Regional Servers? (Opinions please)

[Dawiichan]

most non FPS games do not require the twitch response that FPS games do, and certainly not this one with its slow combat.

Well first they said they were making the combat faster, so that knocks out one of your points. Then they also said they wanted to incorporate a good PvP system in this game, so i doubt that having latency unbalance between different regions would help this matter. Then when competitive content appears, the speed of which actions are taken out does actually affect one's gameplay. No, I would have to say latency is important considering the path this game is taking. I mean, we've already seen the outcome of it in Ifrit Extreme. While it is still definitely possible to be beaten, you can't deny the fact that the regional latency difference makes it easier on others.

I don't understand why people are so against it. Some servers are located elsewhere, some are located in Japan. Why do they all have to be in Japan? If you ask me that's just selfish. Even if most people don't go to a global server, doesn't that mean that keeping them all global was a bad idea from the start?

Only FPS require damn near nil latency issues given the nature of the game -- in PvP in MMOs, the games are designed to give much more leeway incase someone has a less than optimal latency while connecting. It's good to have as little latency as possible, but FPS is the main genre that benefits the most from it, because most standard MMOs that rely on PvE content more so than PvP content are designed to handle higher latencies.

XIV is the exception because the foundation was already pretty poorly built.

While this is definitely true, this no where near means that it has no potent affect toward's one gameplay. Ifrit was obviously taken into consideration towards the poorly built foundation of the game, yet we've seen the difference that regions has placed on it. A simple separation from the east coast and the west coast makes almost no noticeable difference to an MMO player. However have you ever seen the difference between an east coast player playing a west coast server, and an east coast player playing in an oceanic server? I have when I played two different servers in Dragonica. The simple fact that the server located so much farther away made it so that some of the "rapid" skills in the game were not able to be used because of the delay experienced.

I'm not saying that close to nil latency is required, but I am saying that it is easier to work on something when there isn't as much latency unbalance. We've already seen how happy people were when XI moved some of their servers over to NA.

[Jennestia]

I don't understand why people are so against it. Some servers are located elsewhere, some are located in Japan. Why do they all have to be in Japan? If you ask me that's just selfish. Even if most people don't go to a global server, doesn't that mean that keeping them all global was a bad idea from the start?

It has no reason not to exist in Japan as I can promise you if you load up a Japanese website just as quick as you do a non-japanese based website, physical locations is not the problem.

Fun fact: A lot of website hosting is based in the UK and Canada, hosts a lot of people use and experience no latency problems or bandwidth problems.

It's not "selfishness" -- wanting servers next to you is more selfish than having the servers where the development team is, if anything it's a lot smarter to keep the servers where the dev team is. Keeping them global was a good idea and it worked for FFXI for many years and worked for XIV -- the issue with XIV is, as stated, the client and server infrastructure, not the geographical location.

It's 2012, ever since the late 1990s physical locations of servers had so little impact on services it's almost hard to tell they're not located next to you unless you're on a particularly bad ISP.

I mean, we've already seen the outcome of it in Ifrit Extreme.

So all the NA/EU players that happen to have a relic live in Japan...?

[Mirage]

Are you seriously comparing website hosting to game server hosting? Lol.

And no one is saying ifrit extreme is impossible outside of Japan. Take your strawmen elsewhere.

As for the FF11 argument, how can you be so sure that it was global serves that kept the game alive? Do you have polls or statistics or something?

[Jennestia]

Are you seriously comparing website hosting to game server hosting? Lol.

And no one is saying ifrit extreme is impossible outside of Japan. Take your strawmen elsewhere.

As for the FF11 argument, how can you be so sure that it was global serves that kept the game alive? Do you have polls or statistics or something?

If geographical location is this big of a problem people are making it out to be, servers that are used for gaming/eCommerce or regular website hosting would all suffer the same problems. I didn't say it was "impossible" so if anyone made a "strawman argument" it would be you adding words to my post, much like no one said "Global servers kept FFXI alive"..actually read the post:

Keeping them global was a good idea and it worked for FFXI for many years and worked for XIV -- the issue with XIV is, as stated, the client and server infrastructure, not the geographical location.

Tell me where that stated it kept FFXI alive? I'd love to read it.

[Tupsi]

Are you seriously comparing website hosting to game server hosting? Lol.

And no one is saying ifrit extreme is impossible outside of Japan. Take your strawmen elsewhere.

As for the FF11 argument, how can you be so sure that it was global serves that kept the game alive? Do you have polls or statistics or something?

What kept FFXI alive was by being a good game, a "final fantasy title" and the fact it actually did something different from many MMOs during it's peak. Also I've seen no one stated Ifrit Extreme was impossible, however saying that different regions have different difficulties with it is false because Dawiichan's post basically stated only Japanese living in Japan have an easier time and everyone else has a harder time.

Everyone's been over this time and time again -- latency doesn't change the fight in that significant of a way unless your connection to Square's server is bad like mine tend to be but that's because AT&T etc.

[Antipika]

So all the NA/EU players that happen to have a relic live in Japan...?

Most of EU sure didn't do it full EU party. As for "NA", no one cares it means nothing. Latency on US West to Japan is acceptable. (Even if a bit high, still far from anything EU can have.)

Fun fact: A lot of website hosting is based in the UK and Canada, hosts a lot of people use and experience no latency problems or bandwidth problems.

Talking about latency for a website Sure these 200-300ms when clicking on a link will greatly affect the browsing... seriously. You sound like people adding more RAM to their computer thinking YouTube will load faster :[

It's not "selfishness" -- wanting servers next to you is more selfish than having the servers where the development team is, if anything it's a lot smarter to keep the servers where the dev team is.

Confirmed for never working with servers. Do you think our game servers are hosted inside SE HQ, "near" the dev team? They're not. They're most likely in a datacenter somewhere in Tokyo but that's about it. They wouldn't be safe inside a normal working environment. (Because of typical hazards risks such as Fire, but also earthquake and so on.) Also using a data center provide a higher scalability depending on the amount of subscribers and the need to get more processing power/clusters quickly. That flexibility cannot be achieved internally and it wouldn't be cost efficient either.

It's 2012, there is absolutely no reason what so ever for a sysadmin to have a physical access to a server. And SE have offices in USA/UK. So even if a member of staff would need for any reason to gain physical access to servers, this could still be done, could it be in LA or London.

[Tupsi]

So many people on these forums putting words into peoples posts and thoughts into other's heads lol.

[Dawiichan]

So all the NA/EU players that happen to have a relic live in Japan...?

Are you so blind that you can't read what I wrote? I never said that whatsoever. If you look at my history you can already see that I have beaten ifrit extreme and have my own relic(Full NA East Coast/Central Party/1 Australian, the Australian was actually able to see cracks slightly faster than the rest of the party). However to deny the fact that the fight is more lenient towards those in japan is just being ignorant. Try evading a crack that appears while you're in skill lock when playing in NA/EU. It's a much more different experience.

Also, I would have to disagree with the fact that from physical location means nothing. It's already been proved to many the difference, this game is already one of those. Wanting people to have the option to have servers near you is no where near selfish, specially in a game that is said to soon be faster paced and have a good PvP system. People saying "Screw latency, I just want to be with international people" is. If a JP wanted to play with NA people so much, they can always play an NA server. If a NA person wants to play with JP people then they can join a JP server. If you want a mix and match, you can play in a global server. If you think options are selfish, then that is an interesting mindset.

[Yumi_Hibiki]

How do you know the siren is false?

How do you know latency wont be a non issue for this game with the new server structure regardless where the servers are located?

Id rather put my gil on the devteam to keep their promises than making unreasonable demands,
we haven't even touched upon the issue of the immense cost and problems of multiple international located servers like location cost, 24/7 on location maintenance and development staff on the other side of the globe from the main development team, different laws and guidelines depending on the country its physically located at, the list goes on and on
and for what? some lousy milliseconds ping? seems kinda excessive

[Jynx]

As far as I'm concerned Community trumps a few Ms's of ping.