Vaska.sedai1: Recently reached lvl 100 BLM on Primal/Excalibur and never traveled to another DC. I'm very appalled that people would leave an instance mid-fight because it wasn't moving fast enough. It's rude. If you sign up then you commit and stay until the end. How will people get better if they're not given a chance to try? Being part of a community includes giving others grace.

ArborusVitae: I think something that could help, and something that I think helped me when PFing DSR, is setting some sort of expectation in the listing. Like there were A LOT of DSR parties p5 and beyond listed as "one food to prog point or disband". Having some sort of built-in time limit I think helped people stick around through a few meme wipes in p2/p3 since they could justify sticking out a food buff instead of leaving immediately when people made mistakes early in the fight. Especially on a fight like DSR where it's going to take a huge number of pulls to do in PF.

bibo0024: you are not entitled to people's time. people are allowed to leave a group for whatever reason they want

Dontreadthis0: I think the issue is ultimately that because there is so many people/parties in aether PF, a lot of people(especially people who are prog lying lets be honest) will hop around PFs because there will be so many of them. This gets even worse if its a fight is rough on a specific role(usually healer, but not always) meaning that specific role has a borderline incentive to be really picky and flaky on what PFs they join.

while a cross DC PF might solve the issue of aether being congested(which as an aether player I would greatly appreciate)I think it will lead to people being impatient and leaving PFs early even more, simply because they can with effectively no penalty cause their are so many other PFs. Which I think could also lead to the issue of people using places like tomestone or fflogs a lot more to double check if people are lying which could cause its own issues.

SlantedWater: It sounds like you just got bad people. You make some solid points. I think the cross data center pf will be fine. For the most part aether is already that. Imagine adding 10 more parties to it.

I do think its unfair for you to label aether as the toxic data center when you try to make the point that balmung isn't the rp creep data center. Like plenty of people from all data centers bring those to aether balmung and other data centers. I can bring up several parties on every data center that have ended in joy or frustrations. People are just gonna people

NayaiDeaure: Im and Aether Native, whos cleared every fight in PF, all Ultimates, Savage, EXs, Criterions, Deep Dungeons, every single fight in this game, on Aether. I WAS a Crystal Native, but as a HC Raider, I felt I had no choice but to move. Im not a top tier Raider, and I mostly consider myself to be ok, ive been Flamed, Verbally Assaulted, put on Avoid Lists, and drug thru the mud, sometimes for understandable reasons, sometimes not, but through all of it, ive had to have the presence of mind to just not let it get to me. And thats extremely tough, but valuing my time as well as others, has been the only thing to keep me sane. I use the 1 Food rule for Parties, where if its just an absolute disaster after 30 mins, ill kindly back out. But if a group is scuff, but promising, ill give it a second food. After tho, its make prog or bail. Dealing with the sweaty Raiders tho is sadly just a part of Aether being THE DC for raiding. Parsers, HC Ultimate Raiders, EX Farmers, its just an amalgamation of a lot of different HC mindsets. And often the more casual Raiders just get chewed up by the Machine. Hang in there tho, and GL pushing for the 11S Clear <3

OrangeSorbet-s3o: crazy deciding people's personality based on their data center.

astrealove1: It's pretty much the same for EU. Chaos DC is pretty much dead, if you want to do content you do it on Light DC.

7:30 That's actually a bad example you're making here. If you already have 4 people, then it would be better to just start a group on your own, you already have half the party filled.

AShortDistanceAhead: Another fun and interesting video! It's almost spooky how, at times, it's like hearing my own self monologue when I'm pf'ing (wait for 40 minutes to fill, someone leaves after 2 pulls, seriously.. aaaah!).

Anyway, I kinda agree primal is a much better experience a lot of the time. Not just the better attitude (often more chill and collaborative) but even the quality of players. I spent literally 3 full days in Aether trying to prog m11's split arena and none (I really mean that: none) of the parties could even get there. Next evening I was back in primal, only two parties around but in both cases reaching prog point on first or second pull.

wordybirdy-z6x: I am a big advocate for cross-pf, but I do see your points in the issues that these things will cause. The prog liars will probably take even more advantage of open groups because there will be so many more available.

Now.. my gripe on DC travel. This is a totally "depends on who you ask" situation, but I never enjoyed it because it limited my gameplay. If you have to sit on Aether like a lobby waiting for your parties to fill, you can't do as much things like you can do in your home DC. I am from Crystal too, and boy I would love to sit in PF while doing Island Sanctuary when it was new at the time in Endwalker, but no; I had to choose one or the other since I can't access my island outside of my home server. I can't decorate my house, access my retainers, get rare nodes out in the open world. I can't sit at the FC house and/or talk to the FC members in the chat while waiting for the PF to fill. ALL of that was taken away with DC travel, and that killed a lot of the enjoyable vibes I find with this game. Some folks out there might not think that is a big deal, but holy moly; it was a huge chunk of my joy in FFXIV just whipped away due the situation the community decided to put itself in.

..and to boot, it destroyed a lot of free companies. This is one of those topics that gets swept underneath the rug, but when members are split apart because activity A needs to be done on this DC, while activity B on another... it isolates people, especially when it disables the chat. I am sure the developers did not intend for this, but not everyone in my FC used discord. They were just a bunch of random players we picked up from different activities, and that all went away when the core group of people had to consistently stay off Crystal to raid. Players felt no one was on or talking anymore and started to leave. Endwalker is known to be a lonely expansion to a bunch of people, and I feel DC travel has contributed to that.

This might come off as bitter, but I do find it unfair that people who reside on Aether or any other popular datacenter outside NA can get the best out of their $15 month subscription while others who are from other datacenters have to give up a lot of things to simply do one activity (Raiding). I and many others try to revive Crystal's PF, but we can't move the community anymore, and it just sucks that it ended up this way. I've basically given up on raiding due to this and only will go with friends to do stuff if I can stay on Crystal.

I think DC travel has a lot of pros....... but I wish it was just pros. I don't know how healthy our servers will get with cross-dc pf, but I don't think the current system should stay as is.

catfood4142: although I agree with everything you said, but doing a static only and none standard strat is usually, a red flag.

you do not need more dmg to kill the orb faster, and putting healer in vs melee in is not enough to make a 7.5% damage difference to one less dash, but awhole bunch of other issues such as way harder to heal, way more mana cost, way risker, harder to recover death..

having two melee in the bubble is not big enough of a dps difference to make the boss dash less and actually kill it faster.

For me, I have subbed way too many, helped way too many statics, those "my static special strats" are designed to priviliage certain individual for their incapabilities, pf standard strats are not often the best but often the most thoughtful of all, and designed, adapt and evolved for reasons for everyone to accept.

It may come off wrong but, week 10? on m11s prog is questionable, those players definitly arent all bad players but definitly players don't want to commit to hardcore progging early, arent eagle for the gear, and less practice than the ones has done week1 or 2, with less practice yes..they are worse on that spefic tier.

can they be a better player in reality? aboslutly. but they choose to lay back and take it slow. there fore...less practice.

And lastly, yes I can see that, players raid on aether can be bad, and players from crystal can also be good, but the trend has indirectly caused players who take raid seriously migrate, and erp players likely to transfer and travel ....to erp.....there definitly are..less chance a player from crystal will do better than aether raider on a grant scheme.

thats just math..

khamz5589: I just finished your video ^^

As always ; I am impressed by the way you can have free talk for more than half an hour

That's always amazed me

That said

Its kinda funny to me (someone else said it on this comment section already )

We have the EXACT same problem on EU servers

Like CHAOS (my server) is like the RP / not serious / casual players ... and we all go on LIGHT (the tryhard / raiders server )

And like you . Almost ALL THE TIME ; when i go on LIGHT for Pf (i have no static )

At very least , half of the time the players are from CHAOS ...

(you know ... the non serious servers ...)

Anyway ...

For the impatience/ toxic issues . I don't think its because of the people from a specific server

I just think some raiders need to touch some grass ... >-<

They just need to relax and take some break (like you said in your video )

For the rest ; i am 100% agree with you

Its like i made this video myself ^^

You're so reliable !

needMoreInput: It just too many WoW players bleeding in. The OG ff players are the helpful ones that take time. WoW crafted people who went after selfish goals, not group goals. And yes. I played both WoW up to Panda. But most my time and my start was in FFXI beta. There was always a difference between the players you interacted with then, and you still have it now. It it just that people porting from wow bring their BS with them.

cassw_: I'm glad someone has talked about this! I started playing around a year and half ago, and recently have wanted to start doing more hardcore content but primal PF & duty finder is wayyy too brutal ;-; traveling to aether sacrifices mood/vibes for clears unfortunately. cross data center PF is something im looking forward to with caution....

mihyunbae: I'm from Crystal and raided in Crystal PF since E1S back in Shadowbringers. Back then, PF was popping because it was the start of COVID and the WoW Migration, so there were a lot more things to do and join in. I cleared E5S - P4S in Crystal PF, but I don't think anyone remembers that during those times that PF could take 1-2 hours to fill, too. Crystal definitely has good players, but a lot of times those people were already in statics. I remember clearing a couple of weeks into the tiers back in Crystal as well.

There is a stereotype that Crystal people are bad at raiding, but I personally did feel limited in growing as a raider in Crystal. Because a lot of raiders are in Aether, maybe Crystal didn't have the foundation to teach each other how to raid or even where to start, but I remember giving feedback on how to do mechanics in P3S or saying when buff windows should align, and I felt Crystal players were much more sensitive to taking constructive criticism. I've cleared all the ultimates and raid tiers starting from P9S to now in Aether PF because I personally felt like I met a lot more people who cared about raiding there than Crystal. I cleared week 1 this past tier with PF as well. I like PF because I get to join what I want and my terms. If people leave after a few pulls, sometimes it is what it is, but I appreciate that there are a lot of PFs that you can join in Aether.

Also, PF isn't for everyone. PF are essentially pugs that bang their heads against the wall endlessly to clear, and it depends purely on how much time you put into it, and being realistic with what your expectations are and what you want as a raider. If you feel PF sucks, is toxic, and is a waste of time, that's perfectly fine. Statics are probably better for you. There are pros and cons to both statics and PF.

As another comment said, it sounds like you just got bad people. There will be toxic players in every game, but there are a lot of good people there, too. Also, recommend grouping up with people you trust and like to raid with, keeping a positive mindset, and setting a built-in time limit. I don't think Cross NA PF will do any harm, and tbh I would like it so I can go back to Zalera lol.

EDIT: Also, totally forgot, but most of the Crystal servers were part of Aether until YoshiP split it up because Balmung was starting to get too populated, and they wanted to create another DC. This was in a live letter back in March of 2019, which is why people think Crystal is the ERP quarantine zone.

MsSjofn: I'm on Crystal and the way PF curled up and died was so goddamn stupid to me. My static has done all its recruiting on Aether this expansion ... and it wound up so six of us are not just from Crystal, but from BRYNHILDR. At least it makes it easy for the other two to travel to us, I guess.

(and yes, Aether players who think that makes them inherently better at raiding drive me fucking crazy)

dracodevil.: I completely disagree that a cross DC pf would be bad in any ways.

I agree that we need better filters, because both the pf rules and pf filters are pretty bad.

AlastorXIV: Crystals top players are just good as good as anybody else's its the median player that gives them a bad stigma, but that problem is only exacerbated by the fact that they have fewer opportunities to get practice because their pf is dead. I have a lot of friends on crystal and will hop over there when they can't get on aether to host parties for things, as much as I hate to say it the average player is definitely not as good.

I raided the entirety of Endwalker on crystal before I was able to move to aether permanently , and rarely were any pugs able give me any competition. Whereas aether pugs have given me a run for my money all throughout Dawntrail they are less patient because the good ones (or good enough ones) are a dime a dozen, you can just replace bads with someone better more often than not. Of course if you're patient enough any group can clear and you can carry people, but not everyone has the time/wants to spend that much time dragging someone through a clear/reclear.

Lauradrewieske-z1h6m: Elise Crystal has been known to have actual cues unlike Dynamis which is have been known to take literally over an hour to get into Crystal tower

pochen23: I think the moment you rescue them out of the bubble is probably when they think it is not a flexible thing. Cuz if it is flexible, then you would just let it go and let the melee do the mechanic. At worse it just randomly pick 2 in the bubble and the rest will have to adjust. It is kinda hard to heal during that for certain healing jobs so that's probably why they think they can't do it, not that they don't know how to do the mechanic. Also just something to think about for future reference, my static did the entire tier using our selected strategy with some modification, but now that we are done with reclearing as a static, whenever we have to PF for 1 or 2 players, we do exactly how the PF do the fight. It is courtesy to whoever joining in so they don't need to learn a completely different strategy or even just minor changes so that it can go smoothly. So I think there are certain things for let's say a 7/8 static can do better when they have to PF and courtesy is also to communicate all the known differences ahead of the time if you decide to do it the way your static do it. I certainly wouldn't have left and I think anyone joining a PF group for less than the food duration is kinda meh, but I can understand why.

VashimuXIV: I feel like this is the sort of phenomenon that happens when you have a culture of a server being the “dedicated raid” center. Is it always full of bad apples? No. I highly doubt people who dip after a few pulls are doing it maliciously. Though I think it’s cultivated a lack of patience in most players who aren’t willing to hash things out on the worst occasions. Because why would anyone want to do it in most situations? It’s understandable that some people just prefer to cut their losses. I just feel like staying for at least a lockout or communicating would be a nice show of grace. Again, I can’t tell people how to spend their time; but I feel like if you hop in a Party Finder you should be willing to meet others half way unless it just completely falls apart. A bit of grace and communication goes a long way in helping people clear fights more. And I just wanna help people and show others helping me respect.

catfood4142: also not saying I support or think the mechanic is at the right to mental breakdown, they are probably a total idiot.

but ppl arent here to make friends though...

It is another proof of the collective energy of pulling ppl to aether to raid, and expect the best outcome of raiding to take raid more seriously, and eagle for the clear, that said....mental breakdown, flaming, and biting at everyone is total nonse.

But I will say, I definitely find less enjoyable on some of those ...casual statics where they cannot stop laughing...flirting...trying their hardest to make the female member laugh 24/7...constantly throw out sexual jokes. That is FAR MORE STRESSFUL to deal with.

And I am NOT foreshadowing crystal raiders does that.

More patient can also be more laid back, and the category [hardcore]. [midcore] etc exists.

Church-i7q: You may be against this and if so then that’s fine but check tomestones, if you really want to clear in pf check tomestones, I guarantee you will have a smoother time.

If you are 4 percent enrage set the pf at that percentage and kick people who aren’t there, 10 percent and under works, otherwise people who aren’t clear ready will join, I guarantee that this works, or set a clear for one and vets will join to help.

Spark_of_Fate: @Aitherea don't know if you are going to read this, but I felt compelled to comment regardless. In honestly, and please don't take this the wrong way, but this was just one big "complaining" video. Yes, you did point out some valid criticisms and potential pain points for the Cross Data Server PF, but ultimately, you did not give any constructive criticisms with possible solutions. If you needed to vent, that's good and all, and these pain points should be heard, but when the biggest issues is humans being impatient and mean, there is no way to fix that, and any complaints about it is moot. That is, unfortunately, the nature of humanity. Get us in a group, and there will be a rude person to spoil the bunch. When it comes to a rude player, its best to just kick those types of people out of parties. Even if it is uncomfortable, as you mentioned, you need to overcome that uneasiness and speak up. Curtail it when you see it and let it be known that it will not be tolerated. If they don't improve their interactions, cut them out and find another.

As for people not sticking around and quitting after few pulls, or even a single pull, there is nothing that can be done about that. That is a wider issue with our current culture as a whole (I won't be going into "Instant Gratification" issues here), and no actions implemented from a developer's view point is going to fix that. That issue lies with humanity. Bring it up, talk about the issue, and be a voice for change, but I sincerely don't think any solution at developer can create would fix an issue that lies at the very core of humanity. Personally, I would realize that no solution is going to be the magical cure to fix all issues, and instead focus on the positive aspects. The developers are going to implement a solution that will address the bigger issue at hand, implement it, evaluates how it goes, and come up with tweaks to fix the tighten up the remaining pain points.

Ultimately, just try changing your outlook into something more positive. Voice the negatives, certainly, but don't overly focus on it. It's only going to drag you down and ruin every other experience.

GennyD: I just want to say that as someone who used to be a Balmung native, a lot of the gooners and people in shout and yell chat saying problematic things sometimes are all from other DCs...

AsteroidField: Took me 20 hours to clear M10s the first 2 weeks on Aether.

Sometimes, you get good people who are chill and some who you could tell where bullied in there life and take it out on others.

I needed to take a step back from the game after clearing. It would be nice to see changes in the future!

4NSW3RM3: TL;DR: I agree with your point, and I don't bother with PF unless I'm with a large enough group of friends

The only thing Cross Datacenter PF fixes is not being able to travel to Aether. Impatience, people not reading, prog lying, all those community based issues are still going to exist, and the devs can't really fix that (maybe the prog lying they can, since fights are on relatively fixed timelines).

Granted, it wouldn't change much for me. I tried PF in LHW, and I made so little progress when compared to doing it with friends. Between trap parties and 2 - 3 pull disbands (even had a nice disband at seeing our prog point because a DPS who couldn't get there cleanly accused the rest of not being able to get there cleanly), I basically only got practice on the first major mechanic. And seeing the first 4 minutes of a fight over and over, and then waiting 30-45 minutes for a new PF to fill to repeat the process just wore me down. Got a group together, actually managed to prog, go back to PF, now it's the first 6 minutes and no progress because I spend more time waiting for parties to refill than actually raiding. Same thing happened with M9S. First night our group got together, we saw platform/adds 2, but in reality were at Aetherletting for our prog point. Go to PF, never see Aetherletting. Get back with them, get to Adds 2 as our prog point when bringing in first timers. Go back to PF, still can't see Aetherletting consistently. Granted, I'm not a great player, I could be the problem. But either way, PF just doesn't work for me.

Mar 23 2026

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