Data Center Travel System - Can we remove restrictions now...?

[Jeeqbit]

I really hope so, I'm wondering if it's possible to merge data centers the way they were splitting data centers up, like I know initially there was no Light and we got seperated.

You're right that some data centers used to have more worlds than they currently do. For example, JP had more than 8 worlds on each data center and it caused massive issues that NA and EU did not have.

You can think of data centers as, literally a book case full of computer towers (the technical term is server racks). Then imagine that each book in the row is a separate computer tower hosting several zones (ie. Azim Steppe, Sea of Clouds, 6 wards), while each row is a world.

https://www.pcinvasion.com/wp-conten...ata-center.jpg

Adding more worlds to the same data center is possible, but it seems the overall amount of network or database traffic from that would cause problems. Although I do not fully know their server setup and issues, each data center seems to have a different IP address and thus I assume a different wire to receive traffic. The heavy duty wires they will use will likely handle a lot, but at a certain point it's going to reach its limits and so are the server machines themselves. And let's not forget people test that regularly with very effective DDoS attacks.

Thus, to split the traffic and support the growing population of the game, they had to create separate DCs. Older players will remember Aether and Primal splitting apart into Crystal and there was probably a similar story for Chaos' split into Light. There was no DC travel then so friends were lost, FCs broke apart and people quit. JPs also split although I think these happened closer to the time we got DC travel.

Most likely some games handle this using cloud servers or otherwise being less strict about it. They chose against cloud servers because they are technically slower, but in the cloud test they performed (which I participated in), it was fine. Cloud servers are basically less strict. They can move around location and increase/decrease hardware requirements through the power of virtualization to stretch over the differing requirements needed on a given day and potentially split up the traffic depending on the person's region (this probably isn't good for a game that depends on fast updates from a central server but can work for websites and thus help with DDoS attacks).

I was thinking about it and honestly I think if they found a way to merge DCs or make a mega DC they won't have to think of a cross DC PF?

Although I think making a mega DC would go counter to all the work they have done splitting them up, I have often thought they could try to break down the barriers twixt data centers in specific cases - for example, putting duty servers and housing servers each in a separate data center and coding the game in a way that switches data center to the region's duty/housing data center, without logging out.

This would require them to rework their whole data center instructure setup, and add a lot of code to make it as seamless as possible for the player. I wouldn't rule out that it's something they do in the future because I used to think "they could do world visiting and DC travel but they won't", and they surprised me by actually doing it. These were things I thought MMO developers were too old fashioned to do tbh, and they actually did it.

[Rueby]

Snip

Thank you so much for this, I'm not tech savvy at all and I'm prone to sometimes getting upset/frustrated and 'why can't they just do it'. I appreciate the time it took you to write this.

I'm curious, is it wrong to assume that let's say (bogus hypothetical number)
100,000 capacity for native players
5,000 travellers

Could this be how this is handled? It'd explain why congested worlds are actually open to transfer, right? I'm not knowledgable at all so I'm winging it essentially.
It does make sense that a restriction is in place either to make sure that the servers aren't overloaded beyond their capacity but also allow players to spread out abit...

For example in EU, we're not really feeling the restriction, we can come and go freely (which has killed chaos PF, but DF seems ok), but I noticed alot of the complaints are from NA. I think NA and JP is relatively larger than EU (I don't have the numbers, but I guess OCE is smallest of the regions).

I thought maybe we could have some kind of region lobby server? I'm not sure if that's possible, think as a raid waiting room, but I'm not sure how you'd keep access to stuff like retainers/FC buffs, etc. I don't know how our characters can even hop between data centers and remain intact (I think that's really amazing tho I don't understand it). Perhaps it's easier to only have to deal with data that's on you? Rather than have to deal with more information like retainer/FC chest/buffs.

Sorry I rambled abit, I'm just curious.

[Jeeqbit]

I'm curious, is it wrong to assume that let's say (bogus hypothetical number)
100,000 capacity for native players
5,000 travellers

Could this be how this is handled?

It's something like that, yes. Except it's world-specific. I believe it's more like:

5,000 native players per world (according to Lucky Bancho, worlds have up to 20,000 active non-trial players but they don't necessarily all login at the same time).

Which would make the capacity for travelers a lot lower than that.

They actually wrote a lodestone announcement explaining it at https://eu.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...4ade7369b03003

It does make sense that a restriction is in place either to make sure that the servers aren't overloaded beyond their capacity but also allow players to spread out abit...

I can see both reasons being part of their decision.

Hopefully if they can make a regional DF data center it will solve everything, it'll just require making DC travel more seemless (so you don't have to logout). That will be very complicated but it's all about the magic of the game client - making it look normal to the player (such as by playing a cutscene of you moving through the stars).

The reason DC travel is complicated of course is because it's actually copying all your data and moving it to another physical row of machines, potentially on the other side of the world in the case of region travel. So being actively logged in risks you trying to modify that data while it's being copy+pasted. Then the client needs to be made aware of the change of IP address of the server you're on. Being on the new server will require an entirely new session, temporary character number, etc.

It's just a lot simpler from the technical side to log out and login to the new data center, but if we are to join a "duty data center" it would be ideal if this was more seemless and happened within the game itself, despite the complexities involved in achieving it.