Having to DC travel to play ranked now?

[notfool]

I think that's right, in which case this addresses a symptom, not a cause. Why does ranked die after a few weeks?

This is more of a cause than you'd realize. One of the major reasons some dc's stop popping latter in each season is because most of the players will simply go to the one dc that popped that day to play on alts instead of wait up a few hours to try to pop on their native dc.

[notfool]

The funniest part is that they chose Primal, which is basically "Aether 2.0" right now when it comes to population because that's where most people go due to the travel restrictions on Aether, instead of say... Dynamis, which not only lacks for player numbers, but is the only NA data center with no community identity or label so everyone on the NA side understandably ignores us/doesn't make characters here/transfers away.

The one time they had the means to help with that, and they still left the dead data center to stay dead, lol. It's even more hilarious because Dynamis has *no* travel restrictions, anyone from anywhere in NA can come here all the time, but depending on the time of day, you can't get into Primal (and it's only going to get more congested from this decision). Always with the one step forward, three steps back.

They probably chose primal because it has the higher average ranked activity compared to crystal and dynamis.

[Valence]

Hot take but they shouldn't have let people from other DCs queue in DCs that aren't their homes. Visit? Sure, that's great, but queue up? How did they not expect this to happen in terms of imbalances? They should have waited to have an actual cross DC queue with a shared pool of players like the cross server queue has worked since forever to enable it...

[notfool]

That still leaves the issue of congestion though, unless they plan on dropping the travel/transfer restrictions for Primal by then.

It also means that Square-Enix is unofficially going along with the community-made labels if they've decided Primal is "PVP" like the players decided, which also means they've probably given up on getting people to stop seeing Aether for "Raiding" and Crystal for "RP". And Dynamis... is just dead weight/future server merge fodder I guess, they have nothing else left to be.

I get the concern but the main reason for congestion on primal is mogtomes incentivizing 3 dc's to visit primal at once for easy rw pops. Once mogtomes ends we will return to the norm of primal being *relatively* deserted with anyone looking to pf a fight visiting aether. I'd also prefer square push harder for a functioning cross dc queue but thats likely far in the future, based on the physical dc limitations.

[CidHeiral]

I'm on Primal and I think this is a terrible idea. Nobody should ever be forced to DC travel for anything. I've always been an outspoken critic of the Aether dogpiling and this is even more repugnant since it's being endorsed by the devs themselves and not just players being dumb. Hopefully this change isn't permanent.

[Astralrisk]

I don't think its a great solution for the long term. Short term it just means queues will last a few weeks longer, but it now just introduces all the issues that players have with the current data center travel system. Speaking from experience as a Primal player having to go to Aether because the PF on our data center is just dead, having to give up all the services like Retainers, Housing, etc, just to be able to play the game is incredibly cringe. With this new requirement, they are just forcing this now upon every player with a remote interest in actually doing ranked. It's more of a critique of the data center travel system, but since its being forced on ranked players it just becomes their issue now.

[Aravell]

Would the numbers really go back to "relatively" normal though? Even before the mogtome event I would have to stand outside of Primal until the late-evening to try and squeeze in because Aether was always closed off until well after midnight, as it seemed like everyone decided Primal was the "new Aether" if I wanted to do roulettes (especially Frontlines). I don't know anything about the ranked PVP scene so I don't know how much it would impact congestion (if it does at all).

The concern is less "How will this impact congestion?" and more "There's already congestion issues, so if I have to travel to a DC that already has issues, that means I can be hit by congestion and just lose out on a day of ranked matches".

I suppose at least they were mindful enough to not pick the "raider" DCs like Aether, Mana and Light.

[WutWut]

It's going to come down to if they lift travel restrictions or not, imo.

If they lift travel restrictions? - Then this was the next best thing they could do while cross-DC DF/PF is still being implemented.

If they don't lift travel restrictions? - My popcorn is ready!

[notfool]

Would the numbers really go back to "relatively" normal though? Even before the mogtome event I would have to stand outside of Primal until the late-evening to try and squeeze in because Aether was always closed off until well after midnight, as it seemed like everyone decided Primal was the "new Aether" if I wanted to do roulettes (especially Frontlines). I don't know anything about the ranked PVP scene so I don't know how much it would impact congestion (if it does at all).

and once again people admit they're complaining about ranked despite having no clue... ranked probably draws like 100-150 people actively per dc max, which is a drop in the bucket in the scheme of xiv's player numbers. Also not all of those players will even be on at the same time to occupy space on primal. for the record I don't blame anyone for being unfamiliar with ranked cc since its a very niche community within the already niche community of active pvpers, but i would appreciate if people took a step back before thowing fuel on the fire when they don't know anything about the pvp scene.