Party Finder needs to be unified across data centers

[Larirawiel]

It could propably work as long as the DCs are also physically connected. It could be difficult to, lets say, letting EU- and NA-players to play together.


Cheers

[MistakeNot]

Well the issue is that there really is no incentive for people to go against the tide and stay on their data center. It's a problem a the positive feedback loop. The more people concentrate on Aether the more encouraged others are to do the same. Yes it is a problem created by player behavior but it's impossible to put the genie back in the bottle now and tell everyone to not travel.

Not impossible at all. SE could just disable cross-DC travel, and that problem would be solved.
The reasons for enabling cross-DC travel would of course remain, but as it is I believe cross-DC travel causes more problems than it solves.

But, going back to the topic of the thread, cross-DC everything (PF, DF, fellowship finder, linkshells, etc.) would probably reduce or even remove most of the problems with cross-DC travel.

[Mcg55ss]

Well the issue is that there really is no incentive for people to go against the tide and stay on their data center. It's a problem a the positive feedback loop. The more people concentrate on Aether the more encouraged others are to do the same. Yes it is a problem created by player behavior but it's impossible to put the genie back in the bottle now and tell everyone to not travel.

To this point yeah they can they just say we made a mistake we meant for it for people to see their friends not to conglomerate on one server we will be reverting these changes and poof guess what nobody DC travels anymore. Now will people complain? sure at first but eventually it go back to before DC travel was available and people would just do stuff in their DC, can you imagine cross party finder with all the club spam and erp spam in there sounds like a nightmare.

[Mcg55ss]

Not impossible at all. SE could just disable cross-DC travel, and that problem would be solved.
The reasons for enabling cross-DC travel would of course remain, but as it is I believe cross-DC travel causes more problems than it solves.

But, going back to the topic of the thread, cross-DC everything (PF, DF, fellowship finder, linkshells, etc.) would probably reduce or even remove most of the problems with cross-DC travel.

Beat me to it cuz I was driving home lol

[WeebAlert]

To this point yeah they can they just say we made a mistake we meant for it for people to see their friends not to conglomerate on one server we will be reverting these changes and poof guess what nobody DC travels anymore. Now will people complain? sure at first but eventually it go back to before DC travel was available and people would just do stuff in their DC, can you imagine cross party finder with all the club spam and erp spam in there sounds like a nightmare.

I think this would be a huge step backward for the game. Being able to play with your friends, play with people who live in the same region as you, relatively seamlessly, is an expectation in modern games today. Not to mention this would encourage people to make characters on Aether/Primal, because they would see Dynamis as the less populated server and less likely to do PFs on. If you wanted to do ultimate PF groups, savage PF groups early in the tier, you'd be heavily de-incentivized from playing on Dynamis. At least with the current system you have the option to go raid while still being on whatever world you desire for FC reasons, etc. And this absolutely would happen, it happened with Gilgamesh years ago in the raiding scene before world travel was a thing.

[Mcg55ss]

I think this would be a huge step backward for the game. Being able to play with your friends, play with people who live in the same region as you, relatively seamlessly, is an expectation in modern games today. Not to mention this would encourage people to make characters on Aether/Primal, because they would see Dynamis as the less populated server and less likely to do PFs on. If you wanted to do ultimate PF groups, savage PF groups early in the tier, you'd be heavily de-incentivized from playing on Dynamis. At least with the current system you have the option to go raid while still being on whatever world you desire for FC reasons, etc. And this absolutely would happen, it happened with Gilgamesh years ago in the raiding scene before world travel was a thing.

The DC travel already does that people only use it as a housing suburb not many people play on it

[Mcg55ss]

I think this would be a huge step backward for the game. Being able to play with your friends, play with people who live in the same region as you, relatively seamlessly, is an expectation in modern games today. Not to mention this would encourage people to make characters on Aether/Primal, because they would see Dynamis as the less populated server and less likely to do PFs on. If you wanted to do ultimate PF groups, savage PF groups early in the tier, you'd be heavily de-incentivized from playing on Dynamis. At least with the current system you have the option to go raid while still being on whatever world you desire for FC reasons, etc. And this absolutely would happen, it happened with Gilgamesh years ago in the raiding scene before world travel was a thing.

So since your DC travel already makes people not play on dynamis because they just use it to get a house and then transfer off can you come up with another reason, because yes people would make a characters on the other DC until the expansion drops and they're having to wait x amount of hours to play meanwhile dynamis would be minutes then the incentive to make a character there and grow there would have bigger implication because you couldn't travel just to aether

[Nezerius]

I believe cross DC everything will eventually happen but because the JP players are worried about it, I would implement for all except them.

That's just being able to travel between physical datacenters (NA/EU/JP/OCE), a feature they have said to have the tech for but is held back from being implemented due to "cultural differences between regions". It is something different than what the OP is asking for.
OP is asking for a cross-datacenter party finder, and having a single one for an entire region. This would allow players to join PF groups without the need to travel between their region's datacenters. Afaik the devs have yet to develop such a feature, but have acknowledged that it's something the players have been requesting.

Not impossible at all. SE could just disable cross-DC travel, and that problem would be solved.
The reasons for enabling cross-DC travel would of course remain, but as it is I believe cross-DC travel causes more problems than it solves.

But, going back to the topic of the thread, cross-DC everything (PF, DF, fellowship finder, linkshells, etc.) would probably reduce or even remove most of the problems with cross-DC travel.

Ship's already sailed on that one. Disabling cross-DC travel now would just cause an exodus on Crystal/Primal towards Aether. Players have already gotten too used to the ease of content parties on Aether.

[Mcg55ss]

Ship's already sailed on that one. Disabling cross-DC travel now would just cause an exodus on Crystal/Primal towards Aether. Players have already gotten too used to the ease of content parties on Aether.

maybe, till next expansion drops and they have to wait 5, 8, 10 hours to play on Aether vs others being a lot quicker. Also don't think there would be as big of a exodus as you think because Aether is already massively populated so it wouldn't take much to basically completely have those servers locked.

[CidHeiral]

Being able to play with your friends, play with people who live in the same region as you, relatively seamlessly, is an expectation in modern games today.

This is an MMO not a Fortnite lobby. There's nothing stopping you and your friends from making characters on the same server.

Not to mention this would encourage people to make characters on Aether/Primal, because they would see Dynamis as the less populated server and less likely to do PFs on.

Dynamis has the issues it does because of DC travel. With DC travel out of the picture its community could grow normally. The latest census shows that Dynamis has plenty of players to do content without any issue if they all stayed on their own servers. In the short term there may be a segment of the population that transfers off, but in the long term you have a healthy DC.

DC travel has caused far more problems than it has solved. SE needs to lock out PF on other DCs and if that isn't possible, disable it entirely.