Looking For A New Server

I'm looking to leave Asura. Last night we had 35-45 min waits for ambuscade.
What other servers have good a english speaking community (NA time zones) that still see shouts for pug groups for ambu/escha/reisen/omen/dynamis, but don't have obscene waits?
From the database, I know odin, bahamut, and phoenix have character size, but that doesn't tell me anything about actual activity or what language is the main for that server. I have nothing against Japanese or European players, but would prefer to play with people with whom I share a language and a time zone.
Any insight to the other servers would be appreciated.

If you hop to bahamut I got a shell for you to join with a big social scene. WelcomeHome is the shell and it’s a good place to meet folks and get PUG started.

Usually Bahamut has 500-600 people on NA prime time.
My shell has 5-10% Of that in it usually.
Wait times aren’t usually bad for things and there is just enough people to get most content done fairly easily.

Nothing. We don't shout for anything, only rely on connections to build ambuscade pt. If you are kind of player that just sit in town waiting for groups to magically pop in yell, then any Not-Asura servers wont be a good choice.

However, if you are kind of player that constantly reach out to People, then small server is extremely efficient for ambuscade.

For example, few days ago I wanted to do some last min ambu 2hr before maint. Since nobody in my ls was interested (they are all capped on points), I had to "PUG".

So I randomly grabbed one person with pt flag up. Then I asked "you know anyone that needs ambu?" He gave me a name, I invited that person. I sent tell to 3 other people from outside of ls sitting in town, I either know them through previous PUG, stream or they just took the opportunity to reach out before.

10 min later a "PUG" was made and we did D/VD successfully despite all of the members are completely random strangers from different places. Despite I made a 6/6 D/VD pt so fast, I didn't yell one single time. I almost never use yell channel to recruit anything.

That's how we normally do "PUG". We don't shout, just recruit through word of mouth and connection building. If you are looking for a server that people do ambu in Asura way by yelling elite players in public channel, then just join on whatever job that's opened, you will have a very hard time on any of the not-Asura server because yell channels on small servers are basically dead. And it's easy to tell on FFXIAH.com

However, if you are kind of player that constantly reach out to People, maintain good relationships with major ls, then it's usually very fast to fill up slots and it's not particularly frustrating to reset a failed run because it's almost always 1-3 pages wait.

In terms of dyna/omen, its not PUG friendly on small servers due to KI lock out. People thats interested all has groups, so you would need to join an existing group as well. It would be difficult to do dyna/omen with PUG if you just want to do specific zone at random time and shout for people.

Tl;dr: servers with similar life style as Asura but less congestion doesn't exist. Everything on small servers are drastically different from Asura way. If you leave, you'll have to change. Do not expect to PUG escha/omen/dyna/ambu the way you expect to.

You want to leave Asura..



Live look in right now of Asura:

Facts

Lol dead

Afania's post nailed it for what Phoenix is like too. There are enough people to get things done, and minimal waits, but it's not really a shout-heavy place. For the most part, it's about getting in an LS, making a few friends (who might invite people THEY know if you're trying to make some sort of PUG-ish party), etc.

You'll still get the occasional shouts for Ambu, CP during campaigns, etc. - but it's not the primary way of getting things done. That said, it's certainly possible to build something like an Ambu party that way (or more commonly, maybe if you're 4~5/6 with LS mates and want a fill a party, shouts tend to work fine).

Afania's description is essentially Lakshmi too. I imagine its the same for almost all the smaller servers. You find an ls, you get to know people, make friends, and you get into content like that.

Shouts are very rare here, but plenty of content is still getting done by people and there's no waits and very little competition for things like cp camps.

If you like to do everything by shouts, it's not for you. If you prefer to run with a tighter knit group of people you play with frequently, it's the way to go. It's also a hell of a lot less stressful to do content and fail if you're with friends, since you're about 100% more likely to regroup and successfully fix your strategy than a shout group that has never played together before.

Can't do Bahamut. Tychefm is building a wall.

This reminds me of going to the beach on Memorial Day weekend or July 4th. You can choose to adjust your travel schedules to a different time when everyone isn't flooding the highways and not subject yourself to crowds so much, or you can deal with it and suffer. Or you can just choose to go to the beach on another day. Or move.

As for Asurambuscade, this is the case every month and is not unique. And it's going right into the weekend. As a general rule of thumb, if you're a PUG kind of person on asura, you should never ever think of joining Ambuscade within the first week of new release, especially on the weekends and at the end of an ambuscade cycle hours before the monthly update. You can expect the typical crowd of people to rush the lines and try to get their "first" and "last" minute points in, and on Asura, that wait is not worth it. You will experience this every month, at the same time, and there's no getting around it.

You should be smart enough to avoid that and spend your time doing something else (whatever other campaigns are going on, omen, dynamis, whatever) rather than subject yourself to that frustration. Especially long wait times are at night, during Prime NA hours (5-10PM EST). When I was doing Ambuscade religiously, that seemed to be the normal routine. Once I started adjusting my ambu times to not be during peak points, I got quick fights in and was done shortly. Never had this problem.

This is one of the biggest complaints of being on a large server. You inevitably will have to face longer wait times for things that smaller servers don't experience. Last night, there were 5 parties doing Omen. I actually got a message saying I was #91, and the line was at #90. I fumed at the party (jokingly) that the one-minute wait to enter was horrendous, since I'd never experienced wait times in omen since it was released. It's just one of those things that, if you're not willing to work around it, moving is a reasonable option. If you're impatient like me and have only so little time to play a week, whenever i see something that's more than 20min wait, I just disband and do something else solo. I can't subject myself to that kind of delay for an event unless I'm the party leader forming it and I need to get it done. You don't have to subject yourself to that either.

Odin has plenty of shouts no matter what language you speak. Our population is pretty good but as for waits in line someone said 20 mins but it depends on day and time. I do agree with everything stated here about other servers. Joining a big social linkshell be pretty good too. Another trick is to change servers on ffxiah and look at people’s shouts yells during the times you’re on to see which server best suits you. Even though I’m sure no other server can compare to asura pug shouts.

Adding to this.... 9PM - 2AM EST any day of the week is also probably the most congested time of the day for doing ambu. If you go earlier or later, the lines arent bad (Aside from that first week).

Yeah, DEFINITELY this. There were the other thread with similar discussion with opinions from Asurans about how they prefer to quit PUG after 2 VD fails because there are more(and better) choices out there and wait line is long.

As an organizer I can't imagine the stress of having to get VD win 1/2 with 6 strangers. Most of the time pt really needs time to tweak play style and strategy to make it work, and it's MUCH harder with 6 people that you don't know.

For example in PUG the other day I used the same VD strategy as LS 4.5 min clear pt, it flat out didn't work Because the gear/skill/experience from PUG members was not quite the same as members from a dedicated endgame ls. I had to change the kill order entirely to get VD wins.

If people rage quit in the process I would be frustrated as *** lol.

I think most of us who prefer to play on small server just prefer to play with only a few people and find ways to make pt work through communication and net working. If this process isn't your thing, then small server probably won't be attractive.

Tychefm for president 2019.

Line length will also vary on how easy/hard the V1 is that month also. If it's SMN burn or very unfriendly to PUG melee style, you will hardly have issues with line length. During Frog v2.0, zero line length because most people were buying the clears or using smn method. Many LS members ignored doing it for the month because it was that annoying. I opted for the PUP method, but your average player doesn't have RUN or PUP geared. When it was Mamool or Dullahan month, I saw longer lines.

This month its pretty annoying fight V1 as well, so I don't anticipate you seeing long lines next week until the day of the July update.

I'm sorta depressed by this his show on the Travel Channel was good.

I'm trying to think of a server that is more dead than Phoenix...maybe Titan ?

Ok, I was gonna say Anthony Bourdain, but I didn't!! Awesome setup for it tho!

This thread is about dead celebrities now and Asura make it happen.

Only 1 person said that he quits VD after 2 losses. and he says he only does it "at times".

Well, I guess thanks for some of the useful comments above. Some of it was a bit hostile and rude, but hey the internet.

1. My playtime is limited. I work, have kids, and help around the house. Evenings and weekends are the only time I have. Don't just assume and call me stupid. That being said, Ambuscade was the content I wanted to do last night. I couldn't because of waits. Thus I am moving servers because I recognize the problem.

2. A lot of people chimed in with "no one shouts for events" but if I form the parties, do people join or is it LS only. I don't mind joining an LS and having a set of people to work with, but again, with kids and a job, I cannot make all of the events groups often want and I end up letting people down. That's why I prefer to pug or join a pug.

From the sounds of it, Lakshimi and Phoenix are a no go. Bahamut gave a couple offers. I will check out the shouts tonight when I play and maybe create an alt to see what some of the other servers are like.

Congratulations OP. You are making the right decision. Bismarck has Ambuscade and Dynamis shouts. Along with the occasional Omen boss. We don't have a lot of people nor do we have much HQ gear on AH.

That was not the intention of sounding harsh actually. Apologies to the tone of that, I guess it could be taken a few different ways. Sorry for the delivery. You quoted one line out of three paragraphs where I was basically explaining the entire Asura dilemma with Ambuscade. Try not to take offense to that though, that was not the entire context. I'm in the exact same boat as you with a kid job wife house and honeydo list to get done every week. I know the struggles of only being able to play once or twice a week very well. I'm not assuming at all, I'm giving you the rundown from someone in the exact situation as you. If you look at Asura shouts from 1am-2am, normally its me shouting for Kin boss clears. I all too well know the struggles of someone frustrated by wait times when play time is limited.

That being said, the full message was that you need to be aware of Asura's "rush hour". If you want to go to the beach on Labor day and can't leave home until 1pm, you have no choice but to deal with the traffic rush. If you're smart about it (doesn't mean you're stupid btw...), you can adjust your travel times so you aren't caught in that messy traffic. Ambuscade on Asura is the same thing. Moving may well be the best option, but if 30-45min wait time is what really ticked you off, believe me when I say that is not the norm of wait times on Asura. It's only like that immediately after and before an update. It's not so much of a problem of overcrowding or long wait times, its just your typical rush hour. It happens every month at the same time, every time for 1-5 days. It goes away. Adjust your entry times accordingly (if possible) and this issue goes away. If you can't do that or won't, your other options will have to be exercised.

All I was saying.

Need HQs on your AH eh? :incoming inventory:

It depends on the ls and I certainly can't speak for every ls out there.

On small server people are less likely to kick others out for playtime reasons. If people do that, pretty soon they won't have members in the ls because server isn't big enough to be picky with people. Most of us just accept the fact that we have to play with casual/inexperienced player at some point and work on solutions.

However, you do get more if you invest more.....you are more likely receive help for things if you actively participate in activities with people. This is true regardless of server.

When I group the priority goes to ls > People in my connection circle, who has expressed interest in the content to me before >>>>>>> shout. Only very very few people shout on regular basis. So if you don't join ls or run around express interest in content, you will have VERY hard time doing anything. And vice versa.

Fenrir GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Valid but all I’m getting out of this is

I look forward to the "I'm tired of being on a dead server with nothing to do...I'm going back to Asura thread"

I've been on both types of servers (dead and full).

And I'm on Asura with 90% trolls and juvenile delinquents. But some of the delinquents are getting better.

If you want functional PUGs in shout, Asura is the only choice. If you have very limited playtime and can't commit to a fixed group, Asura is the only choice.

You(and others like you) made that choice for yourselves when you all mass merged into Asura. No other server will ever have a healthy PUG population again, simple fact.