Data Center Travel Changes Have Made Raiding Impossible, Where is the Fix?!?

[YonaAkatsuki]

In NA, Aether Data center has been where raiders have traveled to for raiding since we were able to. It was a great community idea, since it meant more like-minded people would gather and parties would fill much faster. Now it has become impossible to travel there, even during non-peak times. People "park" characters there, making it permanently impossible to join for those that need to move back to their home world. I have been wanting to prog DSR for weeks now and I haven't been able to. I can't go to Aether, there are no DSR parties on my server, and any that I set up don't fill.

Please revert these changes already, or make party finder cross-DC asap. I thought we'd hear about a fix in these coming patches but so far 0 noise about it. Is it really just NA having these issues?

[Jeeqbit]

No, it's not just NA. Everyone in the JP region goes to Mana, everyone in the NA region goes to Aether and everyone in the EU region goes to Light.

Unfortunately it's not necessarily that simple to add a cross-DC PF (depending on how they go about it). World Visit and DC Travel themselves were complex and risky additions requiring lots of untangling, problem-solving and testing (this is just an obvious thing if you understand it) and that's why each of them took a whole 2 years to add. Even now, you're lucky if there isn't a glitch that causes character data loss while traveling and it's a relief that we haven't seen a massive issue with that.

I think that they know people want it as a solution because they've discussed it but they will probably be thinking of other ideas until it's developed.

[Nezerius]

It was a great community idea

A "great" community idea that basically destroyed any sense of raiding community on any datacenter other than Aether (NA)/Light (EU)/Mana (JP), ever since they introduced it back in EW. If it weren't for Data Center Travel, you likely would have been able to find DSR parties on your own datacenter.

The system was a mistake, and they'd have been better off had they poured resources into developing cross-DC PF instead.

[YonaAkatsuki]

The only sense of raiding community that existed before was the sense of superiority that data centers had in their strats vs those of others. I still remember the initial hump of aether and crystal people disliking each other's strats and saying the others' was bad. Discords have now merged, and NA is now the community.

As for finding DSR parties in my own data center, at best it would have been 1/3 of the people interested in ultimates. The ultimate community is already small, so merging them all has been the best thing that's happened.

[Gurgeh]

This this this all day long this.
It's why I'm not subbed.
EU. Travel but no DC PF , lead to mass migration that has killed even Duty Finder and Rouls on Chaos. (Unless you content just to run ARR content) and lead to literally deserted map regions (I'm talking Idyshire not Thule)
I've migrated, but now I need to make new friends. But unfortunately it's left a bad taste in my mouth and without friends waiting for me when I log in I just can't be bothered. Chaos was unbearable frankly. And while light is barrable, bareble is not enough right now.

[CidHeiral]

It was a great community idea

Yeah it was a super great idea to annihilate every DC that wasn't Aether.

[YonaAkatsuki]

Yeah it was a super great idea to annihilate every DC that wasn't Aether.

Queues are still popping, and the non-raiding scenes are still great. Heck, extremes and other easier content can still fill well. But for less populated content like savage and above, I'd prefer to have more people fill parties faster than be able to use my retainers.

[YonaAkatsuki]

Maybe on Crystal, but Dynamis is another story entirely. PVP if any kind if pretty much non-existent, the PF is literally just a little bit of venue spam, and unless you play during peak hours you won't get any roulettes done at all. But then Dynamis had the misfortune of being born right when DC travel was added, whereas Crystal was at least born out of worlds that already had a population. Only reason to come here is for a house and then hop elsewhere for content, but in light of the travel restrictions, we're not even getting new transfer moving in despite there being a bunch of Mediums and even Larges up for grabs, or how even the Smalls would be valuable in light of the upcoming interior space changes.

The thing about Dynamis is that most of the people who went over went for housing. They didn't plan on staying since the server was mostly empty. You're right that it had the misfortune to open right as travel became available. With time and more new players it should go up. Eventually when PF becomes data center wide, none of this will matter. That's the goal of a post like this, but Yoshi-P mentioned it would take a long time if they decided to go that route. In the meantime, these new changes are just making everyone unhappy in different ways.