When do you think they'll add cross-region data center travel? OCE is screwed!

[Bunnycake]

They need to take some action it's months and it's not getting better. If anything people are leaving because of the new DC in NA. 5 underpopulated servers aren't going to magically fill unless some additional action is taken by SE. More incentives dunno what maybe more gil/xp but seriously DC travel is probably an easy way to at least help the queues people can't get to pop.

Even on Halicarnassus it's hard to get some things to pop but DC travel keeps the experience positive until the additional servers are added and the DC reaches critical mass.

Not adding fully populated Japanese servers was a cop out and a mistake. Let them either DC travel to English speaking servers or to Japan.

They can cite cultural similarities with Europe, North American and Materia. They can still keep the Japanese apart for now and hopefully open that as well one day.

No kidding on the queues. I'm maxed out and went to Dynamis to help the new people with their queues...took freakin forever even as a tank and healer.

[Ralphe2449]

Might as well right? Who cares about the ping .

Many of us do, which is why we play on OCE and not JP or some US server

[Shibi]

No kidding on the queues. I'm maxed out and went to Dynamis to help the new people with their queues...took freakin forever even as a tank and healer.

Trying both, the Dynamis queues have been about three times longer than the Materia queues. To my eyes Dynamis is far deader than Materia has ever been, everyone there scoots off to Aether or wherever if they need to wait more than 5 minutes.

And that's going to be the poison pill of Materia getting DC travel. We need it, but I am well aware it does mean everyone will be off traveling to other regions a lot more and the Materia queues will grow longer as a result. Everyone else needs to be aware of that poison pill too.

Rock meet Hard place.

[Ralphe2449]

Trying both, the Dynamis queues have been about three times longer than the Materia queues. To my eyes Dynamis is far deader than Materia has ever been, everyone there scoots off to Aether or wherever if they need to wait more than 5 minutes.

And that's going to be the poison pill of Materia getting DC travel. We need it, but I am well aware it does mean everyone will be off traveling to other regions a lot more and the Materia queues will grow longer as a result. Everyone else needs to be aware of that poison pill too.

Rock meet Hard place.

Yeah i remember seeing a post about how dead a server was because everyone had just DC traveled to the big DC which definitely doesnt sound like a good thing for OCE, what would the point of OCE be if everyone has just moved to some murican DC for faster ques.
If people want faster ques they should just move to those DCs instead since they clearly wouldnt care about the latency.

[Edelgarde]

what would the point of OCE be if everyone has just moved to some murican DC for faster ques

Because you will have good ping for content like raiding with your static, pvp and your standard expert roulettes. But if you want to do optional content outside of the MSQ and want it to at least pop, you can do it on other data centers. New players are struggling, and they're just gonna leave if they know they can get an easier experience with side content of the game if they were to play on other data centers instead of restricting themselves being locked into only one.

At least people in Dynamis have this option. Yeah sure it's kinda dead over there, but while you're waiting for the playerbase to build up, you can at least go to other data centers to do content. OCE data center gets nothing and everyone over there gets bent over, then hip thrusted up the butt.

I'd say that it's only good for you if you've exhausted all the content of the game that you login to do nothing but the occasional raiding with your static. Then sure, Materia should be fine for those sorts of players. But what about the players who have not exhausted the content yet? But they want to do the content, they just can't do it on their main, so they can't get the mount or the glamour they want on that character because the playerbase is so low.

[Iscah]

I just think it feels optimistic to say "people will travel to other DCs while the population builds up, then switch to queuing on their own DC once it hits critical mass". How long is it going to take to hit critical mass if everyone is over in the other DC?

Unless everyone agrees to simultaneously switch over and stay there, you're going to get individuals testing the waters, deciding it's still dead and leaving again, even once there is theoretically enough population to be self-sustaining.

[Jeeqbit]

I just think it feels optimistic to say "people will travel to other DCs while the population builds up, then switch to queuing on their own DC once it hits critical mass". How long is it going to take to hit critical mass if everyone is over in the other DC?

The answer is because everyone isn't over on the other DC. Only some people are. There are a lot of people who don't understand things like data center travel, especially new or casual players, who will probably stick around to support this critical mass.

[Shibi]

I just think it feels optimistic to say "people will travel to other DCs while the population builds up, then switch to queuing on their own DC once it hits critical mass". How long is it going to take to hit critical mass if everyone is over in the other DC?

Yes, this is the biggest problem to face and it's a doozy. It's a problem being dealt with right now in Meteor, where there are voices on the JP forums asking for DC travel to be removed to repopulate the eternally empty DC. And it is already a problem on Dynamis, where queues are worse than ours because everyone is off on other DCs.

But what is the solution to stuff like PvP or PUG Raids for us on Materia? Outside of inter-region travel artificially taking 30 or 60 minutes... I don't actually know how we can avoid the poison pill as we can't ever force people to wait 10 minutes rather than travel to NA and insta-queue.

I am still in the view we need the travel, although from the outset back in January I was saying it will harm the community more than it gives and that view hasn't changed, it will make the five servers little more than some half empty housing wards and a place for statics.

And although I think it is going to be needed to stem the bleeding, I do hope that people do keep considering the real ramifications of getting that travel.

[LaylaTsarra]

Make OCE the only DC who can travel regionally. Keep it exclusive until the DC reaches critical mass. People will flock to it

Add 3 more servers while you're at it so it will have at least 8. Remember regions like Japan and eventually NA will have 32, the EU 24, we have 5 underpopulated servers. Fix it or merge it with another DC. This experiment isn't working. Doing nothing isn't going to fix it. People aren't going to come here while you're adding more servers else where and housing and so on.

Letting it languish is unacceptable. When you have large houses sitting empty for months and the state of the DF and PF speaks volumes to the state of the DC and where it is going. I'd be willing to bet our population numbers are decreasing not increasing. Your not moving fully populated Japan servers here is the crux of the problem. You preferred to cheap it out and hope for the best well your hope for the best isn't working.

[LianaThorne]

Make OCE the only DC who can travel regionally. Keep it exclusive until the DC reaches critical mass. People will flock to it

Add 3 more servers while you're at it so it will have at least 8. Remember regions like Japan and eventually NA will have 32, the EU 24, we have 5 underpopulated servers. Fix it or merge it with another DC. This experiment isn't working. Doing nothing isn't going to fix it. People aren't going to come here while you're adding more servers else where and housing and so on.

Letting it languish is unacceptable. When you have large houses sitting empty for months and the state of the DF and PF speaks volumes to the state of the DC and where it is going. I'd be willing to bet our population numbers are decreasing not increasing. Your not moving fully populated Japan servers here is the crux of the problem. You preferred to cheap it out and hope for the best well your hope for the best isn't working.

I think can also add that it would cause backlash if any of the JP servers got hooked to a non-JP DC. They already want to be completely excluded from cross-DC travel, why would they be fine being forced to become part of a non-native DC?

I would like to think they intended for cross-region to be a thing to help Materia but because of that they had to shut down the idea and cancel it for everyone. I don't think they'd intentionally try to burn money.