Aether locked, PF dead. What now?

[Miradelle]

Aether's locked again, so gone are the days you could just swap over whenever and join ultimates or savage prog for fun. Why is it even locked? It wasn't locked in Endwalker, and that expansion was waaay more popular than this one. It felt like there were way more people playing in 6.4-5 than now, so what's the deal?

SQE should either

1. Make a cross-world PF (pipedream atm). I don't care if it logs me out once full party is formed and transfers me to a specific party finder server, I just want to be able to do other things while waiting instead of "service not available on this world."

2. Kick everyone who isn't from Aether out of the server once they've been logged out for 1hr. Right now, the only way you're raiding is if you're on Aether, so everyone logs in at early morning hours and basically lives there. This way you have spill over on Primal, like how it worked during M1-4S; you could actually fill parties and there were hundreds of them. Not guaranteed to work though, 'cause game ded lmayo.

3. Remove Aether lock, just like in Endwalker. I assume they have a reason why they don't. Maybe downgraded their servers due to costs? Maybe they can't protect against DDoS and this alleviates the problem? I swear to god if it's because they can't stand a regular Aether person seeing a "100 in queue" instead of "25th in queue" then I am going to lose it.

[Hyperia]

I get the feeling that they want each DC to be able to do content without everybody going to one DC.

I expect one of the big selling points of 8.0 will be cross DC party finder and roulettes.

[Xapapetsu]

I know I go to aether because most of my ultimate static is on aether, but I think most people are going to aether to farm the EX and run Quantum 40. I think going to aether to farm the EX is stupid because it's the easiest EX we've seen in a long time, but I understand Quantum 40.

[Miradelle]

I get the feeling that they want each DC to be able to do content without everybody going to one DC.

I expect one of the big selling points of 8.0 will be cross DC party finder and roulettes.

Every time cross DC PF has come up, they've said how difficult it is to implement (but they say that about everything). So, I don't think it's coming in 8.0, maybe 9.0. The game desperately needs it, or one of the options I listed. That, and they only now realized that it's an issue, and SQE works VERY slow. Complaints from early DT are probably only being addressed well into the next expansion.

[Doki]

Meanwhile on Aether

[Infindox]

Meanwhile on Aether

They're on Faerie this time, right? Saw a bunch of posts on Reddit about it.

[Oizen]

The population is declining to a point where I feel like server merges aren't off the table.

[Alicie]

I expect one of the big selling points of 8.0 will be cross DC party finder and roulettes.

I wish! They'd be talking about it like crazy though if it was in development.

[SkankyRoe]

Meanwhile on Aether

I feel like this should be punishable since Faerie is now designated as Congested; every single one of these bots is taking up a precious spot that could have gone to someone who actually wishes to engage with the game's content.

[Alicie]

I feel like this should be punishable since Faerie is now designated as Congested; every single one of these bots is taking up a precious spot that could have gone to someone who actually wishes to engage with the game's content.

It's just going to be the same situation as with RMT PFs. It's going to be unnoticed until JP guys will come and see it, and shortly after that rules will be immediately changed and these guys will be immediately banned.