SE: Please address the enormous imbalance created with the data center changes.

[ScarecrowJames]

I think you're wrong.

There's two major population groups, raiders and RPers. Square-Enix did a good job segregating the communities. Aether for raiding, and Crystal for RP. Obviously, people should choose the data-center that provides the content they prioritize above all else, and then find little nich groups of the other content when it happens. RPers can still raid with pugs, and Raiders can find niche RP clubs on Aether. It's win/win.

Ultimately, no one data-center can support BOTH the Raiding and RP communities, so a split was destined to happen.

"segregating" Hmmmmmm...that has always been a good idea. Lets separate the majority of try hards from casuals and rpers!

[Hamada]

._. If they made one or two new worlds on each Data Center and made them for transfer players only temporarily, along with adding new wards to housing, then MAYBE this would be half way okay. It'd still be the shuffle from h*ll to get all my retainers in order so I can carry over my furnishings... and I'd have to give up my alt's small house in favor of having my main still having her medium + access to all three of my alts. But I'd be at least halfway more willing to to just transfer at that point.

3 million isn't an incentive for me. It's not worth about 3-4 weeks worth of shuffling between 4 characters and trying to trim down inventory space to accommodate, hopefully temporarily, 500+ housing items. Shoot, I don't think 5 million is worth it. Even if the amount was enough for a Large house... I don't know if that's remotely worth it, because you'll never actually get one. x.x

Mist, Plot 6, this has been my home for YEARS and I had coveted that spot since the LAUNCH of housing. ._. I'm not likely to get that on any other server, especially with all the transfers. And I feel terrible for my FC, maxed subs and airships... large in Shirogane, but they have to leave, because of their raid groups... :/

Your post made me think of something, is it even possible for SE to give enough gil as proper reimbursement? The answer I came up with is no, and here is why.

As you said, it takes a lot of work and time putting all the valuable furnishings into retainers, tossing out items and so on. The reason this takes soo much time is because for whatever reason, development wants to make lots of different items for this game, with nowhere to put them. Now lets say if they gave something like 30-50 Mil, as you said large house figures for simply transferring. What would happen is an extreme housing shortage because now even if they just own a small before, will be going after all the large and meds on the proposed new wards/ servers. People that do not get deep into housing simply do not understand, like my girlfriend made something like 36? windows, just these windows has a 4M-7.5 M value (depending what time you gauge the market) that a house happens to have.

So yeah 3 million is a joke to people that really do amazing things with housing and covers nothing. If they really want to control the markets while helping players, those items would be transferred digitally of some sorts, without cluttering our retainers. You simply can't give enough gil to cover all those items, otherwise it will cause problems for the markets, and players losing all those items are simply unhappy. They need to let us transfer the items easily.

The housing system SE made just does not work. They where told this countless times, upgrade your servers, make instanced houses, something, but they continue want to cheap out this game to maximize profits, and keep running into problems like this because of it.

[Atlantasia]

Your post made me think of something, is it even possible for SE to give enough gil as proper reimbursement? The answer I came up with is no, and here is why.

As you said, it takes a lot of work and time putting all the valuable furnishings into retainers, tossing out items and so on. The reason this takes soo much time is because for whatever reason, development wants to make lots of different items for this game, with nowhere to put them. Now lets say if they gave something like 30-50 Mil, as you said large house figures for simply transferring. What would happen is an extreme housing shortage because now even if they just own a small before, will be going after all the large and meds on the proposed new wards/ servers.

The housing system SE made just does not work. They where told this countless times, upgrade your servers, make instanced houses, something, but they continue want to cheap out this game to maximize profits, and keep running into problems like this because of it.

Pretty much. I started on Balmung due to my ex boyfriend at the launch of ARR having his legacy character there, I moved later to Coeurl to be with my friends from another game who wanted to raid and remembered I was an excellent healer in that game. It took me 2 months to prepare for that server move, and that was with only one character and no house at the time because I was using my private FC chest as a 3rd and 4th retainer, so I had to downsize and my friend helped me spend money on items I could get payout for on Coeurl with the move. I cannot imagine the scale needed for this. x.x It's overwhelming and a nightmare for me.

Money just doesn't cut it. More wards + new servers, locked for transferring only people might help, as would some FC locked ones, for all the FCs transferring, but there's no getting back those submarines and air ships and the time it takes to make and unlock things with them.

The only other solution is to do Cross Data Center Party Finder.

[Nalien]

Also what about PvP? I do not see this talked about enough, seems like crystals top 100 is gonna be determined by who sits in the queue the longest. Maybe SE should update the cap on that queue wait timer to go higher then 999 mins and 99 seconds. At least that would allow people to show SE how long they wait for PvP queues.

From what I've been told, Chaos has been by far the most active PvP data center for a long time (check Feast top 100, at least mid-season it always has the highest rated players simply due to high activity) and NA players frequently make alts there just to enjoy active pops. Will be a shame to potentially see EU lose that level of activity... Chaos was a good example of why we shouldn't have anything but regional data centers to be honest, at least from the PvP perspective, but that must apply to raiding/etc. as well. They shouldn't be splitting Aether and Primal up into Crystal, they should be merging them... That though, of course, would require a substantial investment... It costs more, its more technical to work out... It would be a good move, both for the players and future of the game, but... Nope, we get the cheap, simple option; More of what we already have, splitting up existing communities as well because paying customers are just collateral damage I suppose. Valued customers.

I really look forward to 5.0 still having a Rabauhn Extreme. I look forward to yet more data centers and another split in 6.0, maybe they'll learn eventually. Probably not before Final Fantasy XVI Online is announced, though... I can already picture the SE higher ups response to Yoshidas request here; "Why would we invest in better hardware for XIV when we can just put that into XVI instead?", perhaps I'm just being cynical though.

[Beckett]

More wards + new servers

There are over 200 open plots on my server in Goblet alone. There are seemingly far more plots available, across servers, than there are people that want houses, and with the upcoming free server transfers, there's no reason why anyone who wants a house can't get one.

[Atlantasia]

There are over 200 open plots on my server in Goblet alone. There are seemingly far more plots available, across servers, than there are people that want houses, and with the upcoming free server transfers, there's no reason why anyone who wants a house can't get one.

Is that the same in Mist? :/ Medium plots? The good ones, not just the ones no one wants unless they're desperate. What about large houses for FCs? And keep in mind, when people start transferring, housing will be filling up in Aether, across all the worlds.

For Coeurl being a small world, there's rarely more than 1-2 open housing spots in Mist, and anything more than smalls is generally rare outside of Goblet, which tends to be the "undesirable" housing area. No offense, but free teleport to Ul'dah through the Gold Saucer, I don't care about Goblet for that reason alone. The last time they released wards, Shirogane lost all their Large plots in 2 minutes, I know, I was the last one to nab one for my FC. 5 seconds slower and we wouldn't have gotten that house!

[Hamada]

There are over 200 open plots on my server in Goblet alone. There are seemingly far more plots available, across servers, than there are people that want houses, and with the upcoming free server transfers, there's no reason why anyone who wants a house can't get one.

Wonder how true that will be after the DC change and free transfers...........
and 200 plots does not seem to be enough to cover thousands

[Beckett]

Is that the same in Mist? :/ Medium plots?

Not enough house and not enough good houses are entirely separate issues. Adding more wards and more servers creates very few new Mediums and Larges.

Wonder how true that will be after the DC change and free transfers...........
and 200 plots does not seem to be enough to cover thousands

That's 200 plots in one district, of one decently populous server. I can't even imagine how many the actual low population servers have.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Not enough house and not enough good houses are entirely separate issues. Adding more wards and more servers creates very few new Mediums and Larges.

Perhaps the devs should recognize and change this then, especially since it's their decision which is so greatly inconveniencing people? Maybe if they worked on instanced housing in the last six years or overhauled apartments to where they aren't simply a glorified FC room, people wouldn't be as upset? The list goes on, but we keep coming back to SE does virtually nothing to fix things until it's long too late then expects the players to deal with it.

[Hamada]

There is a few things with this situation I do not think enough is talked about
1. PvP queues (and top 100)
2. PvP queues during dead times during patches (much more common then 2 weeks of congestion)
3. How dead would crystal feel during the dead times? Because I need be honest, the game feels slow and dead outside the 3 cities during the second and third month after a patch... in balmung, and this is reflected on MB activity too.

I really think SE did not think this though and just wants to prevent opening congestion of an expansion, that only last 2 weeks, and yet they are making a change that is detrimental for months and maybe years, just because SE is too stubborn to put a little more funding in the game. Maybe just maybe they would have a much bigger player base if the game was properly funded? what ground breaking logic.