Sad and tired

[Hyperia]

I believe that SE is hoping 8.0 will justify all of these servers and what they have done up until then. I hope they are right but I still worry and I see regional mega servers as the only way to save face by merging everything into one server per region.

[MicahZerrshia]

Even Aether feels bad right now. Over 30 minutes to get into the new raid is unheard of here, but its happening. My queues also went from less than 5 to easily 10-15 minutes or longer. While it's bad on small DCs, I could about imagine how bad off Dynamis is, but we are even feeling it on big, high pop DCs atm.

[Kaurhz]

I believe that SE is hoping 8.0 will justify all of these servers and what they have done up until then. I hope they are right but I still worry and I see regional mega servers as the only way to save face by merging everything into one server per region.

Nah, SE just thought past growth with end of ShB - Start of EW, would be retained long-term to justify these servers. I don't think they are or have been banking on 8.0 to justify server and infrastructure changes that they made 3 years ago. I think they know that the biggest population boon this game will ever see has already come and gone.

At this point mega servers isn't even about saving face, but should have been the default long long ago for duty finder.

[SyferU]

Remember when the dc split first happened and everyone thought chaos would be the Raiding dc. I wasn't really playing ff14 during the time it flipped to everyone raiding on Light, would love if someone could give me a timeline why it turned like that, I think it had to do with LPDUs popularity or something.

[Kisshu]

On a Chaos world myself. Looking at the PF on a regular night might give you 10 parties across all content, 20 if you're lucky. Then jump to Light and see easily 100+ parties across all content. It makes it feel like you have to go to Light just to get anything besides roulette and daily PVP done.

Another issue that more world specific, is that the MB has slowed to a crawl on a lot of items. Some still sell, but a lot of random reward items from Deep Dungeon or treasure maps just rarely move. So A lot of times, you just end up selling it to NPCs.

[Garruss]

A mmo having to do a server merge or shut down servers is a bad look for them. It would mean admitting the game is not what it once was. I've seen it happen with SWTOR when they had to merge and shut down servers.

I would think if this is still going on in 8.0 it's a sad thing SE are going to have to look into doing.

[Rueby]

The whole chaos is dead joke becoming a reality made me lose interest in 'high end' content. It feels like I'm being punished for not being on the DC that people decided was the raid DC prior to this 'feature' was introduced.

Either merge us together or find a solution to not make us feel stranded when DC traveling. Cross DC PF/DF is the answer honestly...

Or I dunno make a cloud server that functions as a lobby for PF, abit like an endgame hub, has MB, retainers, mail, FC chest. I'm not sure if people do anything useful while waiting for PF to fill aside from maybe standing around in house/limsa/crafting. Maybe it might even make PFing feel more social but this is just a shot in the dark at something I honestly don't know much about on the technical side. I wonder if this idea would work.

It's a self fulfilling prophecy. I was stubbornly avoiding any extreme+ content (ever since Barbaricia + P5S~P8S) until chaotic (it's been a whole year already..) dropped, I refused to PF out of chaos and compared to 2-3 pages of PFs, I wouldn't see any. I stopped being so stubborn because I pay a subscription for this game...and I'm not having fun with it and putting some shitty restriction on myself in hopes others wouldn't let our DC bleed, but no one cares quite frankly. It's why NA DC and why poor OCE are on lockdown. If the locks are lifted, no one would be on these DCs.

I still think it's so much effort to transfer to light. Feels like fish out of water to even travel within my own DC. No, I won't transfer, I love my FC house and personal houses being in the same spot; it's important to me and it's where I chill. Spriggan is where all my memories are, good/bad and where my friends are. I just hope they'd address this before more people get burnt out, it doesn't help that DT was pretty bad and many people quit.

[KhujaRela]

I think we are now on a "low population" times anyway because a lot of stuff. Also people playing the same game for years and years gets expectedly tired... Specially if they never rest of it.

I think there is a lot of good suggestions (I play in Chaos by the way, not moving because I have 8 alts, it would be too expensive XD)
My opinion:
-Look for other people to play if "your" people is inactive. Use party finder, shout in chat, cross world linkshells, and as last resort, even move to other DC if necessary. If you are alone on the FC, look for new members maybe. Join an active discord community.
-Rest a bit from the game... I think it's not worth it to get burnt out. If it's a house/FC issue, get all the stuff you can to a safe place and let it be. So far FC don't get "destroyed" for inactivity, I think (but master is rotated)
-I'm pretty sure in 8.0 the game will have more activity again, if SE do the correct moves...

I think if population don't gets better by 8.0 it will be necessary to merge datacenters or to allow to be more cross-activity within them. I'm sure they are considering the pros and cons or working on it somehow as we talk here... Because it's bad for the game reputation to merge servers, but it's also bad to look "empty" and discourage remaining players.

But definitely, to the people burn out of the game... I think they should rest, there is no crime in it << if it leads to burn out, even if the game gets better, it will be harder to keep playing it.

[SaltyDaddy]

I miss the old days. The Abyssoss tier was the last one Chaos DC was still alive and it was great. Then, for some reason, people started doing even EX in Light. I don't understand. Like, I do. At this point, much faster PF filling. But we Chaos players are the one to blame. It is really sad.

[Shistar]

(I play in Chaos by the way, not moving because I have 8 alts, it would be too expensive XD)

I moved my 8 characters for free back when Phantom was marked as New. You can travel from any world to a "New" world for free, and it'll also be free if your original world is marked as Congested and you move to a Preferred world.

[...]If it's a house/FC issue, get all the stuff you can to a safe place and let it be. So far FC don't get "destroyed" for inactivity, I think (but master is rotated)

Be careful about assuming things like these. Inform yourself before going on a hiatus unless you're fine with losing your house or even the ownership of your FC.

If the company leader doesn't log in at all for 35 days straight, their rank will be transferred to another member according to certain characteristics like their own last login time, their rank within the FC, how long they've been in the FC... so if you and your officers all go on a hiatus, the leadership could well land on a random recruit and the GMs cannot do anything to help you in that case. You'd have to hope the "new leader" is nice and gives the leadership back instead of keeping all of your stuff, including your FC house, workshop and anything in your FC coffer, as the previous leader would be demoted to the lowest rank and unable to do anything about it.
If no one steps in the FC house for 45 days, it will be demolished. FC houses are much easier to upkeep because any FC member may reset the demo timer by stepping inside, unlike personal housing where the tenants cannot help in any way.

And don't just trust my word, either. Always double and triple check any information in more trusted sources such as wikis and official sites if you care about your house and FC.