Voluntary Data Center moves, "Compensation" and why its failed, a theory.

[Barraind]

From another thread:

They've been trying for years to get people to redistribute themselves by offering the Road to 60 buff with free transfer to low-pop worlds but it hasn't been enough.

Theres been a lot of talk about why people affected by the Crystal datacenter creation are being driven to maddening levels of abject rage, but this thread is going to touch a different topic.

What would Squenix have to offer to get people to move to an empty server on a new datacenter. No new characters, just transfers. Designed to pull statics, FC's, people. Large chunks of people moving together.


Lets look at the theoretical best offer they've made, which is a combination of the "please move off balmung" and the "heres what we think we have to offer to get people to move to crystal"

100% compensation for house costs
3mil gil for items that cannot be transferred from a house
Unlimited Gil cap
Road to 60 on destination server



Now, what do you lose?

FC progress. Rank is easy. Company credits can pre-purchase ceruleum tanks and tangible items (I dont know why you would buy paintings), but cant pre-buy actions, as they stay in the company windows. You also have to find space for everything in the FC chest and every airship/sub part.

You will also have to spend time re-discovering every ship/sub location and leveling them up in order to use the previously built parts.

House location.

Inventory Space. My house doesnt exist and I now have up to 640 items to put on my retainers, in my inventory and in my chocobo saddlebag. Of course, thats more space than you get as a default, so probably need a few extra retainers. Maybe you have to buy 4 new retainers with $ to avoid having to delete everything (but its realistically 1-2, I know this from moving Cactuar - Coeurl and then medium house to large house. Also, you have to spread FC housing stuff around on people.

Time decorating a house. Our FC house took 2 people 27 hours each to design and decorate. My personal house took... a lot more. Thats a significant investment of time, which is a significant investment in game currency, or Gil. not sure how much of the compensated 3mil that accounts for, but its a massive amount of time.

You're now on a new server (brand new), and on a new datacenter, so time to re-populate friends lists and the like, and are left to hunt down a new fc, level it up (yes, this can be fast), repurchase fc and individual plots, and get things moved from wherever you had to stash them to wherever they have to go.

As fast as possible because everyone else is racing you for the same prime spots.


(1)

[Barraind]

(2)

Its easy to see why people dont want to move. We havent even gotten into losing statics, losing the community (as youre praying the NEW community will make up for the old community as much as possible), losing personal friends (being reliant on discord, like slack, like aim, like irc,, ect just doesnt work) and we're already operating at a MASSIVE loss.

I honestly dont think voluntary moves even can work the way squenix has their servers set up. The code that seems less stable than Everquest at times doesnt support a lot of what they would need to get people to seriously consider moving:

Keep your house, because housing is correctly instanced.
Keep your FC and all progress it and you have made.
Move all your existing inventory spaces without having to put it in specific places.
Have the ability to party find, duty find and group with people on any datacenter in your region (or world. Its already being done in other, current mmo's that had to build the infrastructure for it from the ground)

Honestly, that would do it, you wouldnt have to add anything else.

But as that isnt now, and likely never will be an option, I honestly dont think any amount of compensation they can reasonably offer (you cant just throw more gil at the problem) will make people want to transfer.

And as evidenced by the ~30 hours of nonsense surrounding Crystal, this was something they should have figured out well before now.

[Solarra]

Agree with everything you said.
Housing and FC Progress seem to be the main sticking points that stop people from moving. The compensation is laughable. What use is gil when you have given up a prime housing plot and may have to settle for something smaller, in a less favourable position or no house at all? They need to give people much better incentives if they want them to move and your list would probably tempt a lot of people. Sadly, I don't see instanced housing happening.

Have the ability to party find, duty find and group with people on any datacenter in your region

I think this would be a huge help, not only to prevent people from rushing to popular worlds but also to alleviate some of the issues caused by the EU and US data-centre split.

[Nalien]

Losing Free Company is one of the bigger issues for me, estate included since apparently reimbursement is only for private estates? Luckily EU is getting new servers as well, so if I move there should be plenty of free plots, but as a small FC grinding to that rank 6 to even purchase a plot is an issue. Losing all the credits is an issue. Losing the airships and submarines. It's all a mess...

Heck, I don't even see "I can just buy a new plot" as a real solution. It's taken years to build up and decorate, to have to potentially redo all that because of this nonsense is just... Placing some single items alone took hours just due to having to use glitches... Finally get the FC house how I like it and to have to worry about this...

What would be really nice is if SE set up some form of registration for moving, and if you apply they look into just moving everything tied to you over completely; They move your FC over. The entire house as is. All the credits/FC chest inventory/etc. Obviously there are potential issues with that, and it's not even viable for NA I guess since there are no new servers, but with EU getting brand new servers it seems like at least a potential solution... Too many people with plots might apply for it to be viable for that, but at the very least it should be possible for FCs, right? Seems far too late to work on making housing instanced to allow for that, but it should't be impossible to just give every FC a workshop via some means other than housing, and thus let FCs carry over their Airship/Submarine progress, right?

[Barraind]

You'd think they could tie workshops to something other than the house, but even now, moving from one house to another on the same server has the potential to reset certain workshop progress

[Sethy]

(2)

Have the ability to party find, duty find and group with people on any datacenter in your region (or world. Its already being done in other, current mmo's that had to build the infrastructure for it from the ground)

This would help a lot. I don't mind losing my house as much losing the ability to play with friends who will now be on another data centre

[Barraind]

If they had announced "we're moving data centers around, but you can still do instanced content with everyone, region/world wide through party finder, but only open world stuff with your datacenter", I would be perfectly happy and have little to no displeasure whatsoever apart from them likely destroying server economies.

If the only thing I'd lose is not getting to do maps or visit houses of some friends, thats an acceptable tradeoff.