Datacenters: A Plea For Community Building, Not Fracturing

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Seriously get over it. It's been done because it's necessary. They're not doing it to make people upset. I have a Balmung alt that won't be able to play with many of my friends now but waiting in a queue of over 3000 to log into the game is kind of ridiculous.

This happened for only two weeks over a two year span. Was it annoying? Absolutely. But I think a good number of people would rather be inconvenienced for a handful of hours over a two week period than having to uproot entirely. That being said, the OP doesn't present a good counter argument. A merger isn't remotely possible, especially given SE seems intent not maintaining their current, heavily dated, infrastructure.

I feel like SE somewhat expect the PF to help with this (thus avoiding long or any queues) and also the World Visit offering more opportunities to find other like-minded players to run content with. Of course some players will lose social connections by the split but we'll see how that goes. Humanity (i.e the players) might actually surprise us and prepare for it... but wishful thinking eh.

Oh, they absolutely do. I suspect they lumped mostly low population servers with Balmung and Mateus in the hopes people will spread out more. What they aren't accounting for is NA/EU's preference to congregate hence why you're seeing so many people talking about transferring back to Aether. And why it took them outright locking Balmung down to stop people from transferring to it. We could very easily end up with the same Raubahn bottleneck again if enough people dogpile one datacenter. This is especially true if they put another instance very early into the MSQ, which is what caused a lot of their problems to begin with.

[Cleanse]

That being said, the OP doesn't present a good counter argument. A merger isn't remotely possible, especially given SE seems intent not maintaining their current, heavily dated, infrastructure.

That was the point. They have the server visitation tech, find a way to use that feature to spread the load on bottlenecks. Investment in their servers should be the #1 priority. All of the fantasias people buy should have it be worth it. It's 2018 and people still need to use a vpn in order to have a stable connection.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

That was the point. They have the server visitation tech, find a way to use that feature to spread the load on bottlenecks. Investment in their servers should be the #1 priority. All of the fantasias people buy should have it be worth it. It's 2018 and people still need to use a vpn in order to have a stable connection.

A VPN has nothing to do with server stability.

Server visitation has nothing to do with spreading the load for bottlenecks. Instances aren't per world, they are per datacenter. Adding 50% more instance servers with a new datacenter will solve bottlenecks, hence the solution they came up with.

[Cleanse]

A VPN has nothing to do with server stability.

Server visitation has nothing to do with spreading the load for bottlenecks. Instances aren't per world, they are per datacenter. Adding 50% more instance servers with a new datacenter will solve bottlenecks, hence the solution they came up with.

Sorry my context was not clear. My point was that since ARR people have had to pay for a vpn in order to play with a stable ping, people have had to pay (financially and socially) to move servers, and have had to pay a subscription fee. Putting the burden on the player-base again is a big letdown. Instead of investing in a proper, modern server infrastructure.

[Nalien]

Instead of investing in a proper, modern server infrastructure.

They are investing in modern server infrastructure... Just not for this game.... Final Fantasy XVI Online, please look forward to it.

[Alien_Gamer]

Sorry my context was not clear. My point was that since ARR people have had to pay for a vpn in order to play with a stable ping, people have had to pay (financially and socially) to move servers, and have had to pay a subscription fee. Putting the burden on the player-base again is a big letdown. Instead of investing in a proper, modern server infrastructure.

Your ping time is a result of many different things, only one of which are the servers themselves; by far the vast majority of what affects your ping is the ISP networks your data travels across and how they chose to route your data which SE has no control over. Using a VPN is a player choice to bypass that and hopefully get a better ping, its not something SE forces them to do.

Moving servers is a player choice, nothing SE does forces a player to move. Blaming SE for the cost of transfers is simply not taking responsibility for your own choices.

The only burden on the playerbase is the sub fee, everything else is optional for the players. You don't have to transfer servers at any point nor do you have to use a VPN. Those are personal choices for personal gains but they are not mandatory to play the game.

SE has a proper server infrastructure. They're leasing rackspace from the ISP to host their games and ISPs typically have a 3 to 5 year refresh cycle for internal hardware which means FF14 is not running on antiquated hardware or poor infrastructure. If you wanted to blame SE for how inefficient their game engine is and how it handles network traffic or their decisions for back up times or character updates, that would be fair but none of that is server infrastructure.

This new DC is new physical rackspace and server blades to host the game. Its balancing the load across more hardware leaving more room for overhead and growth which means the servers are more stable and have less issues with bottlenecks and server slowdowns. Each DC will have more room for instances preventing things like Raubahn EX at the beginning of SB, more room for housing wards, more room for dungeon/trial instances, more room for inventory, etc. This move sucks for statics, and people that try to play with others who will no longer be on the same DC but ultimately this is a huge benefit to everyone in the game and for the game in and of itself. Your request to merge the DCs would only exacerbate every issue people have had with the servers for literally no benefit to the game or players.

[Rosa_Frandlia]

Your ping time is a result of many different things, only one of which are the servers themselves; by far the vast majority of what affects your ping is the ISP networks your data travels across and how they chose to route your data which SE has no control over. Using a VPN is a player choice to bypass that and hopefully get a better ping, its not something SE forces them to do.

The only burden on the playerbase is the sub fee, everything else is optional for the players. You don't have to transfer servers at any point nor do you have to use a VPN. Those are personal choices for personal gains but they are not mandatory to play the game.

SE has a proper server infrastructure. They're leasing rackspace from the ISP to host their games and ISPs typically have a 3 to 5 year refresh cycle for internal hardware which means FF14 is not running on antiquated hardware or poor infrastructure. If you wanted to blame SE for how inefficient their game engine is and how it handles network traffic or their decisions for back up times or character updates, that would be fair but none of that is server infrastructure.

This new DC is new physical rackspace and server blades to host the game. Its balancing the load across more hardware leaving more room for overhead and growth which means the servers are more stable and have less issues with bottlenecks and server slowdowns. Each DC will have more room for instances preventing things like Raubahn EX at the beginning of SB, more room for housing wards, more room for dungeon/trial instances, more room for inventory, etc. This move sucks for statics, and people that try to play with others who will no longer be on the same DC but ultimately this is a huge benefit to everyone in the game and for the game in and of itself. Your request to merge the DCs would only exacerbate every issue people have had with the servers for literally no benefit to the game or players.

I should mention I feared the new data center causing a split between West and East Coast North America, meaning an even worse split on worlds. When the servers were in Montreal, I had bad pings. Now that thy are in California, I have good pings. Why? Because I'm on the West Coast. You look at other games and they have East and West Coast data centers, something Final Fantasy XIV does not. A split with Crystal being on the East Coast and Primal being on the West Coast would have meant for logistics I'd need to leave my world as we are being moved too.

And if anyone is saying that all the Primal worlds coming are dead, I had a que (be it 7 people) of world full yesterday. I wouldn't exactly say that is a dead server and we are known on Primal as being the one for crafters and gatherers. I welcome people coming to visit and buying the 380 gear I make as that is a larger market.

[Cleanse]

Your ping time is a result of many different things, only one of which are the servers themselves; by far the vast majority of what affects your ping is the ISP networks your data travels across and how they chose to route your data which SE has no control over. Using a VPN is a player choice to bypass that and hopefully get a better ping, its not something SE forces them to do.

The servers can be unreliable during peak hours (the routing from certain regions gets bottlenecked -- maybe it's a fault of the US's infrastructure) and the go to suggestion by the player base is to get a vpn. It is a choice to get a vpn, but at the same time, a better host for the servers would appease their customers.

Moving servers is a player choice, nothing SE does forces a player to move. Blaming SE for the cost of transfers is simply not taking responsibility for your own choices.

I wasn't really blaming them, but stating they have made money from their server transfers due to the instability.

If you wanted to blame SE for how inefficient their game engine is and how it handles network traffic or their decisions for back up times or character updates, that would be fair but none of that is server infrastructure.

I feel the backend management software would be included in the infrastructure. Load balancing based on demand (beginning of an expansion). If we are being nitpicky though, I will just concede.

Throwing more hardware at it seems backwards. Aether most likely will have another (or few) mega servers that will cause the same issues Balmung has.

Advancing their tech to support a united North American playerbase is where most companies start or have moved towards.

[LaylaTsarra]

This happened for only two weeks over a two year span.

For only two weeks? Really? That's acceptable to you?

No it's not acceptable in my opinion and that's not to mention the fact that many after waiting forever in queues of over 3000 to get in only to get kicked and to have to get back into line again. I applaud SE for taking measures to try and prevent that from happening again. One can hope that this will in fact work and I'll guess we'll find out when expansion hits.

[Jojoya]

For only two weeks? Really? That's acceptable to you?

No it's not acceptable in my opinion and that's not to mention the fact that many after waiting forever in queues of over 3000 to get in only to get kicked and to have to get back into line again. I applaud SE for taking measures to try and prevent that from happening again. One can hope that this will in fact work and I'll guess we'll find out when expansion hits.

Except this won't prevent it from happening again because most players refuse to make smart choices. They'll once again zerg the game at release, causing bottlenecks and crashes.