[Feedback] Data Center Travel Changes

[Veladrys]

Just adding my two gil in as someone who owns one venue and helps manage several others, this has us all pretty worried. The open public RP nights in Buscarron's Druthers on Balmung that a few of us have been working to promote had a fraction of its usual population the other day due to the changes. I have the reopening of my fight club venue tonight, and I'm already expecting it's going to be a much lighter crowd than pre-Dawntrail. We have a number of off-DC participants and patrons, and I really don't want them to be excluded because of this.

[BoxyFoxy]

Members of my static also unable to raid with us on Aether, and we can't travel to another server or we get locked in queue for an hour, then when we finally transfer over, we have to spend another hour trying to login because "Servers are congested, Visiting Characters cannot login."

It's single handedly the biggest blunder they've made involving world travel.

I get that it was to prevent too many people on one world, but it's preventing their community from interacting with each other.

[strigiformes]

There are perhaps other stop-gap solution that shouldn't be too difficult to implement until they can fix the more fundamental issues in 2-3 years that I'd like to see them try. Something that doesn't require a rework of server architecture and could be accomplished with a single extra check somewhere, and is less obstructive to the non-gameplay parts of the game.
Preventing people from making PFs on other DCs (but still being able to join them) might be a decent start. Maybe also preventing a party from queuing if more than 50% of its members come from a different DC than the one they are queueing on. There are options left that I hope they explore.

I agree with this, honestly. There are plenty of other methods they could try that don't interfere as egregiously with the social/community aspect of the game. I would like to see them attempt one of these first rather than what they did, which was implement a sweeping change on a major patch day without any forewarning.

Hell, I'd even be happier with a queue system for DC/world travel if they're adamant about keeping the restrictions in place. Anything that isn't a "click and pray" system reminiscent of the old housing placards. I'll wait in line as long as there's a line to wait in.

[Fluffysilverkitsune]

I moved to Dynamis to get housing because i knew I could travel to other DC to run content. Dynamis is so dead a vast majority of the content I want to run cant be because there are no players (spent 1h 46m in que). This change now prevents me from playing content, visiting friends, try new venues, or even play the base game in a reasonable amount of time. They need to change this back, I even made a forum account just to post this. By far the worst thing they have done since i started playing

[Veladrys]

I moved to Dynamis to get housing because i knew I could travel to other DC to run content. Dynamis is so dead a vast majority of the content I want to run cant be because there are no players (spent 1h 46m in que). This change now prevents me from playing content, visiting friends, try new venues, or even play the base game in a reasonable amount of time. They need to change this back, I even made a forum account just to post this. By far the worst thing they have done since i started playing

This is why most people I know from Dynamis ended up there, because it was the easiest (or only) way to obtain a house - and I don't blame them. I've considered rolling characters on Dynamis for housing, but if DC travel is going to be such an issue, then there's really no point to doing that now. If housing was more available on Crystal, I'm sure there's a lot of people who wouldn't have bothered moving datacenters.

[ArtemisXIV]

As someone that tries to meet up with friends regularly to do maps, this change has made our lives very difficult. I (Balmung-peep), often go to Seraph to meet with my friends and queue up for stuff so they can keep their FC bonuses. Now, we all have to go to Cuchulainn just to meet up for maps, and we all lose our FC bonuses.

Hunts have been made much harder for me, as there's no guarantee I'll make it in on time (if at all).

Additionally, I help run a RP fighting venue. Not all of the staff is on Balmung, often coming to us from other places in Crystal. Obviously, not all of our visitors are from Balmung, either. We've just lost 3/4ths of our visitors from where we were prior to this change, as now only people on Balmung can swing by reliably.

This change isn't helpful. Prevent new characters if you want, but this is doing more harm than good for the average playerbase.

[angienessyo]

I understand them trying to keep everyone and their mom from descending upon us on Aether for raiding, but they made it really annoying for everyone with the restrictions. I'm fine with there being some restrictions, but I think they might have made them way too strict. The 1 person in my static that isn't on Aether has to world transfer 7 hours before raid to ensure he doesn't have to fight crowds to get in at prime time.

[Eskat]

I think what I hate about this most is that it's actively incentivizing us to participate in the behavior they're trying to quell. I'm being far more stubborn about trying to get "my slot" on foreign data centers now. It's not incentivizing me to play on my own world and data center, it's prompting me to hog the space on the desired location for longer than I even intend to use it.

[Lck0ut]

I understand them trying to keep everyone and their mom from descending upon us on Aether for raiding, but they made it really annoying for everyone with the restrictions. I'm fine with there being some restrictions, but I think they might have made them way too strict. The 1 person in my static that isn't on Aether has to world transfer 7 hours before raid to ensure he doesn't have to fight crowds to get in at prime time.

Inversely, I am the only Aether-dweller in my static, and a majority are on crystal. It is frustrating to no end, as I either cannot access fc buffs, my retainers, or do certain things that SE locked down to people only on their homeworld (Diadem, timed gathering nodes to be precise) for multiple hours each day, or spend 1+ hour trying to get over to crystal right before raid.

[1313]

I think what I hate about this most is that it's actively incentivizing us to participate in the behavior they're trying to quell. I'm being far more stubborn about trying to get "my slot" on foreign data centers now. It's not incentivizing me to play on my own world and data center, it's prompting me to hog the space on the desired location for longer than I even intend to use it.

I was thinking along these lines myself. I was contemplating going and parking my ass on aether and never logging out. Might do that around 6am when I can actually get over there.