[Feedback] Data Center Travel Changes

[1313]

I did some searching on Reddit to see if I could champion more people to our cause of either reverting or tweaking the current system, and found a workaround for those stuck in a DC travel loop:

Users jaqenhqar and drunkengranite both had input, and combined, the method is below:

Go to <insert drive letter here>:\Documents\My Games\FINAL FANTASY XIV - A Realm Reborn
Open "FFXIV.cfg", and (if you have it) "FFXIV.cfg.old".
Delete the line "dkt_session_id" at the very bottom of the <Network Settings> section.

While it doesn't solve the root of the problem, it should hopefully mitigate the more pressing issue of the matter. As much as my roleplay loving self really wants to be able to visit my friends on Crystal and Primal (More Primal in this case), I think being locked out of a character due to technical reasons on the server's end is more of a pressing issue.

pretty sure telling people to do this is gonna get you banned
if reported or seen by mod.

[Brynne]

I'll add my voice to this. Two of my friends transferred from Siren to Raflessia. They made this decision in large part because of the promise of DC travel returning in full with the release of savage, so they could continue to play with the friends they left behind on Siren while enjoying the quieter atmosphere of a Dynamis server. Obviously, they are regretting the decision now.

I feel like the assurances that you should transfer and spread out the population because you can still play with friends thanks to DC travel have been largely undermined by this change. No one is ever going to want to give up their spot on a congested server now.

[Qorani]

I legitimately never felt the need to make an account on the forums until today so I could complain about this.

The worst part of the situation is that, even when you can DC travel to where you want to go, there's a stupidly high chance that you won't be able to log in when you get there. It's almost like there's a system to check if you can DC travel somewhere and an entirely other system that checks to see if DC travelers can log in once they get there. I spent nearly 20 minutes trying to get to Primal yesterday to give some crafted gear to friends and static members to just be told "F you, go back to Aether" by the system when I got there. Like, couldn't there be a system in place to let you slide into a different server on the data center when you get there?

It's worse because they somehow brought back the "ETA: Unavailable" bug that they had to patch out of Asura last year, so it's hard to even get to Dynamis, which is the only American data center to not have this issue. My static started raid an hour late last night because our healer got stuck in limbo for an hour. I know there's a method of cancelling your DC travel request by going into your system files and editing something, but going about the Cloudstrike method of making players with technical knowledge fix developer-created issues should NOT be something that we have to deal with.

I don't know which developer thought that the previous method of DC travel was broken, but in comparison to this, they were dead wrong. I never had issues with DC travel before aside from not being able to access stuff like retainers, but I won't claim that it was perfect. This feels like the devs trying to reinvent the wheel and turning it into a stumbling block.

One of my static members put it like "This is SE trying to kill DC travel without actually killing DC travel". This is a major issue and probably should be reverted until the devs have had PLENTY of time to work out all the bugs and kinks. If they think that day 1 of savage is bad, just wait until a major patch comes out.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that most of the servers that you even can get to (New/Preferred if you're lucky) still often have 5-15 minute DC travel times and 10-15 person login queues. This is gross incompetence at best and intentional artificial congestion at the worst.

[ObscuraFi]

One of my static members put it like "This is SE trying to kill DC travel without actually killing DC travel".

Correct. This was discussed in an interview question to Yoshi P at Media Tour before Dawntrail release.

25:00 - Of course I am aware of problem, and I think the fastest solution would be to close off dc travel. Of course FF14 is not a game solely for raiders, but I really would like to get rid of any disparity between all DC's and worlds. It's not like I haven't thought about a perfect party finder, we have been discussing it, but from a technical perspective, it is almost close to impossible to achieve. If we full force on development, it would take about 3 years. But of course, you can't wait for 3 years. The development team has came out with various ideas. One idea was to promote 1 DC for raids via higher rewards etc., on the other hand, there could also be rewards tied to low party finder count data centers. But if we do that, it would place greater stress on a given DC and would promote DC Travel, so I'm not sure what we should be doing. So, even if we implement that, all the other players will have problems logging in. So, my head hurts around this problem.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PIxQPKBf0E&t=1410s

[Qorani]

This isn't supposed to be a good thing lol. Players are suffering (I know the exact wording there sounds hyperbolic, but a better way to phrase it isn't coming to me at the moment) because of the devs not knowing how to handle their game and implementing features that blatantly degrade what was an acceptable player experience before now.

Please don't defend this. They took a feature that people liked - aside from some pf issues - and made it tentatively unusable at best. I'm not one to harrass the devs or anything, but this is a significant step backward. This feels like a version of the feature that would be in alpha or beta build of it.

[ObscuraFi]

- aside from some pf issues -

Crystal:
PF Issues

Primal:
PF Issues

Dynamis:
PF issues
Eureka/Bozja Issues
Roulette Issues
Open World Fate Issues
Low Population Social Zones
Never getting access to FC Buffs or retainers while PvE'ing which is what everyone else complained about having to go to Dynamis but is what Dynamis dealt with for years.
No casual PvP queue's until it was organized by a PvP discord
Low Population count for venues
Low Marketboard interest due to more undercutting on main data centers

[Qorani]

I'll agree that the Crystal and Primal pf issues are somewhat valid, but you can't attribute the Dynamis issues to DC travel. At best they slightly made the issues work, but the bigger problem is that no one wanted to go to Dynamis to start with and we didn't see enough NA player expansion in Endwalker to really justify them - especially an additional 4 worlds for Dawntrail. The issue with Dynamis is the same as Materia in that there is no GOOD incentive to go there aside from maybe easier housing. People need a great reason to uproot their habits, leave their FCs and friends behind wherever they left them, and contribute to building a new data center from the ground up. And the devs simply have not done that. Extra exp and some gold chocobo feathers aren't going to cut it.

[Dexion]

I genuinely dislike the change and miss Endwalker's DC travel system. As I've met friends IRL who play on different data centers it was a breeze to swap over, see their houses, go on treasure hunts, raids ect. When Dawntrail released I was a little bummed about the Dynamis push but waited patiently for dc travel to open back up only for it to be...underwhelming.

[NanaWiloh]

Players who are native to a dc or world have priority for logging in over visitors. The restrictions are enforcing that idea.

[NanaWiloh]

If their rewards offerings are enough, then why is Dynamis still having issues with population? It really does seem that no one has a compelling reason to go there.

It makes one think... that maybe the devs haven't made it feel worth it? That maybe they should have added additional worlds to pre-existing data centers instead? Not my job to fix things since I'm not a game dev, but the issues are apparent.

As in free character boosts, free housing plots, list goes on. In short all the stuff SE is not going to do..