Materia/Oceanican Data Center needs help please!

[LianaThorne]

I can say from personal experience (SEA friends) that the OCE data center being basically the same as them playing in NA was a real disappointment for them. I'm not sure how that's even possible frankly, aside from maybe better latency support for the older DCs because they have always been multicultural, but in that case why neuter OCE so badly in that respect? Between AUS/NZ you have a fraction of the populace and without any bolstered support from other DCs for queue times it's going to remain this bad. Having the queues bolstered by the JP community would at least make standard content playable.

Not to mention low pop. means that housing content is also difficult to do anything with because you need people circulating materials in the marketboard...which means you need people actively playing.

Problem is this is becoming a catch 22 for OCE region players. My friends are all NA, even those who are based in SEA. The raiding scene is hard enough to break into with friends let alone solo, but the ping on NA has been steadily increasing. I want to raid and do PVP and it's impossible to queue for in OCE and almost unplayable at 170ms on NA. Blah blah VPN (VPN only brings me down to 150 which is still obscene).

Proposed solutions:

Definitely focus on upping the validity for SEA players to play on OCE servers. They should absolutely not be getting equivalent to NA ping connecting to a Sydney server.
Run more moving campaigns for the server. Level rewards for moving, gil rewards for registering an FC (and a big chunk too, maybe enough for an S house?) to encourage people to continue at least logging in. Logging in is half the battle.
Encourage more active engagement from OCE. Examples include, oh idk...an OCE Fanfest? Campaigning to establish an SE Store base somewhere in SEA? OCE players literally cannot purchase the collector's box still. It's 2024. The FFXIV team showing up once a year for PAX Aus isn't good enough when you literally have servers here.

I hate to break it to you but check out the recent census for the game. OCE has existed for two years now (?) and there is a massive gap between it and any other DC. I don't think they'd bother, money wise, with changing anything or producing anything because there isn't an audience to recoup the investment from. Its nothing personal, just the reality that people would rather stay on the other DCs than move to OCE. Gil rewards aren't going to keep people there either since you can just soak it all up on multiple alts and then return back to your own DC with pockets lined (i.e. what people did on Dynamis and itll be easy with how cross-DC works now to allow visitation to OCE. )

Logging in is an issue across everywhere right now because post-EW has been as interesting as a snail moving across the grass. If Dawntrail does what they're saying it will then that will probably improve.

I agree on the store stuff though, they should fix that as it would ultimately generate them more money (which is the point of them doing anything) and make things easier for the playerbase there.