The dire state of party finders

[Munshade]

I realize this has been talked about before but I have to voice my frustrations with it.
Ever since the introduction of data center travel, Chaos PF has been dead. Everyone travels to Light for any sort of raiding, there's often 10 times the amount of party finder groups availble there than on Chaos, ironically often posted by people from Chaos.
I understand it's a case of data center travel being a net positive for player base over all but I think this is still a big problem that needs to urgently be addressed.
Firstly, newer players often see the PF being empty and assume the whole server is dead/empty which is of course not the case.
Second; every time someone from Chaos wants to participate in party finder raiding they are losing the ability to use retainers and even more importantly the ability to talk to their friends via FC chat or linkshells. This, at least for me personally ruins the experience, since I love to chat with people in linkshells.
Third; the impulsive PF joining is now impossible. Back in the day I used to regurarly check PF if there's anything interesting being listed and I would impulsively join it but now to do that I would need to travel to light everytime I wanted to see if anything is listed, which is too tedious.

I know that merged region PF would be the ideal solution, but I also know ffxiv has a spaghetti code issue that is probably preventing it to be done (at least in a timely manor).
I do hope some temporary measures could be put in place to mitigate the issue, like being able to chat in CWLS and use retainers when travelling. Or being able to at least browse the PF from other data center before travelling.

[Jeeqbit]

SE is aware that this issue affects Mana (with JP players going to Mana to raid). They have a solution in mind but I think it will take them a while.

As far as I know, SE is oblivious to the fact EU players are going to Light to raid.

SE also seems oblivious to the fact NA players are going to Aether to raid.

I know that merged region PF would be the ideal solution, but I also know ffxiv has a spaghetti code issue that is probably preventing it to be done

It has nothing to do with spaghetti code. It has to do with the laws of physics. Data Centers can be in separate regions, so they are treated as separate entities.

Data Center Travel overcame the laws of physics by copying very sensitive data from one server to another, potentially across regions (although this seems deliberately disabled), that did not have any information about the player or the worlds they are from, nor data on certain things like their Free Company, CWLS or retainers. That involves making sure the "spaghetti" code is designed to handle it - everywhere, without exception, or a giant crash could happen or data loss. It helped that half the work was already done to make World Visit possible.

The issue with Cross-World PF or DF is - where should the "middleman" server that lists all the PFs be located? Where should the "middleman" cross-DC party chat be located? Which data center does SE decide to send everyone to in order to enter duties?

These are questions they have to answer and decide upon if they do something like that.

like being able to chat in CWLS

Would require Cross-DC Linkshells. We already have separate CWLS slots for each data center, so they would probably make a new UI for it.

use retainers when travelling.

Not likely to happen unless they completely change the code so that it works the same as Chocobo Saddlebags. Retainers can't even be accessed from other worlds.