Can we talk about Data Center travel?...

[BigSpenDaBeast]

It feels like DC travel has really ruined every DC that isn't Aether when it comes to PF. If you raid, you are almost required to travel to Aether and be restricted while you're there. It does not feel good.

Last night, around 6pm EST (prime time) I tried forming a FRU group on Primal. Spent 2 hours in PF and could not fill the group. Can't transfer to Aether because of congestion, so now I'm not allowed to raid? This is on patch, first week, new content, and you can only form groups on the consolidated DC of Aether.

I transferred to Aether at 2am EST. Form a group within 10 minutes, and wowie looky there, half of my team were Primal and the other half were Dynamis.

This is a major issue and I'm sure it's been addressed before, but I know this has been an issue for over a year now and it's really effecting player's ability to play parts of the game.

Long story short, Cross DC PF needed to happen a year ago, it still hasn't happened. What gives? If other games can do it, why is it so hard for SE to implement?

[IOwn92FCHouses]

Do you want a real answer? Because it's pretty simple: When the servers were first designed, they weren't designed with cross world interaction in mind, let alone data center interaction. It's very hard to implement a new feature in an existing system without reworking said system. There's a lot more under the hood that would need reworking, especially something as sensitive as something that handles character data. Something goes wrong? People could lose their characters.

It's why it took a while for us to get cross server pf. For us to visit different worlds in the DC. Then for us to visit other DCs. No doubt that Square is trying to figure out cross DC PF. But it can't be understated that dealing with tech debt is a challenge.

Yet a large portion of people will still think it's a matter of them pressing a button or writing a few lines of code and then the feature will exist. I pity those sorts of people.

[Akamadoshi]

At least you get to travel to Aether. Be happy you're not in JP
Late Monday / early Tuesday through Wednesday Mana DC is closed. If you want your reclears you better logout in mana long before reset.
Now that ultimate is out, if you traveled home to get gil/retainers, you'd be out of luck. It was so bad, on Saturday 3 servers of GAIA was closed+entire Mana.
Meteor is not very popular raiding/Ele uses different strat than PF. At the least you are not locked out of your weekly lockouts. You just have to travel like everyone else.

[VeyaAkemi]

The problem isn't DC travel as much as it is the DC travel limitations imposed in 7.05, there are issues with DC travel for sure, but the benefits far outweight the negatives, but then the limitation broke the camel's back, and turned the annoying-but-bearable issues brought about by DC travel into completely unbearable.

[BigSpenDaBeast]

Do you want a real answer? Because it's pretty simple: When the servers were first designed, they weren't designed with cross world interaction in mind, let alone data center interaction. It's very hard to implement a new feature in an existing system without reworking said system. There's a lot more under the hood that would need reworking, especially something as sensitive as something that handles character data. Something goes wrong? People could lose their characters.

It's why it took a while for us to get cross server pf. For us to visit different worlds in the DC. Then for us to visit other DCs. No doubt that Square is trying to figure out cross DC PF. But it can't be understated that dealing with tech debt is a challenge.

Yet a large portion of people will still think it's a matter of them pressing a button or writing a few lines of code and then the feature will exist. I pity those sorts of people.

Oh, I'm sure it's hard, but a year and a half and we haven't really had any update on the status of cross dc pf? That's plenty of time to do just about anything. Other game's had the same limitation, but figured it out. If SE doesn't have the team capable of accomplishing it, they need to make changes. The DC issue is not getting any better, if anything its getting worse.

At least you get to travel to Aether. Be happy you're not in JP
Late Monday / early Tuesday through Wednesday Mana DC is closed. If you want your reclears you better logout in mana long before reset.


Now that ultimate is out, if you traveled home to get gil/retainers, you'd be out of luck. It was so bad, on Saturday 3 servers of GAIA was closed+entire Mana.
Meteor is not very popular raiding/Ele uses different strat than PF. At the least you are not locked out of your weekly lockouts. You just have to travel like everyone else.

I literally have to wake up at 3am EST to move to Aether because it's locked by 7am EST. Then if I want to use my retainers or house, I'm SOL or I have to do it all over again. It's exhausting and has really soured me on trying to even raid FRU consistently.

The problem isn't DC travel as much as it is the DC travel limitations imposed in 7.05, there are issues with DC travel for sure, but the benefits far outweight the negatives, but then the limitation broke the camel's back, and turned the annoying-but-bearable issues brought about by DC travel into completely unbearable.

I used to agree with this statement, but lately I can't agree that the positives outweigh the negatives. I used to be able to form PF groups on Primal for high end content, now it is impossible to get a group for the content on it's release week. That is a complete and utter failure.

[IOwn92FCHouses]

Oh, I'm sure it's hard, but a year and a half and we haven't really had any update on the status of cross dc pf? That's plenty of time to do just about anything. Other game's had the same limitation, but figured it out. If SE doesn't have the team capable of accomplishing it, they need to make changes. The DC issue is not getting any better, if anything its getting worse.

I made the last paragraph about this exact line of thinking. "They need to do it." "They need to make changes." "It should be enough time." Bro, it took years to get cross server PF. I remember transferring servers, shelling out the money to do so, just to raid. If the highly requested feature wasn't a huge task to implement, Square would take the free win. Clearly it's not an easy fix.

And to suggest they "make changes" to their team if they can't figure it out is the most laughable Karen shit. What changes? Different people that don't know the codebase, that would need training and to be brought up to speed, thus increasing the delay further?

There are other factors, too. Maybe it doesn't meet the cost vs benefit ratio. Maybe time allocation isn't allowing it. You can do anything when you ignore all the logistics to doing the thing. Fact is, we only know that they are aware of the strain DC travel has caused and that should prompt a solution. And official statements. Outside of that? Tossup.

[BigSpenDaBeast]

I made the last paragraph about this exact line of thinking. "They need to do it." "They need to make changes." "It should be enough time." Bro, it took years to get cross server PF. I remember transferring servers, shelling out the money to do so, just to raid. If the highly requested feature wasn't a huge task to implement, Square would take the free win. Clearly it's not an easy fix.

And to suggest they "make changes" to their team if they can't figure it out is the most laughable Karen shit. What changes? Different people that don't know the codebase, that would need training and to be brought up to speed, thus increasing the delay further?

That's kind of just flat out wrong. If you do not understand that there are professional server managers that know how to merge databases and get the information to work together, then I really don't know what to tell you. The team that manages the server should be professional and capable of doing something like that. It happens all the time outside of video games, databases are databases. It does not take a year to accomplish that. It literally either is a resource issue where they just don't have the capabilities of doing it internally, or straight up ignoring it at this point. Either way is unacceptable for a game as large as this that requires $15 a month to play.

I've literally played and been subbed every single month since beta for 2.0 began. My patience is wearing thin. That's that. I moved off of Aether because of congestion and the promise that I could still play the game on other servers. That promise was broken.

[Kaecilius]

Honestly, as much as having to travel to Aether if you want to do any serious raiding has always sucked, it feels like we're stuck in an even shittier situation now, since you have to pre-plan sneaking over at 2am the night before.

As much as I want them to finally implement cross-DC PF, at this point I'd be happy if they at least removed these travel limitations.

[ExESGO]

That's kind of just flat out wrong. If you do not understand that there are professional server managers that know how to merge databases and get the information to work together, then I really don't know what to tell you. The team that manages the server should be professional and capable of doing something like that. It happens all the time outside of video games, databases are databases. It does not take a year to accomplish that. It literally either is a resource issue where they just don't have the capabilities of doing it internally, or straight up ignoring it at this point. Either way is unacceptable for a game as large as this that requires $15 a month to play.

I've literally played and been subbed every single month since beta for 2.0 began. My patience is wearing thin. That's that. I moved off of Aether because of congestion and the promise that I could still play the game on other servers. That promise was broken.

Literally YoshiP said hinted they are working on it. In the last live letter when they talked about the PVP ranked changes they knew it was not ideal and they were working on a better system that should encompasse other types of content.

As per Miuna's raw translation:

"This is not entirely what I want to do.... Like Ideally you should just match from whereever right?"
"But.... I can't say this yet"
"We are working on a matching system that invovles every kind of content"
"As soon as I have more news, I will make the announcement"

[TaleraRistain]

It's just something I've had to learn to deal with from making the mistake of rolling on Dynamis, and the only thing that's changed in 2 years is that I hop to Primal instead of Aether now if I want to do my roulettes.

If we can't get cross-data center duty/party finder because it's not feasible with the current code, than they need to just start merging data centers, which we know they *can* do because it's part of how they made Crystal to begin with.

Crystal wasn't made by merging any data centers. The Crystal data center was created and they moved existing servers from Aether and Primal over to it. That's not remotely the same sort of process.