Datacenters: A Plea For Community Building, Not Fracturing

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Except this doesn't actually add any infrastructure. This is a move to more evenly balance people (see load balancing) across the same existing hardware (no new servers being added). That is not much of an investment at all.

Also how do you explain Arena Net's ability to do Mega server tech? Bethesda as well with ESO. Are they just that much better funded than SE? I find that hard to believe.

As many people before me have pointed out, the dated code SE is using is impeding their ability to grow the game. Rather than fix it properly, we are being given a band aid that can be completely invalidated by people transferring back to Aether and Primal.
Shortsighted at best. Purposely negligent at worst. Is it any wonder people think they are using the majority of the money from this game to bankroll their other operations?

Not exactly, it will add new infrastructure in the form of 50% more lobby and instance servers to accommodate a whole new datacenter (as each datacenter requires its own). So thats at least an improvement there.


As for the "SE is being cheap" part. I agree, but not financially. I believe they are being cheap with time, as any kind of effort to do this would require a massive amount of manhours to rebuild. It would also take the people away from the improvements we ARE getting in terms of QoL for backend and the like. The difference between now and what the game was like at launch is vast, however much people like to say "they havent made any improvements at all!"

[reiichi]

Also how do you explain Arena Net's ability to do Mega server tech? Bethesda as well with ESO. Are they just that much better funded than SE? I find that hard to believe.

Do we know if they make use of something like AWS or GCP? AKA, cloud computing platforms where you pay for the number of instances you need on a dynamic rate and scale (literally clone and boot up) additional servers as needed. It works great for -certain- use cases designed specifically for that.

FFXIV's not doing the same. Instead, it looks like they're using dedicated machines with hard-set numbers of servers and instances for things. There are pros and cons to both. (Usually cost IMO, but one server with a lot of resources can also work out better than a bunch of tiny servers with few resources depending on how the product is designed.) This is why things like housing wards are hard-set and don't just expand based on demand/availability. (Aside from UI constraints like supporting people who play this game in 720p).

Chances are, the new datacenter IS going to involve adding a new rack (or however many they need) of new hardware instead of just spinning up a new lobby server instance and setting which worlds it can talk to. Anything that goes through Content Finder (Duty Finder, PoTD, HoH, instanced solo missions, etc) is shared among all users at the datacenter level. My assumption is that they're not going to de-allocate those servers from Aether and Primal in order to make Crystal's set. They'll get that many more servers/vms/logical partitions in addition. And that means an actual improvement for everyone.

[WaterShield]

Do we know if they make use of something like AWS or GCP? AKA, cloud computing platforms where you pay for the number of instances you need on a dynamic rate and scale (literally clone and boot up) additional servers as needed. It works great for -certain- use cases designed specifically for that.

FFXIV's not doing the same. Instead, it looks like they're using dedicated machines with hard-set numbers of servers and instances for things. There are pros and cons to both. (Usually cost IMO, but one server with a lot of resources can also work out better than a bunch of tiny servers with few resources depending on how the product is designed.) This is why things like housing wards are hard-set and don't just expand based on demand/availability. (Aside from UI constraints like supporting people who play this game in 720p).

Chances are, the new datacenter IS going to involve adding a new rack (or however many they need) of new hardware instead of just spinning up a new lobby server instance and setting which worlds it can talk to. Anything that goes through Content Finder (Duty Finder, PoTD, HoH, instanced solo missions, etc) is shared among all users at the datacenter level. My assumption is that they're not going to de-allocate those servers from Aether and Primal in order to make Crystal's set. They'll get that many more servers/vms/logical partitions in addition. And that means an actual improvement for everyone.

Points for the explanation (I learned something). I still am not happy with this move though, considering the trade off is a sizeable reduction in people to pull from for PF and duty finder content. Also the split happening causes people that have cross server friends, to be forced to choose between them due to not everyone going to the same place.

I can't say what exact effect this will have on queue times given I do not have access to the demographics of each server, but I am very apprehensive.

This also does not address what happens if people dog pile back onto Aether and Primal. This could still not have the desired outcome.

[Alael]

+1.........................