Aether congestion has made raiding with friends impossible

[Hyperia]

Aether will be locked until they replace it with a cloud DC.

[Miradelle]

Have everyone meet on Primal or Dynamis instead?

Because they need to PF, which means they aren't a full static, and if you have to PF at all .. the only place where you can get people in a timely manner is aether.

The real solution is to DC travel to aether at early/late hours, and never leave like everyone else. (SQE needs to kick people who are logged out in different DCs after an hour to fix this garbage)

[Ascend]

@Joyoya — responding to your suggestion above:

This was the first alternative we tried, and I agree it’s the next best option in theory. Unfortunately, as I mentioned in the original post, Party Finder activity on those data centers has been inconsistent and unreliable in practice. Because of that, they prefer to raid on Aether, where PF listings tend to gain traction more consistently. Given the number of unsuccessful attempts we’ve already had elsewhere, it feels awkward to keep putting them in that position. I don't want to make my problem their problem.

[Infindox]

I'll add that it's not only affecting the savage raiders; pretty much any sort of content that recommends communication or to gather on PF to do it is getting affected. All too often the runs of things like BA, DRS and FT have to either host on Primal or Dynamis to make sure everyone can join, or they run the risk of people not being able to join.

[CCheshire]

Honestly, they should have split Aether in half the last time they made a new NA DC like they did with one of the JP DCs. Aether is far too congested and if it's just going to lead to the entire data center being on lock down for new character creation for months at a time, they should have done something about it awhile ago.

I've been sitting here stuck on my home server for 4+ hours because every server on Aether is congested and I cannot travel. There are 215 high end PFs up right now. If it's to the point where I can't even do anything during prime hours, then I'd rather just not log in until the raid tier calms down a bit - when I teleport into any of the city states all I see is <Traveler> everywhere.

I'm not sure if everyone was aware now but aether has already been sundered once in the past like it used to have Balmung and Gilgamesh in the same DC before they newly added Crystal which borrowed some old worlds to populate and this was an extremely unpopular decision as they gave out free transfers for everyone too because they wanted to switch DCs now.

For anyone who is determined to come to Aether, the best times I've tried is that you should move your Wols when they're open on weekdays from 1AM-4PM EST and they typically are locked down all hours during the weekends so not even world visit is allowed by my main who is already on aether since his home world is there for over 7 years which is a shame since I just wanted to go bargain hunting in the evening.

[TeresaFortell]

I feel like the hardlock congestion is Square-Enix's way of putting their foot down on the matter. If people will not voluntarily disperse (whether via transfers or making PFs elsewhere), they'll make crowding onto Aether as inconvenient as possible until people get fed up enough to relocate one way or another

As long as Aether remains the main raiding server, people will find ways to circumvent any obstacles SE puts in place to squeeze themselves into it.

[Gloriam]

I'm not sure if everyone was aware now but aether has already been sundered once in the past like it used to have Balmung and Gilgamesh in the same DC before they newly added Crystal which borrowed some old worlds to populate and this was an extremely unpopular decision as they gave out free transfers for everyone too because they wanted to switch DCs now.

I was on Aether when they did this and I celebrated it back then (though I was in the minority, I recognize this). Considering that now we have DC travel, whereas back then we didn't, I doubt the move would be as unpopular as it was.

As it stands, SE needs to find a way to address the congestion because players are essentially being hard locked to their home servers and unable to travel within their own DC because of all the travelers. I only can speak for myself and my experience, but I can only set aside a limited amount of time to play xiv due to demanding job hours. If I have to spend that time sitting at an aetheryte unable to participate in hunts, crafting/gathering mat shopping, and hanging out with my friends (basically anything not involving PF), I'm much less likely to continue playing during raiding season.

Bare minimum they should turn afk kick back on, long term they need to look into whether a pf that includes all of the NA DCs is possible so people can stay on Primal, Crystal, and Dynamis and still have access to the Aether PF.

[GraceHorizon]

Yes please on the cross-DC party finder, and please also cross-DC duty finder so our queue times on Dynamis don’t suck.

[Absurdity]

I was on Aether when they did this and I celebrated it back then (though I was in the minority, I recognize this). Considering that now we have DC travel, whereas back then we didn't, I doubt the move would be as unpopular as it was.

I'd imagine it would be the opposite, even more unpopular.
Imagine being on Aether, THE data center for actually getting any content done, maybe you even server transferred there. Then suddenly the devs move you to one of the dead DCs without asking you, forcing you to now travel to Aether and all the restrictions that come with it.

It doesn't actually fix the congestion issues, because people aren't going to stop traveling to Aether for any activity that requires party finder as long as DC travel exists, it just pisses off the people who previously didn't have to deal with it as they were native to the DC.

[Jaltaer]

Since they keep making excuses as to why cross-DC PF won't be a thing for a long while, if ever, what they should do in the interim is lock Travelers out of creating public PFs. That alone would alleviate a lot of the burden I feel. There's no damn logic in "hmmm yes let me travel from Primal to Aether, set up a PF, and then recruit 7 other people, none of which are from Aether", which, yes is a thing that happens very very often. But if Travelers can't make public PFs, then they would be limited to only the PFs locals post, which might actually get them to stay home with all of the other people on their DC who had the same idea. Allowing them to make private PFs would still allow for cross-server statics or other groups to meet up, but would hopefully lessen some of the congestion.


And while I'm at it - they should only allow locals to queue for Duty Finder, at least on the 3 main active NA DCs. If a Traveler wants to do dailies with their friends, they can just be in a party with them and have that person queue them. But if you're solo, you should have to stay on your home DC to do dailies.