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

[mana-burner]

Currently, the North American servers are located in California. It might be the most populated state in the USA but about 80% of the country lives in the eastern half. And of course there's a noticeable amount of ping over this distance. In addition, when there's a node having issues near the FFXIV servers it means a significant amount of the playerbase is going to be affected. Many people affected by this end up paying for a service to reroute traffic on top of the FFXIV subscription. Many of us had a blast in November 2023 during the cloud test from experiencing normal latency after going through those issues for years. As someone whose ping can vary from 70ms to 100ms (120ms lately) I didn't even know that the game could feel so good at 20-40ms. It's a completely different, better, and snappier game.

Anyway to bring this back to data center populations, Square Enix just needs to move each DC to a different location. They could keep one server in California, move one to the central United States (perhaps Texas), place one in the Canadian data center where the cloud test took place, and move the last one to the south eastern United States. I guarantee that if Dynamis was in Atlanta so many players in the region would swap to it that you would think it was around for as long as Aether or Primal, even if the transfer wasn't free. Are you having issues with a node again? Now instead of paying for a VPN you can DC travel to the second closest data center in a different physical location until the problem ends. Is half your static split between east and west? Don't worry, you can still meet in the middle with the central US DC while spending the rest of your time at home.

This post is pretty US-centric but it would also improve the experience of the Brazilian playerbase and the data centers in EU and JP could probably do something similar to better serve players in those regions.

[mana-burner]

Other Proposed Solutions:

Lastly I wanted to talk about why I'm not a fan of some of the more common proposals from the community.

1. Implement cross-DC party finder & duty finder.
   Unfortunately there seem to be some big technical hurdles that need to be tackled first
   

   Would it be possible for you to consider [...] a content finder registration system that transcends regions?

   a matching system across all regions and a content finder registration system are also being considered for implementation. However, the super server engineer on the development team and I have had many meetings, and at the end of each meeting, I find myself saying, “U～～～～～～～～, let's talk about it again at the next meeting” (smiles). (wry laugh). It is very difficult in terms of both technical and infrastructure, but I think it is a good thing that the “FFXIV” team never gives up on a challenge, so I would like to continue to think of ways to make it work without giving up.
   Since CS3 are attempting other solutions I doubt they're still considering this. But any time Yoshi'P gives an answer like "it would be very difficult" I'm inclined to believe that the chances of it happening are very slim. Obviously I wouldn't be opposed to cross-DC grouping if it were to happen but latency would still be an issue for east coast players.
   
2. Remove data center travel.
   We can't go back after pandora's box has been opened. Many players have made friends and joined communities/statics across data centers. Most would not be happy to have that suddenly taken away from them.
   
3. Restrict access to party finder, duty finder, and other content when traveling.
   This is almost as bad as removing data center travel. What good is being able to meet friends on other servers if you can't do anything together? You might as well find a different game to play together at that point.
   
4. Reduce rewards when playing on other data centers.
   Data center travel was implemented so we could game together. It would be awful if every time you played with your friend you had a nagging feeling in the back of your mind about the rewards you're missing out on. This would also break up a lot of statics if it meant reduced gear.

If you have any other ideas please feel free to share them. The more we talk about it the more likely SE will try a proper solution instead of this god awful congestion based system.

[Jeeqbit]

Restrict access to party finder, duty finder, and other content when traveling.
This is almost as bad as removing data center travel. What good is being able to meet friends on other servers if you can't do anything together?

There is a better solution to this, which is:

Restrict access to the public High-End category in Party Finder for Travelers.

This would prevent people traveling to PUG, but would not prevent them from:

• Joining private static parties (so statics can remain cross-DC)
• Joining hunt parties
• Joining map parties
• Joining Other parties

Surely Cross-DC Party & Duty Finder would be easier to implement, and cheaper, than physically moving servers across a country and all the logistics issues(safety in transportation, required game downtime, possibly rent of physical locations, possible costs in hiring and paying additional maintenance teams, so on) that come with that, right?

I say this as someone with technical and programming knowledge - I actually think it would be easier to setup a new DC than to implement cross-DC PF and DF. Especially when they already tested an NA cloud DC.

Now sure, if it were me personally, I am sure I would find a way to make cross-DC PF and DF work relatively fast, but I'd have to admit some things:

• It's complex and messing up anything could result in character data loss. That they even dared to go ahead with World Visit and DC travel impressed me because it was very risky and complicated stuff behind the scenes.
• It's communication between multiple servers and regions, which can be complex, including from a security standpoint.
• It would need thoroughly testing due to its behind-the-scenes complexity.
• It's probably a lot more complicated for them due to spaghetti code, their hardware arrangements or their interpretation of their hardware situation.
• It's probably harder for them because they split jobs between different team members, whereas an indepedent developer could probably do certain things faster if they did it all alone, due to the task not having to be passed along to different teams at different stages of its development, which is a bit like a bill being passed around by politicians - it can make things take longer than they should (but in other cases it can speed them up so it's not always bad).

[mana-burner]

Surely Cross-DC Party & Duty Finder would be easier to implement, and cheaper, than physically moving servers across a country and all the logistics issues(safety in transportation, required game downtime, possibly rent of physical locations, possible costs in hiring and paying additional maintenance teams, so on) that come with that, right? sure there are technical limitations around it, your solution would infer a much greater financial strain on the studio, which Square would likely veto immediately as it would cut down profits

In the past, all NA and EU servers were located in Montreal. Then around Heavensward, they moved Chaos to Germany. Aether and Primal were also moved to California.
https://eu.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...8c71cb4be72616
https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...0716040e34a5b6
It might require a longer downtime but just like back then they can offer a day of playtime to each active subscription.

I can't give you the exact cost of everything but given the fact that they were able to do this back when the game wasn't as financially successful as it currently is and the fact that Yoshi'P said recently cross-datacenter party finder and duty finder would be a massive technical hurdle that would take years to tackle I think spreading out data centers is actually the easier and cheaper option.

plus, you are ignoring the possibility that the physical proximity of the server racks, and them being physically connected to each other, is why DC traveling is even possible, doing so over the internet could range from being significantly slower to outright impossible, at least under the system implemented.

We know this isn't true because anybody from NA, EU, or JP can travel to Materia, a data center located in Australia.

There is a better solution to this, which is:

Restrict access to the public High-End category in Party Finder for Travelers.

This would prevent people traveling to PUG, but would not prevent them from:

• Joining private static parties (so statics can remain cross-DC)
• Joining hunt parties
• Joining map parties
• Joining Other parties

This still isn't ideal. A lot of people solely play this game for high-end content. Someone might have friends on other DCs they want to practice savage or even farm a current extreme trial with but now they wouldn't be able to because they don't have 7 friends available and they can't fill the remaining slots in PF. Even for non-high-end raiders, restricting where players can do current extreme trials would be felt by most of the playerbase.

[Jeeqbit]

Someone might have friends on other DCs they want to practice savage or even farm a current extreme trial with but now they wouldn't be able to because they don't have 7 friends available and they can't fill the remaining slots in PF.

Usually, a static would DC travel to a given data center because the "leader" of the static resides on that data center. So all the friends need to do is get the "leader" that is "native" to that data center to recruit in PF, since the option would be available exclusively to them.

restricting where players can do current extreme trials would be felt by most of the playerbase.

In a positive way... people would be able to actually PF raid content on Primal, Crystal and Dynamis. I remember seeing people say how positive it was for Dynamis when they couldn't travel away to raid.

Aether really wouldn't miss an odd 100 raid PFs out of its 200 PFs in some cases.

Especially since that other 100 don't even load in the PF list so nobody even sees them, resulting in them not even filling.

[mana-burner]

Usually, a static would DC travel to a given data center because the "leader" of the static resides on that data center. So all the friends need to do is get the "leader" that is "native" to that data center to recruit in PF, since the option would be available exclusively to them.
In a positive way... people would be able to actually PF raid content on Primal, Crystal and Dynamis. I remember seeing people say how positive it was for Dynamis when they couldn't travel away to raid.

Aether really wouldn't miss an odd 100 raid PFs out of its 200 PFs in some cases.

Especially since that other 100 don't even load in the PF list so nobody even sees them, resulting in them not even filling.

If simple workarounds like this are possible then it's not going to have much of an effect because everyone will just use the workaround. For example, even if someone doesnt have a friend on another datacenter they could easily whisper party leaders asking them to personally invite them and then relist the party.

[Jeeqbit]

If simple workarounds like this are possible then it's not going to have much of an effect because everyone will just use the workaround.

Statics and people with friends will use the workaround, sure.

The entire point is to stop people just visiting another data center alone to PUG, which will help create a culture of pugging on other data centers again. Then this will in turn stop people traveling away due to no PFs.

For example, even if someone doesnt have a friend on another datacenter they could easily whisper party leaders asking them to personally invite them and then relist the party.

Well they could but I don't think all party leaders would bother with the hassle, especially since I think it would involve canceling the PF and world visiting to the same world to send the invite(?) I also think a very significant amount of the playerbase have anxiety that would prevent them sending the message (it already prevents a lot of people from raiding or pugging altogether).