Why did SE add DC travel and new Home Worlds at the same time?

[Johners]

As the title says really, I'm perplexed by the decision to launch new home worlds that people want to move onto at the same time as DC travel which has restricted access to the home world transfer service.

DC travel is great and it's bringing the player base together on a per region basis. However, if adding this system and getting it entirely functional means restricting home world transfers for approaching a month now, why do it when you launch new servers?

Many people, myself included, wanted to move to new home worlds. We planned to move to new home worlds. People left FCs, disbanded FCs and stopped doing everything else, such as retainer listings, in order to move ASAP. Characters stuck in limbo waiting to move elsewhere and we can't.

I have an alt on Raiden that I've been playing in preparation of moving my main but at this stage I'm pretty bored of skipping cutscenes to burst through MSQ to level an FC. I anticipated that I would've been able to move my main already and while they didn't list a specific date, nothing in the original announcement suggested it would've taken this long to correctly implement DC travel.

I'd really like to know the rationale behind adding both DC travel and new home worlds at the same time. We're all well aware that technical implementations in this game take some time to get right and still leave a lot to be desired (nice glamour dresser limitations or housing raffle launch btw). Are we going to have another limit on home world transfers in August when the first phase of NA data centre expansion is implemented as well? Are we even going to get home world transfers before then?

Square Enix ask for our patience on these issues but when we're spending subscription money to sit waiting to move, we could've been playing our mains normally instead with an actual target date for moving OR just spending that £10 monthly subscription fee playing something else instead. Alternatively we could actually have home world transfer and be building our new communities on Alpha, Raiden or whatever the two new Chaos home worlds are called.

I just hope the target date of next week for home world transfers doesn't become the week after or the month after.

[Ilisidi]

Simple, infrastructure patches happen during x.y8 aka content draught and thereby fewer to players around to be impacted not prevented from doing story content or Savage/Ultimates.
6.18 was Materia, 6.28 was Meteor and Europe, 6.38 will most likely be NA4. So next option would have been 6.48, some time next year. System probably wasn't ready for 6.18 and I wouldn't have wished the current situation on a nascent data center. System is obviously ready now and the issue will have a much smaller impact since neither Meteor nor Europe completely lack a population that's not just new characters. Would you have wished it upon NA4 which looks to be happening around Christmas?

[Johners]

Simple, infrastructure patches happen during x.y8 aka content draught and thereby fewer to players around to be impacted not prevented from doing story content or Savage/Ultimates.
6.18 was Materia, 6.28 was Meteor and Europe, 6.38 will most likely be NA4. So next option would have been 6.48, some time next year. System probably wasn't ready for 6.18 and I wouldn't have wished the current situation on a nascent data center. System is obviously ready now and the issue will have a much smaller impact since neither Meteor nor Europe completely lack a population that's not just new characters. Would you have wished it upon NA4 which looks to be happening around Christmas?

NA4 is planned for August 2022, not the next patch cycle. We're on track with all the infrastructure changes originally announced back in January. OCE launched on time, EU expansion happened on time, JP restructure happened on time. NA4 Phase 1 is due next month, the same month patch 6.2 will release, and there's no indication of that changing.

European servers were packed on Endwalker launch with absolutely massive queues and while we're not at the same player count right now, there's still good demand for playing on new home worlds once you factor in systems such as housing. It's not the challenge of populating a new DC entirely, it'll just be existing players moving over, for example, to start new communities or accessing 7200 additional housing plots per home world. I really don't see why they added new worlds which will give you bonuses for transferring an existing character onto while implementing a system alongside it that restricts the home world transfer service because the servers are made of wet paper bags.

Either DC travel should've come before the server expansions entirely OR they should've done the server expansions first and then released DC travel towards the end of the 6.2 cycle in late-November or early-December.

[Jeeqbit]

This is a good point actually. Restricting world transfers when launching new worlds doesn't make a lot of sense. It seems like an oversight but I didn't notice it either, so maybe SE didn't.

[Glandire]

Many people, myself included, wanted to move to new home worlds. We planned to move to new home worlds. People left FCs, disbanded FCs and stopped doing everything else, such as retainer listings, in order to move ASAP. Characters stuck in limbo waiting to move elsewhere and we can't.

I have an alt on Raiden that I've been playing in preparation of moving my main but at this stage I'm pretty bored of skipping cutscenes to burst through MSQ to level an FC. I anticipated that I would've been able to move my main already and while they didn't list a specific date, nothing in the original announcement suggested it would've taken this long to correctly implement DC travel.

Not to mention there are people behind on pvp rank now as it resets after transfer too.

Also if someone planned to transfer to not new world and buy house in current lottery cycle (which happens to have lot more plots available) they must be super dissapointed.

Sadly nothing we can do about it now though. Maybe they would decide differently now but what's done is done.

[Ilisidi]

NA4 is planned for August 2022, not the next patch cycle. We're on track with all the infrastructure changes originally announced back in January. OCE launched on time, EU expansion happened on time, JP restructure happened on time. NA4 Phase 1 is due next month, the same month patch 6.2 will release, and there's no indication of that changing..

You are correct, not sure why keep thinking November.

We should take into account that data center travel was post-poned. Like Materia they intended for it much earlier. Probably also the new European and American worlds. This was likely the first opportunity to add this often asked for feature. And I don't think that Thanksgiving/Christmas would have been a good time for implementation either, give or take new worlds.

It is what it is and there is still time to found an FC and rank it up should the new wards indeed be available for their potentially first lottery cycle starting in August 24th.

They also opened World Transfer only the day after Materia was introduced and it was promptly congested.

[LianaThorne]

Ya'll, housing isn't introduced right away in new servers/DCs. You don't need to stress about missing anything.

[SwingLifeAway]

Yeah it was a clown decision honestly. That said, I wouldn't have such a big issue with it if the communication and planning was better - but it has been absolutely abysmal.

Waiting without a specified date & time or without timeous updates is incredibly frustrating, they can ask for my "patient" all they like, but I can't help but feel like my time just isn't valuable to them at all when they are wasting it like this. Based on the previous notice I expected to be able to transfer yesterday after the maintenance, only to have to wait almost a day for another notice to tell me I'd have to wait the rest of the week. At what point do I just stop trusting notices?

I appreciate the difficulty of the situation, however that difficulty was one they imposed upon themselves, and as a consumer I shouldn't have to care.

[Glandire]

Ya'll, housing isn't introduced right away in new servers/DCs. You don't need to stress about missing anything.

True for added servers but not everyone is transfering to new world and on old ones lottery cycle with bigger amount of plots available is now as they converted fc wards.

[LianaThorne]

True for added servers but not everyone is transfering to new world and on old ones lottery cycle with bigger amount of plots available is now as they converted fc wards.

Why wouldn't you have transferred to an older server prior to all of this....?