Can we end the fake server congestion for world visiting?

[Raim]

The game's population is not as high as Endwalker or Shadowbringers right now. And yet more servers than every are being arbitrarily locked or locked in a way as to 'incentivize' new players to move to Dynamis when we really didn't need it. This in turn is making it so you can't use the world visit system on many servers even though the population obviously isn't a problem. Everything was working just fine before the world visit system changes happened and people could freely visit anywhere to coordinate events or partying.

[Jeeqbit]

To be fair, we can scrutinize this ourselves using Lucky Bancho stats.

Current congested worlds, bold if also considered congested on Lucky Bancho:

• Anima
• Chocobo
• Hades
• Titan
• Balmung
• Brynhildr
• Coeurl
• Diabolos
• Goblin
• Malboro
• Mateus
• Zalera
• Adamantoise
• Cactuar
• Faerie
• Gilgamesh
• Jenova
• Midgardsormr
• Sargatanas
• Siren

That is 20 worlds. Now, let's list the 20 most congested worlds according to Lucky Bancho. I will bold them if they are included in SE's list.

• Faerie
• Mateus
• Balmung
• Jenova
• Coeurl
• Zalera
• Goblin
• Siren
• Brynhildr
• Diabolos
• Malboro
• Midgardsormr
• Lamia
• Famfrit
• Gilgamesh
• Adamantoise
• Ultros
• Cactuar
• Hyperion
• Excalibur

In the previous Lucky Bancho stats, although in a different order, the only difference to the list is that Hyperion isn't in it and Sargatanas is instead.

So, it seems that according to Lucky Bancho, Aether and Crystal are indeed the most congested data centers of all, and their worlds more congested than any other worlds in the entire game.

However, it does not seem true that the 4 listed Japanese worlds are as congested as 4 of the ones from Primal are, yet those Primal worlds do not have Congested status. It's possible JP data centers have less technology. While those 4 worlds are at the top of Lucky Bancho's list in JP terms, many others have around the same population as them in the JP region, so maybe their active populations just stay logged in for more hours on average than the others do.

[NegativeS]

Is it better to believe that the congestion is being faked for optics/filling up servers, or that the congestion is from SE's server infrastructure being that bad?

[FeyFavilla]

While I do fully agree I also think they have to do this for server stability. Despite the somewhat low load we do almost constantly have latency issues, and we have had crashes and disconnects even outside of the recent DDOS fiasco.
I am not knowledgeable enough to point at either the hardware or software being an issue. All I can say as a user is that the infrastructure SE has built cannot handle the game in its current state for one reason or another and if they do not fix this before 8.0 we will have a possibly catastrophic launch.

[vincexorcized]

Isn’t that because of those bots?

When I’m in idle camera, I can spot tons of lalafell bots under main aether plaza in Limsa for example.

[Alicie]

Can't be helped I'm afraid, there just isn't any incentive for people to go anywhere else but Aether or Crystal on the NA side of things unless they get shuttered to prevent travelers/new players, but that just results in people funneling into Primal instead.

Hell, I'm pretty much twiddling my thumbs waiting to transfer out of Dynamis myself for Aether or Crystal, abandoning two Medium houses in the process, and there's not a damn thing anyone can say or do to convince me its the wrong move. And no, trapping me here with a lockdown or travel restrictions only makes me want to leave MORE. At best, I'll just move to Primal instead, ANYWHERE is better than Dynamis at this point.

The only way the situation could possibly be fixed is if they made cross-DC duty/party finder (never going to happen, probably too many technical issues like why they can't merge Dynamis into Aether/Crystal/Primal) or Square-Enix shuffling around worlds within a given data center (so say... Balmung ends up on Primal or Dynamis), but people would riot over it even though it's the only thing Square-Enix has proven they can actually do when they made Crystal to begin with.

if SE takes a world on Aether where I have a main character, a large house I worked so hard to get, and put it onto a dead Dynamis, I'll immediately unsub forever. It's not even a question.

[Hyperia]

The best option is to use the cloud data center technology that they tested a year ago, and use it to merge all servers into a single regional data center. That would give us Japanese, North American, European and Oceanic data centers.

All zones would use instance technology that would spin up new instances as existing zones, fill up and shut down instances when they are no longer needed.

This would make the open world feel amazingly alive and much more populated. Hopefully we’ll hear something about this at fan fest as this should be their ultimate long-term solution.

[SalamanderIX]

The difference between Lucky Bancho and what servers are designated as congested aren't really proof of anything. The snapshots were taken at different times with different statistics (Square's are far more complete). That is to say I don't doubt Square is basing the congestion on actual congestion, other than perhaps having some mercy to which servers are open to new characters - Since they seem to strategically cycle those to give people windows to move to them.

The issue is more, why do these things exist in the first place? There's two things that need to be explained.
A server being closed to new players was not a thing during SHADOWBRINGERS. It would literally just depend on the time of day (it still does), but if you wanted to make a Cactuar character for instance all you'd need is to get on early in the morning.
A server being "unable to travel to" was not a thing during ENDWALKER. You simply had long queues to busy servers.

Considering the game is less popular than it was during both these expansions, I don't see any reason for it other than "we want to re-balance population"
Because the servers haven't proven to be more stable during Dawntrail, they have been less stable. If this is a DDoS or something else, they go down far more.

I suppose the question is, how long does Square attempt to force these populations to be balanced? a few more patches, all expansion, forever? I was under the impression (I forgot why) it would only be for the start of Dawntrail. But it continues with not a lot of answers.

[Hyperia]

The populations will never properly balance, at least outside of JP. Trying to population balance the game is like trying to balance the jobs.

You can never have a fully balanced population unless demand massively exceeds supply and everything is filled to the maximum.

[Jeeqbit]

The difference between Lucky Bancho and what servers are designated as congested aren't really proof of anything. The snapshots were taken at different times with different statistics

While true, the stats support what SE has done anyway.

A server being closed to new players was not a thing during SHADOWBRINGERS.

False. It was added ahead of Stormblood release due to Balmung.

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...2360440abe9651