Content getting harder to pop

[sindriiisgaming]

Okay so I live in eu and everything i say is entirely subjective to EU population, but I am extremely concerned about the state of the game in the last 3 months. lately nothing i que for seams to pop without ridiculously long que timers.

in PF the savage tier is basically dead in if its not between 7-9st (which is a very small window to play this content) cloud of darkness pf seams to be shrinking as well with that content basically not going until about 3pm and its went from 20 pf to about 3 tops.

Roulettes on average as a tank take over 5 minutes to pop which is honestly crazy. dps ques don't even pop for upwards for 30 minutes and healers instantly pop which means you either play healer or nothing (not exactly the best look when it says TANK in need constantly.) which just clogs the que up more with tanks. My boyfriend recently made a new character and he made a healer, too and even he couldn't get the older content to pop, average wait times for trails were over 15 minutes (as a healer) and since he was new he'd be pulling in mentors yet it still wasn't enough

pvp crystalline conflict has been notoriously bad too with it popping only after 11am consistently and its always the same 15 people from the pool as well, so even less of the availed spammable content is active. and while one might say "its the time of week" I have this problem on weekends too

fishing boats are almost always under capacity as well tho this is from observation not direct engagement. overworld fates are generally dead in DT zones and only S-ranks and A-ranks trains being the only thing people do now consistently.

Now I give these perspective from light DC and i've heard chaos is even worse if not damn near unviable as a datacenter. but of course your mileage may vary. all i wish to do is point out that the games current content cycle and release schedule has been increased to on average 19 weeks (its pretty much to the T) which is 5 months and not the 4-4.5 months we were told it would increase to. and this is having very bad impacts on the population of the game right now.. It's never felt this bad in the 6 years i've played

This is also very upsetting when I continuously see alternative clients like MOBILE and now CHINA EXCLUSIVE client getting updates more than the main game. but hey maybe ur experiences are different, maybe im only this games target audience between 7 and 9 PM st. /shrug

[Supersnow845]

I really can’t believe it’s been this long and they still won’t fix their horrendous “always check the tanks first” AIN system that rewards tanks for healers being the rarer role

In the 3 (4) dungeon roulettes you’ll never wait on a healer, you may wait on a tank and you will wait on a DPS, trials and normal raids are roughly equal in either waiting or not waiting on the supports. Alliance is a free for all

It’s concerning that content overall is getting harder to pop but while it is they desperately need an up to date system of meaningfully rewarding who the queue is actually waiting for so it can be filled as quickly as possible, not rewarding the “default” in need role when they really aren’t in need

[sindriiisgaming]

I really can’t believe it’s been this long and they still won’t fix their horrendous “always check the tanks first” AIN system that rewards tanks for healers being the rarer role

In the 3 (4) dungeon roulettes you’ll never wait on a healer, you may wait on a tank and you will wait on a DPS, trials and normal raids are roughly equal in either waiting or not waiting on the supports. Alliance is a free for all

It’s concerning that content overall is getting harder to pop but while it is they desperately need an up to date system of meaningfully rewarding who the queue is actually waiting for so it can be filled as quickly as possible, not rewarding the “default” in need role when they really aren’t in need

I would also at the very least like some more transparency in this window as how many or what role are currently in the que. because for roulettes and pvp u simply cannot tell. i could be in a que of 9 here, or a que of only 1. Knowing this would at least give me an indication of how long untill this might pop and if i could ask people to make it pop realistically.

[Exmo]

On Light, haven't noticed any problems with queues. Do you have all languages selected?

[Jeeqbit]

in PF the savage tier is basically dead in if its not between 7-9st (which is a very small window to play this content)

That's true in all regions but especially NA. I think there are only more parties outside those hours in EU because there is a much increased amount of people without a fulltime job or other distraction, but it's still a boom in evening hours in all regions in any case.

Roulettes on average as a tank take over 5 minutes to pop which is honestly crazy.

Then they probably need a healer or DPS instead. With roulettes, it's usually not related to the amount of people that queue but the role that is most in need.

average wait times for trails were over 15 minutes (as a healer)

When I was new to the game, every single MSQ content I queued for took 40 minutes as a tank. That was 10 years ago. I don't know what it's like now that the game has grown, but I know some people still take 40-70 minutes at dead hours.

pvp crystalline conflict has been notoriously bad too with it popping only after 11am consistently

Can only speak for NA, but in NA PvP often dies by around midnight PST. It only really fixes itself after the daily reset time. That's a whole 7 hours where it can struggle to pop at all and is about the same time EST as you're saying (10-11AM).

its always the same 15 people from the pool as well

Whenever I've done CC it's always been the same faces if I queue over and over again. This is obviously because certain people are farming it at that particular moment in time. Most people who do it are farming it and not just doing it one time.

when I continuously see alternative clients like MOBILE and now CHINA EXCLUSIVE client getting updates more than the main game.

Yoshi-P is actually surprised by how fast the mobile developers can develop things. Apparently they told him that they could do it even faster if it's needed. Although in fairness their blueprint is already there since they are copying the main game and don't need to come up with ideas, concept art or designs themselves aside from the mobile differences.

[sindriiisgaming]

That's true in all regions but especially NA. I think there are only more parties outside those hours in EU because there is a much increased amount of people without a fulltime job or other distraction, but it's still a boom in evening hours in all regions in any case.
Then they probably need a healer or DPS instead. With roulettes, it's usually not related to the amount of people that queue but the role that is most in need.
When I was new to the game, every single MSQ content I queued for took 40 minutes as a tank. That was 10 years ago. I don't know what it's like now that the game has grown, but I know some people still take 40-70 minutes at dead hours.
Can only speak for NA, but in NA PvP often dies by around midnight PST. It only really fixes itself after the daily reset time. That's a whole 7 hours where it can struggle to pop at all and is about the same time EST as you're saying (10-11AM).
Whenever I've done CC it's always been the same faces if I queue over and over again. This is obviously because certain people are farming it at that particular moment in time. Most people who do it are farming it and not just doing it one time.
Yoshi-P is actually surprised by how fast the mobile developers can develop things. Apparently they told him that they could do it even faster if it's needed. Although in fairness their blueprint is already there since they are copying the main game and don't need to come up with ideas, concept art or designs themselves aside from the mobile differences.

this could be conjecture but i did a player search for "world" and found 193 members for my server. which is very low. now obv EU is comprised of multiple servers, but this is very low player count in general

[Mikey_R]

this could be conjecture but i did a player search for "world" and found 193 members for my server. which is very low. now obv EU is comprised of multiple servers, but this is very low player count in general

It's also in the middle of the working day, you would expect lower numbers during these hours.

[Jeeqbit]

this could be conjecture but i did a player search for "world" and found 193 members for my server. which is very low. now obv EU is comprised of multiple servers, but this is very low player count in general

199 on my world (people in NA will just barely be waking up if they aren't at work). This does not count people in duties and most people who play the game are logged in to do a duty since 99% of content is instanced.

Another thing to note is that this is concurrent players, which is the amount of players logged in right now. In one hour, many of those players will have logged out and been replaced by another 199 players. Concurrent means that if there are 2000 total players per month, only 200 of them play at any given moment in time, for example.

I imagine the actual cap for each world is only several thousand. That might not seem a lot for a game with hundreds of thousands of players but that's why there are 11 data centers with 85 worlds which by my estimate could support no more than half the active playerbase at any moment in time, which is fine because they will not all login at once and they can do an AFK timer at expansion launches.

[tsuchii]

You should just quit forever tbh. Based on your post history, you're very unhappy. Why force yourself to do something you don't enjoy?

[Bonoki]

While I agree with everything you've said, I think it's worth pointing out that the majority of players right now are focused on Monster Hunter Wilds. I didn't realize how burnt out I was until I picked it up. Despite all the performance issues, I felt genuinely relieved to be playing something other than FFXIV.