I’ve come to realise that materia needs help

[ChrysOCE]

Well, not sure about the state of the data center, but I've been trying to queue for Void Ark since finishing HW (now I just finished Doma Castle) and never actually seen it pop off once during my play session. Sometimes I wonder if people in OCE actually run Alliance Raids at all besides occasional Crystal Tower for MSQ.

There might be some doing it. I rarely touched Alliance Roulette, cause I just can't deal with CT any more. You will have more luck in setting up a PF for it.

[DixieBellOCE]

Data Centre travel with NA please!!!

God no please.

7 months playing on NA made me realize that i NEVER want to play with NA again.

Data center travel will not solve the issues with Materia, it will destroy it entirely.
People will go to JP/NA to do content and Materia will be more of a ghost town than it already is.

The ONLY solution to Materia is to region lock JP servers to JP only so the SEA playerbase are forced to populate Materia. It's not a good solution, but its about the only thing that can happen to make Materia grow.

[Renalt]

I'm hoping one day they start implementing Super Servers much like in GW2. When an area is low in population you just phase shift into a more popular one. When you party up with friends you will phase shift into the same server. You don't even need to log out.

[ChrysOCE]

Chrys, I am going to comment on this and bear in mind I am working from what I know, which is very little.

The past two years have been extremely trying for Square Enix. It may indeed be possible that regional datacentre travel was planned.

However, what may have eventuated is the system itself was not ready for implementation. It is also very likely that system errors and issues made it not possible without extra work and error resolution.

Imagine a player losing an eight year character in transit and not recoverable. Worst case scenario, I grant, but the fact remains that testing may have identified a high percentage of errors, or that further testing needs to be completed in order to eliminate identified issues.

That leads us to the option of datacentre connection, however I know nothing of what technical limitations may be involved without possibly relocating the actual datacentre. It may be the case that Materia CANNOT be connected to JP or NA without physical relocation. The logistics involved are unknown to us. Cost may be a factor but this is conjecture only.

Without further communication on the issue, the problem will remain unresolved.

Sure, and I understand that there could be technical limitations and there was the covid delay and there's old coding. But, while I do understand that those are factors, the situation with Materia is just unsatisfying. I think, probably with so many issues, if they would just communicate. Tell us that they recognize and are aware of our concerns. That they have concerns. Surely, they didn't go to the expense of setting up a whole DC, just to have it sit and quietly fester away? What are their plans to grow the DC? Just have us as on new world status, perpetually?

[AwesomeJr44]

With DC travel being a thing, tying Materia to another region won't solve the issue completely, if anything it'll just be another Dynamis where everyone just goes to *insert another DC here* whenever they want to queue for something. There's just no good reason to do content on a DC without an established playerbase if there's a choice to do it elsewhere.

[VelKallor]

God no please.

7 months playing on NA made me realize that i NEVER want to play with NA again.

Data center travel will not solve the issues with Materia, it will destroy it entirely.
People will go to JP/NA to do content and Materia will be more of a ghost town than it already is.

The ONLY solution to Materia is to region lock JP servers to JP only so the SEA playerbase are forced to populate Materia. It's not a good solution, but its about the only thing that can happen to make Materia grow.

The proposal you make is untenable. Region locks, even if they are possible, would create much larger problems. Your proposal also ignores the effect this would have on the very large non jp population.

Solving one smaller problem by creating a much larger one is not an option. You are also ignoring the latency issue for SEA populations. This alone would serve as a deterrent which would defeat the intended purpose .

Data centre travel may actually have the opposite effect you believe.

[Jojoya]

There was a thread discussing cross region data center travel a few months back. Some think it will not happen because JP players are too opposed to playing with non-JP players. The general feeling in the thread seemed to be leave JP out of it in that case. Let NA, EU and OCE play together.

What's SE's current position on cross region travel? Have no idea, it's been radio silence. Maybe it will get mentioned at FanFest on Friday or Saturday.

On the cross data center travel issue in general, that's a hard one to solve. Clearly some incentive would be required to get players to travel to (or stay on) the worlds with low population online but too big an incentive might reverse the problem. The Moogle Tomestone event is always popular so maybe something along those lines but make it a permanent shop and possibly cap the amount of currency that could be earned in a day. That would likely help with roulettes but it may not work to solve the PF issue.

I'm really not certain what would help. Probably the best thing would be to ask players what they think would be sufficient incentive to get them to play on the low population worlds occasionally.

[VelKallor]

Jojoya, please see my earlier post. What we want or suggest may not be reflected in what is technically possible. As stated earlier, cross region travel may have been delayed for good reason. Data or character loss in transit may have occurred during testing. Consider also what errors or issues could occur with high volume traffic in both directions.

Until we get more information, we will need to wait.

[DixieBellOCE]

I mean, Luckybancho updated 4 days ago with the new census data.
https://luckybancho.ldblog.jp/wsurve...?world=Materia

(Please remember that the Data only includes players that have a level 70 job, or a gunbreaker/dancer at level 60) ~This is to avoid free trial/bots being counted in the census.

Materia is a sample size of 18,982 players that met the criteria for the Materia census.

Around ~1700 of those characters existed before 2021. meaning the majority of Materia are either New players, or Alt Characters.

The population of the previous Census 3 months ago was 24,053 Characters. That is a loss of 5,071 characters in the 3 month period.



The above image shows the shift in players over the 3 month period.


What does this tell us about Materia?
1) The majoirty of the player base are new or alt characters.
2) Player retention is very low, at around 78%
3) More players are transferring in, than transferring out, but more people are leaving the game than joining.


Some additional Information:
1) 55.2% of players have never touched eureka.
2) 55.1% of players have never touched Bozja.
3) There is a staggering 970 free companies with 1 character in them (Gold bots/farmers/sellers).
4) The average FC size is 1-3 players.
5) 8.2% of players obtained the 6.2 Savage mount.
6) 61.4% of players have completed the 6.0 Endwalker MSQ (Based on having the Argos mount unlocked from the final 6.0 MSQ)

[VelKallor]

There is a staggering 970 free companies with 1 character in them (Gold bots/farmers/sellers).

Assuming facts not in evidence. Solo FCs are nothing new. Id argue this with you further, but experience has shown that option to be futile.

Now if you will excuse me, I have a relic to complete.