[Feedback] Data Center Travel Changes

[kajv95]

Log in server is set to say a world is congested if enough peole are in que. Even if the world itself is not, I am on lamia its status is standard yet I still get the message.

I know that. That's what I mean. Logging in is perfectly fine on both sides. Yet strangely I couldn't get players on Light to come to Omega on Chaos, with one of them getting stuck in loading for 20 minutes before the game finally decided to give him the boot.
It's not exactly fixing the woes of "dead pf" either because a large chunk of pfers ended up riding out to Light in the last 2 years. To illustrate my point, if you're willing to go with The Goblet or Empyreum, practically ANYONE can get a house here. We have hundreds available.

The playerbase does not reside here, but Light players *still* have trouble getting into populated but not nearly full worlds. It's frankly hilarious.

I don't mind if the system actually properly balanced things out, but either the parameters are far, far too low, or this system actually believes the server is currently congested which... well we get routinely told our Limsa seems quiet, so take that how you will :')

(I should mention my main isn't Lilia, but I like my femroths vibe so)

[KazukoHimura]

I pray they fix this with the hotfixes...

[xanatosdc]

I will bet money that they won't

[HighlanderClone]

Atrocious is the only way to describe this. My static lost 4 hours because of DC travel shenanigans on day 1.

[strigiformes]

For the record, the RP community on Crystal is still having problems with this system a week later. Even on a Crystal native character, it was nearly impossible to get to a regularly scheduled event on Balmung last night. This could be chalked up to reset day crowds, except that the same issue came up Monday as well.

I say "nearly impossible" because while World Visit eventually let me in, it wasn't without some serious stubbornness. Initially I tried going to this event on my DC traveling character, gave up, and then switched to my character on Mateus. Since this is World Visit and not DC travel-specific, the system is "working as intended" here.



It's too early to say how the crowd dying down over a patch cycle will impact us, but I argue that social activities shouldn't revolve around a patch cycle in the first place.

[SophiaDL]

For the record, the RP community on Crystal is still having problems with this system a week later. Even on a Crystal native character, it was nearly impossible to get to a regularly scheduled event on Balmung last night. This could be chalked up to reset day crowds, except that the same issue came up Monday as well.

I say "nearly impossible" because while World Visit eventually let me in, it wasn't without some serious stubbornness. Initially I tried going to this event on my DC traveling character, gave up, and then switched to my character on Mateus. Since this is World Visit and not DC travel-specific, the system is "working as intended" here.



It's too early to say how the crowd dying down over a patch cycle will impact us, but I argue that social activities shouldn't revolve around a patch cycle in the first place.

This isnt getting removed anytime soon, people are just taking the restrictions and sitting happy being restricted, 150 PF's on Primal for raiding last night says enough, I really do wish people had some backbone and would complain (as they should) for the restriction of a feature that has been in the game for quite a while now, but nah, as per usual with this community, people just sit happy and take anything SE throws at them. The community will one day be this game's downfall, might be in a few years, might be in 10 years, but in more ways than one, the community will be at fault.

No matter what happens, people just sit and take it, and are grateful for it, it has reached pathetic levels at this point that anything bad that happens just gets complained about for a day, then just gets dropped as if nothing happened.

[Kit_Lakshmi]

One week later and this is the impact of the new data center travel system on my friends and me:

Those of us who are not on Aether, log into Aether in the morning before the rush. Most members are on Aether and we will not risk trying to have everyone log into Dynamis because we got burned real bad a week ago. An entire night was lost. No gaming at all. We are fully aware of the longstanding congestion problems on Aether because most are Aether natives. But friends are friends and having a common time to play together is limited and precious. We will continue to log into Aether under the current data center transfer system until there are changes. This is human nature, sticking with friends in familiar places and minimizing risks. It goes against human nature to start new and risk leaving friends. The current data center transfer system creates pressure to do the latter, it goes against human nature, and so it will have limited success.

I am currently babysitting a connection on Aether for eight hours so I can play with friends tonight. I am fully aware this is not what SE wants players to do. But they are my friends. We have limited time to play together. I will continue to do this.

I am also getting the impression that it's getting harder to data center transfer into Aether. I suspect this is because an increasing number of players are using plugins to stay logged in. I don't blame them. It's human nature to stick with friends in familiar places with years of investment and less risk of an obliterated gaming night for all friends. This is just my speculation about an increasing impact of the current data center transfer system.

Maybe Aether will become impossible to transfer into all day long all week long. Maybe Aether will officially go on complete lockdown. Maybe the same will happen to other specific world servers. I hope Dynamis will be ready to serve as a reliable data center transfer for NA. My friends and I were ok with doing gaming nights on Dynamis before the mess of the current system. We would change our behavior and return to playing on Dynamis if it went back to being... RELIABLE.

How about an official announcement recognizing these concerns, SE? Or — real talk — we can just keep doing what humans do, ToS be damned.

[VoidsentStatus]

Or — real talk — we can just keep doing what humans do, ToS be damned.

I mean, while I understand being with your friends is what you want, that's what caused problems, so the more you and your friends fight against the devs, the hard they're just going to screw everyone over including you. That's what caused this situation to begin with and you fighting the solution is just going to make them more strict. If you're noticing it's getting harder to sign into Aether, it's probably because it is. Eventually more and more people are just going to try to cheat the system and you won't be able to sign in to Aether period after you disconnect or a maintenance happens that forces you off. Or, the amount of cheating gets so high that Square decides to host a maintenance and shift data center travel to not even allowing travelers at all to sign into Aether so even if you're at character select, you can't get into the world. You being there is only because Square allows you to be, and like I said, the more you piss them off, the more you're going to force their hand to do what they could've did already. You can keep doing what humans do, and they're just gonna keep doing what devs do.

[Kit_Lakshmi]

I mean, while I understand being with your friends is what you want, that's what caused problems, so the more you and your friends fight against the devs, the hard they're just going to screw everyone over including you. ... [snip because of character limit] ... You can keep doing what humans do, and they're just gonna keep doing what devs do.

To be more direct, had DC travel to Dynamis not been botched with the release of the changes in 7.05, my group of friends would have continued to chose Dynamis as our place to play together. Even if we were looking forward to getting together on Aether, we would have chosen any location that involved less risk. So if the underpopulated world servers can be traveled to reliably, that would be sufficient for what my group of friends are looking for. I think the devs can make this happen, and they may already be working on this despite their silence.

That being said, it wouldn't help the RP community. A different approach would be needed.

In regards to calls for players to take the initiative to relieve the strain on congested data centers, I consider it unrealistic to expect hundreds of thousands of customers to change their behavior in significant ways when the implementation of new systems is clumsy, e.g. large portions of populations leaving friends to switch home data centers when newly implemented barriers severely impede certain types of cross-DC interactions that players have come to enjoy. The system as released with 7.05 likely discouraged many players from shifting their gameplay away from congested data centers. The devs can address these issues as the onus is on the business to develop their product in ways that better appeal to their paying customers. I don't expect players to get everything we want, conflicting interests make that impossible, but the devs are more likely to steer resources and development in ways that appeal to more players if they pay attention to the various criticism and praise from players.

I believe the devs are genuinely trying to improve what is a complex web of mmo gameplay while trying to minimize a heavy-handed approach. And I am getting the impression pieces of this new DC travel system are quietly being worked on. My posts in this thread are my attempt to communicate what specifically has sucked in my recent experiences, describe why my friends and I choose what we choose despite restrictions, and hope that there's some invisible funnel that somehow places a conglomeration of player comments in the ear of someone on the dev team.

[VoidsentStatus]

..

That's the misunderstanding. You're not supposed to be able to go to Dynamis reliably anymore. If you could, that would just shift the problem. You aren't supposed to be going anywhere consistently and for a long time period because that is what causes problems wherever you go, even outside of running content. That severely impedes cross-DC interactions is because that very activity impeded home-DC interactions that people had enjoyed for 5-10+ years compared to the 3 for DC Travel. This happened because that new interaction is not top of the priority list.

"quietly being worked on" -> Agreed. Because we have no idea what the traveler or visitor limit is, and they get to set it anytime they want, and we don't even know if they need a maintenance to change it. The only thing they posted is relativity notes on the worlds in terms of "decreased or "increased", but not what the "Normal" amount is that can be shifted at any time. We don't even know if "Normal" exists per Data Center or is it shared per Region, or is Normal for that world. There's a lot of assumptions we have to make, but the one assumption I won't make is that they're going to backpeddle and make things easier because of complaints that could've been predicted by a 3-year old.