突然醒起, 有篇野係REDDIT 講美版同日版0既分別, 係幾得意
準備移民可能會搬DC 0既朋友可以參考一下
Alt characters, cross-region DCs, and progress parity: a small sharing thread
https://old.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscussion/comments/v0v7nh/alt_characters_crossregion_dcs_and_progress/
I'm not sure how prevalent this practice is, but I have 2 characters I play equally regularly, one each on a different data center. My first one was made in Crystal at Brynhildr, since it is the DC where most of my American and Canadian friends who introduced me to XIV play on. I am from SE Asia, so my ping here is significantly high - 185-190ms with a VPN, 220-240ms without. My second one was made in Elemental at Carbuncle. While Elemental has the largest population of players from my country and Tonberry/Kujata has the biggest share of said players, I chose Carbuncle because it was a preferred server at the time. My ping here is considerably better - 80-85ms with a VPN, and 90-95ms without.
When I was progressing through the story and learning the various jobs, the gameplay culture certainly feels different in some ways. Among other things I experienced, while learning healers, some tanks on Crystal were not afraid to drag me through wall-to-wall pulls. Meanwhile, some tanks on Elemental prefer to limit things to single or double pulls. In retrospect, I would have preferred the "trial by fire" that Crystal does in this regard, though I understand that players on Elemental might have intended to make things easier for someone who only recently started piloting healers. In general, I do see more chatter in party chat on Crystal than on Elemental, especially on long and boring duties like old Praetorium and CT series alliance raids. After I got into the endgame, I feel that Elemental provided a better place for Savage raiding especially, but Crystal is better for other things like old-content farms, hunt trains, and BLU content.
Having finished the current Savage tier on Elemental but not yet on Crystal,
Elemental feels more orderly and - for lack of a better term - "professional". In PF parties, macros are provided as an easy cheatsheet and parties form and disband with minimal fuss. It was also easier for me to find a static (a casual one, given that this is my first ever Savage tier), because Elemental happens to have a few discord servers for this express purpose. Crystal PF, by contrast, is more...outspoken, shall we say. It's nice that sometimes I can have a casual conversation while waiting for PF to fill, but if the run/pulls go sour, often so will the contents of chat. And indeed, it was much harder for me to find a savage static - I eventually got in one composed of the FC and CWLS friends I know. We are still stuck on P3S, sadly.
Maintaining similar progress for most things on both my characters were...interesting. Seeing as I basically went through the MSQ twice, I had more leisure to skip certain parts I've already seen on one character. Player economy (read: market board), which played no small part in progressing my DOH/DOL jobs, feels more cutthroat overall in Elemental due to more vicious undercutting and lower prices overall meaning less profits to be had. I saw the difference in latency/ping between the 2 DCs as a guideline for prioritizing which jobs I levelled; I stuck with higher-ping friendly jobs like WHM on NA, while on JP I felt more freedom to play faster and weavy jobs like GNB and MNK.
On the subject of the immediate community I interact with, I can't say much; on Crystal, I was immediately recruited into a semi private FC of our friend circle; on Elemental, I eventually ended up in a public FC...but only by invitation from one among my friend circle on JP.
I'm interested to see if anyone here plays on different-region DCs like I do.