[Feedback] Data Center Travel Changes

[KitaiAryik]

They need to just give up and accept that we don't have the player numbers to populate 4 NA data centers and merge Dynamis into Aether/Primal/Crystal. Give Aether the 2 least populated, split the remaining 6 into 3 each for Primal & Crystal, and *then* only if absolutely necessary, give Aether a new world to bring all 3 of the remaining NA data centers up to 11.

But they won't, because announcing data center merges would look like "bad PR" for the state of the game, and they probably want to squeeze as many pay transfers out of people first (especially with Aether opened back up) before they even think about handing out a "free" one by moving the Dynamis worlds over wholesale.

would be the easiest bet but alas SE would squeeze $18 an xfer b4 they even attempt something like that. they sure as hell got my money to not have to go through this again as it is. sucks that it has to come down to paying for that but it is what it is atm and unless something gives which wouldn't look so good for SE PR wise specially after scraping what they needed for the new DC when the whole WoW exodus/COVID time was a thing, but that was a temporary thing and now thats passed, we just don't have the population for 30+ servers across 4 DCs to support it all. only time we would even remotely have that would be an expansion launch but that also doesn't really last after a couple months

[CeruleanArc]

Posting to share some feedback and start a conversation about the state of Data Center travel as of patch 7.05.

My general feedback is that this causes more problems than I can see it solving. I’ll talk about those that I’ve personally experienced based on the way I play XIV.

Hear, hear to everything you've said.

I have a regularly scheduled thing on Aether that I still can't attend with my main. So, since I cannot Data Center travel to Aether's Faerie server (it is always locked down due to mythological "congestion"), I have created an alt on the same server.

Which, wasn't that what Dynamis was created to prevent? It's maddeningly ridiculous that I have to make a permanent character on a server that "struggles" with "congestion" rather than temporarily travel there in order to participate in events with established organizations that already exist there and should NOT be forced to move just because SE has failed its FFXIV community on such an impressive level.

Anyway, I guess my alt lives on Aether now, since we are now all disincentivized from creating characters on Dynamis and must create characters on Primal, Aether, and Crystal to do more than wait 30 minutes for roulettes.

[Fuyuqi]

A bunch of servers on Aether are open for new characters/character transfers now, and I have exceedingly little faith that they'll roll back these changes (or if they do, it'll be far too late, as is tradition for Square Enix), so fine. They win. I'll pay the "you were an idiot for transferring to Dynamis" tax so I can stop feeling like a second-class citizen in the game I pay $15 a month for. I encourage others to do the same if you have the means and don't have anything tying you down to your data center, because at this point, I don't really see them doing anything about this unless the situation in other data centers gets so bad that it's impossible for even a company this dense to ignore.

This is exactly how I feel. It's so frustrating. It's been nearly half a year and the game is nearly back to end of Endwalker numbers but anyone not on Aether has to jump through incredibly tedious hoops since even with the restrictions, people aren't PFing on their home DCs. I'd rather deal with the 5000 people queues for the first 2 weeks of launch instead of just not being able to play the game for half a year because all I do is raid in PF. I'm literally at home and awake for 3 hours a day, having to deal with this is seriously killing any desire to play the game at all.

[Fuyuqi]

Just to share my experience and complain, this is how the restrictions have affected me. I have a very busy schedule (out of the house for over 12 hours every weekday), and the days I have free are variable week to week so statics don't work for me. My primary gameplay in FFXIV is raiding, and I do crafting and island sanctuary (for materia) to sell for gil to buy things like food and pots for raid. I have about 3-4 hours each day free to do everything I need to at home (showering, cooking, eating, work), so I tend to sleep pretty early.

At the end of Endwalker, when player numbers were pretty similar to now, I could log in on a day I had some free time, check my sanctuary, grab materia and list them on the marketboard. I'd then travel to Aether, rarely wait longer than 30 seconds, and find a 7/8 or 6/8 ultimate PF to spend an hour or two in. When I was ready to call it a night, I'd log out, travel back to Crystal, and collect any gil and update my marketboard prices if people undercut me while I was gone.

Now, if I'm on crystal, sure I can do my "maintenance" stuff in the game like crafting and island sanctuary, but the primary thing I play the game for (raiding) is torture. There's barely ever any parties in PF, and the quality of the parties are pretty low. Not a slight to Crystal raiders, but most people who are serious about getting reclears done quickly or doing ultimates at all usually head to Aether instead. If I have the desire to raid, I have to think ahead and stay up late or set an alarm and wake up early so that I can actually travel, and have the option to raid the next time I log on.

If I'm on Aether, sure I can raid, but I feel like I'm missing out on my ability to earn gil. Can't sell mats or crafts on MB, can't use subs, can't do timed nodes. I don't have much interest in things like triple triad, so I'm left twiddling my thumbs waiting for pfs to fill since everything else I enjoy (mahjong, pvp, levelling) I can't do while sitting in PF. Even at the end of the night, I can't just go home and sell stuff I crafted on the MB because it'll still be too early for me to get back to aether for the next day, and I'd have to stay up or wake up early again.

I feel like I'm forced to give up one of the two types of gameplay I enjoy, and that I have to fight the game just to play. It's even more infuriating due to the lack of acknowledgement from the dev team, and thinking that I have to either deal with this indefinitely or give up the community i have on my home world and pay to transfer just so I can enjoy the game honestly just makes me want to quit the game

[CeruleanArc]

the primary thing I play the game for (raiding) is torture. There's barely ever any parties in PF, and the quality of the parties are pretty low. Not a slight to Crystal raiders

As a Crystallite... totally fair statement.

I honestly feel the most for people like you with limited time. If I were in your position, I'm not sure I'd still be playing this game at all. As much as I love it, when time is scarce, it costs us way more than $15/month to play this game when they do things like this to us. At some point, the cost becomes prohibitive, and we'll have to go elsewhere whether we want to or not.

[Fuyuqi]

As a Crystallite... totally fair statement.

I honestly feel the most for people like you with limited time. If I were in your position, I'm not sure I'd still be playing this game at all. As much as I love it, when time is scarce, it costs us way more than $15/month to play this game when they do things like this to us. At some point, the cost becomes prohibitive, and we'll have to go elsewhere whether we want to or not.

LOL well hey I was a Crystal raider at one point too, I can't judge.

I WAS fine paying 15/month since it's not like I logged in much to begin with with my schedule, so the time I get for the money hasn't changed much, just the quality and enjoyment I get from it has gone down a lot bc of the travel restrictions. The game has always been worth the cost for me up until this point. I was happy through the end of EW, I enjoyed the launch of DT, but ever since they didn't remove restrictions on savage release and still no comment on it for FRU... I might just be unable to do the content I've been waiting for for half a year, and I think if that happens I'm finally gonna call it quits.

[KitaiAryik]

And even then, we did just have an expansion launch (and the Xbox one), but it did little to increase Dynamis player numbers, and in fact a lot of people pay transferred out after their 90 day bar was lifted, because most people have in fact been using Dynamis as a "cheaper" character boost as you can roll a character on most Dynamis worlds, use Road to 90 to fast track multiple jobs/speenrun the MSQ, and then pay $18 to move to Aether/Primal/Crystal rather than spend $25 *each* on the different "Tales of Adventure" for jobs and MSQ skip.

We're basically an alt churner, and the only "mains" here like myself are 100% reliant on data center travel to get anything done. Like, I got frickin' stuck on progressing my own MSQ last night because I needed to do the Susano fight but there's no way in hell I'll find even *one* other person to do it unsync at 10PM at night with me on Maduin, much less 7 other people if I wanted to do it normally, and the only reason I didn't just DC travel right then is because I wanted to step away from the game at that moment I was so annoyed/depressed at just how bad choosing to stay on Dynamis truly was.

Since my last post in here on the 14th, I have half a mind to just clean out the FC I'm babysitting (and take whatever "social" consequences that come with it assuming the other members ever log in again/bother to track me down), ditch my Medium house, and just pay the damn fine to get into Aether while I still can.

and its those on dynamis i feel bad for atm the most since its been DoA with it launching with DC travel. with little incentive outside free xfers and xp boost, there is just no incentive to roll a toon there much less stay there. and those that do either roll a character or wound up xferring to dynamis almost feels like a punishment with all the restrictions in NA, to where its a mistake to begin with. so its been a moot point to even have the DC to begin with and now you would have to pay the xfer costs just to get basic MSQ roulettes done to get to the current expansion since everything is tied to story in some form with the restrictions making it difficult to DC travel for those on Dynamis. all the restrictions and lockdowns did was have the opposite effect of what SE wanted in that ppl just wanted to get the hell off of Dynamis once servers started opening up and 90 days passed for xfers to begin with so we just wind up back where we started before all this. all around its just fkd up and with SE giving 0 comments on it, hell we're even lucky we get even a vague statement at the best of times, just makes ppl feel like they don't even want to play the game anymore or even log in which is so messed up as is.

[wirebones]

Sent my Dynamis alt back home last night to pick up moogle mail because I bought the new cash shop item.

Woke up at 9AM EST this morning and the entirety of Aether was already locked so I couldn't get on it to meet up with friends for dailies like I usually do. Pretty much solidifying my decision to transfer the character back to Aether as soon as my preferred server opens up because the restrictions are truly forcing my hand to... make Aether more congested.

[IOwn92FCHouses]

Question, why not use one of the couple of current, active threads instead of bumping one that has been dead for over a month?

[wirebones]

Question, why not use one of the couple of current, active threads instead of bumping one that has been dead for over a month?

Because two weeks is not a month and those threads are discussing different issues. I'm talking about DC travel restrictions, I would be fine staying on Dynamis if restrictions were lifted, other threads are talking about party finder and population issues.