Greenlight NA and EU Travel

[Doomed_Raven]

NA is just Europe with different accents. Europe/NA play together all the time in many other games from Call of Duty to other MMOs. I think there is no culture gap (I used to play Rainbow Six Vegas many years ago before Rb6 became the garbage of today, with many American and European players, good people and times).

Japan with NA/EU on the other hand I'd understand the hesitation. NA/EU servers will be more rowdy/obnoxious in the chat I'd imagine, and there are frequently in-game bands playing everything from FF themes to metal and pop (opposed to JP bands just playing FF themes - or so I've read). But also people will flock to JP servers to buy cheaper items, which might seem uncouth. On the other hand, there'll be other games with Western + Japanese players playing together on a server. And it would be neat to bridge that divide and let West/JP players hang out.

As for raid players piling on certain servers, there can probably be some behind the scenes tools added, or more filters to DR/PF and whatnot.

[Gokki]

100% agree, need this travel please.


I understand cultural differences are an issue, but to that i have two arguments:
- No need to enable JP with EU or NA. Keep EU, NA and O connected without JP

- Cultural differences are where interesting things happen, it's good for multicultural engagement to happen, people can still pick up on rules and customs.


For example: i heard JP servers practice Savage raids in PF but progress in DF - i'm fine with that, i can adjust, it's easy. The inverse is always possible - JP players are free to come to EU and do braindead hector pf spam like the rest of the mongrels here.

But also people will flock to JP servers to buy cheaper items, which might seem uncouth. On the other hand, there'll be other games with Western + Japanese players playing together on a server. And it would be neat to bridge that divide and let West/JP players hang out.

This is actually a good thing for JP, it means people will come to their market and spend gil there to the income of JP players.

[Raim]

Im just sick of the pointless lockouts for server travel in general. It was fine before DT, and lets be honest the player count hasn't gone up.

[Nana_Bear]

There's no "issue", this is purely SE pretending that the game is booming with players while in fact... it isnt.

https://steamcharts.com/app/39210

We havent been at such a low point since december 2023, where is the so called congestion ? Why is Balmung open for new character creation, while at the same time being congested for world visit and DC travel ? Those are both good questions to ask yourself and question if any of this "congestion" makes any sense at all.

Even the so called "aether is the raiding dc" has simply moved to primal, people will always congregate on the same servers and datacenters, this happens in every single MMO and FFXIV isnt exempt from that.

Even though Steam is just an indicator and not totally reflective, I very much agree.

1. SE keeps pushing the narrative that FFXIV is "booming," when absolutely no it's not. If it is, WHY do they keep pushing "Returner" campaigns?

2. Another way to tell (yes is an estimate) is market board activity---and that's dropped significantly since I started around 3 years ago.

3. Aether mysteriously gets "congested" every time they release a patch now, and for most of the day they lock it down. Yet when you go in "off-hours," it's very small queue (1-5 people). Do they consider "30 players ahead of you in queue" to be "congested"? Because honestly, that's NORMAL as "a bit heavy." Even when we're under DDoS attacks and trying to get back in to our own non-Aether DC, the queue isn't breaking a thousand, or most of the time, more than 200. Considering that for the EW release, people routinely had well over 1000 in queue ahead of them, I think they've gone into overkill on "congestion," and labeled anything over 50, or even 30, as "congested."

4. FFXIV is still SE's big money-maker, and they struggle with all their other content to make profits. We know this. I think part of it is they fear people finding out FFXIV's average player base is shrinking will further negatively impact them, and reduce chances of new players joining (plus old ones returning).

5. Combine those two factors (too sensitive definition OF "congested," plus fewer players/new players), and yeah: we get told Aether is "congested" with every patch release (and for a long time after people have come in, done the new content, and dropped back again on playing).

In short, I believe the "congestion" is an artificial perception. Let's see them test it: STOP locking out Aether with the next patch update, and see what the log-in queues are REALLY like. If they're under 50-60 during peak hours, don't lock down that DC.

[Baf0]

Hey SE,

Can you please enable this already so I can do Forked Tower with the NA discord servers when I run out of EU Discords to do it with?

Thanks!

[Underscore]

Agreed. I can understand not allowing travel between those data centres and JP due to the cultural differences, but NA and EU should be no problem. I'd like to be able to participate in events on NA and play with the people there.

I do worry about further party finder consolidation, but hopefully the ping difference would prevent that.

[Skde]

Same. I am pretty happy atm. Primal has a decent pf again, no need to travel and play the PF wait game while having nothing to do. It’s possible to do other things again and keep up with the FC. When I want to run stuff with friends cross DC we meet on materia/dynamis depending on whether they are from the EU or NA.

Edit: if they ever implement a regional cross dc df and pf, my opinion may change.

Biggest disagree ever, have you tried progging ultimates? Waiting 5 effing hours to fill a stupid prog/clear party to die in phase 1 due random meme, disband and feel like you wasted 5 hours for nothing? If you mean EX trials and casual content sure thing primal have its niche scene, but for high end raiding primal is far from "alive", its a living corpse made from rpers and raiders leftover that couldn't join their respective servers in time. Look at primal during prime hours, really look at the dead, left-behind PF that Primal has and repeat your exactly same message. Primal used to have a very proud ultimate raiding scene years ago but since cross-dc exists it died so fast, your message (with all respect, really its just this topic really frustrates me because primal pf is dead) feels like an insult to someone like me who permanently lives in Aether as refugee, every time I have to go back to Hyperion and check the PF I want to cry.

[RaionKansen]

We all know Square has the technology to open DC travel to all regions, and they already did so with Oceania.

Recently, in gamescon, someone asked Yoshi-P when will he open travel between NA and EU, and he said he's waiting for the community to greenlight it. Here is the clip about it https://x.com/MysteriousRyan/status/1827803223970746441

It may come with its own issues such as language barriers and also the war between macros and waymark dance in PF. But we've already seen NA and EU players play together; and honestly, we both have similar gaming cultures overall.

Many players who reside in EU also play in NA because they have friends there and vice versa. People can travel too to different regions but may be hesitant to change their regions in XIV because they have already established themselves in a certain region.

So am making this post so we can give the greenlight for SE to open up travel between EU and NA.

Horrible idea. DC travel has already ruined PF raiding in every region. We don't need all of EU and NA trying to populate one DC just to raid. It would be even harder to raid

[Jeeqbit]

Horrible idea. DC travel has already ruined PF raiding in every region. We don't need all of EU and NA trying to populate one DC just to raid. It would be even harder to raid

This would not happen due to ping. It would purely benefit people who want to raid with a good ping but travel to visit friends or for RP.

[RaionKansen]

This would not happen due to ping. It would purely benefit people who want to raid with a good ping but travel to visit friends or for RP.

People from NA and EU play in opposite regions frequently. You would still definitely have increased traffic to both of the main raiding DCs in each Region. Until they create a cross-DC party finder, allowing NA and EU to travel would just create more problems unless you have a static and can go to another DC to raid. Or they would have to restrict some DCs from cross-region travel