Cross Data Center Party Finder?

[ErinRayelle]

With the unfortunate news that Crystal will be made, which will consist of mostly Roleplayers and casual content players due to most raiders and crafters shifting back to Aether, my question is as follows:

I know its possible solely through the fact that they never thought world hopping and cross world PF would ever be a thing, yet here we are.

May we please have a Cross Data Center Party Finder implemented into the game by 5.0 or at the latest 5.2?

I ask this because many of my friends who raid are leaving, but my friends who do in house and spend the most time with me are staying. I cherish the FC I'm with but how am I supposed to decide between playing the game with my WIFE and friends, versus playing the game to my own desires with my old static and getting end-game content done at a reasonable pace? No one should be forced to decide.

[HyoMinPark]

I’d love a cross-data center PF, even if it was just for your specific region (NA with NA, EU with EU, JP with JP). That would solve the issue of my static having to break up once Part 2 of 4.5 hits, as well as losing the ability to play with the friends I have that are staying on Crystal (and them with us on Aether). Plus I’d finally be able to play with my friends on Primal.

[Esp]

I have wanted this since the cross world party finder was created. And I think even if it's not out now, it's something that should be considered for the near future.

[Enla]

Given that all the servers are likely being kept in the same location for NA and then with a similar setup for EU I don't see why this couldn't be possible. Someone brought up the potential tech limitations on reddit but they didn't word it as if it was entirely impossible. Please if anyone actually knows how server administration works, I'd love to know the ins and outs as to why this might be viable and the potential challenges of getting it to work. Because if there's even a minor possibility of it working, it'd be worth it.

[KisaiTenshi]

With the unfortunate news that Crystal will be made, which will consist of mostly Roleplayers and casual content players due to most raiders and crafters shifting back to Aether, my question is as follows:

I know its possible solely through the fact that they never thought world hopping and cross world PF would ever be a thing, yet here we are.

May we please have a Cross Data Center Party Finder implemented into the game by 5.0 or at the latest 5.2?

I ask this because many of my friends who raid are leaving, but my friends who do in house and spend the most time with me are staying. I cherish the FC I'm with but how am I supposed to decide between playing the game with my WIFE and friends, versus playing the game to my own desires with my old static and getting end-game content done at a reasonable pace? No one should be forced to decide.

Cross Data Center will never be a thing, it defeats the purpose of having servers in different regions, and puts load on services that simply can't handle "all players" logging in at the same time.

There still is a potential work-around that I'm surprised SE has not proposed. Allow a "echo clone" mode, that copies the state of your existing character, minus inventory (eg only gear currently equipped will be taken with you) to be able to temporarily exist on other servers/dc's:

Limitations:
- No loot rewards
- No money
- No gear changes, no repairs unless a player can repair it for you for free
- No shops
- No trading
- No Chocobo, no mounts (other than zone-specific mounts as MSQ rewards that won't be rewarded from a clear)
- No Link shells
- No FC access

Basically you're there to fill a slot in a party, or for RP reasons. Once you disconnect from the world, your temporary echo clone is deleted. This would of course not be permitted at all if the world has any queue. That circumvents the issue with having to synchronize any data between the DC's, it's just a one-way trip, and you can't bring anything to the world, or take anything from it. If you want the rewards, you have to have an actual character in that DC.

There's probably more data points I've missed, but the general problem with cross DC is that it would require synchronizing both DC's server clusters, not just the servers. With CRZ's (Cross Realm Zones), this is actually internal data sync, and if they're really planning on making the DC's one "super server", then it's very likely that they've decided to break up services to their own servers/virtual-servers inside the DC so that the only thing that a "world" really represents is a set of non-overlapping zones for capacity reasons. They could easily go "ok this new area, we're going to have five instances of it (one per world) only", and players are just bumped to other world's versions of that zone if the zone is full or have explicitly selected it when partied with players on other servers. Areas that are generally empty, would just collapse into one zone.

So I just don't see this happening if they physically move the DC's away from each other, as that would put a prohibitive cost on synchronization, where as if it's physically in the same DC, it costs them effectively nothing.

[Barraind]

I would say itll happen one day because Blizzard figured out how to do it years ago and you can group with people anywhere in the world for your group and raid experiences, but 14 also doesnt let you do thing like:

desynth an item if a duty window has opened
sell items if a duty window is opened
eat food if a duty window is opened
do anything during the animation lock of anything else (WHY IS THIS STILL A THING)
open your FC and friends list in an instance
send tells to anyone not in the same instance as you, unless its a smaller sized instance, then you cant even do that, because lol
have a sensible housing item placement system


So it would probably take a handful of consecutive miracles and jesus himself returning to actually happen.

Small indie developer, remember.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Cross Data Center will never be a thing, it defeats the purpose of having servers in different regions, and puts load on services that simply can't handle "all players" logging in at the same time.

Uhh, Yoshida has outright said this is something they want to do eventually. Furthermore, people aren't asking to connect to different regions, just all the Datacenters in their region. So Aether, Primal and Crystal players could all be in a party together. As Barraind mentioned, WoW did this already. If Blizzard figured it out, why can't Square Enix?