[Feedback] Data Center Travel Changes

[Kit_Lakshmi]

One week later and this is the impact of the new data center travel system on my friends and me:

Those of us who are not on Aether, log into Aether in the morning before the rush. Most members are on Aether and we will not risk trying to have everyone log into Dynamis because we got burned real bad a week ago. An entire night was lost. No gaming at all. We are fully aware of the longstanding congestion problems on Aether because most are Aether natives. But friends are friends and having a common time to play together is limited and precious. We will continue to log into Aether under the current data center transfer system until there are changes. This is human nature, sticking with friends in familiar places and minimizing risks. It goes against human nature to start new and risk leaving friends. The current data center transfer system creates pressure to do the latter, it goes against human nature, and so it will have limited success.

I am currently babysitting a connection on Aether for eight hours so I can play with friends tonight. I am fully aware this is not what SE wants players to do. But they are my friends. We have limited time to play together. I will continue to do this.

I am also getting the impression that it's getting harder to data center transfer into Aether. I suspect this is because an increasing number of players are using plugins to stay logged in. I don't blame them. It's human nature to stick with friends in familiar places with years of investment and less risk of an obliterated gaming night for all friends. This is just my speculation about an increasing impact of the current data center transfer system.

Maybe Aether will become impossible to transfer into all day long all week long. Maybe Aether will officially go on complete lockdown. Maybe the same will happen to other specific world servers. I hope Dynamis will be ready to serve as a reliable data center transfer for NA. My friends and I were ok with doing gaming nights on Dynamis before the mess of the current system. We would change our behavior and return to playing on Dynamis if it went back to being... RELIABLE.

How about an official announcement recognizing these concerns, SE? Or — real talk — we can just keep doing what humans do, ToS be damned.

[VoidsentStatus]

Or — real talk — we can just keep doing what humans do, ToS be damned.

I mean, while I understand being with your friends is what you want, that's what caused problems, so the more you and your friends fight against the devs, the hard they're just going to screw everyone over including you. That's what caused this situation to begin with and you fighting the solution is just going to make them more strict. If you're noticing it's getting harder to sign into Aether, it's probably because it is. Eventually more and more people are just going to try to cheat the system and you won't be able to sign in to Aether period after you disconnect or a maintenance happens that forces you off. Or, the amount of cheating gets so high that Square decides to host a maintenance and shift data center travel to not even allowing travelers at all to sign into Aether so even if you're at character select, you can't get into the world. You being there is only because Square allows you to be, and like I said, the more you piss them off, the more you're going to force their hand to do what they could've did already. You can keep doing what humans do, and they're just gonna keep doing what devs do.

[Kit_Lakshmi]

I mean, while I understand being with your friends is what you want, that's what caused problems, so the more you and your friends fight against the devs, the hard they're just going to screw everyone over including you. ... [snip because of character limit] ... You can keep doing what humans do, and they're just gonna keep doing what devs do.

To be more direct, had DC travel to Dynamis not been botched with the release of the changes in 7.05, my group of friends would have continued to chose Dynamis as our place to play together. Even if we were looking forward to getting together on Aether, we would have chosen any location that involved less risk. So if the underpopulated world servers can be traveled to reliably, that would be sufficient for what my group of friends are looking for. I think the devs can make this happen, and they may already be working on this despite their silence.

That being said, it wouldn't help the RP community. A different approach would be needed.

In regards to calls for players to take the initiative to relieve the strain on congested data centers, I consider it unrealistic to expect hundreds of thousands of customers to change their behavior in significant ways when the implementation of new systems is clumsy, e.g. large portions of populations leaving friends to switch home data centers when newly implemented barriers severely impede certain types of cross-DC interactions that players have come to enjoy. The system as released with 7.05 likely discouraged many players from shifting their gameplay away from congested data centers. The devs can address these issues as the onus is on the business to develop their product in ways that better appeal to their paying customers. I don't expect players to get everything we want, conflicting interests make that impossible, but the devs are more likely to steer resources and development in ways that appeal to more players if they pay attention to the various criticism and praise from players.

I believe the devs are genuinely trying to improve what is a complex web of mmo gameplay while trying to minimize a heavy-handed approach. And I am getting the impression pieces of this new DC travel system are quietly being worked on. My posts in this thread are my attempt to communicate what specifically has sucked in my recent experiences, describe why my friends and I choose what we choose despite restrictions, and hope that there's some invisible funnel that somehow places a conglomeration of player comments in the ear of someone on the dev team.

[VoidsentStatus]

..

That's the misunderstanding. You're not supposed to be able to go to Dynamis reliably anymore. If you could, that would just shift the problem. You aren't supposed to be going anywhere consistently and for a long time period because that is what causes problems wherever you go, even outside of running content. That severely impedes cross-DC interactions is because that very activity impeded home-DC interactions that people had enjoyed for 5-10+ years compared to the 3 for DC Travel. This happened because that new interaction is not top of the priority list.

"quietly being worked on" -> Agreed. Because we have no idea what the traveler or visitor limit is, and they get to set it anytime they want, and we don't even know if they need a maintenance to change it. The only thing they posted is relativity notes on the worlds in terms of "decreased or "increased", but not what the "Normal" amount is that can be shifted at any time. We don't even know if "Normal" exists per Data Center or is it shared per Region, or is Normal for that world. There's a lot of assumptions we have to make, but the one assumption I won't make is that they're going to backpeddle and make things easier because of complaints that could've been predicted by a 3-year old.

[Bladesinger]

I mean, while I understand being with your friends is what you want, that's what caused problems, so the more you and your friends fight against the devs, the hard they're just going to screw everyone over including you. That's what caused this situation to begin with and you fighting the solution is just going to make them more strict. If you're noticing it's getting harder to sign into Aether, it's probably because it is. Eventually more and more people are just going to try to cheat the system and you won't be able to sign in to Aether period after you disconnect or a maintenance happens that forces you off. Or, the amount of cheating gets so high that Square decides to host a maintenance and shift data center travel to not even allowing travelers at all to sign into Aether so even if you're at character select, you can't get into the world. You being there is only because Square allows you to be, and like I said, the more you piss them off, the more you're going to force their hand to do what they could've did already. You can keep doing what humans do, and they're just gonna keep doing what devs do.

That's not my case: My RL WIFE cannot return because of this - Cannot make a new character and SE is literally telling me that if I want her and 20+ other guildmates together, I have to walk away from an FC that has been active since 2013 - To hell with the time and money spent since then to maintain a FC House over that period of time because of a stupid fluke regarding an explanation SQUARE wrote =\



These aren't friends that I recently met on this game - In most cases, they are RL friends that have been together for nearly 20 years and one that started on Siren - Return her home SE

[VoidsentStatus]

That's not my case: My RL WIFE cannot return because of this - Cannot make a new character and SE is literally telling me that if I want her and 20+ other guildmates together, I have to walk away from an FC that has been active since 2013 - To hell with the time and money spent since then to maintain a FC House over that period of time because of a stupid fluke regarding an explanation SQUARE wrote =\



These aren't friends that I recently met on this game - In most cases, they are RL friends that have been together for nearly 20 years and one that started on Siren - Return her home SE

Because what you want is something that I was going to let you learn on your own since you seem to be an older person that doesn't know the average developer mindstate or company protocol. The old days of game companies having a personal touch in their customer support is gone due to people lying and abusing systems as well as playerbases growing over time. If they refund or help you, a lot of people are going to ask for the same, and they're not going to deal with that headache, that door isn't going to be opened. They're going to say that you should've confirmed/asked before making the transfer, including checking the FAQ on the support page for ff14 where it states that free companies are not on the list of data that is transferable with the home world transfer service. That also opens the door for people to home world transfer to recieve benefits such as XP bonuses, chocobo feathers, gil, etc. and then return, on top of allowing characters to rejoin a congested world that is not supposed to be accepting new characters at all. Being made an exception to the policy is going to cause liability to someone's job because most players will tell others how they received something and it become expected or favoritism accusations circulate. Another example of where no personal touch in support is the case is account rollbacks when it comes to housing. If someone was to hack your account (like what happened to me), support can recover your personal house and belongings, but anything done to the FC including the property itself cannot be reinstated. You, as the leader of the FC, are also not entitled to the FC activity log after it leaves the chat log you can see in game. So if someone was to kick everyone from the FC, demo the house, and then spend a bunch of company credits to flood the log, customer support will not even give you the name of the person that kicked everyone and demo'd your property. My mistake costed me 500Mil in housing property on Aether, yours costed you valuable members of your FC.

[Bladesinger]

Every other game offers the ability to return to a home server with a fee with next to no questions asked as to why you're doing it - This one feels it necessary to tell you regardless of how much time and money that has been spent that at any point they will lock the server down and force you to work with what you have on that server which feels slightly totalitarian - Flukes happen, misunderstandings happen - It was made very clear by SE that after the 90 day lockout something can be done but for right now - NOPE 90 days is 90 days because of crooked people exploiting the system and ruining it for people with serious issues - DC travel be damned regarding this.


As for your thinly veiled "old man doesn't know how the game industry works" remark - If you only knew just intrinsically connected I am as an audio engineer for 30+ years who I know on a professional and personal basis in the game industry... Keep your sewer SHUT - SE has already stated after 90 days they'll be able to do something, you fearmongering for your server and the situation is going to write a check you aren't going to be able to cash child... You aren't an advocate for the company nor do you represent them in any capacity outside of white knighting YOUR circumstances to possibly "educate" people as to what you think the companies going to do...

[VoidsentStatus]

Every other game offers the ability to return to a home server with a fee with next to no questions asked as to why you're doing it - This one feels it necessary to tell you regardless of how much time and money that has been spent that at any point they will lock the server down and force you to work with what you have on that server which feels slightly totalitarian - Flukes happen, misunderstandings happen - It was made very clear by SE that after the 90 day lockout something can be done but for right now

Listen, I'm not gonna flood this thread with screenshots of various other games where that first sentence is a lie/not possible *cough*.





Let's do something significantly easier. Post 1 receipt of a decently populated MMO that has the feature you speak of. An MMO that does not have server/world caps, no world/server transfer restrictions, and or will allow someone to bypass a no transfer restriction.

[SophiaDL]

Listen, I'm not gonna flood this thread with screenshots of various other games where that first sentence is a lie/not possible *cough*.





Let's do something significantly easier. Post 1 receipt of a decently populated MMO that has the feature you speak of. An MMO that does not have server/world caps, no world/server transfer restrictions, and or will allow someone to bypass a no transfer restriction.

Yet WoW handles server transfers to FULL worlds (aka congested) just fine, weird how that works.

[VoidsentStatus]

Flukes happen, misunderstandings happen