Yoshida-san - GLOBAL Servers and Balancing Tweaks Instead of Regional Servers

[Starlord]

You're just guessing about still having a mix, and saying its not essential is just your opinion.

/fail

Everyone seems to be "Guessing" at this point. XD

[Priya]

so you're okay then with completely alienating the hardcore playerbase and essentially telling them if they want truly challenging pve they should just get it from another game?

Ironically, the people who play just to socialize are perfectly fine with alienating everyone else.

What I believe is that you have no knowledge regarding how latency can affect gameplay, and that it's not as easy as adding X ms to boss mechanics in order to compensate effects of latency.

The annoyance induced by latency isn't linear. Someone having 300ms won't be "twice more annoyed" than someone having 150ms. It's exponential.

Even if mechanics window are 0.5s longer, players with 300ms vs someone with 50ms will still get screwed. When the gameplay is fast paced (in before comparison with XI, no that's not fast paced), having a high latency makes it really hard to play properly. Ability lag combined with a low GCD make the gameplay experience horrible.

I experienced SWTOR or Rift couple of times with 300ms+ latency (had issue on my line so my latency was horrible), and I purely and simply could not raid. It wasn't about me needing an extra 270ms to react to mechanics (~30ms is my normal ping), it was more like playing a music game where notes are out of sync with the music.

To take your SF exemple, it would be like having a 15 frame delay when playing. Even if you increase all execution timing window by 15 frames, you will still suck badly.

Finally, boss mechanics aren't the only one thing. Healing/interacting with other players is important as well and there is no timing window for that. When you need to use a cooldown quickly on someone or that someone will die, you just need to do it "ASAP".

ASAP + latency can mean wiping. But again to realize that, you need to understand what is raiding. And it seems that Yoshida has an idea of what raiding is and how latency can terribly affects a raid performance.

[Iryu]

Amazing post. Please read it, Yoshi!

[Colino]

so you're okay then with completely alienating the hardcore playerbase and essentially telling them if they want truly challenging pve they should just get it from another game?

If you want to play reaction based difficult content you shouldn't be playing an MMO in the first place, especially one with Final Fantasy in the title.

That being said, if you have friends from different regions, you can all agree to play on the same server and you'll be able to play like you did before.

Why do you keep saying this when we have been telling you time and time again that it's not as simple as asking them? How many in-game friends do you actually have? Do they all belong to the same tight-knit group or LS?

We can have friends from MULTIPLE regions (I do and so do many others) who do not KNOW EACH OTHER and thus it is practically IMPOSSIBLE to ask ALL OF THEM to make the same exact server move (or not to make one at all).

Is it really that hard to understand or are you just ignoring this on purpose?

[Miliant]

Will you please stop complaining about regional servers?

In a different MMO, I chose to play in a US server instead of a Euro server. In the end, my schedule ended up making it almost impossible for me to particiate in most events. I had to make a new character in a Euro server. People choose regional servers for a reason, and it's not just lag. You can still choose whichever you want, why isn't that enough for you? Seriously...

[Miliant]

We can have friends from MULTIPLE regions (I do and so do many others) who do not KNOW EACH OTHER and thus it is practically IMPOSSIBLE to ask ALL OF THEM to make the same exact server move (or not to make one at all).

Is it really that hard to understand or are you just ignoring this on purpose?

Can't you just stay on your current server and avoid all complications, then?

[Atoli]

This is no different from what SE wants to do.
You act like that because you suspect people WILL go to a regional server if it is labeled as such instead of just staying on the server they currently are on (global).

If you are so sure people WILL do that there is no point to label some as "global" because your beloved community will STILL be torn into pieces because some people will go to the regional ones (like you suspected) and others like you will go to the ones labled as "global".

And seriously, you all go nuts about this whole "I want to play with other cultures!" thing...I've been on the inofficial EU server for months now and played with more different cultures than I ever did on the "global" server I was on before..where I only played with NA and German players. Here it's people from all the different EU countries, Dubai, Japan, NA, SA, arabs etc. because everyone is here to whom this time zone is convenient, meaning also people from non-EU countries who can only play in the morning or late at night.
Servers will still have an international community even if their location differs.

Also....communities to which being together was really important stayed together through the last server transfer as well.
Why do you think that suddenly everyone wants to switch to a local server although "everyone" was strongly against it at the last server transfer?

[Veltaine]

did everyone forget were getting content finder which will spread across the servers? yes your in a server that will reduce lag in your area. but you can still do instances with other ppl from other servers, woooo. you ppl are boring with your uninformed debates.

[Zetsubou]

If a certain server is connected to a certain region that would indicate that server is populated with players of that region, even though it doesn't say that server is designed for those players of that region.

Which is what everyone is worry about, you will end up with a prime/dead times on each server, cause why would players from different region would join a server that isn't built in their region, when I can join a server is just next to me.

For me, a delay is still manageable, and I would find a way to work myself around that lag in the end, but knowing the fact that people who are on my time zone won't but bother help my case of join any other server other than the servers in my region.

[Jynx]

I'm mainly upset because this causes large issues for people like me and my friends who have widely varied play times.

I can't pick a server that is "Best" for me because I often have to switch up what time I'm available for play.