Dynamis honestly felt like the worst data center for a new player to start on.

[FeyFavilla]

Unfortunately cross-DC duty/party finder is a long way off assuming it happens at all, and I'm not much inclined to wait however many years it takes to implement when this is the same company that couldn't even figure out Viera and Hrothgar hats for the longest time.

Mind you, there's an argument to be made that if Square-Enix is in "break all the emergency glass" mode to keep people in the game and coming back that they might speed up working on said cross-DC duty/party finder due to it being constantly in demand. But... another thing that's ALSO constantly in demand is more housing wards/districts, and that might actually be easier for them to do. They drop thousands of new houses on Aether/Primal/Crystal and you have even less reason for people to transfer out and more reasons for others to transfer in.

Yeah, I know it likely will not happen, it just seems like such an obvious, glaring problem that needs solving. I think they would not even need to keep drip-feeding us smaller bonbons if they just had a representative pop on and be like "Hey guys so we are seeing this issue. It's a big problem but we are working on this and are going to get it done by 8.0, so the smaller stuff will have to wait until after." I can almost guarantee that would have even people who are not currently subbed perking their ears. If they just took the time right now while the server load is low in general to work on the system, maybe even use that extra EU server to beta test before 8.0 we could get stuff done. You know, if they are quite done firing people to replace them with AI.

Idk. To me it feels like we are not worth being invested in any more. We are supposed to endlessly support this construct falling apart at the seams without any kind of acknowledgement and reassurance that things will, in fact, be fixed soon. Locking people into a dead DC is so insane. It'll just antagonize people further.

[Aidorouge]

Yeah, I know it likely will not happen, it just seems like such an obvious, glaring problem that needs solving. I think they would not even need to keep drip-feeding us smaller bonbons if they just had a representative pop on and be like "Hey guys so we are seeing this issue. It's a big problem but we are working on this and are going to get it done by 8.0, so the smaller stuff will have to wait until after." I can almost guarantee that would have even people who are not currently subbed perking their ears. If they just took the time right now while the server load is low in general to work on the system, maybe even use that extra EU server to beta test before 8.0 we could get stuff done. You know, if they are quite done firing people to replace them with AI.

Idk. To me it feels like we are not worth being invested in any more. We are supposed to endlessly support this construct falling apart at the seams without any kind of acknowledgement and reassurance that things will, in fact, be fixed soon. Locking people into a dead DC is so insane. It'll just antagonize people further.

Admittedly that was a thing that had me hesitant to move for so long, the idea of paying Square-Enix extra to "fix a problem they created" when they left Dynamis to fend for its self compared to Crystal which they "seeded" with existing worlds to give it a chance. Fast forward to today and Crystal rivals Aether in population, eventually overtook its older sibling of Primal in population, while Dynamis not only failed to grow but hemorrhages players faster than any other NA data center/the population is mostly barely played alts.

One of the rare times they DID listen to people ("don't move worlds from existing data centers around when making a new data center") and it ended up being the thing that screwed Dynamis over the most.

[FeyFavilla]

Admittedly that was a thing that had me hesitant to move for so long, the idea of paying Square-Enix extra to "fix a problem they created" when they left Dynamis to fend for its self compared to Crystal which they "seeded" with existing worlds to give it a chance. Fast forward to today and Crystal rivals Aether in population, eventually overtook its older sibling of Primal in population, while Dynamis not only failed to grow but hemorrhages players faster than any other NA data center/the population is mostly barely played alts.

One of the rare times they DID listen to people ("don't move worlds from existing data centers around when making a new data center") and it ended up being the thing that screwed Dynamis over the most.

Understandable.
They kind of failed to update their infrastructure when the game was growing while crossing their fingers and hoping it would work out and now you have hundreds of thousands sitting on a jenga pile. The way they handle their servers is pretty archaic by today's standards and I have no idea how they think they will be able to launch a new expansion on what we currently have, with the constant server issues, splintered communities and a system that punishes newcomers.
I don't think even SE knows how to fix the mess they created at this point. Maybe a complete revamp would be necessary, but I think we all know they would never invest that kind of money in this game.

It's a toxic cycle of
"We are too popular, there is too many players online at all times, we can't work on things right now, we need to keep them busy! And we can't interrupt the services!"
and
"The player count is low, we have to invest the funds we have into clawing players back to keep numbers up. We can't afford to invest in the infrastructure. What if the numbers decrease further and we end up losing money?"

I really wish you and the people waiting to join a more populated DC the best of luck. Let's cross our fingers and hope SE will one day realize that the big underlying issues with the game are way more impactful for the survival of it rather than maybe a few failed patches or a subpar expansion.

[Aidorouge]

Understandable.
They kind of failed to update their infrastructure when the game was growing while crossing their fingers and hoping it would work out and now you have hundreds of thousands sitting on a jenga pile. The way they handle their servers is pretty archaic by today's standards and I have no idea how they think they will be able to launch a new expansion on what we currently have, with the constant server issues, splintered communities and a system that punishes newcomers.
I don't think even SE knows how to fix the mess they created at this point. Maybe a complete revamp would be necessary, but I think we all know they would never invest that kind of money in this game.

It's a toxic cycle of
"We are too popular, there is too many players online at all times, we can't work on things right now, we need to keep them busy! And we can't interrupt the services!"
and
"The player count is low, we have to invest the funds we have into clawing players back to keep numbers up. We can't afford to invest in the infrastructure. What if the numbers decrease further and we end up losing money?"

I really wish you and the people waiting to join a more populated DC the best of luck. Let's cross our fingers and hope SE will one day realize that the big underlying issues with the game are way more impactful for the survival of it rather than maybe a few failed patches or a subpar expansion.

I can't begin to imagine what technical limitations are preventing them from doing one thing or another, I just know that I'm done waiting for them to find a solution, ANY solution, to make Dynamis actually worth playing on and once I move, I hope to never step foot in there ever again.

[Shinku_Tachi]

The Dynamis data center situation is so bad, I've been of the mind for a while that SE should give everyone there a free world transfer to a Primal or Crystal world and close Dynamis; and, going forward, only open Dynamis during expansion launch windows, from the 'x.0' launch until the 'x.1' content update.

[OliverQ]

The Dynamis data center situation is so bad, I've been of the mind for a while that SE should give everyone there a free world transfer to a Primal or Crystal world and close Dynamis; and, going forward, only open Dynamis during expansion launch windows, from the 'x.0' launch until the 'x.1' content update.

Yeah, they really should allow free transfers off of Dynamis at this point

[Aidorouge]

The Dynamis data center situation is so bad, I've been of the mind for a while that SE should give everyone there a free world transfer to a Primal or Crystal world and close Dynamis; and, going forward, only open Dynamis during expansion launch windows, from the 'x.0' launch until the 'x.1' content update.

Yeah, they really should allow free transfers off of Dynamis at this point

While I have no qualms about leaving Dynamis myself, I wouldn't think it fair to forcibly uproot anyone who chooses to stay here, as shuttering Dynamis would cause them to lose the one thing they came here for in the first place, getting a house. Though in hindsight, Dynamis WOULD have been better off being a cloud server like Shadow was for EU, so at least when it closed out for the expansion, nobody got stranded on a dead data center.

It would be great if Dynamis got broken up and merged into Aether/Primal/Crystal, with Aether getting the 2 least populated worlds while Primal & Crystal got 3 each (and then when necessary, give Aether its 11th world later on). But their server infrastructure won't allow them to do this apparently, as part of why they made Crystal to begin with is because 10 worlds was too many for Aether and Primal to handle after a while, so Crystal got 2 each from them and got 4 new worlds on top of that.

The other, more radical idea is that because they can seemingly swap worlds around as they did to make Crystal, that they reshuffle all current NA worlds and redistribute them, or at the very least make Aether & Dynamis trade 2-4 worlds each, and maybe have Primal & Crystal do the same with each other.

While there's a risk of people being separated from those they knew from their original data center, the idea would be that with the population moved around so drastically, there would be less congestion issues across Aether/Primal/Crystal making traveling easier throughout the day (as opposed to now where Aether is frequently locked down for hours). Something like that WOULD warrant Square-Enix handing out 1 free transfer for every person that was moved off their original data center to give the affected players a chance to relocate if they really want to.

While a hypothetical person from say... Cactuar might lose their house if they move away from Dynamis now, it might not be the biggest loss if their move back to Aether puts them on say... Golem with a bunch of unclaimed houses. SE could even go one step further and just outright give anyone using the free transfer an instant-house voucher upon arrival to their destination so they can bypass the cost and bidding. There would be a lot of transferring around and uproar, but hopefully once the dust settled every NA world would have a more robust population instead of everyone being crowded into only 2 data centers.

[Xieldras]

While I have no qualms about leaving Dynamis myself, I wouldn't think it fair to forcibly uproot anyone who chooses to stay here, as shuttering Dynamis would cause them to lose the one thing they came here for in the first place, getting a house. Though in hindsight, Dynamis WOULD have been better off being a cloud server like Shadow was for EU, so at least when it closed out for the expansion, nobody got stranded on a dead data center.

It would be great if Dynamis got broken up and merged into Aether/Primal/Crystal, with Aether getting the 2 least populated worlds while Primal & Crystal got 3 each (and then when necessary, give Aether its 11th world later on). But their server infrastructure won't allow them to do this apparently, as part of why they made Crystal to begin with is because 10 worlds was too many for Aether and Primal to handle after a while, so Crystal got 2 each from them and got 4 new worlds on top of that.

The other, more radical idea is that because they can seemingly swap worlds around as they did to make Crystal, that they reshuffle all current NA worlds and redistribute them, or at the very least make Aether & Dynamis trade 2-4 worlds each, and maybe have Primal & Crystal do the same with each other.

While there's a risk of people being separated from those they knew from their original data center, the idea would be that with the population moved around so drastically, there would be less congestion issues across Aether/Primal/Crystal making traveling easier throughout the day (as opposed to now where Aether is frequently locked down for hours). Something like that WOULD warrant Square-Enix handing out 1 free transfer for every person that was moved off their original data center to give the affected players a chance to relocate if they really want to.

While a hypothetical person from say... Cactuar might lose their house if they move away from Dynamis now, it might not be the biggest loss if their move back to Aether puts them on say... Golem with a bunch of unclaimed houses. SE could even go one step further and just outright give anyone using the free transfer an instant-house voucher upon arrival to their destination so they can bypass the cost and bidding. There would be a lot of transferring around and uproar, but hopefully once the dust settled every NA world would have a more robust population instead of everyone being crowded into only 2 data centers.

I wouldn't mind a merge into Crystal if the housing voucher comes to pass. However Square is never this gracious so what will most likely happen will be a merge and leaving us stranded afterwards with a "Enjoy your new data center!".
Might be the final thread snapping for me logging in if that happens actually.

[MsMisato]

I do my raiding on Crystal, and I've never seen RP here outside of venue spam in shout chat.

The people who keep repeating "Datacenter X is for Y" are part of the problem, just like people who keep saying, "DC travel to not-Dynamis to do Z" help ensure that Dynamis never actually grows.

Two issues with dynamis is that it became alt central for those that just wanted a house for the sake of having a house. Second, they meaning SE messed up just releasing lik 2 years before any xbox announcements. they could have very well integrated 2-3 servers on each DC.

[Aidorouge]

I wouldn't mind a merge into Crystal if the housing voucher comes to pass. However Square is never this gracious so what will most likely happen will be a merge and leaving us stranded afterwards with a "Enjoy your new data center!".
Might be the final thread snapping for me logging in if that happens actually.

I would prefer a painless transition process, but yeah, the most likely thing Sqaure-Enix will do is just reshuffle worlds and leave people to sort things out themselves.

Cross-DC duty & party finder seems outside their ability, data centers can't go above 8 worlds anymore, none of the Preferred+ incentives are working, attempts to trap people on Dynamis just makes them more likely to leave once the gate cracks up a tiny bit, and community-required features like Cosmic Exploration make people realize there's no actual community. I seriously doubt 8.0 is going to salvage Dynamis anymore than Dawntrail did, and if the expansion launch comes with another lockdown, it's going to mean another exodus out of Dynamis afterward.

With a world shuffle, though nobody loses anything personally tied to that world (like their house), they would still end up separated from anyone they knew on the other 7 worlds within their former data center. It's not ideal, but at some point Square-Enix might need to to do SOMETHING to make people disperse and break the "mega" NA data centers, and since we won't do it ourselves (and why would we), they'll have to force the issue and moving worlds around is the only thing they've PROVEN they can do and something we can't stop them from doing if things got drastic enough.
+++

Two issues with dynamis is that it became alt central for those that just wanted a house for the sake of having a house. Second, they meaning SE messed up just releasing lik 2 years before any xbox announcements. they could have very well integrated 2-3 servers on each DC.

Post-lockdown and Cosmic Exploration aside, the other two times I've seen people noticeably filter out was a few months back when Balmung of all places was allowing transfers, and then when word got around that thousands of houses had been freed up on Aether/Primal/Crystal recently, even more people fled to take a shot at one.

Let that sink in a moment... some people who ALREADY HAD a house here (including Larges and Mediums), were willing to throw it away at a CHANCE to get even a Small one on the more populated data centers. This whole data center seems filled with housing alts or abandoned mains, because even before the overall player decline I would notice when certain people just weren't playing on Maduin anymore because being a small community, it actually sticks out.

I would not be surprised if they rolled an alt elsewhere, saw how night and day the game is compared to Dynamis, and their alt became the new main while their original character got turned into a house-sitter.