Datacenters: A Plea For Community Building, Not Fracturing

[aesteval]

This wouldn't have happened if the balmung population wasn't so stubborn about staying on their server despite all of SE's attempts to balance out the population.

Part of the additional datacenter is due to events like Raubahn Ex. Primal was also hit by Raubahn Ex. Raubahn Ex happened without Balmung's influence. The new datacenter is not *just* about Balmung.

[ColorOfSakura]

Part of the additional datacenter is due to events like Raubahn Ex. Primal was also hit by Raubahn Ex. Raubahn Ex happened without Balmung's influence. The new datacenter is not *just* about Balmung.

Exactly. Balmung isn't the problem here - the problem is the game being too popular and needing more infrastructure to support it. Yes, Balmung was moved away from Gilgamesh because they're the two most populated servers on the game in terms of active players and splitting them up is a smart idea in general. But this was something that was a long time coming - Balmung isn't the sole factor of it.

[WaterShield]

Exactly. Balmung isn't the problem here - the problem is the game being too popular and needing more infrastructure to support it. Yes, Balmung was moved away from Gilgamesh because they're the two most populated servers on the game in terms of active players and splitting them up is a smart idea in general. But this was something that was a long time coming - Balmung isn't the sole factor of it.

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?

[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.

[reiichi]

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.

RE: People staying on whatever datacenter
It's a common misconception that roleplayers don't do content. (OK, there are some who don't. Or won't on their alts, but let's ignore those for now as they're a minority.) Balmung and Mateus have two of the largest active populations currently. Gilgamesh is also MASSIVE on its own too. Before we had commodities like the Cross-World Party Finder, or even the Party Finder in general, these larger servers weren't running into issues with people finding groups to run basic content. With the newer features in addition to the World Visit system, I don't think we're going to see any issues aside from destabilizing per-world markets. Perhaps some people ruining hunts for others if they abuse hopping to multiple worlds to get the same hunt mob.

RE: People moving "back"
I can't judge for other servers, but I can say Balmung has a pretty horrid housing situation these days where things sell out FAST. While this seems like it would typically encourage people to jump, nobody wants to have to spend that much gil again and rebuild and reobtain their nontransferable items. Between groups of friends already on a given server and the other time investments a user's made, I don't think we're going to see some massive migration of players. Surely, we're going to see some people move out from Crystal. We're also probably going to see others move in, whether for RP or not.

There are some good charts showing the general active population of each datacenter before and after the moves. They're rather balanced. Does that reflect high-end duty raiders? Not really. I've been seeing quite a lot of panic there, which I think is fairly unfounded. Unless...people don't play with their friends? Like...at all. Friend groups/Statics being broken up will suck. But at the same time, there are plenty of all-on-one-world clusters as well. And we may see more of those in the short term while people re-adjust to all the changes. Or they'll make alts and have to split their time. Friends will find a way to stay in contact and enjoy their time.

[WaterShield]

RE: People staying on whatever datacenter
It's a common misconception that roleplayers don't do content. (OK, there are some who don't. Or won't on their alts, but let's ignore those for now as they're a minority.) Balmung and Mateus have two of the largest active populations currently. Gilgamesh is also MASSIVE on its own too. Before we had commodities like the Cross-World Party Finder, or even the Party Finder in general, these larger servers weren't running into issues with people finding groups to run basic content. With the newer features in addition to the World Visit system, I don't think we're going to see any issues aside from destabilizing per-world markets. Perhaps some people ruining hunts for others if they abuse hopping to multiple worlds to get the same hunt mob.

RE: People moving "back"
I can't judge for other servers, but I can say Balmung has a pretty horrid housing situation these days where things sell out FAST. While this seems like it would typically encourage people to jump, nobody wants to have to spend that much gil again and rebuild and reobtain their nontransferable items. Between groups of friends already on a given server and the other time investments a user's made, I don't think we're going to see some massive migration of players. Surely, we're going to see some people move out from Crystal. We're also probably going to see others move in, whether for RP or not.

There are some good charts showing the general active population of each datacenter before and after the moves. They're rather balanced. Does that reflect high-end duty raiders? Not really. I've been seeing quite a lot of panic there, which I think is fairly unfounded. Unless...people don't play with their friends? Like...at all. Friend groups/Statics being broken up will suck. But at the same time, there are plenty of all-on-one-world clusters as well. And we may see more of those in the short term while people re-adjust to all the changes. Or they'll make alts and have to split their time. Friends will find a way to stay in contact and enjoy their time.

The bold bit is the heart of why I'm upset. I made the choice to jump from Aether to follow my friend group / raid static (from Balmung) to the Crystal DC and am losing my friend group and FC on Aether (The reaction was very negative when I informed them my main would be moving, friend list is quite a bit slimmer now).

[Alien_Gamer]

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.

Queue times will be largely unaffected by the split. There are 2 main factors that affect queue times, population amount and role distribution.

For population amount, as long as you have a certain base level of people your queue times aren't going to change and with the crossworld duty finder each of the DCs will have that base level of people. That said there are times on Primal and Aether when times go up, usually around 1-6am when people are sleeping. What I would expect to see after the split is for that range to increase to maybe 12-7am as the population starts dropping due to people logging off but during normal play times there shouldn't be any difference.

Role distribution is the primary driver of queue times, IE there are fewer tanks and healers than DPS. There's no reason to expect the ratio of tanks to healers to dps to change after the split so there's no reason to expect queue times to change.

Each DC has its own quirks for queue times, and those will change certainly, but as a whole I wouldn't be worried about queue times.