Title. Why did they lock aether and crystal, when there's less people playing now than in Endwalker? At least going to primal in M1-4S was 'okay' in terms of group volume, but now I'm looking at like less than 70 groups on primal at prime time, when before there were well over 140.

Cross DC PF is not happening for the next 5 years, so the next best thing would be to let us at least pool up all the raiders in one server, so you don't have to wait an eternity. It worked great in Endwalker, barely had to wait at all, but now I'm rotting away waiting for a healer and phys range for like an hour in PF.

What is Square Enix doing?

It feels like their current approach to DC travel is trying to keep it at an unhappy medium, where it's restrictive enough to keep you from traveling to Aether during peak hours, or but not restrictive enough to make it so players on other data centers are encouraged to actually play together. If the other 3 DCs are going to be Aether's suburbs, they could at least let us come and go as we please.

Them letting people go on Aether would be them admitting the playerbase of the game is going down, aka never happening, congestion is their way of pretending that the game is booming with players, nothing is really congested, but it gives people the idea that it is, just like in the past when it said "server is full" on the character screen.

Originally Posted by SophiaDL

Them letting people go on Aether would be them admitting the playerbase of the game is going down, aka never happening, congestion is their way of pretending that the game is booming with players, nothing is really congested, but it gives people the idea that it is, just like in the past when it said "server is full" on the character screen.

It also lets them reduce the server overhead while maintaining the illusion that everything's the same.

I can see two potential reasons:
- Server overhead/security to prevent too many travelers causing a server crash.
- Make the ability to travel not guaranteed due to the limits. The reputation for it being unreliable will become known, and people will stop going to Aether to raid always. Kind of genius. They probably did it for the first reason though because this one is too clever.

Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

I can see two potential reasons:
- Server overhead/security to prevent too many travelers causing a server crash.
- Make the ability to travel not guaranteed due to the limits. The reputation for it being unreliable will become known, and people will stop going to Aether to raid always. Kind of genius. They probably did it for the first reason though because this one is too clever.

Worked fine in the past, then all of a sudden they decided it was congested, yet the playerbase has gone down not up

Hmmmmmmmmmmm.......

They realized they messed up by letting everyone just congregate in one dc/world, because now the other dcs/worlds have dead PFs and inactive guilds (the guild thing could be expanded on a lot; there are soooo many other reasons FCs in this game are shit). But they can't revoke the DC travel feature either, because people like it; the genie's out of the bottle and it's ruining the game's communities in a lot of ways, but it's also letting people meet who would've never met otherwise. The "unforeseen" consequences that people warned about and saw coming a mile away (those old historians who saw similar things happening when cross-world was implemented, probably) are here, and Square's only option is to limit the system so much that it doesn't even feel viable for most of the people who enjoy it. Dynamis travelers lament that they can't get into balmung to see their friends on crystal. Raiders are using third party tools to get into Aether so they can play the game they pay monthly for. It's all dumb as hell. An ideal solution would be to just make the game work with cross-dc functionality. Instead of restricting the cross-dc travel feature, give FCs cross-dc invitations. Same with CWLSes. Make cross-dc chat options a thing. Cross-dc pf. Cross-dc marketboards. The works. And before you say it's impossible, some nerd working for free in his basement was able to give modders a cross-region/dc chat function. They really put the cart before the horse by letting us travel first while the game was still stuck in 2014. Like, ffs we still have linkshells that are limited to world, and they have more member space than a linkshell designed for cross-world. That's the sort of infrastructure we're dealing with here, but then they gave us cross-dc and expected things to just work out. Why? LMAO

Originally Posted by Miradelle

Why did they lock aether and crystal, when there's less people playing now than in Endwalker?

It's to throttle people from dogpiling one DC. It has nothing to do with the overall player population.

Originally Posted by Miradelle

At least going to primal in M1-4S was 'okay' in terms of group volume, but now I'm looking at like less than 70 groups on primal at prime time, when before there were well over 140.

Before the restrictions that number was zero at all hours of the day.

Originally Posted by Miradelle

Cross DC PF is not happening for the next 5 years, so the next best thing would be to let us at least pool up all the raiders in one server, so you don't have to wait an eternity. It worked great in Endwalker, barely had to wait at all

The game being dead on every DC outside of Aether is not "working great." The entire reason the restrictions were put in place was because swaths of the game were nigh unplayable if you were anywhere else.

Originally Posted by CidHeiral

It\\\\\\'s to throttle people from dogpiling one DC. It has nothing to do with the overall player population.




Before the restrictions that number was zero at all hours of the day.


The game being dead on every DC outside of Aether is not "working great." The entire reason the restrictions were put in place was because swaths of the game were nigh unplayable if you were anywhere else.

3 bingos. The only 3 answers anyone needs, hit the nail on the head. First one being the numerous uno reason. Sorry on mobile messed up the quote

My character is on Aether and I’ve never had any issue logging on myself. Maybe the limit is lower so that Aether residents won’t have any issues when playing. Meanwhile when Dawntrail launched I basically lived on Dynamis for a few weeks.