[Feedback] Data Center Travel Changes

[Crimen]

2 of my raid mates from a different DC are stuck in limbo.

[Ayalu]

With People trapped in limbo....that needs a hot fix.
A immediate reversel even if they still want to apply it they would need to refine it atleast sofar that this doesnt happen.

[bbnn]

This only happened bc some one said it would be a good idea to roll out this restriction on the week it matters the most. THe system itself i have no qualms with, if they actually announced this restriction like way early on, it would have been the most ideal situation as it would have allowed people to maybe not join a X-DC static. or maybe announced it today but implement at a later date... at the elast implement this on like 7.01, at least then maybe the problems could have been highlighted and maybe fixed by this time. if not would have preferred it if they just kept the DC travel lock as to completely avoid the situation of accounts/characters being locked in limbo

[Maxilor]

Note to self: Do not travel to Dynamis lest I be stuck in the Infinite Tsukuyomi.

[strigiformes]

I agree with all of the points in the original post of this thread. Aside from the egregious technical hiccups we're all experiencing today on patch day, I really want to emphasize the issues that I see having some long lasting and damaging impacts on a variety of communities in this game.

A lot of these events happen on specific worlds, at specific times, and usually with a predictable schedule. All of this is important because the success of these events relies on having a lot of participants, creating an active community. They also rely on word of mouth, making it difficult if not impossible to switch their location on short notice to respond to congestion. A lot of these events happen on Crystal, which has a reputation as the roleplayer’s data center of choice, but which has also historically been pretty crowded. Before DC travel you had to elbow your way into that crowd and make a character on Crystal in order to participate. When DC travel first opened without restriction, it opened these events up to everyone on a North American data center. You could make a character anywhere, and still take part!

The roleplaying community depends so, so heavily on consistency and reliability in our events and venues. Simply transferring to another, less populated data center is not the answer for even modestly-sized social activities that require players to physically be in the same place at the same time. Not to mention the ongoing housing shortage/issues that moving data centers certainly will not solve (we have seen entire wards on Dynamis bought up by the same person, in fact). As any organizer of in-game and IRL communities will attest, trying to get a group of people to shift as one to something new is incredibly difficult if not impossible in a lot of cases.

Furthermore, a server that is one day "Standard" might suddenly become "Congested" with the next maintenance. So any amount of sea change that might happen within a community (moving an overworld event from Balmung to Mateus, for instance) is effectively undone at the whims of the developers.

You cannot say you want to foster a vibrant social community and then effectively turn each data center into a series of suburbs with unreliable travel between them.

[KazukoHimura]

The roleplaying community depends so, so heavily on consistency and reliability in our events and venues. Simply transferring to another, less populated data center is not the answer for even modestly-sized social activities that require players to physically be in the same place at the same time. Not to mention the ongoing housing shortage/issues that moving data centers certainly will not solve (we have seen entire wards on Dynamis bought up by the same person, in fact).

This is exactly what I want them to see. In my case, a lot of my RPs are at more private housing, one place is my chara's home, another is the clinic she visits, etc. We can't just up and move to Dynamis and have new places for that, because these are PLAYER HOUSES, not random spots in the overworld. Unless people on Dynamis want to willingly loan us houses/FC house rooms, etc.

[VoidsentStatus]

This is exactly what I want them to see. In my case, a lot of my RPs are at more private housing, one place is my chara's home, another is the clinic she visits, etc. We can't just up and move to Dynamis and have new places for that, because these are PLAYER HOUSES, not random spots in the overworld. Unless people on Dynamis want to willingly loan us houses/FC house rooms, etc.

I have over 50 plots on Dynamis I wasn't planning on using for the RP/Gpose community until 2025 when I had the gil to decorate and the housing changes came through. If there were any small venues/small rp communities that reached out, I would let them use my properties for the time being which include smalls and mediums primarily on Goblet as well 3 large's in Mist. I have over 20 FC's in shiro and empy primarily but also a large fc in mist.

[fourzero]

First ever Forum post, because I'm literally stuck unable to play the game when I'd had zero issues with Dawntrail launch previously

I've been trying to return to my home world - not even travel somewhere else - for exactly past hour and constantly getting getting error 505 and 2021. It only NOW just let me in.
Why not at least give homeworlders priority, or a way to cancel out of DC travel and return to the world you were originally in?
If nothing else, at least redirect me to a different world in the same DC that I can actually log into to play in a cross-world party, or let me log into a different character...?

I'm really wondering what exactly this change is trying to accomplish...? If people are trying to play together specifically, a change like this is going to inherently split parties, which is pretty disastrous on Savage patch day. If you can' cancel out of DC travel, how exactly are you supposed to coordinate where your party will go?

I don't know, guys, I feel like this change wasn't well thought out :P

[VoidsentStatus]

[kajv95]

It's just ridiculous. You can't force people to go back to "the way it was" because every region made a (reasonable!) decision to merge their raid communities together.

It's messing with every single type of players. From the hypercasuals who found new connections while talking random things in Limsa, to the people who simply played with real life friends who were literally barred from making their characters on the same world due to lockdowns and decided to make the most of it with DC travel, all the way down to the RP community who basically keep this game funded as it is now and the raiders who went cross DC because they literally let the pf woes sit that way for more than 2 years.

Do I like having to go to move DCs to raid? No. But I'll gladly take that annoyance over screwing with every single social facet this game has.