Quote Originally Posted by TheRogueX View Post
Honestly, to fix the problems that DC has caused for Duty Finder/Party Finder/Roulettes, there just needs to be some sort of "Home Data Center" bonus, especially for new Data Centers.
Being effectively a new player (had JUST started HW when I hiatused 2 years ago, came back in the past couple weeks and now like 90% through SB), I transferred to Dynamis just to get an EXP bonus + I don't really have any roots put down anywhere. All of this to say: I concur with this suggestion.

Road to 80 is a nice buff and all, and I'm hoping I can scrape together enough to buy a house before they all get finally picked up as Dynamis fills up, but it feels like a self-defeating feedback loop

- "no one is queueing"
- run to Crystal or Aether to run a duty
- end up sticking around on the DC after finishing the duty to continue prog because I'm not gonna burn 5 minutes (potentially longer depending on traffic) going back home, also hey maybe there's another duty waiting for me in the MSQ?
- me being gone causes me not to queue on Dynamis
- someone else thinks "no one is queueing"
- rinse and repeat

At this point, I only stay on Dynamis for the first hour of the day to due my tribal dailies (joined a independent-player FC just for the buffs, so I take advantage of the TP discount), send my retainers on ventures, entrust whatever mats I collected the night before, etc., then basically spend 90% of my time otherwise away from the server. I realize I'm part of the problem, but it's like a prisoner's dilemma. Or something. I'm not 100% versed in game theory lol.

Having something that KEEPS you on your home DC would be nice. I might even go so far as to say the Road to 80 buff should ONLY apply if you're home. Yeah, it'll suck if you're in the very particular situation of having friends on other DCs and playing content with them, you lose your bonus, but I'd argue (with absolutely no stats to back it up, just a gut feeling) that the people who most need the XP buff (newbies and/or latecomers like me with few or no jobs above 80) are less likely to be in this particular situation?

The most valuable use for cross DC is stuff like idk savage+ raiding. And despite not participating in that (yet...?) myself, even so I say right on, get everyone to play with a good static wherever it might be "homed". But if you ARE doing such content, you're probably level capped anyway, so don't need Rt80, so there's no reason NOT to take it away.

And even then, longer-time players who've created an alt on Dynamis or whatever will then be encouraged to at least roulette on Dynamis to level that character up, which solves the issue of dead queues.