Something needs to be done about Party Finder outside of Aether

[HyperiusUltima]

I’d honestly say to hell with it and just bring Cross-DC PF/DF as everyone says. The infrastructure is there - just simply build on it to make it so we are literally not having to jump everywhere unless we want to. My static has had to jump to Aether just to raid because Primal has lost its raid scene to Aether. This problem will persist until Yoshida does something about it; and I’ve a mind to throw this in the QnA when it comes time again.

[Gember]

Its not just Primal; Crystal is suffering too, and Dynamis didn't even get a chance. Crystal did have a raiding scene before DC travel, but it was much smaller than Primal and Aether. It was first hand I saw my old FC dissolve because most of the active players were raiders. It really does suck for smaller communities. It feels a lot more lonelier even though there are friends online playing still.

[sharplysurreal]

i agree. this is a disaster on par with 1.0 and if they dont fix it really quick this game is going down the shitter

[Stormpeaks]

Primal for PvP, Aether for PvE, Crystal for venues/nightlife and dynamis for new players.

What a mess. Constant need to DC travel back and forth depending on what you're doing.

[Theodric]

Unfortunately the problem has its roots back in the early days of ARR. Back then, the NA and EU servers were both hosted in the same location. Canada, I believe. This was later changed but due to the lack of a region lock a lot of European players ended up flocking to the North American servers. Many then befriended people there and understandably didn't want to leave even when the EU servers were improved. The situation has balanced out somewhat but it does contribute to Aether being propped up artificially.

If not for the scarcity of housing, I actually think the situation would be a lot worse - players are often attracted to where the most activity can be found after all. Though many of us would rather not sacrifice a house to achieve that. Though it is not my intention to imply that the housing system shouldn't be changed to be more readily accessible.

[Lyth]

Aether's popularity just goes back to Gilgamesh being advertised as the subreddit server during ARR's launch, and a lot of the raiding community started up characters and Free Companies there early on. You likely saw similar population spikes on Ragnarok/Chaos back when Angered was actively involved in world progression.

This is fairly standard behavior in MMOs. Players congregate where there's action, so high population servers get bigger and low population servers get smaller. Cross-server PF and statics make your server choice less important, but you won't truly move towards a stable equilibrium without Cross-DC PF. You either live in the big city or you commute.

[Defmetal]

Aether's popularity just goes back to Gilgamesh being advertised as the subreddit server during ARR's launch, and a lot of the raiding community started up characters and Free Companies there early on. You likely saw similar population spikes on Ragnarok/Chaos back when Angered was actively involved in world progression.

This is fairly standard behavior in MMOs. Players congregate where there's action, so high population servers get bigger and low population servers get smaller. Cross-server PF and statics make your server choice less important, but you won't truly move towards a stable equilibrium without Cross-DC PF. You either live in the big city or you commute.

yeah but it wasn't until it became "the streamer server" that things got out of hand. Everyone seems to think they'll be featured in asmongolds stream or something.