Aether congestion has made raiding with friends impossible

[Gember]

How many years has it been now since they said they "could" do cross-DC PF?
Did they give us an 100% confirmation that they are working on it?
What if they aren't? and if they are, how many years are we waiting until it does come?

I get tired of the suggestion for cross-DC PF, not because its a bad idea (Its great); but because we don't even know if were gonna even get it.

Why not ask for some suggestions for the meantime? Like some temporary bandied fixes until they got something figured out?
That way if things are being worked on; were not all suffering over here.

Maybe drive up some incentive to get people to go on more quieter datacenters? Like extra bonus rewards in the roulette or something? I know there is a* EXP bonus on Dynamis, and they are offering free transfers already; but people are not going to move to quieter datacenters because they know they have to travel to get certain duties to pop.

I know someone suggested a <Visitor> mode to where you can travel to datacenters, but you can't do any duties on there, but you can visit a friend's house or something. Why not drive the population to more quieter datacenters, and leave the rest on visitor mode? I got people losing their minds to the idea to funnel the the population to Dynamis temporary, so Aether can breathe a little. Then adjust it again if it becomes Aether 2.0. I dunno.

I am not a developer when it comes to population control; but I would like some sort of adjustments, and more communication about these issues at least.

[Jeeqbit]

How many years has it been now since they said they "could" do cross-DC PF?

I do not believe they have ever said they could do it. Given what I know about programming, I can say that it is possible. It's complicated and technically challenging, but so was Data Center Travel, and they achieved that feat, so they can do this too.

Did they give us an 100% confirmation that they are working on it?

No, they did not. They acknowledged the concern that people "go to Mana to raid". They said they had a solution in the works. I believe this was before they imposed Data Center Travel and World Visit caps, so that might have been their "solution".

It's also possible that they have it in the works but won't reveal it until patch 7.57. The .5 patch is when they normally release updates like this. In 3.5, we got cross-world PF. In 4.57 we got World Visit. We were going to get Data Center Travel probably before Endwalker release, but it was delayed due to the game going viral on twitch and then the expansion release - they did not want to test it at the peak of congestion.

One thing I can say though is that in 1.x, they felt the game needed cross-world Duty Finder so much that they were willing to remake the entire game so that it was possible. Now, we need cross-DC Duty Finder and just like in 1.0 the game does not support it, so what will they do?

[Gember]

I do not believe they have ever said they could do it. Given what I know about programming, I can say that it is possible. It's complicated and technically challenging, but so was Data Center Travel, and they achieved that feat, so they can do this too.
No, they did not. They acknowledged the concern that people "go to Mana to raid". They said they had a solution in the works. I believe this was before they imposed Data Center Travel and World Visit caps, so that might have been their "solution".

It's also possible that they have it in the works but won't reveal it until patch 7.57. The .5 patch is when they normally release updates like this. In 3.5, we got cross-world PF. In 4.57 we got World Visit. We were going to get Data Center Travel probably before Endwalker release, but it was delayed due to the game going viral on twitch and then the expansion release - they did not want to test it at the peak of congestion.

One thing I can say though is that in 1.x, they felt the game needed cross-world Duty Finder so much that they were willing to remake the entire game so that it was possible. Now, we need cross-DC Duty Finder and just like in 1.0 the game does not support it, so what will they do?

Here is a interview on the topic of cross duty finder here:

https://www.famitsu.com/news/202307/30311422.html

Reddit for English:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscus...w_with_yoship/

"Some sort of world-wide Duty Finder system or content matching/registration system is under consideration. They're worried about cultural things though, and it's a big technical challenge besides."

This is why I said "could" because it has been talked about, but I didn't hear it being brought up again. (Not sure if this also includes PF too) I think during last fanfest; some folks asked him about it, but I really don't know what YoshiP said there.

If there is better context on the interview; I would love to hear it. Still though, we could probably use some temporary fixes until we know for sure what is going on.

[Miradelle]

So how are they doing it right now with all of Aether congested?

Aether opens up when people are sleeping. So, either late in the night, or early in the morning, you can get into the DC. Then you just log out, and never leave the server.

[Voidsent-Uchiha]

How many years has it been now since they said they "could" do cross-DC PF?
Did they give us an 100% confirmation that they are working on it?.

Thankfully I remember a post I made in a pvp discord about when the most recent news happened like 1.5 years ago. (paragraph is my current timeline text)
Summary:
good news (stated in interview):
implementing cross-dc pf/df is only described as "almost close to impossible"

bad news:
best case (stated in interview): some long shot option that takes 1-1.5 years (this time period has passed with no update so this has failed most likely)

more likely case (stated in interview): it would take 3 years of full effort of the team to make meaning 8.0 or later (interview aired on June 6, 2024, that would mean mid 2027 if resources were moved toward it. if we reach mid this year with no update, probably means they're not considering this. i almost want to bet this is abandoned due to resources still being put toward housing and glamour plates technical side they've spoken of, but haven't for duty finder/party finder)

realistic case (my assumption at the time): they likely just stop ppl from doing duty finder on other data centers to avoid the baren raiding pf issues and it never gets implemented (he states that he doesn't want ppl to stress from login times among other things, they don't want people to dc travel "29:24 if we do this, -etc. would happen-- and would promote dc travel, so I don't know what we should do". so if they dont want ppl to dc travel at all, they don't want stress in 1 place, and technology doesn't exist, it was the only solution I saw happening eventually outside of flat out disabling dc travel entirely like they're doing a soft version of now.)

Source was exclusive interviews that got released on youtube.
23:30 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PIxQPKBf0E

[Gloriam]

So how are they doing it right now with all of Aether congested?

Exactly how people did anything during EW and ShB when congestion was so bad people were getting stuck on other servers for days or weeks at a time because they couldn't world transfer home. Signing on in the dead of night/wee hours of the morning and transferring over and then either staying online afk or signing out on that world so they can sign back in later without transferring.

[CCheshire]

snip

I mean, everyone who did a paid transfer or made an alt on Materia is stuck there for good, except for everyone else who can visit them, and they're not doing well either way...

It'd be way easier to buy a paid transfer than go through the endless obstacles of having to always ask your friends to make a PF or queue for content esp if everyone needs to be on the same schedule which is rare unless it's for a static.

[Raim]

I wish more people were upset about this fake congestion. Aether and Crystal are often locked for creation most of the year now and most of the day Aether and some of Crystal is locked from visiting. But we know the population isn't higher than EW/SHB. And where is cross DC regional party finder so people don't need to cram into one unofficial "raiding DC"?

[Zotoh_Zhaan]

I feel like data centres should just be dissolved it would solve all the problems.

Make it so there is 1 NA data centre with every single NA sever across all of NA linked to it.

That way all of NA can raid and party with everyone. All of the final fantasy 14 NA servers are located in Sacramento, CA. So there wouldn't even be increased ping.

Do the same for the JP, OCE and EU data centres.

1 single data centre with all world's in the region linked to it.

[CCheshire]

I feel like data centres should just be dissolved it would solve all the problems.

Make it so there is 1 NA data centre with every single NA sever across all of NA linked to it.

That way all of NA can raid and party with everyone. All of the final fantasy 14 NA servers are located in Sacramento, CA. So there wouldn't even be increased ping.

Do the same for the JP, OCE and EU data centres.

1 single data centre with all world's in the region linked to it.

The original DCs were sundered because having too many connected worlds caused them to be more unstable and inefficient, so IDK why they would do this for the 2nd time?