[Feedback] Data Center Travel Changes

[Gember]

Must be nice not having a social life and wanting to play with friends

A lot of social groups got destroyed by DC travel. A lot of free companies fell apart because whoever decided to label data centers based off activities really caused a mess. If a friend wants to chill on their island gathering on Crystal, they can't talk to their friends who have to sit in town on Aether because they are trying to do some sort of content through party finder. So if you think people who enjoy the restrictions are some anti-social no lifes; you need to educate yourself on the community who was hurting from this. Were literally the opposite of what you accused us of. We miss our social groups, our friends, and everything else that DC destroyed due to poor community decisions. Some of my friends have quit this game because our DC had no life on it, and being forced to do content in a completely different space. DC travel was not a good design at the start.

[Ayalu]

I do have to question...if DC Traveled Destroyed some Communities, do those communities have communication issues? :/
Lets meet on Data Center/ World X and do Y. Doesnt seem that hard.

I managed it to meet people in Oceania DT when they were from NA ones as everyone can travel there.
Of course we all had delays but still.

[xanatosdc]

That sounds like you all just need to talk to each other more. Whereas it IS an issue if I can't go to the venue my friends run, because I can't even get to Aether.

[Gember]

You can't do Island Sanctuary on a different data center, along with many other parts of gameplay. Its not a communication issue, its a gameplay issue. If friends come to see you from a other DC; then their gameplay is stripped as well. A lot of players in my space don't just log into the game to sit around and talk, and maybe this is why its confusing some people in here as to why I am not against the restrictions. DC travel almost felt like it was forcing all of the raiders to be friends with raiders on Aether, and so on. I was in a community where everyone did all sorts of different things. Gathering, crafting, ultimate raiding, house decorators, roleplaying, and whatever else you can think of. It was nice being in a space where everyone can do talk and play the game their own way. However, DC travel separated us from that social circle.

It might be confusing, but a lot of friendships were just formed from people visiting the FC house and watching people decorate, craft, etc while they wait for their PFs to fill. People still talked to each other in discord when travel was implemented, and we try to meet up a lot, but it felt extremely hollow and tedious. No one could see each other in the game to do fun little things to fill for their wait times without sacrificing some of their enjoyment. It was the "hanging out" part that got thrashed. FC buffs were becoming useless, because people started to not visit the house anymore because they just had to be on Aether or somewhere else. The traveling was tedious and they didn't want to keep dealing with it. Its hard to explain it, but Endwalker has lead people in these groups to become more distant, and some ended up quitting.

I really don't want the "you guys have discord, so you guys are fine" pinned against me, because I could say that you all can RP on discord too and be fine without going to a venue. I don't want your enjoyable experiences to be taken away from any of you either, but it really did hurt my social circle a lot, and I wish there was a better solution to this problem. I just don't want people like myself and my friends to be dismissed as "anti-social no lifes" because we were upset that we had to separate ourselves from our community to do what we enjoyed in the game, and got completely worn down from it.

Sorry, I am not very good at explaining this stuff, and I am not attacking anyone in here. But I just feel like my situation along with many other players are being overlooked by a drastic measure in this thread.

[Ayalu]

im still confused there, people do stuff across other worlds and formerly occasionaly other Data Centers but after what they needet to be done they came back after that. If they just "stay" on the other Data Center its on the people that do that not the Datacenter Travel. ^^*
Like nobody forced those people to not return to there data center to hang out.
Its not hard to do.
I myself only would use data center travel to visit friends on other data center and they visiting me, it expands the possibility for that.
I very much looked foreward to intercontinental Datacenter Travels to visit NA Friends

Also the current restrictions encourages to just stay on a Datacenter after arriving there because its so annoying and time consuming to travel.
Which would make your problem worse, no?

[Rueby]

That sounds like you all just need to talk to each other more. Whereas it IS an issue if I can't go to the venue my friends run, because I can't even get to Aether.

The fact that the mob mentality of assigning a raid DC and everyone piles on said DC is a problem. SE loves segregating us because...whatever excuse they want to come up with to not give us cross DC PF/DF. People want to play together but we still get more DCs added to SEPERATE people.

As it stands, piling up in one place hurts the place being drained of its players. It makes sense that people want to play together, but you can't turn a blind eye to the problems it causes. I don't want DC travel to go away, I've always been excited for it, I always wanted to visit my NA friends on my main (EU), I love NA, it's way more social...but my ping is bad and I honestly don't have it in me to commit to leveling with that ping.

Yet people brand anyone frustrated with being on the dying DC as anti-dc or anti-social...?? I'm sorry what...I get you're upset that you can't go where you want to be. If I go to another DC to follow the herd, I'm stranded from my friendlist, FC (chest/chat/buffs), retainers (that I pay for), all linkshells. I used DC travel casually, I never used it to camp there, I always used my local (dying) PF. Yet somehow I don't have a social life? Okay!

I hate restrictions and I hate being on the dying DC.

The reason why you can't see your friends is mostly because everyone and their aunt wants to be on aether to PF/raid and I reckon this might be why the restrictions are there.

I stayed politely in my little dying DC and never contributed to the problem, occasionally used DC travel to do BA/PVP rather than camp the other DC.

I don't think they expected people to use DC travel this way but this shows a desire for people to play together esp high end content, idk why they're not prioritizing cross DC PF/DF and instead we get this eyebleed graphical update....It'd fix your problem and my problem, plenty of people who raid will have access to other DC PFs from the comfort of their own server, reducing the need to physically be there. This would likely free space for people to use DC travel for social things and hang out with others. That's how I see it anyway.

I refrained from commenting further in this thread because some people are more interested in being upset and getting mad at anyone who feels otherwise. I'm sorry that you can't meet your friends, but being snide towards me or others won't make you see them either.

[Sourcy]

Maybe something like adding instances to major cities could help? Anything to increase the count and reduce load.

Balmung right now is watching what little bit of RP community and events it had left die as half our visitor slots or more all sit in front of the quicksands in smallclothes doing /beesknees.

Honestly just do a pass by there once a week and throw out monthbans.

[Gember]

im still confused there, people do stuff across other worlds and formerly occasionaly other Data Centers but after what they needet to be done they came back after that. If they just "stay" on the other Data Center its on the people that do that not the Datacenter Travel. ^^*
Like nobody forced those people to not return to there data center to hang out.
Its not hard to do.
I myself only would use data center travel to visit friends on other data center and they visiting me, it expands the possibility for that.
I very much looked foreward to intercontinental Datacenter Travels to visit NA Friends

Also the current restrictions encourages to just stay on a Datacenter after arriving there because its so annoying and time consuming to travel.
Which would make your problem worse, no?

Sorry, I might be a little confused by your response. My main is from Crystal, and because of the restrictions; our PF is thriving now, and friends are not feeling forced to travel to do content in PF anymore. Its only been a short time now, but I already got comments that people missed just hanging out doing other things while waiting for PF to fill, and our gatherers aren't feeling like our FC just died when the reality was just people were just in different DCs for x-y-z reasons. Friends are happy for it, because they didn't like the separation in the game even though we do have discord to help with communication. We just feel we are spending more time with friends now, and being in a true MMO space like it was back in Shadowbringers.

I just want to say it again, I don't want people who have friends in different DCs to feel separated either. A lot of problems come from gameplay restrictions. If I could do Island Sanctuary on Aether while my main home is Crystal while waiting for a PF to fill, and having access to my FC chat; it wouldn't really be this bad. But it was that bad, and my group suffered a lot from it.

[Gember]

Maybe something like adding instances to major cities could help? Anything to increase the count and reduce load.

Balmung right now is watching what little bit of RP community and events it had left die as half our visitor slots or more all sit in front of the quicksands in smallclothes doing /beesknees.

Honestly just do a pass by there once a week and throw out monthbans.

I do have a question. Does the server prioritize residential players first and visitors second? Or does it just let in whoever is in line first?

[Tyark]

I will chime in and say the changes in 7.05 on DC travel restrictions are not working for myself personally or for my static. I'm apart of a group that tries to raid on Aether (since 6/8 are on Aether) and unless I log-in first thing in the morning and go squat on Aether for 10 hours before raid time, I'm rarely making it over in time for raid. This is now week 4 and have never seen the DC travel be this restrictive.

I understand and appreciate what the team is trying to accomplish but this is not working. Cross-DC pf's discussed previously during LFTP/PLL really does sound like the best fix but I'm not going to act like I understand the server/networking infrastructure of how FFXIV is configured. Whatever can be changed to help alleviate the current congestion (even if it's going back to 7.0/7.01 configuration) would be better at this point.