Limited Cross Region DC Travel

[HyperiusUltima]

I don't mind that Oceania is being put on the test, but let's be honest here: Can we just address the Cross-World feature first as well as the problematic connotations that come with it?

- Promotes gathering on ONE DC for all content, based on opinions and what has been said by the community.

- Discourages staying on your Home World for content.

- Disparages the economy as Aether gets most of the benefits of an active market even during downtime.

We need to fix this problem first before they introduce Cross-Region. It is a hill I am going to die on since it's apparent on all DCs regardless of Region.

Until we fix the 'Dynamis' Problem, it's going to stay until they fix it.

[Abriael]

There is no real need for you to be able to travel directly from light to aether for example and doing so risks all content concentrating on aether (and aether is bad enough as it is), if you want to RP or do casual content with worldwide friends then you can just all do it on materia

Which makes preserving any limitation completely meaningless and simply a quality-of-life flaw.

[Supersnow845]

Which makes preserving any limitation completely meaningless and simply a quality-of-life flaw.

What does this even mean, there has to be some inherent limitations to complete cross region travel or the entire playerbase is just going to fight for limited spots on aether, if you are absolutely chomping at the bit to see friends who are on other data centres you can meet in materia, ripping down all the walls just means we end up with aether and 8 pressure valves for aether which dynamis shows already doesn’t work

[KuroMaboroshi]

Oh hey, it's this debate again. As usual, feels like people are just venting frustration over the results of player psychology making the worst of regional DC travel on the back of cross-region DC travel.

Even if we put the cart before the horse and assume this test means cross-region DC travel will be right around the corner in the wake of this test run (which I won't hold my breath for yet), there is nothing its expansion will do to the DCs that hasn't already been done by regional DC travel:
Primal, Dynamis and Crystal PFs won't be any more dead that they already are, cause they are already dead. Same with the EU DCs and I assume JP is stuck in the same situation.
Retainers and FCs won't be any less accessible on a different region's DC than they are on another DC in the same region.
The only thing at this point that'll mediate that problem until Square adresses those issues specifically will be the release of Dawntrail and the server congestion it'll likely bring, forcing a lot of people back to their native DCs for the first month or however long it lasts, ere we go back to the current state of affairs.

And how is economies normalising across regions a bad thing? It leads to higher prices for crafters on highly oversaturated markets as new buyers roll in, and allows people on highly undersupplied DCs to buy for cheap until eventually everything settles as close to an equilibrium as the players are willing to maintain by going to extra mile and checking other DCs for item prices. Besides, it will mostly happen to very expensive items where checking prices elsewhere and travelling will actually be worth the time and effort spent doing so.


Of course I hope we'll get Cross-DC PF functionality as soon as possible (region-locked to whichever region you make the PF in I assume, since latency will actually matter so a global PF would be problematic unless they add some new filters). I hate the state PF on my home DC of Primal is in right now and want it fixed as much as everyone else. But is that enough reason to miss out on a chance to be able to hop over and play the game with some of my RL friends on the EU DCs? Definitely not.
Considering unlocking this functionality comes at zero development cost and will not slow down the deployment of possible counter-measures to the current "Aether problem", I see no good reason why one should affect the other. Don't let "good" be the enemy of "decent".

[Abriael]

What does this even mean, there has to be some inherent limitations to complete cross region travel or the entire playerbase is just going to fight for limited spots on aether, if you are absolutely chomping at the bit to see friends who are on other data centres you can meet in materia, ripping down all the walls just means we end up with aether and 8 pressure valves for aether which dynamis shows already doesn’t work

That's such a completely unrealistic depiction of the current situation that it isn't even funny. People from a whole region can already go to Aether without limitations, but I certainly don't see this massive migration you speak of.

It's always funny when I see people from Aether telling this fairy tale that everyone goes to their DC. That's simply not real.

If you think Japanese and European players would somehow decide to give up the chance to play with their own people most of the time to invade Aether en masse, I see a massive delusion here.

[Supersnow845]

That's such a completely unrealistic depiction of the current situation that it isn't even funny. People from a whole region can already go to Aether without limitations, but I certainly don't see this massive migration you speak of.

It's always funny when I see people from Aether telling this fairy tale that everyone goes to their DC. That's simply not real.

Yea people don’t permanently move to aether they just travel there to do most of their daily duties, an average DF run on aether will have more travellers than native aether citizens, I’m sitting in a eureka instance right now and 3/4 of the people in it aren’t from aether, our PF’s are full of people from the other data centres

There is an enormous influx of people who regularly visit aether, just because they don’t fully world transfer doesn’t mean they aren’t still coming to aether for most things, I’m certainly not seeing crystal DF drowning in people from jenova

[Abriael]

Yea people don’t permanently move to aether they just travel there to do most of their daily duties, an average DF run on aether will have more travellers than native aether citizens, I’m sitting in a eureka instance right now and 3/4 of the people in it aren’t from aether, our PF’s are full of people from the other data centres

There is an enormous influx of people who regularly visit aether, just because they don’t fully world transfer doesn’t mean they aren’t still coming to aether for most things, I’m certainly not seeing crystal DF drowning in people from jenova

Yeah. No.

I don't know what's with people playing on Aether that makes them think they're special, but it's hilarious.

Crystal is bursting at the seams, with Balmung that's incredibly crowded all the time, but we don't go complaining nearly as much as you folks do

It's almost like having a lot of people to play with in a MMORPG is bad. What a riot.

[Supersnow845]

Yeah. No.

I don't know what's with people playing on Aether that makes them think they're special, but it's hilarious.

Crystal is bursting at the seams, with Balmung that's incredibly crowded all the time, but we don't go complaining nearly as much as you folks do

I’d love to know how balmung being busy disproves my statement but you seem to be totally wrapped up in your own head so I’ll just leave it there

[Abriael]

I’d love to know how balmung being busy disproves my statement but you seem to be totally wrapped up in your own head so I’ll just leave it there

Quite obviously, Aether isn't this be all, end all of tourist destinations where everyone goes.

[KuroMaboroshi]

There is an enormous influx of people who regularly visit aether, just because they don’t fully world transfer doesn’t mean they aren’t still coming to aether for most things, I’m certainly not seeing crystal DF drowning in people from jenova

I think you are somewhat overestimating how this would scale to Cross-Region DC travel. The problem with regional DC travel is that all those DCs are in the same location, so you will not see a change in latency travelling from one to another. The "only" tradeoffs you have are inventory/retainers, FC features, linkshells, etc.. Sadly, enough people think those are outweighed by a larger player pool and in case of Dynamis shorter queue times. All this adds up to the complaints of those who wish for a Cross-DC PF.

Meanwhile, the difference in ping when transferring between regions is quite significant. And considering how awful XIV is at mitigating latency (in fact making latency worse by the inane way in which it handles animation lock), that'll be a barrier that will keep quite a few people away. Some jobs become borderline unplayable at high latency, and at 200+ ms even snapshots start feeling unreliable. Which is why I believe the problem won't get worse with Cross-Region DC travel when compared to regional DC travel, though sadly I can not prove it.
Pandora's box is already open. Might as well let hope out of it as well, by at least giving those who want to visit and play with friends in other regions the chance.