The only incentive to get me back to Materia is DC travel.

[VelKallor]

You play in a country that has a vastly superior internet than Australia,

Ummm.....no.

[Missforester]

Well for being on Chaos and being in EU i can tell you we are doing just fine with the ping and the travelling. I am waiting for SE to open up the rest which most likely not happen anytime soon but i keep my fingers crossed

[Osteichthyes]

Best thing that I can think of (and the most expensive), is to open up a new DC in Singapore, put it under Materia and make a SEA/OCE region. Give options to players from various regions.

As much as DC travel would be nice for queue times, in terms of culture and the way content is handled it would become fairly messy. People would likely try and impose what they are familiar with on people and things would quickly devolve into arguing, and in the end it doesn't actually make OCE more populated in terms of PF/DF. People will still move DC to get their dailies/weeklies/prog, then come right back. I just don't see it having the affect that people desire.

Forcing people to move is simply just a wrong answer. Nothing breeds contempt more than being told how to have fun, so moving Elemental over will never work.

I once asked MrHappy about this and his advice was to advertise the advantages, and OCE definitely has advantages. I keep saying OCE isn't dead and it's true, but it is small, so the problems that exist in MMOs are greatly amplified. You can get stuff done, you just need to be smart about it (and patient). Use the PF to find helpers and often you will find help (I try to join as many PFs as possible). Try to learn when people will raid, use discord groups, etc. It takes some more effort.

I just don't see how giving people a way to play off of Materia will help the numbers grow in a meaningful way. It would just mean that Materia DF is even more slow than it is now since there would be more incentive to just move DC for quicker queues, thus reducing the player queueing count even further. The only thing that this would mean is that people could move here, get a house, then not play here.

(Apologies for any errors, it's 3am and am tired.)

[Tigerlilley]

I just don't see how giving people a way to play off of Materia will help the numbers grow in a meaningful way. It would just mean that Materia DF is even more slow than it is now since there would be more incentive to just move DC for quicker queues, thus reducing the player queueing count even further. The only thing that this would mean is that people could move here, get a house, then not play here.

Because it's removing the main "risk" people are weighing up when deciding to move or not.

If you knew that you could always go play with the friends and communities we've spent a decade building, if you knew that you could get a queue at 7am before work, the risk of deciding to transfer to Materia is gone. With the risk gone, the population can grow. With population growth, DC travelling for queue times will be less needed. People don't WANT to dc travel for queues. Just having the option there is key.

With the new Dynamis datacentre for example - there is zero risk of worry for anyone looking to transfer. NA players know that if there are any issues with population or queues, well you can just pop on over to Aether or Primal or Crystal. You don't have to leave friends, you don't lose anything.

Materia doesn't have that - it's too much risk to move.

[LianaThorne]

Bumping to keep relevant

[Illmaeran]

It's important to keep in mind the purpose of creating the new Datacenters: spreading out the population to avoid the major queue problems seen at Endwalker's launch. Do you remember the uproar from the community when they weren't able to get in for hours or even days? Do you remember the consistent login server crashes because of overload? Do you remember how people were screaming for an immediate solution and relief from massive queues and technical issues?

New DCs are the permanent solution.

SE have given the players the remedy they were demanding so vociferously. It's now up to the players to think ahead and take the solution offered. Yes, it means lower population servers for a while. Yes, it means queues for daily content may be longer in the short term. In order to take advantage of the remedy and be in the best possible situation for the long term, it's in peoples' best interest to spread out and build solid populations on the new DCs. Moving to a new DC while actually playing on the old one will only discourage others from moving, or moving then returning to their original DC, because content queues aren't fast enough for the Hivemind's liking.

Look to the future and build your community today.

[Myrany]

It's important to keep in mind the purpose of creating the new Datacenters: spreading out the population to avoid the major queue problems seen at Endwalker's launch. Do you remember the uproar from the community when they weren't able to get in for hours or even days? Do you remember the consistent login server crashes because of overload? Do you remember how people were screaming for an immediate solution and relief from massive queues and technical issues?

New DCs are the permanent solution.

SE have given the players the remedy they were demanding so vociferously. It's now up to the players to think ahead and take the solution offered. Yes, it means lower population servers for a while. Yes, it means queues for daily content may be longer in the short term. In order to take advantage of the remedy and be in the best possible situation for the long term, it's in peoples' best interest to spread out and build solid populations on the new DCs. Moving to a new DC while actually playing on the old one will only discourage others from moving, or moving then returning to their original DC, because content queues aren't fast enough for the Hivemind's liking.

Look to the future and build your community today.

This is the actual truth of it.

Also true is that people have no patience these days and are not willing to deal with things being slow to build up to something better possible a year in the future.

Before anyone says "You left Materia as soon as the new NA servers went up." Yes I did. I went to Materia in the first place to play with a dear friend and help build the server. I played there for months. By the time I hit mid Heavensward I realized that my ping on Materia was making me a serious liability to any group I played with. I literally don't see the marks on the floor before they go off. It worked in ARR because I know that content so well I anticipated what was coming. Bismark? well I jumped right off the platform because it looked like he had just pulled along side when in reality he had already left. That was my wakeup call. I can't play at 400 one way 4000 the other way on a good day. I would have happily stayed on Zurvan as I loved the server. It just wasn't playable at all for me.

[VelKallor]

SE have given the players the remedy they were demanding so vociferously. It's now up to the players to think ahead and take the solution offered. Yes, it means lower population servers for a while. Yes, it means queues for daily content may be longer in the short term. In order to take advantage of the remedy and be in the best possible situation for the long term, it's in peoples' best interest to spread out and build solid populations on the new DCs. Moving to a new DC while actually playing on the old one will only discourage others from moving, or moving then returning to their original DC, because content queues aren't fast enough for the Hivemind's liking.

Look to the future and build your community today.

So you are now against regional DC travel?

Moving to a new DC while actually playing on the old one will only discourage others from moving

Player choice is a good thing.

Im curious now as to why it is the cross region DC travel hasnt been reinstated.

[Myrany]

So you are now against regional DC travel?

I don't read that as him being against DC travel. I read a pretty accurate description of what is happening. If people don't do what it takes to build the server then it WILL fail. We don't have DC travel we have no idea when or if we will get it. The only way to build materia is to stay there and play on it.

Now I say that as someone who is just as guilty as I have left albeit for different reasons. That doesn't make him wrong.

[VelKallor]

The only way to build materia is to stay there and play on it.

Stay on a dead server with no groups, no real functioning MB where you cant get anything done outside of a two hour window

NO.

Oh btw Ilmerain is on an established server attached to a dozen jp servers that are full to bursting, if you move to a new NA server you are attached to to other established NA servers..OCE is not in either of these categories and you know it.