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So I've barely mentioned it here but I am very, very into Final Fantasy XIV these days, for the simple reason that it's very, very, very good. But like any MMO, it exists within an ecosystem of business constraints, creative choices, and navigating a huge global community, so it can have... issues.
Currently one such issue that I am wrestling with is the matter of which server to "live" on. When the Dawntrail expansion was in pre-release, I was confident that I would end up changing my miqo'te (i.e., nekojin-style catgirl) gunbreaker Nijan into a hrothgar (i.e., jungle cat-style furry), and I tried it... but I was not happy with the result. The changed Nijan was just too different; if I wanted to have a hrothgal (and I did), she would have to be a whole new character.
BUT! This is where the business and community stuff comes in. I still had my "first" character, an abandoned miqo'te paladin, so it was simple enough to change her to a hrothgar instead. I went ahead and did that, renaming her to Aurora, and have enjoyed playing her since. At the same time, I'd been pondering the idea of starting my own Free Company (or FC, the FFXIV version of guilds), not because I particularly wanted to, but because I was dissatisfied with the FC that Nijan was in and wanted to make an FC that was more active, or at the very least where people would be willing to come do content when asked.
I also had friends who wanted to join the game, but (business part) new characters could only be created on the Dynamis data center, a much less populated place than the Crystal data center where Nijan and Aurora lived. Since they would probably want or need a FC anyway, I went ahead and moved Aurora over to Dynamis so they could build characters and sign up.
Unfortunately, the population of Dynamis is... sparse. I didn't know this at the time, but the general consensus seems to be that it's mostly a place for messing with alts or for long-time veteran players who want housing but don't want to deal with the ridiculous lottery difficulty of getting housing on a more populated server. So long story short, trying to do any content that involves creating a party is a painful exercise in hour-long dungeon queues.
Theoretically, of course, that's what the FC is for: if you need a party, you hop on to the FC Discord and call out for the Avengers to Assemble. And yes, that does help, but it also adds a lot of friction to the process. Where the people in Nijan's FC just won't do stuff, Aurora's FC is so small that it's rare there are more than one or two people available to do stuff, whether they want to or not. Sometimes you strike gold and get a full party, but often you end up still running solo or just getting one taker... which doesn't make the queues go any faster.
The quick workaround is hopping data centers, temporarily "visiting" the other world in order to run group content with pickup groups, and then returning to your home world for the administrivia stuff you can only do there. It does kinda make you part of the problem, but it also makes group content actually doable in an evening.
To mitigate this, a while back I floated the idea of migrating the FC back over to the Crystal data center, but that has its own issues. First and foremost, it's still often listed as "congested," meaning they don't want people to migrate over there and charge a $20 fee... if it's even allowed at all (which sometimes it isn't). Getting everyone to shell out because I'd rather go home to Crystal is a big ask. If I was still making the kind of money I did in my web developer days I'd probably just cover everyone's transfer fee myself... but I'm not.
Second, it would require dissolving the FC on Dynamis and re-starting it on Crystal, which would lose the progress and benefits we have accrued (not that big a deal, but definitely a thing). There's also no guarantee that our FC tag of -CATS- (for the Danger Cats) isn't already taken. If anything, I would assume it was. Even less of a big deal really, but I would miss it.
These two factors made the rest of the FC decisively say no to the world hop. Since then, a third wrinkle has popped up, which is that one of our members has gotten quite invested in the sub-community around Eureka, a pocket of content that's its own little micro-culture. While he could world-visit to continue running with them if we moved, he would probably be better served staying on Dynamis and finding another FC among them, which would be a bummer.
Finally, I thought about simply transferring ownership of the FC to someone or disbanding it, selling off the group's assets and splitting the in-game funds among the other players, and just migrating back to Crystal myself. I'd feel bad about that, particularly since folks such as Inkblitz and Sirfox migrated to join me on Dynamis specifically; it's probably the least ideal option, but it is on the table.
And that's where things stand at the moment. World-hopping to Crystal negates FC buffs when you're over there (you can only get FC bonuses on your home world), but it makes running group content possible, and the worlds on Crystal feel a lot more "alive." I don't want to disappoint or cause problems for the people who've collected "under my banner," as it were, but I also think the FC has grown all it's likely to and I don't know if that's enough to serve its intended purpose.
So... oof.
-TG
Currently one such issue that I am wrestling with is the matter of which server to "live" on. When the Dawntrail expansion was in pre-release, I was confident that I would end up changing my miqo'te (i.e., nekojin-style catgirl) gunbreaker Nijan into a hrothgar (i.e., jungle cat-style furry), and I tried it... but I was not happy with the result. The changed Nijan was just too different; if I wanted to have a hrothgal (and I did), she would have to be a whole new character.
BUT! This is where the business and community stuff comes in. I still had my "first" character, an abandoned miqo'te paladin, so it was simple enough to change her to a hrothgar instead. I went ahead and did that, renaming her to Aurora, and have enjoyed playing her since. At the same time, I'd been pondering the idea of starting my own Free Company (or FC, the FFXIV version of guilds), not because I particularly wanted to, but because I was dissatisfied with the FC that Nijan was in and wanted to make an FC that was more active, or at the very least where people would be willing to come do content when asked.
I also had friends who wanted to join the game, but (business part) new characters could only be created on the Dynamis data center, a much less populated place than the Crystal data center where Nijan and Aurora lived. Since they would probably want or need a FC anyway, I went ahead and moved Aurora over to Dynamis so they could build characters and sign up.
Unfortunately, the population of Dynamis is... sparse. I didn't know this at the time, but the general consensus seems to be that it's mostly a place for messing with alts or for long-time veteran players who want housing but don't want to deal with the ridiculous lottery difficulty of getting housing on a more populated server. So long story short, trying to do any content that involves creating a party is a painful exercise in hour-long dungeon queues.
Theoretically, of course, that's what the FC is for: if you need a party, you hop on to the FC Discord and call out for the Avengers to Assemble. And yes, that does help, but it also adds a lot of friction to the process. Where the people in Nijan's FC just won't do stuff, Aurora's FC is so small that it's rare there are more than one or two people available to do stuff, whether they want to or not. Sometimes you strike gold and get a full party, but often you end up still running solo or just getting one taker... which doesn't make the queues go any faster.
The quick workaround is hopping data centers, temporarily "visiting" the other world in order to run group content with pickup groups, and then returning to your home world for the administrivia stuff you can only do there. It does kinda make you part of the problem, but it also makes group content actually doable in an evening.
To mitigate this, a while back I floated the idea of migrating the FC back over to the Crystal data center, but that has its own issues. First and foremost, it's still often listed as "congested," meaning they don't want people to migrate over there and charge a $20 fee... if it's even allowed at all (which sometimes it isn't). Getting everyone to shell out because I'd rather go home to Crystal is a big ask. If I was still making the kind of money I did in my web developer days I'd probably just cover everyone's transfer fee myself... but I'm not.
Second, it would require dissolving the FC on Dynamis and re-starting it on Crystal, which would lose the progress and benefits we have accrued (not that big a deal, but definitely a thing). There's also no guarantee that our FC tag of -CATS- (for the Danger Cats) isn't already taken. If anything, I would assume it was. Even less of a big deal really, but I would miss it.
These two factors made the rest of the FC decisively say no to the world hop. Since then, a third wrinkle has popped up, which is that one of our members has gotten quite invested in the sub-community around Eureka, a pocket of content that's its own little micro-culture. While he could world-visit to continue running with them if we moved, he would probably be better served staying on Dynamis and finding another FC among them, which would be a bummer.
Finally, I thought about simply transferring ownership of the FC to someone or disbanding it, selling off the group's assets and splitting the in-game funds among the other players, and just migrating back to Crystal myself. I'd feel bad about that, particularly since folks such as Inkblitz and Sirfox migrated to join me on Dynamis specifically; it's probably the least ideal option, but it is on the table.
And that's where things stand at the moment. World-hopping to Crystal negates FC buffs when you're over there (you can only get FC bonuses on your home world), but it makes running group content possible, and the worlds on Crystal feel a lot more "alive." I don't want to disappoint or cause problems for the people who've collected "under my banner," as it were, but I also think the FC has grown all it's likely to and I don't know if that's enough to serve its intended purpose.
So... oof.
-TG
