Materia DC and DC travel.

[LilFlowers]

This is the thing Denada it's constant back n forth of do I leave or wait around for it to grow but I feel like the Materia DC already peaked early on with it's population. If I wait any longer for people to get PS5s or for updates to bring new people in it's going to be the next expansion by the time I hit endgame on my alt due to the queues and having to play at very specific hours to get things done to progress MSQ. I made an alt on OCE to play PVP on a good ping, managed to get a few games of FL going early on but as soon as CC became the only PVP mode I could play on that server I knew things were dying already. Even if I queue at these supposed peak hours Frontline says more than 30 minutes and after seeing that enough times I'm just about ready to head back to JP. I try to stick around the best to my ability, I've got an alt and a house there but if I don't see growth within the first week or two of 6.3 or even leading up to it I'll probably be heading to another DC to be able to enjoy things like PVP changes and endgame.

[Tigerlilley]

This is the thing Denada it's constant back n forth of do I leave or wait around for it to grow but I feel like the Materia DC already peaked early on with it's population. If I wait any longer for people to get PS5s or for updates to bring new people in it's going to be the next expansion by the time I hit endgame on my alt due to the queues and having to play at very specific hours to get things done to progress MSQ. I made an alt on OCE to play PVP on a good ping, managed to get a few games of FL going early on but as soon as CC became the only PVP mode I could play on that server I knew things were dying already. Even if I queue at these supposed peak hours Frontline says more than 30 minutes and after seeing that enough times I'm just about ready to head back to JP. I try to stick around the best to my ability, I've got an alt and a house there but if I don't see growth within the first week or two of 6.3 or even leading up to it I'll probably be heading to another DC to be able to enjoy things like PVP changes and endgame.

And you're right to do so. Everyone pays a subscription to play the game. If you can't play the game, what are you paying for? I think SE really needed to step in with promotion or regional travel or just -something- so much earlier but they haven't. It's disappointing but it's no ones responsibility to keep Materia alive. If SE don't care then why should we?
Just do what's right for you. Enjoy the game

[Jojoya]

And you're right to do so. Everyone pays a subscription to play the game. If you can't play the game, what are you paying for? I think SE really needed to step in with promotion or regional travel or just -something- so much earlier but they haven't. It's disappointing but it's no ones responsibility to keep Materia alive. If SE don't care then why should we?
Just do what's right for you. Enjoy the game

I've been told by others that SE had been heavily promoting the game with the new OCE data center in that part of the world so that's not part of the problem. If OCE players aren't picking up the game, then the OCE Facebook group that had been lobbying for the OCE data center overestimated the importance of a local data center to those not playing the game.

They aren't going to force players to play on a specific world so that we can rule out as any sort of solution (even if a bad one).

If cross region data center travel has already been tested on their internal services and works as they say, then it needs to be enabled. If the JP player base hates the idea that much, then leave them out of it and allow it for NA, EU, and OCE. That would probably pull OCE and SEA player back out of the JP worlds to Materia where they'd then have more options.

If the JP player base wants to be isolated, that's their choice. No reason for the rest of the player base that isn't looking to be isolated to have to be so.

[LaylaTsarra]

If the JP player base wants to be isolated, that's their choice. No reason for the rest of the player base that isn't looking to be isolated to have to be so.

Totally agree!

Materia needs major attention. Letting it wilt and die is unacceptable. It's unfair that this small DC can't DC travel to help with queues they can't get to pop until it's had time to grow. It won't grow the way it is now and the time for action is now not with 7.0.

[Tigerlilley]

I've been told by others that SE had been heavily promoting the game with the new OCE data center in that part of the world so that's not part of the problem.

I mean, I live here. I haven't seen anything. I saw screenshots of a few billboards back in January that were posted on this forum. They're not going to entice existing players to move though. I just wish they'd paid attention to things like, having housing avaliable for people to go when it opened. Mentioning us in the live letters, maybe even an oce themed event, I dunno. Something. Waiting until the end of the raid tier to open the servers, only having 3 servers, not 5. There were a ton of miss steps.

If OCE players aren't picking up the game, then the OCE Facebook group that had been lobbying for the OCE data center overestimated the importance of a local data center to those not playing the game.

I think the biggest issue here was SEA. Obviously the BIGGEST community that isn't represented on Tonberry is SEA. When SE decided the servers were in Aus, not Singapore, we were worried. Big worried. And I think we were probably right about that. I am not in a facebook group though so I'm unsure what their thoughts were on it. Someone from SEA also wrote a super interesting post on why SEA players didn't move and the service provider SE chose was a big issue for them, routing and ping wise.

If cross region data center travel has already been tested on their internal services and works as they say, then it needs to be enabled. If the JP player base hates the idea that much, then leave them out of it and allow it for NA, EU, and OCE. That would probably pull OCE and SEA player back out of the JP worlds to Materia where they'd then have more options.

If the JP player base wants to be isolated, that's their choice. No reason for the rest of the player base that isn't looking to be isolated to have to be so.

Hard agree. Leave Japan to Japan.

[DixieBellOCE]

If OCE players aren't picking up the game, then the OCE Facebook group that had been lobbying for the OCE data center overestimated the importance of a local data center to those not playing the game.

The issue here is that the majority of the 'English' population on Elemental are SEA players, Not OCE.
Square Enix have no data whatsoever on the SEA region due to the game being 'technically' unavailable in those regions. Most of them have their account addresses set to Aus or NA.

When OCE opened, it split the English community between two places, with a large majority of English players still playing on JP.

Tonberry alone lost around 5000 players, which on a server that was well over the 18,000 player population, shows how few players were actually from OCE.

Materia was on a path to failure the moment that they decided to implement them in Australia and not a SEA country.

[DeNada]

The issue here is that the majority of the 'English' population on Elemental are SEA players, Not OCE.
Square Enix have no data whatsoever on the SEA region due to the game being 'technically' unavailable in those regions. Most of them have their account addresses set to Aus or NA.

When OCE opened, it split the English community between two places, with a large majority of English players still playing on JP.

Materia was on a path to failure the moment that they decided to implement them in Australia and not a SEA country.

To be frank, I'm not sure if the same situation wouldn't have occured if SE has set up SEA servers instead of Oceania.

Most English speaking players in Elemental have their roots there and it would be hard to convince the majority of them to give up their friends/community to move servers even if they are set up in SEA instead of Oceania.

Imo, Oceania on the whole is just poorly planned and unfortunately the Oce community had to suffer as a result.

[DixieBellOCE]

To be frank, I'm not sure if the same situation wouldn't have occured if SE has set up SEA servers instead of Oceania.

Most English speaking players in Elemental have their roots there and it would be hard to convince the majority of them to give up their friends/community to move servers even if they are set up in SEA instead of Oceania.

Imo, Oceania on the whole is just poorly planned and unfortunately the Oce community had to suffer as a result.

This is the other sad reality, some people have been on JP for just under 9 years at the launch of Materia.
its hard to move away from friends after that long.

The only other option was moving Tonberry and Kujata to the new DC, but that would have sparked outrage from the SEA and JP playerbase on those servers.

[LaylaTsarra]

The only other option was moving Tonberry and Kujata to the new DC, but that would have sparked outrage from the SEA and JP playerbase on those servers.

They should have done it... you just don't create a new DC and let it flounder. At the least SE get off your butt and implement DC travel for Materia for English speaking regions and keep your precious Japan servers isolated. They created the problem and they need to fix it sooner than later.

And I will add the real outrage is creating a DC that is dysfunctional. I don't give a hoot about the outrage on servers that should have been moved to begin with. Since they didn't have the backbone to do what was needed they need to act now and fix the issue with data center travel.

[Tigerlilley]

To be frank, I'm not sure if the same situation wouldn't have occured if SE has set up SEA servers instead of Oceania.

Most English speaking players in Elemental have their roots there and it would be hard to convince the majority of them to give up their friends/community to move servers even if they are set up in SEA instead of Oceania.

Imo, Oceania on the whole is just poorly planned and unfortunately the Oce community had to suffer as a result.

However, if Materia had opened with the ability to region travel, like they had mentioned, no one would have had to give up anything. Except the 6 - 7 hour login queues Tonberry had on Endwalker launch. SEA and OCE could have moved to better ping, alleviated login queues and maintained their decade old communities. But "no foreigners". And here we are.