The FFXIV Party Finder Problem

[@cellardoor10]

It's been so frustrating - Primal used to have a pretty solid raiding PF, especially during peak hours, and then a streamer (I have no idea who it was, I just heard about it) said Aether is the place to PF, and it was like night and day, suddenly a ghost town.

[@GuyN0ir]

That's always been the thing though. Everyone always said Aether was the best raiding DC. Plus it's where most of the big streamers play. It wasn't until around the time Omega prog was happening that Primal pf really died. The funniest thing is you have a good chance of getting mostly Primal players in a Aether pf. As a Primal player this has pretty much killed the game for me.

[@taiyo4599]

heard of UPR? Primal used to be ultimate raiders hub

[@anarchyripper2251]

I hate the whole "we have to do this now cause some streamer said so" sheep mentality. I took a break before this whole thing and came back to find Primal PF empty and was so confused until my friends told about it... so now i have to DC travel just play with ppl from my home DC 🤨

[@Pink5G]

eh, even up through earl EW Primal PF was popping, I did everything though PF without leaving Primal, I took a break after finishing main EW MS and in that year it's a shadow of what it was even at EW launch@@GuyN0ir

[@eimpty]

I started the game in 2019, and I always heard Aether was better back then. They're not. I can't get over that they didn't use Sharigan strat for Shiva Savage -.- I bet there'd be better strats used in NA if everyone didn't travel to Aether, but that's speculation

[@akane.sakurada]

I actually bit the bullet and just transferred to Light. I was very tired of constantly changing servers to even look at my retainers or sell something, I just didn't want to leave my old FC behind and endured it... In the end I just switched to Zodiark and my FC exploded and completely disappeared like 1 week after I left with a huge drama so I guess it was the perfect time kek

[@KajsaWanderer]

I transferred from Aether to Dynamis when it opened because I wanted to meet new people from other data centers and have a shot at buying a medium house (which I did, in Shiro). But in addition to intrinsically lacking the population because we only have four worlds as opposed to eight, a significant chunk of the population is new players, or new characters, at least. Which means they don't have endgame content unlocked, which means we're practically obligated to use PF for any content beyond Stormblood. This has led to our "party finder culture" and I've met a lot of awesome people who are fellow lurkers like me; we just want to help players get content unlocked! Someone said that being on Dynamis is like moving to the suburbs for affordable housing, and transferring to other DCs for weeklies/raid is like commuting to work. It would be awesome if regional DF/PF were implemented. I should think it wouldn't be too difficult if the servers are in the same geographic location.

[@JustSpag]

the PF culture is legit my favorite part of my dynamis alt

[@MIZUKIYuzuka-tx8no]

i like that dynamis kinda uses PF for alot of DF stuff it brings back a nostagic feeling from older days in a way anyways ive met awsome ppl through dynamis that on other DC's i wouldn't have due to DF ppl never talk out side of trashing on ppl makeing mistakes, where on dynamis ppl are more kind/socal

[@JustSpag]

@@MIZUKIYuzuka-tx8no yeah it reminds me of stormblood era for some reason

[@KooriGraywolf]

The sentence "I transferred from Aether to Dynamis" fits so well with the lore haha

[@kneegrowontharun]

Yup. I hate what has happened to primal. I don't think allowing aether to uncheck cross dc will work though. Then the problem will still happen and people will transfer to get the full aether list.

[@KiRAyylmao]

Aether unchecking wouldn't be a huge problem, Aether isn't really that much bigger than Primal (save for the wave of people who transferred because of PF problem in this video) and a lot of the listing on Aether right now are from Primal players who went there to list their PF If all those Primal players were on Primal listing as cross DC it would be fine

[@Xylus.]

As an American on Crystal I find this very frustrating. I don't want to go to Aether to raid. It's tedious, but more importantly, I don't want to feed into the bleed of players who are on Crystal, but leave for pf. Probably the same on Primal. Dynamis...is probably never gonna have an active pf. Sorry Dynamis. But I hope Crystal and Primal both have an upswing where people just draw a line in the sand an say "I want ro raid close to home". Either that, or we need a cross DC party finder/queueing system.

[@EinsiJo]

I've been playing on chaos since mid-to-late Shadowbringers and while I did notice the PF being rather barren lately, I had no idea this was the reason! Just tried DC traveling to Light and sure enough, the PF is a lot livelier there, with multiple UWU and UCOB parties as well as progs for the current Extreme while at the same time the Chaos PF has only three parties recruiting in the High-End tab! The only exception seems to be the 'other' tab, which is equally swamped with nightclub ads on both DC's.

[@Zantetsudex]

The number of times I set up a PF and it gets filled up only by other people from my DC is getting comical at this point.

[@GoodLosertjo]

One thing I can say about EU scene with everyone going to Light was mostly because Light consolidated a lot of it's resources via LPDU whereas chaos was well chaotic. Both data centres used different strats for both savages and ultimates but since Light made its resources accessible it made it the definitive way to raid especially considering in chaos if you suggested light DC strats they were frowned upon.

[@belljdr]

Is kinda wierd when chaos made those strat in world run then ppl from light takes rhe creds

[@kiiturii]

yeah, the reason light became the pf'ing server is because it already was even before datacenter travel, and it was thanks to lpdu, back then chaos players had no choice but to transfer if they wanted to do ultimates in pf. Then as soon as travel was implemented their fate was sealed

[@GoodLosertjo]

@@kiiturii I wouldn't say Light was the main pfing server before DC travel. Before DC travel chaos had quite a few pfs up including ultimates, I helped others in uwu pf get the kill and even got a top 10 speedkill randomly in a chaos pf back in 6.1. When the DC travel happened was when it started to drift and a huge part in that is cause of LPDU, Light has different strats to chaos and if you did suggest LPDU strats in chaos back in 6.1 or before they would kick you out of the party cause they were "different" , while chaos didn't have lpdu they did have an abundant of macros and toolboxes to give to players but the issue is you'd have to find that somewhere or ask in something like the ERC. DC travel comes around now in 6.2 and while pfs are up in chaos we start to see it die down. From the perspective of the new player if I joined a party in chaos and suggested LPDU strats I'd be kicked because the LPDU strats differ from chaos, but wait, I can now just skip on to Light, join a pf and they won't kick me because I've studied their strats. Now someone from my FC wants to raid, well I'll tell them I learnt LPDU strats so you'd have to go there as chaos won't allow it. Repeat this ad infinitum. It's funny because LPDU has been standardised nowadays so much so chaos strats don't even exist, chaos can reasonably just start pfs and put in the description LPDU strats and people won't complain this time, like both DC's could thrive now but it's too late now...

[@kiiturii]

@@GoodLosertjo yes chaos pf of course existed because people didn't have a choice, but due to how chaotic it was thanks to no consistent strats people didn't want to pf there as much and instead joined statics, so when datacenter travel was implemented there was immediately a huge shift from chaos to light just for ultimate pfs and yeah people definitely could just use lpdu strats on chaos but now it's not anymore about standardized strats, it's about wait times.. It's funny because there are a lot of parties that fill up on light that are made up of only chaos players lmao..

[@Lyu-Phy]

@@GoodLosertjo That's what you call poetic justice. Funny how Chaos imploded on itself, truly poetic even in the name. Don't get me wrong, I think what happened to Chaos is a terrible thing, but is it surprising that the more accessible and more organised way keeps on? I just find it ironic.

[@DeadEye935]

This issue has trickled down to casual players too. People DC hop just to do roulettes. When people make PFs to try to do the Crystal Tower raids for the first time, which is mandatory content, because the queue times in the Duty Finder were just endless, things are really bad. Unfortunately the only long term fix for this seems to be cross DC duty finder and party finder but that seems like it'd require a massive overhaul of their infrastructure. Considering the process you have to go through to DC travel, I imagine they just do not have the infrastructure setup to relay information seamlessly between DCs. Don't envy them in trying to find a solution here because the obvious one is immensely costly.

[@VulpineDemon]

This issue happened in WoW early on and NEVER recovered. Horde racial abilities were so strong in early WoW that people migrated to Horde for the racial abilities. But then everyone who raided were horde so people migrated to horde, not for the racial abilities (because only the top end cared about that) but that's where everyone was. And then years of stigma of Alliance raiding is bad, doesn't exist, and it's impossible to migrate entire guilds to Alliance. Weird how things can snowball like that and it happens before you even noticed. And it's (almost) irreversible. I bet FFXIV could do it, though.

[@cattysplat]

In the modern day it is no longer incompetence in balance, but intentional. Blizzard will flip flop between which race has better PvE and PvP racials to force mass paid transfers to different faction. Guilds genuinely expect you to pay for any services required in order to raid with them, no questions it's become that normalised. People don't have loyalty to servers or factions anymore, just the chasing of top parses and being in the big guilds.

[@ivankrizanic507]

Eh, a year or two ago Chaos was "raiding" DC, now Light is, stuff like this happens

[@ruily276]

@@ivankrizanic507 Sure things happen but that doesn't mean they have to stay this way.

[@Raika63]

As someone on crystal... this is painful. Staring at the PF list in and of itself starts to burn me out going from group to group that only last a few pulls, while *also* not being able to distract myself between with things like the market board or FC chat.

[@ChrisDoesStuff999]

At the beginning of this year I could get parties on primal for high end duties and now a year later it's fucking dead which sucks because I don't want to sit in pf without being able to talk in my fc chat & shit.

[@ncBadrock]

I would really like to see the numbers if the additional hassle having to travel DCs has an impact on how much players engage with the content.

[@bl00dm0urne]

"Oh! Hello, Self fulfilling prophecy that happened when alot of players went to the official forums during the sever splits and said all the good raiders went to Aether and all them crazy role players go to Crystal! How's the wife and kids?"

[@goglux2]

GW2 got rid of that problem with the mega server. Basically everyone is in the same shard of zone and if it overflows, another shard is made until it fills an so on an such. Then when a shard becomes underpopulated they offer to switch you with a small bonus to entice you and you end up in a more populated one. I know their engine tech might limit them, but GW2 has the best solution to having population poroblems on servers.

[@closurehascomex]

yeah GW2 is split only into NA or EU and I never noticed a population difference due to the way megaservers work there

[@Qorani_VT]

I'm on Primal and, if I didn't have a medium house, I'd have 100% transferred to Aether by now and I think a lot of people feel the same way about housing or other social ties. At the bare minimum, they need to enable the various social aspects, retainers, firmament, and gathering nodes (this one I'm iffy on but it probably needs to happen) for characters as long as they're within the same region as their home world. I'm tired of having to go through the process of logging out of Leviathan and hopping to Aether out of boredom because we only have 3-5 PF listings going on for most of the day/night.

[@RinBanana]

They're here to kill chaos :(

[@selesiars420]

Chaos killed chaos pf.

[@packoNewportonrs]

DC travel was just a mistake honestly, just a short-sighted solution that caused more issues than it fixed. It's still a mystery why they even added it when looking at world travel and the effects that had clearly showed a system as such would just result in empty servers and one or two populated ones.

[@furyqed5436]

I made a twitter thread about this a while back and it showed that Aether had more High end duties over ALL other NA DCs and some people were in agreeance and others didn't even see the issue and said it was a non-issue. I really don't think the average player cares and that really speaks a ton.

[@aeonlamb]

Even just... having some way to send /tells and see partyfinder listings from other datacenters would be better. Then you could actually see that there's a party for the thing you want to run on, e.g. Primal, so you send a tell, "hey i'm transfering to primal for this, save a spot for me" or something. Still annoying but it would be an improvement.

[@AC3handle]

REALLY wish they allowed cross world visiting from cities OTHER than the main 3. Get a call for S rank, need to port to one of those, get in que to transfer over, wait...get over, find party, port, hopefully get there in time.

[@Oiamh_TheWolf18]

I remember when I prog'd UWU in PF on light - most of my parties had like 7 of us with TRAVELLER in the name XD

[@MatthewSwaine]

Splitting the EU data centre in two was a huge mistake by SE. There are more players on one NA data centre than both EU DC's combined. SE should just add all servers into 1 DC or make it so PF works across DC's.

[@lifebetweenthelines8576]

I'm just happy that I'm not part of the minority that is affected by this. There are discord servers for things like hunts and maps so no need for pf. Also imo, puging endgame progression... removes part of why I love mmorpg. It's about the friendship and bonds you build, not how many clears you can get in a week. Lastly, there are some way more fun ways to play xiv but streamers can't monetize it, therefore you won't see the hours players put into housing or RP concerts, or hunting for just the right glam. In perfectly OK with bleeding edge players going to one DC, as that will be the only DC that dies off as content is cleared.

[@jasam01]

So long as data server transfer is a paid service and profitable to SE. I can't see them trying to fix these kind of issues completely.

[@SuperSnivMatt]

DC travel sucks with how it affected PF and group stuff. I spent like maybe 40 hours in P8S prog, with maybe 1-2 hours being **in the actual instance** I am an achievement hunter so I need my island, retainers, etc. and I can’t access a lot on other DCs. Also the strats might objectively suck like JP Levinstrike. But one thing I hate. Is Hunts. I’m on primal. We are such a good hunt community and we had so many issues of people ruining trains and pulling S Ranks because we shouldn’t wait. It’s community content!! People spawn these S ranks and spend HOURS doing so for some and then someone from Aether says they pull because it’s annoying to wait when they are already there??? To be fair a lot of people from other DCs come to Primal because our Norm is 10x better than other DCs. And I know DRS and BA often have people coming to Primal as well cause we have some active communities there Just sucks that I rarely see 20+ PFs in the evening, with 70% of them being Venues. And then Aether has 250+ at the same time. I stick to Primal for my own convince and also not to perpetuate the problem

[@chelsthegameruiner8669]

That's happened in Crystal too where people pull the monsters early and kill it before the remaining people arrive. The hunt leader had to say multiple times to wait before pulling but the guy never listened which led to many people (myself included) leaving empty-handed with some bosses

[@kazenon]

The "under consideration" part of Yoshi-P's statement does make me pause a little, as there is a culture of "Never say 'no', always try and offer something" in Japan. From a technical perspective, different datacenters do live in different server racks, and it's part of why you have to log out to transfer so they don't lose data from doing other things while you wait as your character data/inventory/etc. gets moved between racks instead of just within the same rack, where shorter distances = faster transfers. It doesn't completely rule it out, but would possibly mean some lengthy transfer times onto the instance server of another datacenter as well as difficulty with party chat as you wait. I'm shocked that Chaos is so underpopulated though, being from Light! I remember some of the big raiding groups all crying "Stay on Chaos, it's the raiding DC!" back when it was due to happen (although I did wonder if this was just the run-sellers trying not to split their client base)

[@powerofk]

As for the US data servers, the not one that’s truly dead is Dynamis. Crystal and Primal might not be as active as Aether, but at least you can get a party for most content (may take a little longer, say 10-15 minutes instead of 5, but it’s doable). Dynamis, however, never took off. I remember MrHappy trying to figure out where the best/worst Party Finder parties could be found for clearing certain content. Dynamis was so dead he couldn’t even get a party together for anything, let alone big raids.

[@バカ外人]

On the Japanese language thing, if most Hispanic people didn't already speak English in the NA servers I wouldn't be surprised if there were a similar situation where PF would have Spanish and/or Portuguese only parties. Also, I really don't blame the Japanese for doing JP only parties, I'm assuming people who speak English over in JP DCs don't bother with learning Japanese, why would they bother learning English, as far as I know said language is not as widespread as it is in Europe or the Americas or I guess doesn't have the same weight. Also JP has different strats for savage and ultimate encounters last time I checked so there's that too.

[@sherimiosga5436]

as a resident of light since the great eu DC split, i see no problems with the current situation

[@sabrinasummers9943]

After watching this I am literally DC transferring to Aether because of the lack of PF on Primal. I do my best not to DC travel if I can help it, but when you're doing content that is old enough most people don't' do it but not so old that it is easy with enough people you need that extra pool of people to draw from or your PF will never fill in a million years. Having cross-DC PF would massively alleviate many of these problems, and I'd imagine it would lighten the load on DC travel immensely by relegating it mostly to people traveling for venues or to hang out with friends in other DCs. However, Yoshi-P is right, it's a huge technical challenge. Seeing the cloud data center test though is a promising thing, as it means that DCs can be more virtualized and thus far easier to change between.

[@Tsavo101]

Guilty as charged... I always HAVE to datacenter travel, with me currently grinding out the Resistence Weapons as well as an fleeting interest in Savage Raiding. Chaos is just sorta like, dead. But I have my friends, and more importantly our FC and FC House on Chaos and frankly none of us want to permanently switch over to Light just for better queue times. We sorta just wish there was a fix to the situation, altough deep down it feels as if this is going to be how it is now and we just kinda, have to deal with it ^^'

[@Cat_Sidhe]

Being an Aether resident for all of this isn't/wasn't much better on our side. At least in the beginning there was tons of "this is how you guys do content here?" types of conversations and arguments. This is partially why I'm against the idea of a universal party finder system because we just don't play the same way.

[@wallflowermiu8473]

Even that looks busy as a Dynamis player. It's incredibly hard to fill groups

[@TheSingingBUn]

I will say this much as someone who's in Materia DC. Its sooo much cosier because we don't have ourselves a 2-dc problem. the Novice Network, fcs and linkshells are you best bets into getting into the community. And even then, because we'll find ourselves bumping into familiar names as we continue doing roulettes, pfs, etc, the community sense feels more established, even more so than my time in aether ironically. the market board, savage, bozja and alliance raids are the only things that suffer the most. Eureka may be a little slower, but its surprisingly manageable.

[@Gingaluna]

i just wish dynamis would pop certain duties like frontlines etc. The community though, is so amazing. Everyone helps eachother and you tend to see the same names often and make tons of friends. Part of me would like that culture to stay but cross dc pfs would also be a massive improvement

[@RuneKatashima]

3:47 where is this whole scene from?

[@RockOnBuckethead]

I don't think it's too much of a problem. I just live on the other dc. Being able to see/join a pf from another dc would be a cool idea though

[@adamantineChelicerae]

tbh i've somehow goofed my way into being a european playing on coeurl, crystal in order to play with friends, but i haven't really had much difficulty finding pfs either on coeurl. it's one of two congested worlds over on crystal, so i guess that's it? i think a way to fix it that doesn't rely on upgrading pf is honestly just to designate some servers as "supercongested" and prevent travelling, which'll inevitably force some people out onto other servers, but i can see how this goes poorly if your entire static has to travel to dynamis solely because none of you can travel to each other's worlds. but, if certain restrictions are lifted like fc buffs (maybe can't apply them but can keep them), retainers and nodes, this shouldn't be too bad either?

[@MrZimmerson]

The amount of times I've seen someone /r me and say "Why are you trying to find a group on Chaos? Go to Light" is not good. I've been playing since Shadowbringers - and there was a healthy amount of players who did savage raiding on Chaos. But, unfortunately and slowly, one by one, people have been packing up shops and moving to Light. Nowadays, i see at peak times - 15 - 20 PFs up for Savage/Ultimate combined, whilst Light during peak times is 70+, for Ultimates (mainly ultimates) and savages. It's infurating as I don't really want to leave my FC and friends to move to Light so i can have the FC buffs - nor do I have the company seals to buy those damned parchments so I can have the same buff as every other fucker on Light. To be honest, we need the Chaos version of LPDU, aptly named CPDU. Problem is - since LPDU is so well cemented - nobody will want to do these strats on Chaos as LPDU exists, everyone is already over there and everyone is just going to do their strats for these fights. Chaos is sort of fucked and I don't know if there's any way of fixing this.

[@GuyN0ir]

Your example of what PFs look like between data centers is much more extreme on the NA DCs. Aether will have 150 PFs up during peak hours. Primal will have maybe 3. Primal used to have a thriving PF community, but it's gone now. The funniest part is a PF from Aether has a good chance of being most or all Primal players. The poor suckers that went to Dynamis never had a chance. They can't even get duty finder groups going.

[@mr_darkrainbow]

To me the most ironic part is that people who were previously of the opinion that a certain DC's pf was "better", inadvertently caused it to become the same or even worse than the others. I had my fair share of experiences in primal PF for sure, but it was never as bad as the experiences I've had with now being forced to DC travel to aether and it makes it that much more frustrating

[@SpazzingEagle]

Definitely love that idea. I dont miss the server only pf. Ever seen a jenova trap party? I dont miss those days still.

[@GrandGobboBarb]

my friends and i started on dynamis and omfg i swear the entire data center is just bots. it's horrific

[@hardware72]

Another lesser thing was before cross DC, it in ways kept DCs filtered from one another. Aether and Primal were where you went to raid, Crystal for the RP club lifestyle. With this change, Aether just basically overtook Primal and now Crystal players come over, and the trapping in PF has gotten worse with all the mixing. That's not all Crystal players of course, but it wasn't known as the spot to go to raid to. Now it's not my problem being on Aether, and in a dedicated static, but I do feel bad for the dead DCs now since you have to come over.

[@Deepseeanenemy]

Do NOT go to materia PF it takes nearly a whole day to fill

[@TheIvoryDingo]

As someone who has pretty much always played on Chaos and hasn't really felt the need to go to Light (as I don't do high end content)... I underestimated the difference in PF. XD

[@NBSgamesAT]

I don't think cross-region matching/party finder is going to be a good idea. But cross dc party finder really is. While I really want to see cross region stuff being implemented someday, let it be like cross dc now. That you don't see what's going on on the other regions.

[@kirablackwolf6220]

on Europa Servers- Chaos is dead and Light is where everyone plays ... hunts, raids, trials, dungeons ... everything is done on Light ^^ its so sad tbh

[@yohanhusei14]

I'm late to this issue but this is the exact same thing I was disheartened about a few months back when 2nd Tier of Pandemonium was released. Words in Elemental quickly spread that the PF in Mana DC is very ez - meaning less wipe and fast clear. We just lost people since Materia DC encouraged the Aus players to transfer there but still after that Elemental DC PF was thriving until the Mana DC shenanigans happened. Less and less people are PFing in Elemental that lead me to actually drop the game. Why can't we just have a region wide PF? We can play with each other and see each other so why not mix them all? That would help the game as a whole right? I mean imagine opening the PF and it has hundreds of listings or an instant Duty Finder Queue? But I guess it's too late for that, I already quit XIV :(

[@jopet216]

Cross DC travel was a mistake

[@Skylar_Spirit]

Why not just make one data center ??? Just put everyone on 1 data center, problem solved

[@turntapeover5749]

Yeah DC travel has had unforeseen consequences.

[@EngelDerVerdammnis]

Ah that's why I've seen you hanging around on Odin for hours the other day. I don't think adding regional PF's would be that hard technically it's just a lot of work to implement. Light and Chaos are in the same Frankfurt Datacenter as far as I know so communication between those shouldn't be an issue physically but logically depending on how much spaghetti-code the 10+ year old DC code is.

[@KuruSeed]

it feels like a huge detriment despite being able to move to a server with all the traffic

[@DaSaiyanChick628]

I was on the Cloud test servers. If our current servers are upgraded to those, ping issues don't exist from every region. When I tell you I've made friends with Europeans, Australians, Japanese, South Americans, and more, I'm not kidding when I say we all got along even with cultural differences and were able to play together just fine with no lag problems. I wish there was a cross-regional datacenter and the cloud test servers make this 100% possible. Of course, we had to use the auto-translate in-game feature and google translate to communicate but it seemed all were perfectly fine doing that. So, seeing this first-hand, I believe there would be no issue

[@Fexghadi]

Same population that already exists on NA datacenters. The only difference is that when you're playing on an NA datacenter you're more or less expected to follow a certain mindset and use English, whether it is your native language or not. Ping is only an issue if you're on console honestly, as PC users have access to specific, under the hood tools to counteract that. I can raid just fine as a caster on any region with them.

[@DaSaiyanChick628]

@Fexghadi Surprisingly we catered to the non-English speakers by trying to translate to their language when we spoke to them. They used just used English to reply back. It was a good mix of people from other countries on the server. Also, I know programs like Exitlag exist but it'd be nice to just log in normally without having to set that up all the time. Cloud Test servers allowed for that

[@oktinaa]

and it's also not as easy as just switching data centres. i like my free company and i don't want to leave them but primal is so dead 😞

[@SorasShadow1]

Honestly I do think their main hang-up towards cross-region is just JP, so let JP be sequestered off on their own if sentiment towards sharing the space is really that bad. At least let Materia play with EU and NA. NA won't ever learn macros, though. NA can barely read chat when someone is politely explaining to please god use the tank lb on SoS normal so we can leave we have like 5 wipes worth of echo already.

[@Rainbowsaur]

It would be great. I don't know how we are in 2024 and still have to deal with split up servers on mmorpgs, I'm actually sick of it. Runescape had this problem solved from the get go, you didn't have to make choices about if you were going to cut yourself off from a group of friends across the world, you could go visit and PLAY with anyone at any time, no "uhhh make sure you make char on this server"

[@lewys9204]

Eu chaos is relatively dead yh I'm on eu light and often find alot of travellers

[@Nasurek1]

Speaking as an OCE player; Yes. Everyone I've talked to about this wants cross DC party finder

[@VaniG91]

I actually do think that there's another solution, just merge all data centers into 1 per "culture" or language. Which would basically mean, a giant datacenter for NA and EU. And 2 datacenters for JP.

[@Terrordragonfly]

We actually had a single datacenter for EU not even that long back which was Chaos. it was split due to overcongregation and got mainly seperated by the amount of population using the french client for chaos and english/german client for light. Which also made sense cause it might be a bit of a meme but due to cultural differences french players were actually pretty poorly regarded among many players during that time. Most commonly an unwillingness of a lot of french players to communicate in any other language then french.

[@D2v0n]

Yay! Thank you. With beenin able to change cross data server I am gonna chill with a friend of mine as "just us." mostly

[@FrazzleCat]

Region-wide should be the default for everything; that is to say that all of Aether, Crystal, and Dynamis should automatically pool for all group-based content. If you don't want to do it, disable it for your group or for your Duty Finder. Problem solved. Done. But just like the block list being useless, this problem exists only out of Yoshida's stubbornness. IF we're lucky, the cloud data center is tech that will be used to fix this.

[@WaterLockser]

My main character etc is on Crystal and call it stubborn, stupid or both both I refuse to DC travel to do content. I will not play a part in killing my DC's PF and will instead despite the hellish nature continue to put up my PF in my DC

[@ver_caster]

7:10 it's Fruity Snacks of the Eorzean Aquarium!

[@Novocaine33]

I'm from Crystal and I don't want to raid on Aether DC. E5S to E8S I skipped entirely. This tier I have only did E9S. P10S look fun and challenging, but I'm not dealing Aether DC culture. 2 pulls and disband along with constant complaining, I'm not interested.

[@magamisic5924]

I wish i could join a static but with my schedule always up in the air with being a kitchen hand, impossible. So i have to do party finder

[@TarossBlackburn]

Primal DC here.... It's horrible really. All I see is "Go to Aether to Raid and EX!" and when I finally succumb because it's DEAD I end up with a whole party full of people from my own dang DC.

[@elodiealaya]

Ain't that the god's honest truth right here?

[@bleth821]

I'm on crystal and it is annoying getting tells to my pf telling me to go to aether.

[@SquallNoctisGUX]

No bs I went to Aether last night and was like “How did Levi go from a good raid server to a barren waste land” 😭

[@Siul_987]

@@bleth821I moved to aether from crystal because I knew it would happen (a month before the dc travel release), also crystal savage and ultimate pf was definitely lacking on players (in savage the further you go on the tier the less players crystal had to offer and ultimates 1/4 the amount of ultimates pf you see on aether before dc travel). If I am honest I think PF should be a connected system with every DC can join from their home DC, because having to data center travel to do pf is very annoying for people that are not on the popular server.

[@7503funkymonkey]

Fellow Primal refugee here. I started noticing the decrease in Savage PFs during P5-8, server hopped over to Aether after I heard people mentioning how many parties there were in Aether, and kind of just settled after seeing it for myself. I cleared P9-12 and BiS geared purely on Aether. I'm still technically from Primal, but it's probably been a year since I logged into my home world in Primal.

[@fireball-dk2gp]

It's even worse on Dynamis. Since it's a newer data center, we aren't very populated, so everyone goes to the other dcs just to go in df a lot of the time, and you're lucky to find any actual pfs up even on weekends sometimes. It's crazy.

[@loneblade201]

Yeah, you all end up on Crystal for some reasoon.

[@fireball-dk2gp]

@@loneblade201 and Aether for Raiding, yeah

[@kosbebot6360]

I'd be surprised to not see a Dynamis refugee in any roulette in Crystal.

[@aznhomig]

I love Dynamis because it's so empty Great for if you want to do some farming in Eureka or Bozja and be left in peace.

[@chelsthegameruiner8669]

​@@kosbebot6360I was a former Dynamics refugee, transferred to Crystal awhile back, though

[@24hr-Gaming]

They should make it so that there's cross data center recruitment. It sucks waiting for a party to fill and not being able to do much during that wait because you're not on your data center.

[@Osteichthyes]

I actually find this really fascinating as we see a real world comparison as more people move from rural areas to the cities. Even with incentives, these rural areas still bleed population, so I doubt that giving out tons of stuff like gil and minions/mount tokens would work. I also want to know more about how the cloud test servers went, and what is going to come from that.

[@kay_faraday]

as someone from a rural area that wants to live there still....... the world won't let me.

[@kay_faraday]

(to clarify it's because there's no available jobs or homes)

[@shawnk7720]

@@kay_faraday there are they're just not inflated corporate city jobs lol minimum wage or hard labor take your pick 😆

[@kay_faraday]

@@shawnk7720 we clearly have different definitions of rural. There's not even minimum wage jobs available where I grew up.

[@Zantetsudex]

The solution is simple (i.e. consolidate PF by regions), and they did say they can do it, but they won't for the asinine reason of trying to keep a community together. This is the same reason they gave for not doing instanced housing.

[@tom8636]

I miss primal so much :( it used to be such a good raiding server

[@chrisME1320]

I miss my reatiners, being able to chat with FC and I wish I could work on island sanctuary while away from my world. Also it feels pretty stupid to get a PF filled and see everyone is from the same outside DC.

[@matthewwysong644]

@@Grimnoire Because everybody's already on Aether. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

[@Shizuma]

It's real bad in NA. Cross DC pretty much killed partyfinder on Primal and Crystal, Dynamis never got started. If you like to do trials or are progressing in savage or ultimate, it gets to be very lonely, you could be spending hours away from their friends and DCs in practice and waiting for parties to fill. I think Rinon has the only real solution here, and it needs to be soon.

[@Nurakarun1]

Sadly I am on Crystal and I almost never see PF for ultimate raids. If I do it's usually Friday and Saturday night around 11pm EST.

[@NotARealNova]

I am a static leader FULL of aether players. I make them transfer to primal to raid, when when theres only 1 or 2 primal players in the static. Its revenge for killing my dc.

[@Xylus.]

As a Crystal player who is new to raiding, coming to the game right after DC travel, I feel this. I didn't even know how to travel to another DC until recently, but I still refuse to for raiding. I only travel to shop for bargains really.

[@Frankthetank302]

​@Xylus. The MB abuse is a bigger part of the problem then raiding lol

[@Frankthetank302]

Also bet your static breaks if you make them do that

[@eimpty]

can i join your static

[@ophereon]

"[Cross-world matching] isn't something that's needed, cross-data-centre is" \*Cries in Materia with only one data-centre that feels dead\* Things feel so dead over here... Isolated from the rest of the world and stuck in our own little bubble with a tiny population. Duty finder is all but dead, party finder is the only way to queue for certain types of content, even old content for people just going through the story, since duty support isn't available for trials and such. I've struggled to queue for some 6.X patch content! Even during the peakest time of the week that still very recent content can still take a long while to queue for. They weren't able to make moving to Materia attractive enough to pull many people from the JP servers, or even the NA servers, so there's just not enough people to keep things as lively as it should be. It's a bit of a catch-22, nobody wants to move because of the low population, but there's only a low population because nobody wants to move. Bad ping was annoying, and it's something I really like about having a DC closer to me, but I'd trade that for the option to queue with people from another region, just to be able to pug content. So from a Materia point of view, since we have no cross-data-centre, we desperately need cross-world.

[@TMoney-wt1cw]

When EW came out, I got tired of the 3k+ player queue on the NA servers, so I decided to temporarily play on the Material data center, mainly since the time zone difference should prevent the crazy queue. I had no idea how dead it was. For playing through the EW story, it actually was a huge plus that the DC was dead because it helped with the immersion. Being the only person on the moon and the edge of the universe was awesome. But it does suck for doing content afterwards.

[@arkhamknightex6929]

Still need help?

[@zombiegodsire]

All instanced and queued content, duty finder, party finder, all of it. Should combine all servers and data centers. With optional regional filters

[@Osteichthyes]

We did just have the cloud server test, so this might not be too far off. The team are definitely looking into new ways and technology to transfer and store information.

[@redgeoblaze3752]

Not too sure about optional regional filters. I feel like having someone in your party half way across the world would just cause way too much lag to be good. It'd be essentially unavoidable, and players would be forced to ask what region someone is from before deciding to keep them in a PF, or kicking them. Keeping it to just your region would be the best solution.

[@acerayquaza]

the main problem with doing this would be latency. As the game stands right now, latency affects weaving during rotations rather than just positioning snapshots for avoidable attacks. Playing on EU I have 20 ping, playing on NA I have 150. The difference between the two for gameplay makes multiple jobs unplayable for me, one of which is my main, Ninja. SE has never admitted to this problem, and until they fix it, cross-region play is unworkable from a player perspective, despite the fact that from a physical/geological and corporate/financial perspective it's also currently extremely unlikely.

[@Xport9]

I'd want it optional. I remember healing a dungeon once, and the tank would just randomly use their mitigation AFTER big pulls, then you come to realization, that they are connected to some random parts of the world with really terrible internet traffic.

[@bluefish239]

@@redgeoblaze3752 I almost exclusively play with someone from Europe on a NA server, the lag isn't really game breakingly bad (unless you are playing fall guys). I imagine if you could match with people or travel to other servers, there should obvious be a way to lock those regions out of your party. That seems a better solution than to take the option away from everyone just because you personally wouldn't use it.

[@chelsthegameruiner8669]

This actually led to a massive stigma in my old FC as someone began inviting randoms from different DCs to the FC Discord for statics, which led to a culture of favoritism and toxicity along with false accusations sprinkled in to get those they disliked kicked from the FC. That FC has since died as they no longer engage with new players who join, leading to an unwelcoming atmosphere. One of the FC members I think got fed up with the situation and transferred to Brynhilder like I did. Its truly unfortunate it had to fall apart, as that FC was made in order to be more welcoming. Its why I also avoid statics now too. Its too much of a time commitment for someone like me who'd rather be enjoying life instead of raiding basically every night

[@NepSpookie]

what fc? sounds familiar to mine

[@Fossil924]

The whole FC concept was a failure from the start it created wannabe elite players which is hysterical considering the game takes little to no skill and as for random FC invites I probably had 1000 when playing maybe those dopey clowns should actually ask if someone interested in joining a FC.

[@TMoney-wt1cw]

Where are all these FCs with drama because all the ones I ever join have literally one normal person that’s cool and then the rest are weebs, furries, flaming homosexuals, or random wannabe socialists. I join FCs just to have chats in the background while I play and I wouldn’t mind having some more entertaining conversations happening to laugh at lol

[@fkkkkkenig]

Same happened to the FC I made with my IRL friends at the time. One of us started inviting a whole bunch of people, created an in/outgroup culture with us being the out, and eventually they made their own FC, severed ties, and then later dumped that FC once they found a static of high level run-sellers to make real money off of. We're no longer friends.

[@erisiannightmare2250]

Bit of a late reply, but as someone who started on-- and will remain on-- Bryn, I hope you're finding it welcoming.

[@aidanmillow566]

Unfortunately this problem also exists in Materia (Not necessarily caused by DC travel but the same spiral of "If I go somewhere else I can find a group easier" so they go somewhere else and there are even less people in Materia to group with) and Regional PF wouldn't really help there.

[@vc4961]

I moved from Materia to Aether, so much better

[@erisiannightmare2250]

Maybe I'm just the architect of my own misery, but... I'm on Crystal. I started on Crystal and I'm not leaving it. I had my first savage tier experience in the PF on Crystal, back when it usually had a decent amount of listings. Now? "lol Crystal doesn't raid, just go to Aether". If I wanted to go to Aether, my dude, I'd have just moved there and treated this like WoW where nothing matters but what you get for yourself. So I refuse. Basically have given up on raiding, even though I very much enjoyed it, but I choose to hold Crystal to better. Here's hoping a better solution is found.

[@skylarkff]

A man of culture. I will happily go down with the ship with you.

[@luchts4547]

Yeah I wish cross-DC travel never happened. In NA, Aether has always been the more raider-heavy DC, but I'm on Crystal and there's always been enough parties and activity to get through extremes and savages without too much trouble. Until DC-travel dropped. Now there's nothing. Like 3 parties in "High-End" during NA prime time. Go to Aether and there are 100-150. It sucks feeling forced to DC travel. It sucks not being able to use retainers or access FC house or Island Sanctuary or gather from timed nodes while waiting for your party to fill. EW will likely be the first expansion I don't finish my extreme tank mount farming before the next expansion, just because I don't want to DC travel. Obviously the solution is to have cross-DC party finder, but I'm guessing that's going to be difficult and take years to implement. I'm also worried this issue won't get any attention since all the big streamers who get to go to media events and whatnot already play on those most-popular DCs anyway, or they have a viewer community ready to fill their party for any content, so it doesn't affect them.

[@KyvannShrike]

I'm meanwhile someone who acknowledges that cross world shenanigans absolutely made savage and ultimate more accessible, and I will absolutely acknowledge that. But I still think it was less healthy for the game overall. Guilds may as well not even exist. Community for anything other than savage and ultimate may as well not even exist. There was also something to be said about having multiple different segregated communities in an MMO. Each of these communities having their different rules and culture was very healthy for the game, and if you didn't like the culture for your server you could just leave. Now the entirety of the community culture and rules are the same game wide, and if you don't like it, you basically have to just give up on interacting with players.

[@NotTheWheel]

I feel like the titling of this is a bit more incendiary than the actual issue you're talking about. You should call the video "FF14 has a Partyfinder problem" It comes down to whether you care about pugging or not. When you say "dead server," I think zero players. But I'm from Louisoix and there are players all around me at all times. With a lovely comfy Static I do content with. I understand you're addicted to the ball-twisting fun of doing Savage and Ultimates... but that's more of a you being an amazing player problem lol Also when you say "dead server" that also causes an Oroboros effect because it scares people into leaving servers they are on. It's like trying to fight a fire with gasoline. 😨

[@J-Dawg81]

Chaos is dead?? I never noticed?

[@StonesCrossRoads]

One of the worst aspects of it for me has been the insanely different normal strats for fights that each DC has. I learned so many fights using Primal standard strats and if I want to join a PF to help out or reprog since it's been a while, I look like a complete idiot for not knowing that the strats are totally different. I've been trying to reprog TEA there and it's been difficult for my muscle memory of what I learned to change.

[@ElricKyra]

The problem is, opening up the crossworld travels killed everything.

[@TheFirstCyberNinja]

I'm on chaos because the newb buff and that's what was recommended to me on reddit (which makes me feel bamboozled now), and I just thought this was the norm. I always chalked it up to bad timing since I usually try to PF at the end of the day or on weekends (which are different since I'm not actually from EU), and people just not wanting to play with randoms in general. I never knew this was an actual problem. I hope cross DC PF is a think because I simply can't switch for many reasons and honestly, I shouldn't have to.

[@Paraguai123]

Raid PF are dead*. But world gameplay (fates, hunts, fishing, duty roulettes) are still full. We need to be careful with how we word this, or we will be part of the problem.

[@RinBanana]

Even non-raid PFs have congregated mostly around the "active" data centre just sheerly through the fact that more people are there to populate the PFs. You'll get a handful of those that don't need to fill on the other DCs but not nearly as much. Probably the only PF section that has parity are non-content PFs, like RP venues and so on

[@Paraguai123]

@@RinBanana I don't know if this is a data center problem but in Primal, I usually fill my Fate grind parties and Hunts are always active. Treasure, Deep Dungeons and doing DR runs also fill with no issues.

[@TheJay104]

Even if it's not worldwide PF and DF, it should at least be region wide. There's no reason why Chaos can't see Light PFs when they can technically see them anyway (with a lil server traveling) So there's no cultural issues as it's already been torn down in 6.1. It would fix Dynamis being dead on NA, as they will actually have PFs and content to look for now

[@luchts4547]

Yeah I see no need for worldwide, who wants to deal with such high latency?

[@marnilauchlan8228]

Basically we were isolated on servers until cross world was released. now that we have cross dc it FEELS like we are isolated again. Not because we can't go to another place, but because if we do we lose our social functions and access to things we do in between waiting for parties to fill.

[@anjoumaaka]

Data center travel is the worst blunder on this game I have ever seen. There are only a few good aspects to it, such as being able to see friends and find better prices on the marketboard. But they should not have allowed players to join party finder and duty finder when not in their home data center. The data centers everyone is migrating to for pf are being bogged down to the point that even with very high quality ISPs you can experience lag. The influx of low skill level players has greatly increased the amount of time it often takes to do reclears. And now it is so bad that people are migrating for duty finder as well. I literally can't get a queue to fill for the Endwalker's alliance raids on my home DC anymore. I have to travel to Aether. And even then the queue times can be bad. It's like nobody wants to get their weekly free upgrade juice for 660 tome gear. And it's even at a point where people are hopping data centers for hunt trains too. I would be much happier if SE just did away with DC travel altogether. The cons heavily outweigh the pros on it.

[@bloodyDeagle77]

This needs to be pinned. Close the borders. I don't wanna see people with "traveler" tags in my weekly reclears or prog parties running it down.

[@Fexghadi]

Aether getting ruined by all those travelers serial-wiping week 71 reclears on bonds 3...

[@anjoumaaka]

As someone who has to travel to Aether just to raid, I would be happy to remain on Primal if all our raiders returned.@@bloodyDeagle77

[@kohlicoide2258]

"I play on Light because Chaos is full with french people and i hate to play with french people." yeah i hear that once why people prefer playing on Light then Chaos

[@penultimania4295]

The sad thing is Light is full of germans so f

[@Vincent.Valentine.]

DC travel killed DC's It never even gave the new DC a chance. Dynamis is dead. Primal, once a thriving DC. Dead. It was the worst mistake SE and Yoshi and Devs have made. Cross-world was fine. There is just too much you can do in DC Travel. DC travel should have been as the player pool was dying, not when people are still joining and the player base is still dynamic and growing. In the NA DC's it's not so much 'populated' as 'community assigned DC's' Aether is 'raiding', Crystal, RP. Primal well it used to be a catch all, pvp, pve, raiding, rp. Now ... raids are non existant, where the rp scene was more than just clubs, that's all it really is now. As far as JP only... I played FFXI for years alongside JP and I never had a problem getting into JP only parties. They would seek me out and invite me. It's just about being polite, show that you are even open to understanding their language and culture and style, most JP are amazing and are extremely friendly if you even read something in JP they've said and respond to it. That's at least my experience.

[@MoiselleTheFae]

Worldwide PF would be best, but one potential compromise for the technical challenges might simply be to let folks *browse* other data centers party finders. You'd still need to travel, and maybe they could add a direct link in the search to let you do so, but it would allow folks to list PFs from their home worlds and still get access to everyone

[@0Zero_]

I doubt the JP playerbase would like a worldwide PF..

[@jin6186]

@@0Zero_ There's a reason why the aussies got their own dc, lol... JP didn't want them there.

[@NebulaHalo]

I remember back in shadowbringers even at like 3 am there was so many party finders going on at once, and a duty you wanted always wanted was going to have a party. Now even during prime hours there will just be a few party finders happening for extremes and savages.

[@seraphize1]

Pros: You can go do 99% of msq on these servers when each patch drop so you don’t end up in situation where the supposedly empty place like UT is filled with players.

[@jm7468]

SE fecked over EU when they split DC had 0 reason the playerbase was already pretty small then you had at the time the main raiders move to chaos during the purge which was ok but we all stayed in our groups and PF sucked and died, now light is more often than not booming in PF and playerbase tends to be kinda better, month or so after content release chaos dies again

[@wavypavy4059]

My main hope for anything like this is that it'd be handed in a way where Materia isn't decimated any further by players leaving. I don't expect it to ever be busy the way big data centres are, but if being on even one of the quiet NA data centres gave you access to all party finder recruitment and duty finder match making in the region I struggle to imagine OCE surviving. If regions became the new standard for the available player pool the way data centres did when cross world was available, I'd ideally want Materia to be folded into one of the other data centres (still keeping the Sydney based physical server location since ping reduction in the entire point of having an oceania data centre). I don't know if that would be possible, but it's probably the only way materia survives cross DC pf.

[@Ryaaka]

The fact that if they don't announce Cross DC PF tomorrow I'm probably moving to light. Its so frustrating