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

[mana-burner]

Technically there's nothing stopping you from transferring now, given your ping would be the same regardless, but I don't blame anyone from Crystal wanting to stay put instead given the low-activity state of Dynamis, or how you might have friends/venues you can't get back to easily due to the travel restrictions.

I don't think you got my point so I'll restate it.
Currently, SE has all NA data centers on the same coast. East coast players don't have a choice in terms of location. The four data centers are effectively the same choice.
In this hypothetical situation where you get moved to the opposite coast you would have choices. There would still be servers near you and you could travel there or get a transfer.

[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!

[Drimn]

TL;DR: Spread NA DCs out. The playerbase will naturally distribute itself evenly for better ping so Aether is no longer the PF hub. Nobody is punished and everybody wins.

No they won't. They'll go where their friends or streamers they simp for are, and that's Aether, with RP alts on Crystal if that's their thing. They'll accept bad ping if it means being where the activity is. All more DCs will lead to is longer queues.

[mana-burner]

No they won't. They'll go where their friends or streamers they simp for are, and that's Aether, with RP alts on Crystal if that's their thing. They'll accept bad ping if it means being where the activity is. All more DCs will lead to is longer queues.

Buddy, it's not 2021 anymore. Also nowhere in the OP did I mention making more DCs, so I don't know why people keep bringing that up.

They could, but would they? Transferring is a much more involved and complicated process than simply letting someone back into the character creator to make adjustments, including the checklist of things you need to do just to be eligible for a transfer at all.

They already let people transfer for free.

Speaking of which... forcing people to transfer due to the newfound physical locations would have immediate consequences on people's friend groups and free companies (...and then there's the housing). Sure, the East Coaster now finding themselves on a East Coast server is happy, but all of their West Coast buddies not so much, and they may transfer away (one way or another) for the same reason you're trying to drive home: Better ping is what/only matters. Data center travel wouldn't be the solution for fractured groups either, given that we've established that trying to play from too far away has a crippling effect on performance, so some of those WC's players aren't going to suddenly come back to play on the EC side, friends or not. And if there's one central data center that's ideal for everyone on both coasts to travel to? Well, now it's the new Aether, and all the current problems that come with current Aether.

I think if this is enough to ruin your relationships then you probably weren't that close. Pretty much everybody I know from FFXIV talks on discord anyway because the in-game social systems are awful.
Even if it isn't ideal, east coast players manage to do all levels of content from the opposite coast so I don't see why you couldn't travel to play together. Take turns playing with worse ping. It'll be like using the shitty player 2 controller.
Most of your issues are mild inconveniences at worst which aren't very compelling. You raised a good point with housing but Square Enix came up with a solution for this a while ago:
https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...5d22338cf55ce7

[mana-burner]

For one thing, that's US population and not NA player numbers, so I don't rightly know how many are playing from where.

Mexico seems somewhat even
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._by_population
However 60% of Canada resides in Ontario and Quebec alone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popula..._and_territory
There are also a significant amount of South Americans on NA that are obviously closer to the east coast.

Secondly, I'm not too fond of being screwed over like that especially when, again, it sounds like trying to play on an East Coast data center would be as terrible for me as it is for East Coast players right now

I've explained multiple times why it's currently worse for east coast players than it would be for you and I feel like I'm talking to a brick wall at this point.

Even my own idea of merging Dynamis into Aether/Primal/Crystal would have radical affects on friend groups, free companies, housing, and though it would certainly make *me* happy, and I still need to acknowledge why it could also be pretty bad for everyone that's not me even if the percentage of those inconvenienced by a merge might be low.

For a person who prides theirself on understanding other perspectives you don't seem to want to acknowledge that the situation you're afraid of is still better than the current situation for the majority of the NA playerbase.
If you have a better solution with 0 displacement that would result in looser travel restrictions and a better connection then I'd like to hear it. If not then you should consider how many people this would benefit even if it doesn't make *you* happy.

[Gurgeh]

...
Now this is just gaslighting...
....

Americans really need to stop misusing the concept "gaslighting" for every time someone tries to persuade them that pineapple is good on pizza, however patently ridiculous that might be to the majority of well reasoned people. (I kind of mean that seriously, gaslighting is phenomenally corrosive and it shouldn't be used lightly)

Also, I think you need a hug Aidorouge.
Here is a hug...
/hug
https://media.tenor.com/Z7lccs-igsMA...ll-hug-hug.gif

[Khryseis_Astra]

...What? Your whole argument is that East Coast players attempting to play on West Coast servers currently causes performance issues for them, so it would stand to reason that West Coast players attempting to play on East Coast servers would encounter THE EXACT SAME ISSUE.

I think the point was, that if they had multiple server locations, everyone could have the opportunity to move to a location closer to them and have nice performance you currently enjoy.

West coast players would still have DCs there, but East coast could get some too. If they moved Dynamis somewhere Central or East, I’m sure it would be a lot more attractive to people than it is now.

I’d be interested to see just how many subscribers there are in each geographical region of NA… because it seems atrocious that only the West coast gets good, smooth gameplay.

[Canadane]

Remember when it was hosted in Quebec?
Man those were good times.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Remember when it was hosted in Quebec?
Man those were good times.

Were they? I seem to remember people complaining about lag constantly because level3 sucks and had a bad node on the Canadian border.

[VeyaAkemi]

So on the subject of cross-DC PF/DF, from 7.1 onward, PvP rankings will be region wide, and YoshiP further had this to say:

Y "This is not entirely what I want to do [regarding designated “ranked” DCs per region].... Like Ideally you should just match from wherever right?"
Y "But.... I can't say this yet"
Y "We are working on a matching system that involves every kind of content"
Y "As soon as I have more news, I will make the announcement"

A lot of people are interpreting this as "We are working on it, we just can't be fully certain if it is going to work out yet", so I guess it's as good an update as any.