Materia/Oceanican Data Center needs help please!

[Supersnow845]

It seems from the census data there is only roughly 10-20k at most active on oceania spread out on all its servers. That 10-20k active players could easily fit on a single server or 2 servers if they merged the servers down to 1 or 2.

The number of materia servers doesn’t matter because all queues pull from the entire data centre

How busy limsa feels has never factored into the game design since this has never been a social MMO for the purpose of clearing content

Every person on materia could have their own server and it would change nothing

[Nebelheim]

The number of materia servers doesn’t matter because all queues pull from the entire data centre

How busy limsa feels has never factored into the game design since this has never been a social MMO for the purpose of clearing content

Every person on materia could have their own server and it would change nothing

The low population of the datacenter in general will make queing for anything for any level range difficult regardless of if they have 8 servers or 1. A lot of people care about population numbers when considering a large population of the game roleplays and goes to venues and dont want to be on a datacenter where the population of the entire datacenter is less then 20k active players currently. Which is also why there is problems queing for anything. I'm glad oceania got a datacenter so people in that region can get better connection but the entire datacenter is a ghost town except for small windows of time at peak times that only happen for 2 hours. People don't want to be restricted to 2 hours of playtime to get anything done. I think oceania and dynamis came too late but unfortunately covid caused delays. Im sure there are people that like being there and love the small tight knit community but a large portion of Oceania people end up going back to JP or NA because of a lack of population as one of the reasons for leaving.

[Supersnow845]

The low population of the datacenter in general will make queing for anything for any level range difficult regardless of if they have 8 servers or 1. A lot of people care about population numbers when considering a large population of the game roleplays and goes to venues and dont want to be on a datacenter where the population of the entire datacenter is less then 20k active players currently. Which is also why there is problems queing for anything. I'm glad oceania got a datacenter so people in that region can get better connection but the entire datacenter is a ghost town except for small windows of time at peak times that only happen for 2 hours. People don't want to be restricted to 2 hours of playtime to get anything done. I think oceania and dynamis came too late but unfortunately covid caused delays. Im sure there are people that like being there and love the small tight knit community but a large portion of Oceania people end up going back to JP or NA because of a lack of population as one of the reasons for leaving.

Yes but the problem is number of players on materia; the number of servers on materia is completely irrelevant

[Nebelheim]

Yes but the problem is number of players on materia; the number of servers on materia is completely irrelevant

The game would probably need to provide more long lasting content or some sort of incentive to get people to want to stay there and build a community. But i also think part of the reason for its low population is former materia players went back to there former datacenters and doom and gloomed materia saying it was dead and convinced any potential new/returning player to not go there.

[Myrany]

I am a NA player that had a character on Elemental to play with a friend. When Materia opened he moved there and so did I. I loved the people there. I'd still be there except I couldn't cope with the lag. When I jumped to my death off the platform because to me it looked like the whale had just come along side when in reality it had already left, I realized I was a detriment to everyone I played with. Then Dynamis opened and I was able to free transfer to there so I moved. I can at least play there even if waits are long or I have to DC travel.

Materia not having the option to DC travel is the single thing holding it back. Too many people didn't want to give up friends or houses to move to Materia in the first place. Others couldn't get done the things they play the game for.

I am generally one who thinks cross DC anything is not a good thing but in Materia's case its desperately needed.

[DixieBellOCE]

Yep. They introduced Materia and Dynamis to deal with the influx of new players and then proceeded to do nothing to keep those people here. Maybe Dawntrail will bring some of them back (or bring more newer players in), but are we going to be having these same discussions once 7.0 is over and we're in the patch cycle for 7.x? Hopefully Materia and Dynamis won't become seasonal DCs, but it's possible.

They introduced the servers at a time when a majority of the WoW Exodus players had hit the endgame and realized that all the hype had lead to nothing.
They did all the content that appealed to them in the two years they were here (Yes, WoW players consume content like it is red bull), and the 8 month wait time at the end of ShB, coupled with Endwalker content being basically non existent outside of week 1, they realized that XIV is just not the amazing game that was advertised and moved on.

[TheNight]

I wanna focus on this because while Materia does have populations problems, this is more widespread than just our little corner on the map. I've been playing on JP a lot these past two raid tiers, the PF changed dramatically (most JP pugs go to Mana to raid now) and the overall feeling is one of exhaustion. People are retiring from XIV, and while it's not fair to measure this during a long, long intended lull between now and 7.0 it is kind of alarming.
OCE is the canary in the coal mine so to speak. When the population shifts away from XIV we see it most starkly... and ultimately I don't think cross region will fix the issue. NA/EU/JP players aren't gonna want to come here to play with us, to help fill our queues (NA can't really be bothered helping Dynamis let alone Materia), and if we collectively go elsewhere to make our own queues pop what does that mean for Materia? The sprouts who don't know any better stay in hours long queues because we've vanished, our overworlds become even more barren, the rp scene dries up overnight...
While I do want SE to help us out a bit, I don't think there's much they can actually do. Maybe after PAX Aus we'll see another jump in sprout numbers.

Of course, the simps will continue denying that the population has fallen off a cliff. People are sick of the game's stale and uninspiring cadence.

[Anonemoose]

Materia was an opportunistic cash grab to bring in more revenue from OCE players during the Shadowbringers/Endwalker hype (and the global revolt against Blizzard/WoW) who resubscribed or bought the game for the first time because now the region had its own server. The reality, as it plain to see, is that the devs don't care to actually support or grow the datacentre beyond trying to plug a gap in their revenues for that financial year so they can make more gacha nft shit. Further, if they really cared about the region, why not have a Fan Fest in OCE? On another note, the gaslight gatekeep girlbossing from the weirdos who ran the Materia Discord did not help and just encouraged people to transfer back to NA or JP.

[Iscah]

Further, if they really cared about the region, why not have a Fan Fest in OCE?

While not a Fan Fest, they do have some kind of annual event in Melbourne on PAX weekend. I haven't gone though, so I'm not sure what it entails.

[Anonemoose]

I'm pretty sure that was just a once off to celebrate Materia launching and the release of Endwalker. That particular event had a few computers set up for people to challenge Zodiark Extreme to win a shirt and not much else. Again, low effort opportunism.