How Square Enix can solve both data center travel and ping/routing issues for NA

[shiftweave]

I don't know if you played before DC travel was implemented but PF outside of Aether was fine back then.

Firstly - no it wasn't. Crystal was widely regarded as a total meme, and Primal players regarded as the strange ones who did weird strats. Crystal still to this day held onto that reputation.

Secondly, even if it was, then they did implement DC travel. Aether became the absolute hub, and just removing our access to that space does nothing to fix that. There are 11 DSR parties up on Aether right now. There's ONE party up on ANY OTHER NA dc. With Cross-DC pf, every NA player would have access to twelve parties. Adding more DCs without adding cross-dc pf would just add more zeroes to the board.

[mana-burner]

Firstly - no it wasn't. Crystal was widely regarded as a total meme, and Primal players regarded as the strange ones who did weird strats. Crystal still to this day held onto that reputation.

Secondly, even if it was, then they did implement DC travel. Aether became the absolute hub, and just removing our access to that space does nothing to fix that. There are 11 DSR parties up on Aether right now. There's ONE party up on ANY OTHER NA dc. With Cross-DC pf, every NA player would have access to twelve parties.

I raided on Crystal before DC travel came out and it was fine. I also did the current tier on Crystal and the experience was still fine. There are definitely enough raiders on Crystal and the perception of it being a total meme is itself a total meme. As for Ultimate raids, party finder is a bad option no matter where you go.

Anyway, my suggestion was not to add new servers or remove access to Aether, only to spread the raider population with ping as the incentive.

[Jeeqbit]

Yoshi-p says "spaghetti code" instead of "no comment", it means nothing.

That's not the reason. It's a genuinely complicated and risky feature on the backend like DC travel and world visit is.

[mana-burner]

Considering I'm on Dynamis but live in Oregon... it would suck *massively* to have my data center end up on the other side of the country, so now I have to deal with a dead server *and* endless lag, so that's definitely a "nay" from me.

If they're going to do a bunch of data center moving of any kind, it should be merging Dynamis into Aether/Primal/Crystal. Give the 2 least populated worlds to Aether, split the remaining 6 into 3 each for Primal & Crystal, and then give Aether a new world later on (when Primal & Crystal population has stabilized) thus bringing all of the data centers that people actually play on up to 11. And just to avoid the same mishap that happened when they created Crystal; Put it to community vote as to which of the 6 remaining Dynamis worlds go where between Primal & Crystal, while also offering people on all 8 of its worlds the ability to free transfer prior to the merge just in case their home world ended up going somewhere they didn't want. Top it off with some official stance on how *none* of the worlds are designated as this or that so people shouldn't feel like they *need* to go to Aether for raiding/Primal for PVP/Crystal for RP because ultimately the labeling issue is the fault of the PLAYERBASE and not Square-Enix, meaning we're mostly to blame for why Aether became too congested in the first place and we really need to break that habit.

At least you would have the option of moving to a server closer to you. Those of us on the east coast don't currently have that choice. And moving Dynamis to the east coast would probably grow the population significantly. I know I'd transfer in a heartbeat.

[mana-burner]

I'm quite familiar with it actually because for the longest time I lived in Houston, TX which was considered "East Coast" when games like World of Warcraft and Star Wars the Old Republic recommended servers for me, and now that I'm in Eugene, OR my long-time characters were effectively left stranded on less than ideal servers unless I was willing to pay to move them to West Coast ones, and since I didn't want to re-roll entirely, I just quit.

This would basically be the same thing, but instead of it being the result of my real life moving around, it would be Square-Enix forcing my character elsewhere, and what are the odds I'm expected to pay to fix that issue too? Unless by some generosity SE allows me to free transfer to whatever the remaining West Coast server is, assuming they would even let me. Say for example... Aether was the one they left over there, but they still labeled it "Congested" and therefore not eligible for transfers (or even new character creation).

Not that East Coast players should be made to suffer if it's really that bad (I wasn't aware until now), I just don't know how making other people suffer in your place (as you would have your East Coast servers but now West Coasters are stuck in it) is supposed to help the situation unless Square-Enix allows for free transfers so people can regionally resettle, otherwise it's just going to end up a clown fiesta of stranded or even quitting players. In fact, they already had a similar incident in the past when they created the Crystal data center and forced certain then-Aether and Primal worlds into it to serve as an initial grow bed, and this was *before* data center travel so if you ended up Crystal when you didn't want to be... best pony up the dough for a transfer or "deal with it".

Regardless of whether SE goes with data center physical relocation or actual merges, it's important that they let people migrate effortlessly during such a transitional period.

They could easily provide free server transfers and make sure non-congested servers are available on each data center. It would be like when they gave every character a free fantasia for the graphics update in case players wanted to make adjustments.
Speaking of congested servers, one goal of this whole thing is reducing congestion. If Aether stays on the west coast then most east coast players are probably going to move to the east coast which will free some space for you.
Even if they didn't provide free transfers, your situation wouldn't be as bad as it currently is for us. You wouldn't be "stuck", because as I said above you'd have the option of DC traveling or transferring. Hell, right now I'd happily pay for a transfer if I had a low ping option.

I mentioned this but it bears repeating that ~80% of the US lives in the eastern half of the country.
Personally, I think slightly inconveniencing 20% of the playerbase to make 80% happier is worth it!

[VerdeLuck]

Considering I'm on Dynamis but live in Oregon... it would suck *massively* to have my data center end up on the other side of the country, so now I have to deal with a dead server *and* endless lag, so that's definitely a "nay" from me.

If they're going to do a bunch of data center moving of any kind, it should be merging Dynamis into Aether/Primal/Crystal. Give the 2 least populated worlds to Aether, split the remaining 6 into 3 each for Primal & Crystal, and then give Aether a new world later on (when Primal & Crystal population has stabilized) thus bringing all of the data centers that people actually play on up to 11. And just to avoid the same mishap that happened when they created Crystal; Put it to community vote as to which of the 6 remaining Dynamis worlds go where between Primal & Crystal, while also offering people on all 8 of its worlds the ability to free transfer prior to the merge just in case their home world ended up going somewhere they didn't want. Top it off with some official stance on how *none* of the worlds are designated as this or that so people shouldn't feel like they *need* to go to Aether for raiding/Primal for PVP/Crystal for RP because ultimately the labeling issue is the fault of the PLAYERBASE and not Square-Enix, meaning we're mostly to blame for why Aether became too congested in the first place and we really need to break that habit.

This is what everyone not living on the west coast has to experience so what you'd go through is what we have to go through every time we log in and have 100+ ping to the server and trouble double weaving. I don't have a lot of sympathy when west coast players have told anyone from the east coast or midwest "suck it up" and "skill issue" for years.

[VoidsentStatus]

This is what everyone not living on the west coast has to experience so what you'd go through is what we have to go through every time we log in and have 100+ ping to the server and trouble double weaving. I don't have a lot of sympathy when west coast players have told anyone from the east coast or midwest "suck it up" and "skill issue" for years.

(east coast here) I remember when I started the game on GNB and found out about double weaving, and I thought it was just my internet dipping temporarly when I randomly couldn't double weave as I was progressing and changing gear frequently (not even materia usage). Wasn't until I played MNK/SAM that I realized my GCD speed played that important of a role under my ping tier for something I saw everyone doing casually everywhere on youtube. Only now as a growing/semi-veteran that I know 80% of those people I saw with no issues are PC using software or West Coast privelege. Actually an even more problematic issue for PvP because your sustain on healing, burst sync'ing to lower reaction, etc. are all ping tied so different jobs have different playstyles and reactions based on how their kit is personally cripled by ping. And it's a "well, I just objectively can't heal as fast, burst as fast, guard as fast, as anyone West Coast without cheating and risking my account, well that's not a fun choice to make."