When do you think they'll add cross-region data center travel? OCE is screwed!

[VelKallor]

https://www.siliconera.com/ffxiv-dat...to-congestion/

Square Enix suspended the FFXIV Data Center Travel feature immediately after launch due to congestion. The company noted that, after it arrived with update 6.18, visit requests were at 15,000 per minute. As such, it is temporarily disallowing the option.

The FFXIV Data Center Travel congestion issues kicked off almost immediately after the feature became available. Early on July 5, 2022, Square Enix alerted people to problems. It also took to Twitter to explain what people could expect while the service was still live. It noted that any world ends up billed as “congested,” then no one will be able to visit it.

It's possible that they announced DC travel and the OCE servers together and either didn't clarify the restrictions or only decided on the restrictions somewhere between announcement and implementation, but I'm almost certain that we knew before implementation that it would be limited by region.

As it stands every single server that has been added in is grouped with established servers with strong communities..EXCEPT OCE

Phantom is linked with other servers in their cluster, OCE is the only server cluster isolated from everyone else. A phrase I will repeat "critical mass", in reference to both influx and Travellers, needs to be achieved to make OCE viable, as it is, isolated and in its own, of course it is struggling

What is needed is either:

1. an SEA server linked to OCE so travel is possible in both directions. SEA is a huge community, but as of now the ping to JP is better than the ping to Materia.

2. Cross DC travel.

If OCE fails then the responsibiiity for that failure is on SE's hands, not ours, as we will more or less have been set up to fail.

SE is yet to even acknowledge there is a problem, let alone advise how it can be ameliorated.

Its up to them.

[kaynide]

I mean, as far as SE is concerned it’s working as intended, albeit not ideally.

To make the international cross DC travel a thing requires more infrastructure. As is, just allowing cross DC within their cluster crashed the system- can you imagine everyone in the world suddenly trying to get into whatever niche event was going on at that moment? Or hunt trains?

They would need entirely new systems (such as guaranteeing residents of a particular world access and limiting visitors to their own reserved spots).

Nothing would kill this game faster than Joe Balmung being unable to log in and play for a week because suddenly everyone is trying to get on his home server. He wouldn’t even be able to switch severs just to play (unless even more dev time on this infrastructure is used).

Adding additional server horsepower just for a convenience thing of jumping around worlds, in addition to the many many housing wards only adds to running costs. I can’t see this being something the devs feel is more important to spend money on than other things.

Again, if anything, it just screams “don’t ever open a new server in a new country ever”.

[Iscah]

https://www.siliconera.com/ffxiv-dat...to-congestion/

Yes, that's the initial announcement from when they launched and quickly suspended travel between any DCs, but it doesn't specify anything about it starting off as completely free to all regions. I'm not sure why you're quoting it followed by a section of my post, but if that's meant to be refuting what I said, then I think you're misunderstanding the circumstances of the article.

I think you've just picked up one half of a story – the half that was judged newsworthy by an external site – that is missing the follow-up announcement that travel had resumed.

Additionally, the feature has always been known as "Data Center Travel" and the name does not promise anything about how many DCs can or cannot be visited under it.

[VelKallor]

Additionally, the feature has always been known as "Data Center Travel" and the name does not promise anything about how many DCs can or cannot be visited under it.

Noted. As it is, the current situation is untenable in the long term. We need a solution.

*sigh*

[Jojoya]

There are NA, JP, EU players who didnt want to leave their communities and houses and friends, so allowing them to travel to Materia and back is a win for them, as they can play alongside other OCE players and not have to permanently move servers.

If they choose to remain where they were so they could stay with their communities and friends, I don't think playing with other OCE players on the OCE data center is at the top of their "to do" list.

Again, Ill ask what it is you object to? Why are you so against this? If you dont like it dont use it, so why are you objecting to others using it? The reason cross DC was suspended was congestion, we know it works..or is this a case of "OCE failed, so take it off them, close it and give NA those servers?"

Since you fail at reading comprehension, let me repeat myself.

I have not and do not object to cross region data center travel being added for Materia or any other region. All I have said is that it will not be the solution you think it will be.

At no point to date has cross region data center travel been implemented on the live servers for FFXIV by SE. All you have to do is go back to the announcement in January of this year:

Regarding the Expansion of FFXIV's Operations

• Players will be able to visit Worlds in other logical data centers within the same physical data center.
  
• Players will not be able to visit Worlds in other regions/physical data centers.
  
• Though cross-region travel is technically possible, implementation is still under consideration.
  
• Travel is initiated not while logged into the game, but from the character selection screen.

followed by:

As I previously mentioned in a Live Letter, while the system has been designed to allow cross-region travel, we'll be limiting it to travel between logical data centers within a physical data center at first due in part to differences in game economy and values. We’ll be paying keen attention to the opinions of players as we consider whether or not to introduce cross-region travel in the future.

Now contrary to what you want to believe, I think that SE should enable cross region data center travel for at least Materia players.

But it is not going to solve Materia's problem. That is only going to happen as Materia gets more new players over time. It would be a pre-requisite to solving Materia's problems sooner instead of later but by itself it is not a solution.

[Tigerlilley]

The reason cross DC was suspended was congestion, we know it works..or is this a case of "OCE failed, so take it off them, close it and give NA those servers?"

No, it wasn't.

I believe you're thinking of cross-world visits, (aka, visiting another world within your own datacentre eg. Behemoth to Leviathan in Primal or Tonberry to Kujata in Elemental) which WAS suspended when everything started blowing up at the start of Endwalker. SE originally advertised as "you'll be able to log in on another less congested world" in order for people to get into the game faster, but I don't think they realised people would immediately try to get back to their home worlds to play, once they logged in. There were a ton of support threads raised and when people realised that you could get locked out of your home world if you travelled, they stopped travelling, bigger servers were now getting hammered from both the log in queues and people trying to cross world back home, things were rough. So, they suspended it.

Later, when things calmed down, it started working again.

Cross-datacentre has been recently added (the ability to travel to another datacentre within your region, eg. Primal/Crystal/Aether). This has never been suspended after it was working, but I believe it did get delayed a little.

Cross-region (the ability to travel outside your region, eg. NA to OCE) was mentioned in a live letter, there was JP uproar, and Yoshi put out a letter saying they weren't going to do it due to "a difference in values". Later, they changed the story and said there were technical reasons, but I think that's just been presented as an easier excuse than "we don't want you on our DC".

Many of us are fine for the Japanese datacentres to remain seperate, as they want. I see no issues there. There is quite literally no reason to keep OCE seperate from NA however, especially since English is the majority language for both regions.

[Ranaku]

It's funny that people think that this might even be a possibility at all, as if SE would ever go against their JP playerbases wishes. We will rather see unlimited glamour dressers and hats for viera and hrothgar and maybe housing for everyone than SE ever even considering to implement region travel.

[Midareyukki]

We will rather see unlimited glamour dressers and hats for viera and hrothgar and maybe housing for everyone than SE ever even considering to implement region travel.

So all good stuff rather than flooding the Crystal Datacenter again?

...honestly not a bad deal

[Jojoya]

It's funny that people think that this might even be a possibility at all, as if SE would ever go against their JP playerbases wishes. We will rather see unlimited glamour dressers and hats for viera and hrothgar and maybe housing for everyone than SE ever even considering to implement region travel.

We know they have the ability to disable world visit/data center travel for specific data worlds/data centers as needed due to localized problems while leaving the service unaffected for others.

Why not enable cross region data center travel in that case for those regions that want it? They can leave JP isolated and allow the cross region travel for all the other regions.

Honestly, all the JP player base is demonstrating with their complaints is that their racism problems are going just as strong now as they were prior to WWII. In which case, let them be isolated while the rest of the FFXIV community mingles and has fun together.

[Tigerlilley]

Honestly, all the JP player base is demonstrating with their complaints is that their racism problems are going just as strong now as they were prior to WWII. In which case, let them be isolated while the rest of the FFXIV community mingles and has fun together.

The irony of this is that I don't think anyone is thinking "wow, as soon as cross-region opens I'm going to go to a Japanese server and force myself on a unwilling community there". People want region travel to open so they can play with and make new friends.