In Final Fantasy XIV, Data Center Travel was a feature designed to enable more players to play together. 1 year later, it’s clear that this has come at a cost.
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Having always been in Aether, I didn't know it was this much of a problem. I will say I hope this is fixed soon, and I'm glad about all the good things this has brought!
We are about a month away from the next patch drop. I am surprised so many groups are still farming gear in high end content. The pros of DC travel outweigh the cons IMO. Dynamis is loaded with bots, one of the reasons queue times are so long not enough real players.
I played in Aether when I started, was on Siren for most of my time there. Transferred to 1 sever but left the next chance I got because I didn't make any friends and the quality of life for myself was improving there to I hopped to Crystal, made some friends but then they quit or left server (before cross server was a thing) then I took my longest break of just over a year, came back then transferred to dynamis because the low population, I like smaller communities just to find this issue with cross data center basically making impossible to form a group of friends like the good old days b4 StB came out, the population boom of StB was the downfall of small communities imo and this just made it worse. Not saying it's horrible but it honestly isn't good when you have less than 10 things in PF in Dynamis and they're all for social events. There's no raid groups in PF, no trial mount farming, takes over an hour to queue for an alliance raid even as healer or tank because you can't PF it because no one joins. Honestly, I think they should take one server from each of the other data center in NA and put them in Dynamis to help the queues because they're atrocious.
There's a bit of history missing here that helps explain why Aether got its reputation for being the big raiding DC. From what I understand, Primal actually used to be the big raiding DC during ARR and early HW. When the Alexander Savages released, though, they were a huge step up in difficulty from what most players were used to. A3S and A4S in particular were very mechanically intensive for the time and had very tight DPS checks in the early weeks, to the point that most statics didn't even clear the tier Week 1 due to a lack of gear. I'm a bit hazy on the specifics since I took a break from playing the game around this time, but apparently a
lotof statics fell apart this time and the sheer amount of bad blood between players on Primal drove an exodus to Aether to escape the supposedly bad playerbase on Primal. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong or leaving out details.Unfortunately, veteran big name players like Arthars still carry that grudge against Primal. He used to talk about how "bad" Primal PF was on stream all the time, and his viewerbase ate it up. Which is funny, because until last year or so, Primal was generally seen as the DC to go to if you wanted to PF Ultimates (UCoB being Primal's specialty). While Arthars ranting about Primal isn't what killed Primal's raiding population alone, it certainly didn't help. There are other factors involved, too; as more players began traveling to Aether due to the larger playerbase, even the big Primal names started joining their friends over there too. Barse parties shifted to Aether as well. After all, if you can't beat them, why not join them?
It's worse for Dynamis.
Good,this is a good thing not a bad thing tbh… Og people how to rot in pf just go to x center and save your time.
as someone from aether selling pots and food has made me rich
The big thing I think could really fix DC travel is removing the ability for a Traveler to create a Party Finder outside of their own Data Center. This would revive the local Party Finders by requiring raiders to be on their own Data Center if they have a specific need for a raid, and it would give the Aetheroids some sweet relief from having to suffer the absolute trash we Primal raiders are lmfaooooo (I'm kidding, obviously, raiders from Primal's worlds except Famfrit are probably competent raiders). Maybe also remove the ability to queue for roulettes when you DC travel, and you should stem the flow at least for normal Duty Finder content and older savage raids.
If Squeenix could go back and undo the DC travel system, I think it would be the single best change they could make to preserve the health of all the data centers, and it would force Dynamis to actually develop a server culture. At the least, Primal's hunt trains could use DPS and chocobos more often than we have been able to when everyone and their grandma comes to Primal for The Hunt.
DC Travel pretty much killed Island Sanctuary for me, as I loved to just randomly gather things and chill while waiting for PF to fill. Now that I have to camp in Aether for everything, I'm not even bothering returning to Crystal just to take care of my crops. Culture mixing is already happening and there's no going back from this, I can only hope cross DC PF will be implemented soon already.
whew, I thought I was crazy thinking the pf had more pages than usual (on aether)
Just another reason for the devs to ignore what the fans want. Every time fans beg for something they always ruin it. Players demanded servers for Australia and that server is dead. No one moved to it. Players demanded more servers because of the of the congestion when endwalker hit. And no one joined dynamis. Players begged for deep dungeon to come back. Qe get one and no one plays it. Players beg for savage and midcore dungeons. We get them and no one does them after a week. Players beg for improved pvp. We get it and no one does it. Ff 14 fans are always wanting things they have no interest in doing. Then they crap on the devs for giving them what they asked for. Now its bring back bozja eureka type zones and long painful grinds for relic.
Dynamis: (Crickets)
not just primal and aether, Chaos raiding scene died too
I moved to Dynamis when it dropped for Housing and to get a fresh start. I think a 6 month "pause" on DC travel would have helped a ton for our DC in the long run, mainly to establish a market/economy and stabilize the queue times. That being said Dynamis' B-Day is coming up and the community is still there its just very slow growing. I know that new people are being funneled into Dynamis worlds because you see a lot of new sprouts (not alts) actually out doing content/leveling/etc. Fingers crossed that SE comes up with a solution before Dawntrail!
Same with Light and Chaos on EU DC
What they need to do is unite all Data Centers with party finder and the problem is solved.
Dynamis will probably stabilize during Dawntrail when launch queues make it prohibitive to hop servers and data centers willy nilly.
As someone from Maduin of Dynamis, I had primarily used DC travel to buy stuff that was either not available on the market board, or was being sold for several more zeroes than it was actually worth.
With the current moogle tomestone event going on now though… I pretty much live out of Adamantoise of Aether now to get PVP queues that actually pop. Waiting for less than 2 minutes before a match begins is far better than waiting for 2+ hours only for a match to never materialize.
Saw a lot of ppl leave chaos for raids. Games completely stagnant mass unsubbing/exodus.. Srsly yoshi how could u let this happen to ffxiv
Something similar happened to JP datacenters. The primary raiding DC is Mana and all servers there are listed as congested.
I dont see how this is destroying FF14. If everyone is raiding on toxic ass aether, cool. Nothing is keeping you from being there or going back. Your PF works in any DC. Now Do i think PEOPLE need to go with the stereotypes of "Aether = Raider heaven" Id say youre a fool. Play with people from aether an you realize how terrible the raiders are there and how toxic that community. Just do yourself a favor and miss that place.
Can't say much about this Datacenter since I play on the European Datacenter but pf always was useless shit tbh. I play since 2014 the times I used pf to do stuff I can count on one hand it was 4 times. The best U can do is play with rl friends or friends U found ingame and create an static or join an active FC that does raiding our look around for discord communities for raids ect. Pf is and was and always will be full of shit and more then once ppl join things they not even know the mechanics to. Then if comes to mount farms even if it's unsyced shit that an run takes not longer than a couple minutes most of the time they stop after 5 max 10 runs. If wanna do savages ect the best solution is and always was find ppl make an static that way U not need the shitty pf to beging with
I want to be able to que for Orthos lvling, w/o having to travel to Aether, just to do Floors 21-30.
as a new player who picked crystal just because i liked the name the most, im very sad to see how dead it is compared to the other servers.
As someone doing UWU progging on Crystal, it's sad to see hardly anyone join let alone waiting for over an hour. Me and another player even managed to create an unofficial PF group for people Clearing UWU and hopefully other Ultimates as well when we complete it.
So… let me get this right.. this video isn't About how DC travels is bad just how much this person hates Aether… slow claps I like it
I have noticed a crazy amount of primal folks on aether now, even sometimes theres equal or more primal/crystal people in my parties than aether natives.
Dynamis has 4 kinds of people and then there's the few who do really defy Dynamis logic.
1) People who tried to buy a house. Self explanatory really. Really beneficial for those who are trying to make their own venues or for FC workshop slaves who just sit there and earn gil.
2) Brand new players who were promised a new island but are essentially stuck because they don't know how to navigate and cross the bridge to the city.
3) Veterans who know the ins and outs of how to use the EXP bonus to it's maximum.
4) Society outcasts.
DC travel only really hurts Dynamis as an island, but if Dynamis was like Materia in the sense that it's fully isolated then it could very well have a worse reputation than even now.
Hi! Some additional history as a Crystal – Zalera player back in HW unti mid-Shadowbringers: People towards the end of Stormblood fled Crystal's raiding scene. The PVP players effectively remained (even to this day, the PVP static I played with is still unbelievably active, as well as seeing lots of consistent faces when I travel back home and play PVP with friends). The flight of players to Aether definitely isn't a new phenomenon and recent microtrends are an overall reflection of how things have been since late Heavensward. I specifically remember finally joining the savage scene around O8S and there was just… no parties doing it. Crystal was in effect dead at that time. This was just a simple result of what started an expansion before, enhanced by what IMMAOILMAN said previously. Aether got to where it is today by consolidation that started far, far before DC travel was possible.
Same with Chaos and Light…
yea i feel the same it initially started with TOP and then everyone decided to just do savage even on aether now primal is my dc and its sad to not be able to raid on my server anymore, and now aether has such mixed players and the few parties who are in primal still are rly good players atleast helped 2 oif my friends get their clear on UCOB we put up a pf in primal and 2 pulled it
Put a cool down on data center travel..maybe 12 or even 24 hours. Or put a cost to it, 100k gil.
Does anyone happen to know if the devs have been asked about cross DC PF?
I think limiting the Road to 80 buff to being on a Dynamis sever for new and transferred characters may help things.
Thank you all so much for the support! This has been one of my best performing videos ever! I tried out some different stuff for the background footage in this video as well to give it a more cinematic feel haha. Lemme know how it felt, especially how it was rendered in ultrawide! Also if you have anything you'd like me to cover, lemme know in the comments! I'm always looking for ideas. Thanks again!
Me, a very confused Light DC player who doesn't raid but checks pf: What do you mean it's dead? It looks pretty alive to me
DC Travel isnt whats destroying it, its the people abusing it an adhering to the stigma of the dcs they created themselves.
Most people don't travel to other data centres to buy on the mb. My FF14 play is a lot of gather/crafting/selling. Its especially good when you utilise the data centres yourself to get mats, especially those rare expensive ones cheaper in order to craft something for a profit. Its crazy when the mats cost more than the crafted item so it evens it out more.
There's even people who are have a hard time just completing the msq because of thaz transfer
Materia desperately needs cross-region DC travel. So many people leave to go play on JP or NA DCs and then players on Materia are stuck with a lower playerbase. Two sides of the same coin.
I actually transferred from dynamis to crystal because the queue times were just so bad. Queuing for dailies as tank took 10+ minutes, my fc completely died out, and not being able to use timed nodes and access the marketboard was really annoying as a gatherer so i had no reason to stay other than the exp bonus
The problem has kind of always been there but the travel made it easier to see. I used to be on Crystal. True you wouldn't see a number as low as 4 for high end during the week but it usually stuck around 20 maybe up to 50 around patches and you would see very few parties for ultimate, unreal or old content. I like to blind prog new content and finding groups for that on crystal was impossible. I loved my friends but I chose Crystal before really knowing about the different cultures of the data centers. Im not into RP but I love to raid. I made the jump to Aether since I was frustrated I couldn't find parties for what I wanted to do. When DC travel started, it let players with similar desires congregate together without having to transfer away from their home world permanently. I would definitely like to see the duty finder linked up across centers since that would greatly help queue times and sprouts who need it. I personally would not mind the PF being linked up but it would lead to the cultures of each DC being watered down even more.
i hate datacenter travel so much. basically if you have a full static you can just raid on your datacenter but if only 1 person is missing you are forced to go to aether unless you want to spend hours filling that spot… and not to mention if you dont even have a static. i spent the first 3 weeks of abyssos living on Aether. basically i just logged in to raid and do daily roulettes so i just had to stay there and man, i cant talk with my FC, i cant check my retainers i cant even be at the house i own or stay at my FC. i cant do any of that and im forced to be there since its imposible to fill a party on primal. i hate this so much. i used to do some other stuff or hang out with friends while waiting for a party to fill or even talk with my fc while waiting and now i cant do any of that 🙁
also, some people might get upset or mad for this but for ultimates we did them differently on prImal and now if i want to get some UwU reclears i have to adjust to the extremely unneficient "Aether" Strats instead of everything we worked so hard to achieve on UPR back on primal.
A unified party finder is definitely a step in the right direction, but it a unified duty finder that we really need. Especially on Dynamis.
Yeah, i feel bad everytime a have to go from primal do aether just to do some old raids, cuz primal don't have people looking for a actual fight in PF, just RP
Please don't ask about the situation in Chaos, it hurts seeing my friend have to travel to Light any time he wants to complete some endgame content. While he at least can find more that 4 active parties on Party Finder, his blacklist is apparently expanding quite quickly.