[Feedback] Data Center Travel Changes

[1313]

"Dynamis is fine bro. It's your fault for creating your character there when you had no other options. Your feelings and rights don't matter cuz I'm not affected by the problem like you are. You should have just not played the game at all while your 45 days of free playtime expired. This is all your fault, victim." - players from anywhere but dynamis.

[kajv95]

My EU static has decided to give up and just take the break in hopes this gets reverted, fixed or what have you. A few of them don't have houses and are officially unsubbed now, the others are still considering what to do. Now that Shadow, the only DC we could freely travel to, is getting shut down there is simply no saving this for us.

Sometimes travel works, sometimes it doesn't and we're tired of even trying tbh.

Can only imagine how badly it's going out there in US DCs.

[Colt47]

High ping is a problem for jobs like viper and machinist for sure. I can't see someone doing high end content with high ping anyway for very long.

[VoidsentStatus]

High ping is a problem for jobs like viper and machinist for sure. I can't see someone doing high end content with high ping anyway for very long.

I won't speak for PvE, but for ranked PvP it's something we deal with regularly. Ranked matches of Diamond/Crystal rank will die off completely on various data centers for days to weeks, even a month+ sometimes. It used to be Crystal that died early in the earlier seasons, but now Primal is dead for weeks. EU same thing happens on Chaos with ppl getting on alts to help Light pop or having secondary characters to get Plat/Diamond on Chaos popping to get more Diamond/Crystal rank possible. Because of the regularness of the queue dying, most of us have characters on every data region that we pvp on besides Materia. EU will regularly come to NA, sometimes JP, NA will regularly go to EU and JP is like a training ground because you have to be a lot more predictive than reactive which makes you better defensively once you get back on home ping. Most of the Aussies from the Materia pvp community play on JP primarily, but also play on Crystal, and they're the prime example of only playing certain job (WAR) because their ping is too high to play other things.

[Colt47]

I won't speak for PvE, but for ranked PvP it's something we deal with regularly. Ranked matches of Diamond/Crystal rank will die off completely on various data centers for days to weeks, even a month+ sometimes. It used to be Crystal that died early in the earlier seasons, but now Primal is dead for weeks. EU same thing happens on Chaos with ppl getting on alts to help Light pop or having secondary characters to get Plat/Diamond on Chaos popping to get more Diamond/Crystal rank possible. Because of the regularness of the queue dying, most of us have characters on every data region that we pvp on besides Materia. EU will regularly come to NA, sometimes JP, NA will regularly go to EU and JP is like a training ground because you have to be a lot more predictive than reactive which makes you better defensively once you get back on home ping. Most of the Aussies from the Materia pvp community play on JP primarily, but also play on Crystal, and they're the prime example of only playing certain job (WAR) because their ping is too high to play other things.

Attrition is pretty rough with PvP as well since CC matches usually get done in rapid succession, and once someone gets a rank they want the only thing left keeping them in the whole thing is getting rank 25 for the final unlock, assuming they want it and haven't gotten to rank 25 yet. I never went ranked but I had to stagger which seasons I was doing because running CC continuously was more exhausting than sitting in PF for the savage runs.

[horsebirds]

Back here again to report that this problem continues to impact me, friends of mine, and the events we've been attending. An overworld event on Balmung had to be moved an hour before the event started because so few players could access the server. Among our little group we spent anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour trying and failing to travel between worlds, over and over and over. The randomness and lack of transparency make the system incredibly frustrating.

I'm not gonna speak for anyone else's experience in the game, and for best results I recommend that no one else does so either. But I'll keep sharing my own experience here whenever I have something to add. Right now that experience is that this is still really demoralizing. It makes it hard to plan events, or even plan to attend events. It makes it hard to reliably play with friends. It adds an element of difficulty and uncertainty to things that we're only doing so that we can spend time together and have fun, and I stay subscribed to this game because I like spending time together and having fun!

There are plenty of things about XIV that I like, but if it weren't for the people I know here I just don't think I'd have stayed interested in it for this long. At the end of the day the social scene is why I'm still here. I stick around every month because I like to see people and go places and take part in communities that have been built across DCs, and that's been getting harder and harder for me to do.

[MartinFreepaw]

I do a lot of events on FFXIV, primarily the crystal data center but i've been asked to do events on aether/primal before.

I run mostly roleplay events, but i've done charities, stream events and artparties etc.
I've accidentally shut down wards, and have closed many houses due to congestion.
I'm no stranger to closed off worlds from before SB, as i've been around doing this for more than 10ish years or so. It's my hobby, and I enjoy making community events for the RPers and others.

There has always been an issue with congestion, A normal zone has a limit of 300ish players but I believe since DT we've seen those numbers go up (Snake fate waiting)
A large house can hold about 120 players, A medium can hold up to 83 or so and a small can hold around 50 or so in the house before you can no longer have people come inside and people get stuck in fc rooms lol.

We've also found in our many years that if too many people crowd an Aetheryte or stand outside a house, you can't travel out of your house or use that aetheryte as the game thinks the instance is at max capacity. (Work around was to teleport outside of the area and come join the group hoofin it style)

That being said, i'm used to dealing with a certain amount of frustration and as an event runner hearing people be upset at not being able to make it to events. I've heard it from 'But i'm not on balmung/mateus etc so i can't make it '
'But i'm not on Crystal dc so I can't make it '

In most issues of past congestions woes there was work arounds. The DC travel currently frankly reminds me old housing from shb where you clicked your heart out and that frankly is incredibly frustrating to me. There doesn't seem to be as much work around for the DC Travel restrictions, itself.

For venue rp, the last few I've done since the changes were 'light' but expected for a new savage drop and new expac, so I wasn't aware of the other venue owners suffering even less turn outs than I did. And generally when I see something going on to this magnitude I ask/reach out and see what is causing a decline and everyone agreed it was DC Travel bans.

So it really does seem that us trying to group together for activity are really finding it frustrating, as right now the only work around seems to be 'if you can data hop earlier to get around prime times and hang out until event time you have a better chance.' Which feeds into the issue of congestion for everyone.

There doesn't seem to be any workaround outside of somehow convincing the playerbase themselves to stop afking in clumps on servers not their homeworld. Which frankly isn't going to happen, they are not getting out of their chairs.

A pretty wordy tl;dr of
I've experienced this annoyance, and i'm experiencing it again in the weirdest of ways and SE please can you give us more server space as thats the only thing I can think of to fix the issues.

[VoidsentStatus]

For venue rp, the last few I've done since the changes were 'light' but expected for a new savage drop and new expac, so I wasn't aware of the other venue owners suffering even less turn outs than I did. And generally when I see something going on to this magnitude I ask/reach out and see what is causing a decline and everyone agreed it was DC Travel bans.

I'm thinking a small implosion is happening. Before Endwalker, there were venues but nowhere near as many. When Empy came out for extra housing and DC Travel unlocked, the community got flooded with venues, with, ironically enough, nightclub clones that later got memed on. Everyone wanted to open a venue, later on everyone wanted to become a DJ, and both have seen reputation/quality decline over the years in the non-rp community eyes that don't know how widely they can swing in variance. Now that DC Travel is locking up people, you have all those extra venues without the population that fueled them to be alive in the first place. I would assume that over time, most of the smaller one's that don't have a strong core community will eventually close and things will semi-go back to how they were pre-Endwalker.

[MartinFreepaw]

Thats a lot of words that circle to nothing and i'm not feeling inclined to humor them.

I hope you have the day you deserve to have

[voidlorn]

I'm thinking a small implosion is happening. Before Endwalker, there were venues but nowhere near as many. When Empy came out for extra housing and DC Travel unlocked, the community got flooded with venues, with, ironically enough, nightclub clones that later got memed on. Everyone wanted to open a venue, later on everyone wanted to become a DJ, and both have seen reputation/quality decline over the years in the non-rp community eyes that don't know how widely they can swing in variance. Now that DC Travel is locking up people, you have all those extra venues without the population that fueled them to be alive in the first place. I would assume that over time, most of the smaller one's that don't have a strong core community will eventually close and things will semi-go back to how they were pre-Endwalker.

The vast majority of venue-based rp isn't just nightclubs and DJ stuff. It's story-driven events and locations built by people and communities who dedicate a lot of time and energy to the stories and connections created by writing together! Generalizing everything into "ew nightclubs, good thing they're dying" is demeaning and dismissive of other people's experiences and the passion we collectively put into this game's roleplaying community.