[ Unlock Aether Servers ]

[Veritas-Ancora]

They have to get rid of Dynamis. As a player on Seraph, roulettes are all 25-30+ minute wait times. The entire DC was a mistake. They need to really look at the populations and consolidate. My thoughts are splitting the worlds on Dynamis, between the other DCs, and just adding them there.

Star Wars: The Old Republic did something similar many years back. My character was on Jekk'Jekk Tarr and they closed that server to combine with Harbinger. It was due to the low-pop servers.

But the issue we face right now is that the devs feel Aether is at capacity, which begs the question why don't they expand the datacenters instead of creating new ones?

[Jeeqbit]

which begs the question why don't they expand the datacenters instead of creating new ones?

Because the datacenters themselves share connections in some way, so it would be too many connections. This is why they did the data center split back in 2019, and created Meteor in the JP region. Too many servers per DC was a technical problem for them.

[Veritas-Ancora]

Because the datacenters themselves share connections in some way, so it would be too many connections. This is why they did the data center split back in 2019, and created Meteor in the JP region. Too many servers per DC was a technical problem for them.

So what would be the answer? There's no growth in Aether and losing new players means not running content every day with new players. This can't be the way the game dies out.

[Jeeqbit]

So what would be the answer? There's no growth in Aether and losing new players means not running content every day with new players. This can't be the way the game dies out.

As far as Aether goes, it being locked is temporary.

For other data centers such as Dynamis, really the answer should be creating a cross-data center PF/DF. Whether they view that as technically possible I don't know. Whether it's in the works, I don't know.

But I know that it can technically be done by having the data centers communicate PF information at intervals (they do this for the friends list) or have data centers submit the information to an external cloud server that clients request it from.

It would have to forcefully decide which data center the content gets done on and request an instance, then forcefully logout the players and switch their data center. But this could be made more visually seemless so you don't see the logout/login process and see a cutscene instead and continue to allow access to party chat, which can take place through a cross-data center cloud server if it's the only way.

Now will SE do this? I would say it's unlikely, but I thought that about World Visit and they surprised me and actually did it. It was a big technical hurdle with a lot of complexities to do world visiting and data center travel, yet they actually did it. From the technical side of things, it was risk and complicated and yet they did it and it wasn't some big disaster like it could have been.

[Kewitt]

I miss the days when balmung was locked 100% of the time, before data center and world travel. I played the game for years never once seeing a RTM shout.

FFXI and a server cruch, where they combined a bunch of servers.

[AzhreiVahlok]

Aether is a deadzone. FCs have nobody signing in, no new players are allowed to come in, and this applies to every server in the entire datacenter.

Square-Enix, you need to start thinking about the number of inactive accounts that are plaguing our servers. In an FC of 500+ people, we're lucky if 10 people are online (and AFK). It's maddening.



Please unlock Aether.

Consolidate servers if you have to.

A game without fresh blood is a ghost town.

They can't just kill the accounts of inactive players man. If that's what you meant. Hell i took 8 years off before i came back a couple years ago lol, I woulda been so mad if my account was gone or it was still there somehow but disengaged from any server till i came back so my apartment was gone.... people take really long breaks sometimes. Hell i hadn't played 11 for a decade or more, i went back to check it out a year ago in a free log in. Woulda been hard to do if my toon was "killed off" or something. When your FC hits the max amount of people, that's when you start at the back of the list and start kicking people that have been gone for say up to a year. As for making each world uncongested so new people can start on Aether.... idk i thought they added to their server capacity so that wouldn't happen? lol... I just woke up, the only way i can think of atm to stop that is to turn back on the auto kicker (if you're afk for 30 minutes, but I'd extend it to an hour..... i mean damn sometimes i really do afk for like 30 minutes but being an FC leader i like to read the chat when i come back if anyone had a question or w/e.....) actually i don't like the auto kicker at all but that's the only thing i can think of atm.

Also consolidating servers is a big no-no.... so many people would lose their house. You think people are annoyed at some things NOW? lol

edit: btw in case you thought otherwise, congestion isn't based on the amount of people linked to a specific world... it's based on the number of people usually signed in on average (actively playing). So the people that seem to have quit or taken year(s) long breaks don't count toward that. You think it's dead but it still seems normal to me on Sag at least. It's dead during the day, even Uldah starts getting a lotta people in the evening when people get off work, and Limsa's always packed (on every world when i hop around shopping lol).....

[Veritas-Ancora]

They can't just kill the accounts of inactive players man. If that's what you meant. Hell i took 8 years off before i came back a couple years ago lol, I woulda been so mad if my account was gone or it was still there somehow but disengaged from any server till i came back so my apartment was gone.... people take really long breaks sometimes

None of this is accurate. It's based off of concurrent players.

[AyahM]

Now that they've hard-locked all Aether worlds, I'm not sure unlocking them without changing the datacenter fundamentally would be beneficial. What I mean by that is, the more its locked the more people pile into Aether when it is unlocked. I live on Dynamis and while I plan to stay indefinitely, the cycle really is

Oh house! Dynamis.
Oh, not as popular. DC travel!
Oh, what a pain.. transfer to Aether.

This is not a Dynamis problem, when I was first on Aether before Dynamis, they had more characters from all 3 data centers than from Aether most of the time. Which means, Crystal & Primal are also experiencing this as people have pointed out. Truly, besides Cross-DC queuing, I truly believe datacenters should consolidate by absorbing worlds, not deleting them. If that means "new" named datacenters (2 or 3 total for example for NA) or, the current named datacenters have an odd number of worlds, so be it. With the lower player pop overall (and I don't see a return to the peak for an extended period, sorry) -- this is the easiest fix which won't cause too much stress on the "servers", and either way, we could just pay for more server bandwidth.

At this point, it is required to maintain a popular game to perpetuate people playing.
As you've pointed out, less people = less people.

I do not need the data from SE to determine that low-pop worlds lose players faster than high-pop worlds. Leaving this issue unresolved is the worst possible solution.

[AzhreiVahlok]

None of this is accurate. It's based off of concurrent players.

You mean current players? ya i know (did you read my edit? pretty sure it was there by the time you read that)... read what you wrote

"Aether is a deadzone. FCs have nobody signing in, no new players are allowed to come in, and this applies to every server in the entire datacenter.
Square-Enix, you need to start thinking about the number of inactive accounts that are plaguing our servers. In an FC of 500+ people, we're lucky if 10 people are online (and AFK). It's maddening."

I know congestion has nothing to do with inactive people, so why did you imply deleting the inactive ones (or at least unlinking them from a world till they return)? Your FC might be dead, mine is kinda too we normally yap a lot on our discord... but there's obviously a lotta people still playing if there's enough logging in to make everything congested. Unless it's all "horse pucky"...

[AzhreiVahlok]

Now that they've hard-locked all Aether worlds, I'm not sure unlocking them without changing the datacenter fundamentally would be beneficial. What I mean by that is, the more its locked the more people pile into Aether when it is unlocked. I live on Dynamis and while I plan to stay indefinitely, the cycle really is

Oh house! Dynamis.
Oh, not as popular. DC travel!
Oh, what a pain.. transfer to Aether.

This is not a Dynamis problem, when I was first on Aether before Dynamis, they had more characters from all 3 data centers than from Aether most of the time. Which means, Crystal & Primal are also experiencing this as people have pointed out. Truly, besides Cross-DC queuing, I truly believe datacenters should consolidate by absorbing worlds, not deleting them. If that means "new" named datacenters (2 or 3 total for example for NA) or, the current named datacenters have an odd number of worlds, so be it. With the lower player pop overall (and I don't see a return to the peak for an extended period, sorry) -- this is the easiest fix which won't cause too much stress on the "servers", and either way, we could just pay for more server bandwidth.

At this point, it is required to maintain a popular game to perpetuate people playing.
As you've pointed out, less people = less people.

I do not need the data from SE to determine that low-pop worlds lose players faster than high-pop worlds. Leaving this issue unresolved is the worst possible solution.

ya true it's more the problem of everyone dc hopping to aether to do stuff that's keeping OUR worlds locked.... honestly if everyone stayed on their world there'd be people to play with, but that would require everyone actualyl getting the message and doing it. The only real way i can think of to do that is kill DC hopping... but that would make everyone mad.

Honestly if Dyna is THAT dead.... maybe they should consolidate DYNA to other worlds. And split the people up by world (so you dont' split friends/fc's up), not everyone to the same DC. One Dyna world to a crystal world, another to another crystal world, one dyna world to a primal world, another to another primal, etc etc

Dyna's been dead from day one hasnt' it?