Feedback for SQX: The game is healthy (enough) but Spriggan world/Chaos DC is dead

[Gurgeh]

(I've decided to repost this here as maybe this is more 'general' and I notice another post saying they want feedback.)

Spriggan is dead, and Chaos as far as I can tell is terminally ill saving a miracle intervention. I'm not going to spend any time convincing fellow players because I'm not bothered. SQX have the real figures on this, and they will know if this is true or not. If it's not true, then there isn't even anything to ignore. If someone wants to convince me though, then they are going to have to get SQX alone to share their figures with me.
* How many are logging onto Spriggan?
* For how long are they logged in when, per week?
* What's the average uninterrupted sub length of those users?
* What MSQ are those players at, how much content do they have unlocked?
* What content are they queuing?
* What do these figures look like for Spriggan world? What do they look like for Chaos DC ? How does that compare with those figures for LightDC ?

I went to Idylshire (off peak) and it was dead. Zero players.
I immediately went to Alpha, (off peak) Idylshire, about 10 players, one sat on latest savage mount.
Tural city 3 players o spriggan, Alpha, again about 10. (I don't care if its the instance, I shouldn't have to pick the instance to force a multiplayer experience in a multiplayer game.
If a fellow player is about to say "but on peak there will be 10 players on Spriggan though in Idylshire!... your missing the point, because Alpha will be enjoying 100.
Alphas a new server know. I checked out Odin immediately as well, Idyshire. Thriving.

The problem is not a dead game (although yes its clearly not enjoying its peak) its just a dead server/DC.
The problem isn't DC travel, the problem isn't players wanting a thriving PF. The problem is Not having cross DC PF.

[Gurgeh]

Even if we were to get cross DC PF its now WAY too late. It would take banning homeworld transfer to light (which you just cant do), and 18 months for things to noticeably improve. Its worth remedying, and can be done, but its probably going to take years now. Now you are probably going to need cross DC duty finder, or to accept that Chaos players are going to have to suffer for 3 years.

Very little needs to be solved to impliment cross DC PF now.
You have DC travel already.
Databases are should not be a challenge for the game to host, the database needed for PF is trivial. Your grandma's laptop could host a non-resilient database adequate to the task. My home PCs could host and adequate resilient implimentation.

Cross DC PF lists >
If you want to chat to a PF host your going to be forced to travel first, too bad (but its single click travel) >
or you can just apply to join the PF then and there >
in which case it signals to reserve your slot in the PF >
and immediately starts you auto travelling to the hosts DC and server.
(yes, then your going to have to sit for 50 minutes on another DC while PF fills, but at least your still on Chaos the rest of the time)

There are now two remaining problems to be solved.
1) Is the increased travel traffic going to be a problem? and queue times to travel?
That would be a problem that needs solving, and I'm not saying it would be trivial.
But I am saying cross DC PF is needed, so it is a solution you going to have to impliment. (Its not a computing problem, none of these are significant computing challenges, if the existing code is a problem, the existing code is going to HAVE to change.)
2) there will be some degree of compromise you are going to have to force on Light:
-Slight waits while people auto travel.
-Maybe people don't bother chatting to the leader as much and just join and chat later.
-It is not going to be an option to allow Light to put up Light only PFs. If you are going to do that then don't bother with cross DC PF and instead just switch off Chaos. Because you 'will' get an better 'average' of player, by recruiting only in Light where there are 'more' of the 'determined type' of raiders. So that's what all those determined raiders will do.
The the problem you have to solve is PR with Light.

[Gurgeh]

Do something or don't its not my problem I've transferred to Alpha.

Note. The CWLS community I left behind, probably now has noone who is invested enough to keep it on life support. It used to make a big difference for a handfull of people in quiet/deserted FCs. Natural turnover will continue, and without topup and recruiting it will eventually die.
Especially with the dismal 64person cwls limit.
There is a good chance that the people I used to know but have given up on maintaining their sub with DT, who were on the fence as it is about ever subbing again like they used to , when they eventually come back once there is enough content saved up to make it worth their while, they won't be there long enough to 'make' friends, and now my community will not be there as it was, with few familiar faces, certainly not me, the three weeks to do that content is all you'll get. The longer content that benefits from friends... maybe they won't do that at all.

The point is not that I'm a loss (maybe a loser though), or even the other people associated with me are loss. On our own we are defiantly not, "so what". The point is I, and my network, will NOT be the only ones. This is a perfect case of a vicious circle.

Like I say its not my problem to fix. I'm paying money for this, its my free time. So I've gone to Light.

Why am I writing this...? I feel 'really' sorry for optimistic bushy tailed bright eyes sprouts joining Chaos. I had a wonderful time as a sprout on Primal, the hey day of EW on Spriggan was wonderful. And it's STILL a wonderfull game. But only on Light. Chaos sucks. Its not fair on them. Its really not.
Forget raids, forget dungeons, forget content. Put all that on hold. Fix this YESTERDAY, or just turn off Chaos.

...and I don't want to hear "but! Spaghetti cooooode!" from anyone who hasn't been hired by Yoshi-P as a lead developer on XIV.

[Jeeqbit]

You said the problem isn't DC travel, but it is. I don't think they should get rid of DC travel. A cross-DC PF or some other solution, such as blocking off the public High-End category in PF when traveling, would help. However, SE said it will take a long time (years) to do something like cross-DC PF so will have to find another solution meanwhile. And yes, they are aware of the issue.

The issue is that it's not a cloud server. They use physical machines so there are technical hardware challenges with them communicating with eachother. This is evident when, for example, you enter a dungeon or another world and lose access to retainers, saddlebags or mail, or your CWLS and FC on another data center. They've obviously designed their hardware structure to where it's needlessly complicated for them to do things.

It's not about spaghetti code at all. I'm sure they could make a new cross-DC PF UI easily. They could probably even request a list of cross-DC PFs from a central server. But what about cross-DC parties and cross-DC party chat? This would probably be needed unless you were auto-traveled to the same DC immediately.

Then decisions have to be made such as "whose data center do we travel to for this content?" I think they could decide that this is the party leader's, but then the travel would need to happen immediately prior to entering the duty.

Then there is the fact we currently logout for DC travel and it takes a while. It's not fast enough to be seamless. And when we logout to the main menu, it often boots us if we were logged in for 2 days. They would need to make that travel happen without even logging out somehow or it would defeat the point.

So it's not really about spaghetti code. It's about technical challenges, and difficult design decisions, which understandably will take time to do.

By the way, it's in Japanese but the estimated active characters on Spriggan as of the end of August is 15,736 of which 9,860 have reached level 100 https://livedoor.blogimg.jp/luckyban...b/ebb814be.png

[Gurgeh]

It very subjective, but cross DC chat is an absolute no no for now. That's asking too much.
All I'm proposing is:
-you scrape and export the local PFs to a central database that both DCs refer to. Thats it, that's 95% of what I'm proposing.
-The local PFs import that DB, or present it
-If you join a DC pf, it sends a signal to the DC saying 'this place is taken.
-Then it auto starts your char for DC travel 'immediately', then you have to wait the 50 minutes for that PF to fill, 'on' that server. (You don't travel last minute, and you don't travel back automatically either, in between resets.

If that's going to take them years, they should hire me. I could do it in a year. A skilled developer who knows their languages and frameworks could do that in four weeks (no QA though granted, full of bugs granted)
No way that should take them years, or their overcomplicating it, for something that is frankly so critical and can't wait for TRUE, cross DC pf.

The problem... is increased travel, and tifthe current DC travel system can take the load and maintain current DC trael times.
For the time most PFs sit waiting to fill, the 110 seconds it takes to DC travel is NOTHING if you make people do it the moment they join PF. Lets add 20 seconds for forced logff.

All yur doing is making > loggoff > DC travel>,log on automated... thats all, and sending a signal to reserve the PF place while you travel. That's it.
The rest is basic data export, and go and buy a Microsoft SQL server Data centre license. It wouldn't even need very many CPUs or mh disk space.
You just have an agent that sits on each DC/server, pretending to be a charactre on that server, reading the PF info, putting up pfs, and pretending to request places. Not much different from the crossworld infrastructure.

I refuse to believe its much more complicated than that. Yes new code, but I don't see that existing code has to change much. Unless they've coded the whole damn thing in optimised assembly withouth and object orientated approach.

[Gurgeh]

In fact... I'll gentleperson's bet you that right now, some clever modder...
Could take two seperate accounts, with a char logged onto each server, and 'clunky' version do 75% percent of what I'm saying right now, without even any access to SQXs servers.
The only problem is that only they would be able to use the service. And they'd have to sneaky leave the PF and get their char to insta join in their place. (with risk of losing the place in that fraction of a second.)
Anyone running two characters on two accounts can in fact 'ALREADY' do this. Especially with some illegal mods.
To be clear I don't' think anyone should do that, I'm making a point. If I had my way we'd all have kernel level anti cheat (implimented by Microsoft.) and I'd permanently break every third party tomorrow (I do mean every third party) and, SQX will just have to re tune the fights to a player base who's skill is no more that they can manage with Stone, Sky Sea, the in game instance recorder, and reading the chat logs between pulls before they expire.
I don't object to what people are doing. I don't blame them. It's like sports with a doping problem. And the fights are now tuned to athletes on steroids. (yes I'm sure SQXs QA's dont use them, but they are clearly not your average below median player)

[Jeeqbit]

Then it auto starts your char for DC travel 'immediately', then you have to wait the 50 minutes for that PF to fill, 'on' that server. (You don't travel last minute, and you don't travel back automatically either, in between resets.

They could probably do it that way, yes.

If that's going to take them years, they should hire me. I could do it in a year.

Same really. I doubt it would even take me a year. Where there is a will there is a way and I can think of numerous ways to do it.

I just feel like there are certain members of their team that don't have this mindset, like when their UI developer said tracking loot you've already obtained was "impossible" before implementing the "Obtained" thing shortly thereafter. There is absolutely no way that was "impossible" like they claimed and then they proved me right shortly after.

It doesn't inspire confidence if they say something is impossible that I know for a fact is not.

bet you that right now, some clever modder... Could take two seperate accounts, with a char logged onto each server, and 'clunky' version do 75% percent of what I'm saying right now

They actually do (show PFs across DCs). They have a website.

Except one thing : Chaos DC Raid Scene is just completly dead. If you want to raid, you need to travel to Light DC. So, shutting down DC travel will impede gear progression for a lot of person.

It's only dead because of DC Travel. If for some reason it's still dead without DC Travel, it would grow over time. I come from a DC where that happened and the PFs grew.

[Gurgeh]

I can only say I agree with 100% of what you say. Including that you could do in less than a year.
The whole loot tracking thing was embarrassing. THAT was a much harder problem to solve than my pseudo DC party party finder with auto travel upon application.

For their sake I'm begging them to do something. It's killing whole DCs. I'm shocked at how much more fun the game is on light. Even just running ARR dungeons. I'm getting CONSTANT parties of hoping happy sprouts, rather than two bored endgame DPS and one console sprout not using chat. There are a lot of players on Chaos with short fuses. And frankly I was one of them. I didn't lash out, I kept it out off chat, but I did give up. Any kind of 'harassment' and I just logged off, a single passive aggressive comment and I was just gone. I was having zero fun, little hope, and any problem just made it stress and negative fun. I wasnt having fun. And I suspect the people being dicks are just expressing/filling their own bored frustration. They are not super happy.
The whole vibe everywhere is night and day on light. I really wasn't expecting it.

[Doragan]

Well.

As somebody that is playing on Spriggan for a long time too, I can tell you that most of the active players are either in Solution Nine, or in their (FC) houses. They might have went away after they finished the MSQ too. My FC was pretty active when the expansion dropped, and they didn't come back since finishing the raid tier. They will most likely come back on 7.1. As things stand now, most players on Chaos are raiding on Light or joining pfs on Light because that is where most pfs are. It definitely wasn't as bad when the expansion dropped, but the whole DC has been a complete desert since last month.

That being said, I believe this is all due to the decision to split Chaos into Light and Chaos back in Shadowbringers. The active population didn't particularly justify that split either at the time, but whatever. Case is, interDC groups are the norm. If you close one off, you're going to break most raiding groups whos active at the moment, and that is going to make a lot of people quit entirely if they can't play with their friends.

I'm probably asking for a lot here, but if we could have a proper server merge with all the European worlds accessible from one DC, this would solve the issue in one strike and we wouldn't have to worry about when cross DC /tell and groups being implemented. That way, we get no house demolished, we get everyone accessible from a few clicks and everyones happy.

Moreover, we already witnessed server-bound pfs dying at the end of Heavensward in favour of DC-bound groups. Now, the same thing is happening on a DC level, and frankly, the neat thing is that it can be fixed without removing servers.

[VoidsentStatus]

.
.

Few things to work out kink wise with this suggestion:

1) all the ppl complaining about losing fc buffs and access to retainers will still complain
2) this allows you to force your way onto a given data center that's congested or it'd just be a combination of dynamis/crystal/primal. you could reject applying if its to a congested location, but then everyone hosting pf's is going to flood non-congested worlds just so people can accept the pf and that puts them away from retainers/fc house/buff usage while waiting in PF so problem 1 but the hoster gets added to the issue
3) still adds server stress which is one of the issues I see people forgetting about when they ask for Dynamis to be shifted into the main 3 NA DC's. They don't want to stay with 3 DC's handling the playerbase stress as the population grows over the years.

this one depend on what you meant by "then you have to wait the 50 minutes for that PF to fill, but then saying you don't travel last minute)
4) that lack of communication possible due to chat disabled would also mean that you don't know how long ppl plan to be available in said pf, and you also can't pre-discuss strategy or other matters before the party is filled.

5) From what I'm aware of the process from what others said over the years, the core issue is how they handle character data to begin with. DC Travel isn't actually a movement of your character data, but rather a cloning of it. You need that person's character data on a different server to interact inside of that server fundamentally. Your original data is likely just hidden/inaccessible and becomes updated when returning home. The "this place is taken" section of your idea would need to relay duty unlock, job played as, item level, blacklist status, before even deciding if that place could be taken. The PF itself in text data could be duplicated and sent over likely, but that doesn't loophole needing 2 sets of character data interacting with each other before you're able to join.

6) The question also exists of what does "this place is taken" mean exactly? If it locks that slot in the raid up until I arrive, does that mean that Square Enix is now, not only going to transfer my character, but automatically force me to log in with no cancel option? What happens during expansion release when login queue's are 500-1000+? Could I alternate characters/accounts and troll someone and lock up their 8th slot permanently because they're stuck on waiting for me? What happens if I close the client during the login process? Square Enix said they save your spot in the queue for certain errrors so I would assume if I was crashed or there was some server instability, my spot in the PF wouldn't be at risk would it? Do I just get to play RNG with the PF Host's patience and there's no way for them to blacklist me because my character data is never fully in the party?