[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.

[HighlanderClone]

This isnt getting removed anytime soon, people are just taking the restrictions and sitting happy being restricted, 150 PF's on Primal for raiding last night says enough, I really do wish people had some backbone and would complain (as they should) for the restriction of a feature that has been in the game for quite a while now, but nah, as per usual with this community, people just sit happy and take anything SE throws at them. The community will one day be this game's downfall, might be in a few years, might be in 10 years, but in more ways than one, the community will be at fault.

No matter what happens, people just sit and take it, and are grateful for it, it has reached pathetic levels at this point that anything bad that happens just gets complained about for a day, then just gets dropped as if nothing happened.

And people in this community really just believes every lie CBU3 puts out about how X is impossible or needs to take years to implement.

I guarantee you if 50% of the players suddenly unsub because they are tired of having no cross-DC PF - which is the only sensible solution to this mess at this point - we'll all miraculously see cross-DC PF being implemented next patch.

[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.

[SophiaDL]

They have a point even if you hate them personally. Alot of people were using DC travel to pile up on one DC and even assigned raid DCs for each region, eventually leading to PF on other DCs to be lacking or dying and forcing people to either go to said DC, or simply not do content. I think something had to be done to discourage this behavior. I do think they might loosen it up on NA since I see alot of people from NA complaining about it but I doubt they'd outright remove it.

I think SE had to step in eventually which is unfortunate, but I'd rather blame those who forced this heavyhanded approach than SE at this point.

This shows we sorely need cross DF/PF to solve the situation where people pile on one DC for content. I made my character on Chaos, I like it here, but once DC travel dropped people decided that Light is where to go for content and eventually our PF died off. I stopped checking or bothering to check it. Alot of my friends became 'residents' of Light, so I'm either forced to leave my DC and deal with restrictions and lose access to my buffs, friends, retainers just to do some extremes.

Ok, and the second Aether will open, because it eventually will, people will pile on Aether again.

So ?

Cross DC PF is not in the work, because it'd require a tiny bit of effort from SE which they dont care to do, so what, do we just lock the DC indefinitely because people will pile up on it ? Where do we draw the line ?

They created DC travel, they created the problem. And this aint the solution, the second Aether eventually opens, it will happen again.

[1313]

They have a point even if you hate them personally. Alot of people were using DC travel to pile up on one DC and even assigned raid DCs for each region, eventually leading to PF on other DCs to be lacking or dying and forcing people to either go to said DC, or simply not do content. I think something had to be done to discourage this behavior. I do think they might loosen it up on NA since I see alot of people from NA complaining about it but I doubt they'd outright remove it.

I think SE had to step in eventually which is unfortunate, but I'd rather blame those who forced this heavyhanded approach than SE at this point.

This shows we sorely need cross DF/PF to solve the situation where people pile on one DC for content. I made my character on Chaos, I like it here, but once DC travel dropped people decided that Light is where to go for content and eventually our PF died off. I stopped checking or bothering to check it. Alot of my friends became 'residents' of Light, so I'm either forced to leave my DC and deal with restrictions and lose access to my buffs, friends, retainers just to do some extremes.

The options were: to to another dc, stay on your dc, or don't do content. Then people attached a false label to aether and other data centers died off. if they hadnt congregated to one spot, everyone wouldve complained about how mid their expereinces had been. it mae perfect sense to do it. but now the options are:dont do the content. (for me). there's no valid option for me since my group is on another dc and we cant even meet up to hi five let alone raid.

This comes back to the players who need to do their part. They need to not attach false labels and spread misinformation. Aether was never the go to spot to do [content]. it was the go-to for ULTIMATES. everyone else should've stayed home, until the content drought (like they did), then gather in one spot (dc).

This is also largely due to certain things that spent up the endwalker budget, which left little for players to do at endgame considering there was no relic related content to keep people busy. So naturally, during a content drought with a shortage of endgame players, people would want to be in one spot. it's not dogpiling, it's adapting and overcoming hardships to be able to play the content they pay to play in a reasonably enjoyable atmosphere.

If they don't revert the restriction to be back to normal again with this hotfix, i'll bet dynamis become just as dead as it was when people were travelling to aether. the difference being, it'll be because they're unsubbed and offline instead of not being on their home world.

[NanaWiloh]

Start new raid,rp and pvp communities on the other data centers. Give people more options oh wait thats too much effort for the community just as a dc pf is too much for SE

[SophiaDL]

Start new raid,rp and pvp communities on the other data centers. Give people more options oh wait thats too much effort for the community just as a dc pf is too much for SE

Or people can stick to the friends/statics/venues+clubs they have, without having to travel to a dead DC.

[NanaWiloh]

Or people can stick to the friends/statics/venues+clubs they have, without having to travel to a dead DC.

Or people friends can stop being lazy and leave their dc's for a change.

[SophiaDL]

Or people friends can stop being lazy and leave their dc's for a change.

Please keep reaching lmao, it's funny to see how far you're willing to go to defend this