REGION-WIDE Duty Finder & Party Finder: Urgently needed in NA & EU

[Alicie]

This problem isn't exclusive to NA and EU it's even happing on the JP servers with Mana becoming the "raiding" server and everyone from other JP datacenters congregating on Mana very much like Light & Aether.

This is also where the reluctance to fix this issue with cross region PF comes from. If they introduced cross region PF and queues Japanese players could be paired with players from the Elemental DC which if you don't know is the unofficial Japanese DC for English speakers such as players from South East Asia. Japanese players are quite hostile to English speaking players often putting the phrase "Do you speak Japanese?" In their PF's and kicking anyone who doesn't. English speaking players from Elemental literally cannot say a single word while PFing on the regions "raiding hub" and if they MUST speak have to rely on Google translate and pray no one discovers the secret that they are not Japanese.
Imagine if this happened on EU with all the languages.

Japanese players not wanting to interact with english speakers is the reason why the OCE datascenter exists even though SE knew the region didn't have the population to sustain itself because the Japanese players do not want non Japanese players on their servers and in their parties. Its also why cross DC travel is restricted to region only (NA > NA. EU > EU) square Enix confirmed they limited this feature because of possible "culture clashes" on various DC's.

Long story short we will never get cross region PF or full cross region DC travel because Japanese players do not want to mingle with the rest of the game even within their DC region. This is mind boggling considering players outside Japan make up majority of this games profits and playerbase but SE are incapable of not catering to JP players first and foremost, just look at the ping problem being an apparent non issue.

Like you currently can restrict PF recruitment to current world only, go ahead and have an option to restrict it to current dc only as well. It's not an issue.

[Shistar]

This problem isn't exclusive to NA and EU it's even happing on the JP servers with Mana becoming the "raiding" server and everyone from other JP datacenters congregating on Mana very much like Light & Aether.

You're right, I completely forgot that JP was split into 4 DCs like NA. I didn't mention them at all in the original post because I can't read Japanese and don't go to that part of the forums, so talking about their situation would be lying on my part.

This is also where the reluctance to fix this issue with cross region PF comes from. If they introduced cross region PF and queues Japanese players could be paired with players from the Elemental DC which if you don't know is the unofficial Japanese DC for English speakers such as players from South East Asia. Japanese players are quite hostile to English speaking players often putting the phrase "Do you speak Japanese?" In their PF's and kicking anyone who doesn't. English speaking players from Elemental literally cannot say a single word while PFing on the regions "raiding hub" and if they MUST speak have to rely on Google translate and pray no one discovers the secret that they are not Japanese.
Imagine if this happened on EU with all the languages.

[...] square Enix confirmed they limited [the cross-region visits] feature because of possible "culture clashes" on various DC's.

Long story short we will never get cross region PF or full cross region DC travel because Japanese players do not want to mingle with the rest of the game even within their DC region. This is mind boggling considering players outside Japan make up majority of this games profits and playerbase but SE are incapable of not catering to JP players first and foremost, just look at the ping problem being an apparent non issue.

I'll have you know EU is doing just fine on the language front lol
We try to speak English whenever possible, but it wouldn't be the first time if I had to pull up a translator tool to explain mechs to a french player in an Ultimate. We mostly make use of the auto-translate feature or use translators in more complicated content, and often times parties are diverse enough to have at least one other player who can assist in translation if needed. In my 5 years of playing, I don't think I ever experienced a language issue that couldn't be resolved with basic communication.

If Japanese players wish to be xenophobic, they're free to miss out on features that would only benefit them while the rest of us who are not averse to basic communication get use out of them. Even if it was implemented they'd only benefit from it, as they can continue to test players on their Japanese skills while simultaneously drawing from a larger pool of JP players for their PFs.

As mentioned by other users in this thread, they can also lock their PF to their own world if they're worried about this. Features to lock your PF to your DC could be implemented as well if SE is interested in the JP playerbase's comfort. I don't think it affects any of us, so why not?

It keeps getting suggested, but I don't think it can be done except for maybe the European servers, mostly because there's only 2 of them. And even there it would likely be an extra inconvenience to the players.

The same was thought about cross-DC travel, yet here we are!
And because DF and PF didn't follow suit, we've got an interesting problem on our hands...

I think having EU as a testing grounds without having to worry about cultural clashes for this would be pretty cool. If it works well, they can scale it up further so NA and possibly JP can make use out of it.

You'd need people to send over their characters data to the other DCs, essentially doing just the same things as what happens with a DC Travel, in order to begin queueing with multiple DCs. As I said, with Europe only having 2 servers, it wouldn't be as bad. NA and Japan having 4 servers, they'd need to do essentially 3 DC travels back to back in order for it to work.
And in order to ensure the data is properly synced, it would likely need to be done once per login.

I am afraid I don't follow, where are these multiple DC travels coming from? I was thinking it'd make more sense to have one central server per region managing duties, pulling people in and out as needed. Although it may take an extra 10 seconds to enter the duty as the server gathers everybody and gets them ready to travel, it'd only be one trip to enter the duty and one trip to go back to your world, wouldn't it? I'm not very tech-savvy so I'd appreciate more detail on this if I'm completely missing the mark.

I think the idea other users suggested of the game automatically choosing the least congested DC and transferring everyone over there would be good too. As I said, this is the part where I can't really be of help since I have no idea what I'm talking about, but I love seeing everyone's opinion on it.

Ranked PvP being only on one DC before Region DF/PF is such a terrible decision too. Want to do ranked? F your retainers, F being able to talk to anyone in your LS or FC!

You're so right, I completely forgot about ranked! Region-wide DF would completely alleviate this issue. So many things I missed in the OP that you are suggesting that would be immediately fixed if we had this feature...

[Xactly]

Not sure why OCE was excluded in the title.

[KhujaRela]

I'm from EU, and play in Chaos - Moogle... we don't have problems with languages or culture barriers you can choose the language you join the PF in-game, to have more possibilities to queue fast I have all languages and sometimes people write in dutch or french... it's okay, we have translating tools nowadays xD

It's very peculiar to me because EU has multiple countries and only 2 datacenters and we don't have so much problem with travelling or languages; I just discovered people go to Light to raid in this post and made me kinda sad xD DC travelling is slow and tiring...

Anyway, I hope there is a way to shorten the queues in party finder, that would be awesome (specially for dps...)

[Shistar]

Not sure why OCE was excluded in the title.

OCE region is composed of a singular DC, Materia, so nothing would change for them if this feature was added. If OCE had more than one DC like EU, only then this feature would be relevant for them.

I'm from EU, and play in Chaos - Moogle... we don't have problems with languages or culture barriers you can choose the language you join the PF in-game, to have more possibilities to queue fast I have all languages and sometimes people write in dutch or french... it's okay, we have translating tools nowadays xD

It's very peculiar to me because EU has multiple countries and only 2 datacenters and we don't have so much problem with travelling or languages; [...]

Haha, right?
I would imagine that from an NA player's perspective, dealing with multiple languages can be chaotic because they're not used to it - but aside from French people refusing the communicate with the rest of us sometimes (?) I've never had a problem in my 5 years playing this game in EU.

Perhaps it is because we are around 1/3rd the size of NA that we have a more cooperative mentality towards communication; we have no choice, after all. Alienating others for not speaking our native language (when Europe has more languages than the officially supported ones, on top of that...) would be very silly of us if we intend to have enough people to run content.

[CaptainLagbeard]

I am afraid I don't follow, where are these multiple DC travels coming from? I was thinking it'd make more sense to have one central server per region managing duties, pulling people in and out as needed. Although it may take an extra 10 seconds to enter the duty as the server gathers everybody and gets them ready to travel, it'd only be one trip to enter the duty and one trip to go back to your world, wouldn't it? I'm not very tech-savvy so I'd appreciate more detail on this if I'm completely missing the mark.

Well, all the different DCs are on different physical machines, cross-world stuff works easier because all the worlds on the DC are all on the same server computer.
In order to play on a different DC, you need your character to exist on that DC. And so when you DC Travel, your character's data gets sent over to that machine.

It would probably be more than possible to create a cross-DC chat, but in order to play with people from a different DC everyone's characters would need to be sent to the same server. At best it would likely involve creating a separate DC that exists only for DF and PF that people would travel to, kinda like the Shadow DC that briefly existed in the Europe region at the start of dawntrail... Although it ultimately wouldn't really be any different from people just Traveling to the most active DC.

[Eastwall]

I understand they are working on it with ranked 5v5. I would imagine it is easy to port over once that is implemented

[Shistar]

[...] At best it would likely involve creating a separate DC that exists only for DF and PF that people would travel to, kinda like the Shadow DC that briefly existed in the Europe region at the start of dawntrail... Although it ultimately wouldn't really be any different from people just Traveling to the most active DC.

I understand now, thank you.
I think we would still greatly benefit from region-wide DF and PF if the travelling only happens once you queue into the duty. I imagine getting basic data across like character name, job and level wouldn't be extremely difficult but I didn't think about people being unable to chat while in a PF outside of duty... I wonder how they'd get around that without forcing us out of our home worlds.

I understand they are working on it with ranked 5v5. I would imagine it is easy to port over once that is implemented

Really? I had no idea! When was this said?
I hope things go smoothly so we can hopefully get it for regular DF and PF too!

[Jeeqbit]

I would imagine that from an NA player's perspective, dealing with multiple languages can be chaotic because they're not used to it

It is off-putting, for sure. Because many EU players went to play in NA originally because there was no EU data center. There only used to be one EU data center called Chaos and it wasn't even located in the EU, and its population wasn't exactly great at the time. They moved it to EU in 2015.

So the appeal of starting on EU wasn't high when there was no benefit whatsoever. After the change, going to try out EU you were met with the realization that, as an English speaker, many don't speak that or don't speak it well on EU servers, and it's simpler to just play in the NA region where virtually everyone speaks English really well.

It's not that hard to navigate it due to auto-translate but it's still just more effort or extra steps, and sometimes you do have to sit through entire conversations in another language in party chat, even in High-End duties.

Visual guides and markers are more important to help cross the language barrier, because saying things like "M2" or "T1" makes it easy to explain your role in a fight without using words. And it seems less common to get a PF into discord voice in EU because of the varied languages.

aside from French people refusing the communicate with the rest of us sometimes (?) I've never had a problem in my 5 years playing this game in EU.

As you say, it is mainly French that tends to cause problems sometimes. It has always seemed more common for other language speakers to be multi-lingual. It's recognized enough that France has been improving it in schools in recent years but that won't affect MMO players for a good 10-20 years.

[Shistar]

It is off-putting, for sure. [...] going to try out EU you were met with the realization that, as an English speaker, many don't speak that or don't speak it well on EU servers, and it's simpler to just play in the NA region where virtually everyone speaks English really well.
It's not that hard to navigate it due to auto-translate but it's still just more effort or extra steps, and sometimes you do have to sit through entire conversations in another language in party chat, even in High-End duties.

Do you play in EU often? I've been only in EU since I began playing in 2020 and my experience was never that... yes, you may see people speaking in other languages in public spaces, especially in certain servers like Ragnarok (spanish), Shiva (german), Moogle (french) and so on... but if you talk to someone in English, they are extremely likely to swap to your language (if they weren't already talking in English to begin with) and all duties are treated as "English unless we find out all of us have a another language in common and we're being silly talking in English for no reason" zone. It is extremely rare to "have" to sit through an entire conversation with auto-translate and even then they're usually short-lived conversations, just trying to get the main point across and move on.

MMO players are generally older and the younger generation is also better educated, so the level of English is fairly decent all around. No, it's not perfect grammar or stellar pronunciation in VC but English is not my first language and we're communicating just fine! The vast majority of EU players can talk in English just fine, but often choose to be in FCs where their native language is favored. Public areas are also not English-only, but duties usually are.

I assume you were taking my quote to provide extra context for the people reading this thread later on, otherwise I find it a little odd you're explaining EU culture to an EU player... as an NA player? Even then and you being a veteran, as I said I have to disagree with the way you see EU players, as someone who actually plays here every day and deals with the players all the time. We have virtually zero communication issues if you ignore a very specific, very small subset of players that may only mildly inconvenience you in a casual roulette, where communication is not a matter of life and death either way.

[...] And it seems less common to get a PF into discord voice in EU because of the varied languages.

Yeah no, we don't do that afaik lol that sounds wild. I don't think I'd ever go into VC with a bunch of strangers from PF, only time I've seen this happen is if you join a static as a PF replacement and it's just an offer if they're feeling particularly friendly.. but it's an effective way to communicate when you know the vast majority of players in your region are guaranteed to understand what you're saying, accents aside.