The Dynamis Problem and Potential Solutions

[Aidorouge]

I'm pretty sure shutting down DC travel would just kill Dynamis outright as people realize they're trapped on a dead data center with no hope for growth, at which point they proceed to mass-transfer away because having a house isn't worth 30+ minute queue times (if anything pops at all). Subsequently, every would-be new player would just delete and re-roll elsewhere before they got too far ...assuming we even get new players anymore.

The first lockdown and Cosmic Exploration's failed projects being as they are have already shown that the harder Square-Enix tries to force people stay on Dynamis, the harder they try to escape it and those who remain suffer more for it. Even as things stand our marketboard prices jacked up significantly after Cosmic Exploration because a noticable chunk of our long-time gatherers and crafters refused to be "punished" any longer for staying here. You start making those who engage with the combat jobs feel the same way and you may as well just shut Dynamis down and give everyone left a free transfer out to select Aether/Primal/Crystal worlds.

At best, removing DC travel would help Primal and Crystal, because they already had sizable communities even before DC travel was a thing so they would be "returning to norm", and Crystal in particular was "seeded" during its creation with other populated worlds while Dynamis was left to build by its self from scratch.

And no, I seriously doubt Dynamis would have grown "just fine" even if DC travel hadn't been implemented at the same time. Case in point; Materia. Nobody there can travel out, and surprise surprise, it's even deader than Dynamis and that's DESPITE the fact that literally anyone from NA/EU/JP can voyage over there to help. One-way/zero DC travel is a death sentence now, not a cure.

The only other solution is to rotate around existing worlds within NA, so some Aether/Primal/Crystal worlds go into Dynamis while Dynamis worlds go back out to Aether/Primal/Crystal. But people hated when Square-Enix did this to create Crystal, which is why they didn't do it with Dynamis to begin with, and with "congestion" constantly keeping various worlds (and sometimes entire data centers) locked up, it not only wouldn't be easy for people to just transfer back to their preferred data center, but it STILL wouldn't salvage Dynamis because people would "ewww" and leave the first-chance they got because it doesn't magically become THE data center for raiding/RP/PVP just because Square-Enix forced a bunch of raiders/RPers/PVPers over there. We have a stigma and it's never going away.

Frankly, their biggest mistake was making Dynamis at all, as they grossly over-estimated how many of the new influx of players would actually stick around, and now the data center serves no real function and has a negative reputation. Hell, the 1,000,000 gil they give you can't even afford a house, and that's assuming you can find one here that hasn't been bought up by submarine bots already.

[CCheshire]

The bandaid aka DC travel has been a massive failure due to ppl just crowding aether for everything. But putting quick and easy solutions into the game with little forethought, next to no testing and a complete lack of understanding on how game communities work is kinda par for the course in this game.

If they actually want to fix the problem they need to just pull the plug on dc travel and force everyone back to their home dc until they can come up with a better solution. But I also understand that this will never happen. "meh, it's good enough" feels like the new "please look forward to it"

tbh everyone on Materia is stuck on their own DC, and look how far they made it out as in everyone relies on PF for any group content...

By removing DC travel would mess up everyone who had friends on other DC or statics cross-DC groups and not fix anything.

[Alicie]

The bandaid aka DC travel has been a massive failure due to ppl just crowding aether for everything. But putting quick and easy solutions into the game with little forethought, next to no testing and a complete lack of understanding on how game communities work is kinda par for the course in this game.

If they actually want to fix the problem they need to just pull the plug on dc travel and force everyone back to their home dc until they can come up with a better solution. But I also understand that this will never happen. "meh, it's good enough" feels like the new "please look forward to it"

Except that this will force all active raiders and just players to permanently transfer to Aether, only making the problem much, much worse.

[CidHeiral]

Deleting it would literally screw over every NA server that's not Aether.
People use the DC travel simply because of the fact that they want to play with friends.

No server is being screwed over by going back to exactly the same situation that worked just fine for a decade. To the contrary, less people will be screwed over when they can play on their home server normally instead of being forced to travel elsewhere. If people want to play with friends on another DC they can make an alt or transfer if it's available. The mountain of issues DC travel is causing is not worth a little convenience.

I've heard the claims in all these posts a million times before. No, the game isn't going to suddenly implode if they remove DC travel. Some people would kick up a fuss for a time, a small percentage might quit, then most would learn to live with it, especially when they see the immediate and numerous benefits of their DCs coming back to life (doubly so for Dynamis). It is far healthier for the game and community in the long run.

If they actually want to fix the problem they need to just pull the plug on dc travel and force everyone back to their home dc until they can come up with a better solution.

100%

[Alicie]

No server is being screwed over by going back to exactly the same situation that worked just fine for a decade. To the contrary, less people will be screwed over when they can play on their home server normally instead of being forced to travel elsewhere. If people want to play with friends on another DC they can make an alt or transfer if it's available. The mountain of issues DC travel is causing is not worth a little convenience.

But it won't be same situation. Player population is not the same as it once was. Dynamis wouldn't even have current 2,5 players if there was no DC travel. People will just naturally trickle to the most populated servers: raiders to Aether, RPers to Crystal. Dynamis will be left in submarine-farming ruins, Primal will probably be middleground where you'll farm like, ex trials and prog savages over 6 months. These who won't be able to transfer to Aether for raiding will unsub. These who won't be able to transfer to Crystall will unsub as well.

[CCheshire]

No server is being screwed over by going back to exactly the same situation that worked just fine for a decade. To the contrary, less people will be screwed over when they can play on their home server normally instead of being forced to travel elsewhere. If people want to play with friends on another DC they can make an alt or transfer if it's available. The mountain of issues DC travel is causing is not worth a little convenience.

I've heard the claims in all these posts a million times before. No, the game isn't going to suddenly implode if they remove DC travel. Some people would kick up a fuss for a time, a small percentage might quit, then most would learn to live with it, especially when they see the immediate and numerous benefits of their DCs coming back to life (doubly so for Dynamis). It is far healthier for the game and community in the long run.




100%

But it's not the same as back as before DC Travel didn't exist vs in 2025 like it would just punish low pop DC even more than aether which is doing fine on its own but I can't say the same for Dynamis, which is already empty other than housing or RP mains. It would completely destroy their remaining worlds and it's not worth it, esp not since SE can get a refund on their DC costs either way.

[Alicie]

But it's not the same as back as before DC Travel didn't exist vs in 2025 like it would just punish low pop DC even more than aether which is doing fine on its own but I can't say the same for Dynamis, which is already empty other than housing or RP mains. It would completely destroy their remaining worlds and it's not worth it, esp not since SE can get a refund on their DC costs either way.

Besides, in the grand scheme of things, colocation costs of an extra physical server for Dynamis DC is virtually non-existent. How much realistically it costs, 300 bucks a month? like, not even an drop in an ocean.

[CidHeiral]

But it won't be same situation. Player population is not the same as it once was. Dynamis wouldn't even have current 2,5 players if there was no DC travel. People will just naturally trickle to the most populated servers: raiders to Aether, RPers to Crystal. Dynamis will be left in submarine-farming ruins, Primal will probably be middleground where you'll farm like, ex trials and prog savages over 6 months. These who won't be able to transfer to Aether for raiding will unsub. These who won't be able to transfer to Crystall will unsub as well.

This is entirely fabricated nonsense.

But it's not the same as back as before DC Travel didn't exist vs in 2025 like it would just punish low pop DC even more than aether which is doing fine on its own but I can't say the same for Dynamis, which is already empty other than housing or RP mains. It would completely destroy their remaining worlds and it's not worth it, esp not since SE can get a refund on their DC costs either way.

Dynamis only seems empty because everybody travels elsewhere due to the perception that it's dead. It's a self fulfilling prophecy. Were DC travel to be removed there would probably be some initial drop-off in the short term, but in the long term the DC could grow normally like every other NA server.

These protestations remind me of when SE decided to address people ilvl cheesing alliance raid roulette and all the cheesers claimed alliance roulette was going to DIE and would NEVER pop again for ANYONE if the devs took away their ability to cheese. Lo and behold, the change went through and nothing they said would happen actually happened. People make a stink any time they have something taken away even if it's ultimately for the best.

[Alicie]

This is entirely fabricated nonsense.

Absolutely not

These protestations remind me of when SE decided to address people ilvl cheesing alliance raid roulette and all the cheesers claimed alliance roulette was going to DIE and would NEVER pop again for ANYONE if the devs took away their ability to cheese. Lo and behold, the change went through and nothing they said would happen actually happened. People make a stink any time they have something taken away even if it's ultimately for the best.

That's because cheese didn't go anywhere. People just bring level 50-59 jobs into alliance roulette, partying up with such or skipping unlocking of other alliance raids. Crystal tower still dominates roulette while alliance raid roulette pop got decreased because a chunk of people who only did it via cheesing permanently left it because, realistically, if it takes more than 15 minutes it just isn't worth doing.

[Brynne]

I think it's very unlikely that they'll remove DC travel at this point, whether it would be the best solution or not (we could probably argue hypotheticals for ages). It's not like the ilvl cheese, something which was never intended in the first place and SE just closed the loophole. It's a feature that was introduced and is widely used, and if SE backpedals on it now, it makes them look bad.

This is a crazy solution that no one will probably like, but if they swapped three servers from Aether with three servers from Dynamis, the two DCs might just balance each other out.