#FREEAETHER

[AlyahVanayel]

This is an open letter from the FFXIV community to Square Enix concerning the travel restrictions put in place for the release of 7.0.

This letter is from all the players whose FFXIV activities have been disrupted by the restrictions mentioned above: players from roleplay communities, venues, raid static, Free companies, and more. There is a growing concern about the length of time the travel restrictions have been in place and the parameters by which these have been in place to begin with.

- August 20th 2021 - Square Enix announced they had to contend with a growing player population and their plan to alleviate world congestion.
https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...0acb6c23ccd07f

- January 13th 2022, Square Enix announced they would make modifications to the DC travel during the 7.0 patch.
https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...8a3986554a2#03

- June 18th 2024, Square Enix announced they were placing travel restrictions to alleviate the new content congestion.
https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...56e40c77a5af8e

These restrictions were originally put in place to alleviate congestion and prioritize logins for Home World residents during the release of new content. But at this point, we feel they have become disruptive to the community itself. Since the restrictions use World population to limit the available connections possible to non-home world characters, many inter-DC activities have been disrupted. Aether, for example, has become completely locked to outsiders, prompting the comical but also legitimate #FREEAETHER tag among players.

Many activities organized between RP communities in various DCs have now been forced to rely solely on Dynamis to continue. However, there is no incentive to move one's house to a new DC, especially if all the air/sub ship progress will be lost and the gil amount transfer is limited. Instead of transferring, many chose to put their activities on hold and wait for the doors to open again. Six months later, and with no end in sight, many decided to stop their activity altogether, and for some, that meant leaving the game for good.

We would recommend these as solutions for this or future travel restrictions:

- Remove travel restrictions or change travel restrictions from the current World population cap to a World queue cap;
- Facilitate or incentivize moving to Dynamis by keeping the air/sub ship levels the same from one DC to another.
- Shorter travel restriction times.


FFXIV is a beautiful platform to create safe social online places filled with a buzzing array of creativity.

Every one of us appreciates and recognizes the immense love you put into your work. We wish to see it thrive for years on end!

Thank you for listening to us and considering these recommendations.

[Jeeqbit]

Queue is irrelevant as a measurement. The issue is how many connections they can allow at once, which includes people who are already connected and through the queue.

Houses should be designed in a way that the house progress never disappears though. It would help if wards were just a reflection of currently active players and inactive players just lost their plots but not their actual house and its contents, and gained a new plot when they returned to the game.

I don't know about them transferring FCs though. That would be more complicated and there may be players that don't want to go. So losing FC progress may just have to happen.

It's unfortunate if they don't understand the impact on RP when that is an aspect they have been putting a lot of focus on over years with bard music, gpose, decorations, emotes, glams, fashion accessories and things like that which have had lots of updates to them.

[Jeeqbit]

Huh... is this why Dynamis PF is almost nothing but venue spam?

Partly people are going there to use it for houses. And partly they are going there when they can't reliably get everyone at an RP event on other data centers. The drawback is if the venue is already setup and decorated on a busier data center. I've also heard of raiders going there, especially on launch week, just so their static don't have trouble meeting up from across data centers.

I have met plenty of genuine new players there though. When I was doing mentor roulette there a lot, not too long ago, I constantly met new tanks and new players that were absorbing this content that was new to them, wiping to basic mechanics that veteran players would know.

[Astronema]

Dynamis is like biblical purgatory. Poor lost souls eternal damnation.

[Nero-Voidstails]

Dynamis is like biblical purgatory. Poor lost souls eternal damnation.

it is free soul for my soul army!!!!! I will conquer you all!!!!

[AlyahVanayel]

I don't think it's productive to lump all the RP scene in one group identity. They are not all the same and do not all cater to the same entertainment.Besides, there are RP communities in all DC from Japan to NA, 18+ or not, SFW or not.

[Miohazuki]

Queue is irrelevant as a measurement. The issue is how many connections they can allow at once, which includes people who are already connected and through the queue.

Houses should be designed in a way that the house progress never disappears though. It would help if wards were just a reflection of currently active players and inactive players just lost their plots but not their actual house and its contents, and gained a new plot when they returned to the game.

I don't know about them transferring FCs though. That would be more complicated and there may be players that don't want to go. So losing FC progress may just have to happen.

It's unfortunate if they don't understand the impact on RP when that is an aspect they have been putting a lot of focus on over years with bard music, gpose, decorations, emotes, glams, fashion accessories and things like that which have had lots of updates to them.

I believe they can introduce dc from server after 30 mins of being afk .I see so many people afk for days in limsa area and other cities

[Gurgeh]

...
Houses should be designed in a way that the house progress never disappears though. It would help if wards were just a reflection of currently active players and inactive players just lost their plots but not their actual house and its contents, and gained a new plot when they returned to the game.
...

This.

I just can't believe how many obstacles this game seems to want to put between me and ever giving a F and feeling this game is relevant or applies to me anymore.
I used to enjoy a game where I had a house, was part of an FC I helped shape, had a real people I knew with connections into the stc least foreseeable. It's now just such a shadow of what it was in terms of the stuff that 'applies to me'.

- I will never again have all the work I put into making a house (with it's hanky UI) thrown away. So I refuse to have a house again.
- I will never care about crafting housing items again.
- I will never care about sharing housing or encouraging someone else or celebrate their house. (Housing is just kind of fomo poison. It's kind of tragic)
- I will never bother helping build up an FC or community because the game just throws that hard work away by giving our subs to other stupid investments, not putting real effort into our game, and telling my well cultivated connections to piss off and play other games.
- I will never bother helping build up an FC or community because the game just can't be bothered to stop eroding them with lack of cross DC PF.
- I will never get to involved in submarines again.
- The game doesn't want me playing engaging casual content because there isn't any.
- At the same time game doesn't want me advancing to high end either because it makes it either literally impossible and time gate keeps me out via gearing (after telling me to play other games), or demands I start using add-ons to keep my Gil earnings up with mb rates (inflated by those who do use addons and are already farming high value drops in their statics), or make unbearable crafting bearable again.
- It doesn't want rewards to be relevant, who needs orchestrions if you don't have housing to be proud of. No I can't be bothered with apartments. I used to have a small house and an FC I was properly part of. I'm not going to enjoy going back to an apartment.
- It doesn't want there to be mounts for me to enjoy in any of the content I do.
- It doesn't want me to care about glam drops from dungeons because I'll have to throw it all away anyway once my difficult to browse glam chest is full anyway.
- It just doesn't want me to have fun or feel a valued part of the community. Your not high end? Well... really this game wasn't made for you. There is a bit of stuff to humour you. Go knock yourself out in sanctuary, and press x beast tribe quests. That's casual.

Irrelevant game that wasn't made for me. That much IS TRUE.
Maybe someone thinks it doesn't have to be that way, maybe noone does. I don't know.

What OP hasn't yet realised, yet, is the severity of the disconnect between the constructed view of the game that exists thanks to the creativity in their own head, and the reality of the game itself. But they are starting to... hence their post... and once they do...

Yeah I don't know about transfering FCs either. Not viable.

[ShadowNyx3]

I would start by attempting to alleviate the biggest issue first which is that everyone in NA uses Aether as the PF hub for high-end content. If it is at all possible to create a cross-DC PF and DF, then this would help immensely.

Another thing that could help a lot is restricting access to Hunts on other Data Centers. A trains and S ranks create a ton of traffic due to the rewards they provide, and either nerfing their rewards or preventing reward drops when you are a "Traveler" could help alleviate some congestion.

After that, creating some kind of FC transfer feature would be good for some people to move off of Aether. It may not entice everyone but, for those whose primary interest in the game is Roleplay to be able to move to a low-pop server without losing their FC and its progress would be a great feature. Dynamis becoming the de-facto RP Data Center makes sense if they can't make my first two suggestions work to balance all four of them.