs would benefit from Dynamis people moving over to Aether/Primal/Crystal

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I would honestly prefer that too as stated at the beginning. It just makes sense to expand the existing space more. I just suspect that, since their answer to congestion has always been 'just add more servers' instead of adding capacity to existing ones this will not come to pass so I am trying to look at alternatives. I kind of also don't see them nuking dynamis and risking the backlash for basically uprooting the players there against their will.

Merge Dynamis into Primal only. This Datacenter is hurting. Apparently Crystal and Aether need to be completely closed they have too many players.
Can a Data Center have 16 worlds? If it can, I don't see the issue.

Wait, hold on, if no one is even bidding on even the large plots, doesn't that mean it's easy to get one in the first place already?

I kinda get that grinding a new FC to lvl 30 is tedious, but nothing is locked away at max rank other than being able to store more FC buff items. Also, many players have already moved to Dynamis for housing since its launch, and SE won't suddenly nuke them from existence so it can be merged with the older DCs, which in turn will make them less efficient or stable before being sundered.

Finally, the biggest incentive so far from the latest patch is that both aether and crystal are Congested so the only way for new players to join is join Dynamis or Primal too.

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Originally Posted by CCheshire

Wait, hold on, if no one is even bidding on even the large plots, doesn't that mean it's easy to get one in the first place already?

I kinda get that grinding a new FC to lvl 30 is tedious, but nothing is locked away at max rank other than being able to store more FC buff items. Also, many players have already moved to Dynamis for housing since its launch, and SE won't suddenly nuke them from existence so it can be merged with the older DCs, which in turn will make them less efficient or stable before being sundered.

Finally, the biggest incentive so far from the latest patch is that both aether and crystal are Congested so the only way for new players to join is join Dynamis or Primal too.

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Relinquishing a plot loses you money. A lot, depending on the size.
Doing that also would either force you to make enough inventory space (somehow) to hold all of your stuff or just let it be destroyed.
Same with FCs. All of that storage would need to be managed between retainers and chocobo and that is in most cases just not going to happen. Taking the existing ones and moving them over would be an easy fix that does not punish someone for moving. It should not be that difficult since they can do it with player inventory, retainers and chocobos. The basic framework exists, it might just be practical to expand it.
And new players... given the current sub trends there are not really enough to make a big difference, and I can guarantee a lot of people who would bring in friends will simply wait until their world opens again. It's what I did back when I joined because I wanted to play with friends.

Not asking for hand-outs, just for square to take into consideration what might be stopping people from relocating despite the incentives they already give us and how to work around some issues we have with DC limited content and functionality.

wdym SE will already reimburse players with full costs of the estate and 3m for lost furnishing when anyone moves from Congested to any Preferred+ World? Also, you can rent a 2nd retainer for extra storage for 1 month for $2 to fill it up with furniture before moving over too.

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...ing/#worldtype

i got a mist med house today after a lott of trys i got it with lucky number 6

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Originally Posted by OliverQ

At this point, Dynamis should just be merged with the other DCs. It's never going to get popular. I get some people like being on a dead DC because it's quiet, but it's a failed effort. With the drop in popularity of the game since DT, I think the other 3 DCs would benefit from Dynamis people moving over to Aether/Primal/Crystal

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SE had to separate extra worlds from JP into their own data center because data center could not handle 10-11 worlds. I have huge doubts that it suddenly will be able to do so on NA.
Sure, hardware has advanced a lot but I doubt FFXIV servers are using cutting-edge servers.

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Originally Posted by CCheshire

Wait, hold on, if no one is even bidding on even the large plots, doesn't that mean it's easy to get one in the first place already?

I kinda get that grinding a new FC to lvl 30 is tedious, but nothing is locked away at max rank other than being able to store more FC buff items. Also, many players have already moved to Dynamis for housing since its launch, and SE won't suddenly nuke them from existence so it can be merged with the older DCs, which in turn will make them less efficient or stable before being sundered.

Finally, the biggest incentive so far from the latest patch is that both aether and crystal are Congested so the only way for new players to join is join Dynamis or Primal too.

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Nah, larges are all picked out on Dynamis. You do see one-two less desired plots, mostly in Goblet and Empy free up per period, but you aren't just getting prime plots in mist/shiro/lb.

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Originally Posted by SalamanderIX

Merge Dynamis into Primal only. This Datacenter is hurting. Apparently Crystal and Aether need to be completely closed they have too many players.
Can a Data Center have 16 worlds? If it can, I don't see the issue.

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From what I understand, a DC cannot have 16 worlds due to infrastructure which is part of the issue with EU as well. Light is the more populated and popular and Chaos suffers because of it, but they can't merge the DCs because they would have to get rid of worlds, and that's not a fair thing to do.

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Originally Posted by Nyastra

From what I understand, a DC cannot have 16 worlds due to infrastructure which is part of the issue with EU as well. Light is the more populated and popular and Chaos suffers because of it, but they can't merge the DCs because they would have to get rid of worlds, and that's not a fair thing to do.

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As the playerbase goes into hiatus or straight up shrinks, Chaos suffers because whoever is left here and wants to raid is very likely to simply transfer over to Light. I like Chaos and I'm already settled in, moving is not really an option for me anymore, but man if it isn't sad to open PF and not even find venue spam... lol

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Originally Posted by CCheshire

wdym SE will already reimburse players with full costs of the estate and 3m for lost furnishing when anyone moves from Congested to any Preferred+ World? Also, you can rent a 2nd retainer for extra storage for 1 month for $2 to fill it up with furniture before moving over too.

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...ing/#worldtype

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Oh! Oh damn I really missed that. I apologize for being wrong on that statement but the sentiment does still hold up.
Because - 3 mil is not realistic to cover a medium size furnished house and up. I am pretty sure the items i have in my home plus in storage well break the mark twice over. Not to mention the hassle of having to hunt the items down again and carry everything from the market board back to the house and then spend ages refurnishing it. And that does not include event items no longer available outside of the cash shop. Or just the step of having to do all of these things and then also having to start bidding on new houses.

Objects at rest stay at rest, if someone is set in a space they will need to be moved or lured. I would much prefer just getting the chocobo feathers and having my character plus the connected things moved over than having to invest dozens of hours (if not more if I am honest about how long it took me to do my home lol) and be handed a meager few mil. I admit I was wrong about the loss of releasing the plot but there is still plenty of related issues.

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Originally Posted by FeyFavilla

I will preempt this with:
I know congestion should not be this bad to begin with given the player number drop.

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I don't think congestion has anything to to with the global number of players, it has to do with people all going to the same data center simply because being on a more populated server is advantageous (lower prices on MB, faster queues, etc.)

Any expectation that people will act against their self interest for the "sake of the greater good" (like improving server population balance) is completely unrealistic in a MMORPG.

Therefore regarding your other point: moving to a different server should at a minimum be completely seamless and hassle free, even for people with houses, to the fullest possible extent. No fussing around with retainers to keep furniture, for example. I'd go as far as to say that after moving you should be able to bid for free on an available plot and your house should be entirely restored with all its furniture if you win the plot.

And even that wouldn't be enough for people to migrate to less populated servers, because even if the process was completely smooth and hassle free, doing so would still work against their self interest. You'd have to give incentives on top of all that. Perhaps give them the favored server exp buff, with the same rules as when creating a new character (ie it works only if you play on that server).

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Originally Posted by YumieYumiki

(...)And even that wouldn't be enough for people to migrate to less populated servers, because even if the process was completely smooth and hassle free, doing so would still work against their self interest. You'd have to give incentives on top of all that. Perhaps give them the favored server exp buff, with the same rules as when creating a new character (ie it works only if you play on that server).

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That is honestly a good idea that would not really cost them anything. I doubt the amount of boosts people buy would drop significantly since even a xp buff would still require hours of work. There is probably a ton of little things like this they could offer that would cover many play styles. Maybe even offer a free extra retainer since those are DC locked anyhow, though that would also imply it has to be removed if the character changes DC at any point.