The Mac OS X Client's absymal performance is a joke.

[Tatsuo]

Well, I knew that the performance would be going to take a hit, but I didn't expect it to be that severe. I have a late 2013 Macbook Pro (GT750M model) and while FFXIV runs with about 50-60 FPS via Bootcamp/Windows on the preset "Laptop (normal)" on 1680x1050, it barely runs with 20 FPS in the same zones with the same presets via Mac OS X.

I'm sorry, but this is not acceptable. Unless there is a major bug/glitch/whatever makes it run that bad, I would like to have the license for Mac removed from my account for a refund.

From reddit:

The new Mac client is a catastrophe. Which, incidentally, also cost $60. Fundamentally, this stems from it being a fairly lazy wine port.

It is slow: at the lowest settings, I get 20-30fps with lots of stuttering. (At the highest it's actually not much worse — with the stuttering, it's annoying either way). Yes, I meet the requirements. No, this is not an intrinsic feature of mac gaming (slightly slower? sure. only barely playable? no.).

The patcher is awful. It hung completely once. It doesn't render the progress bar correctly; sometimes it just doesn't render anything at all and you just get a black rectangle. You can still click on the rectangle, though; it seems to be strictly a rendering error.

The quality of the in-game rendering is abysmal. For instance, the ground here is missing.
It's unstable. It's crashed multiple times without me even really trying to do anything. (The built-in crash reporter then also failed.)

Full-screen mode is broken. It successfully takes over all screens (in violation of Apple's recommendations, but I'll let that pass because it was at least listed as a known issue), but then the rendering is offset such that it only fills some portion of the screen. You can't see the missing parts, and you just have black on the other side.

The controls also don't work as I might like (I use one of those mice with a numpad on the side — modifier keys on the keyboard don't do anything if I use the buttons on the mouse). I'm willing to believe that's not SE's fault, though.

All in all, this is about the behaviour I'd expect if I just stuck the game in wine and crossed my fingers. It would be deeply questionable if this were a free addon, and is completely unacceptable for something that costs an extra $60. It's not just me — there are a few reports of this around.

[Nemna]

I'm having the exact same issue. Frankly, I think it's an embarrassing blemish -- not unlike the 1.0 debacle. They shouldn't have even bothered if it was going to be this bad. I've submitted a support ticket making a similar request (remove/refund my Mac client bundle; I'll stick to Boot Camp for now).

I'm seeing similar threads starting to appear on Reddit as well.

[troyster]

Oy, this isn't promising. I just purchased it this morning, but I can't even get it to patch. It keeps choking on an error. I was worried when I read that it wasn't a true Mac client. Perhaps I should save myself the trouble and just ask for a refund now.

I don't understand how anyone at SE thinks that this is acceptable. Some can't even get it to run and patch correctly, others such as yourselves are getting abysmal performance on hardware that otherwise plays it quite well under Windows. Why offer a crippled and debilitated Mac version if this is how it's going to perform?

So disappointing.

[zegota]

It's especially galling they made people buy a separate license for the Mac version if they didn't even bother developing a native Mac version.

[GaryREM]

It is ridiculous.

I can run 2560 x 1440 smooth as silk around 35fps in Bootcamp.
In OS X running 1920 x 1080 with everything turned off and can barely get a jerky 24fps. This in open terrain. Frightened to see what happens in a dungeon!

I knew not running DX11 would be a penalty, but this is crazy. Didn't anyone test this stuff?????

[Stuke00]

Thank you for saving me money! I will stick to my bootcamp version. Thank you.

[GunplaGamer]

This is completely ridiculous. I thought this would be handled correctly but apparently the company they used completely didn't do anything to optimize performance. I would have GLADLY buy it again to play it natively on my mac, but I could've have done this a while ago by myself. -.-;

[Sandulf]

The performance of the client is, as stated by those above me, completely unacceptable for a product that costs $60. I would understand if it was a native port, but it's simply utilizing Transgaming's Cider.

It's lazy and, frankly, outrageous that SE thinks it's acceptable to charge for this clearly unfinished and poorly optimized port. It's particularly unsettling because they failed to release a benchmark, which seems to indicate that they knew performance would be unacceptable, even on machines with the recommended specs.

I won't request a refund just yet, as I'm holding out some blind hope that, perhaps, some of these issues are just launch day troubles and will be ironed out with time. With that said, given the cost, I must say there's really no substitute for a true native port, and that's what paying customers deserve.

[krinchan]

I tried so hard to warn some folks in my FC about it once I saw Transgaming's name all over it. They did the Guild Wars 2 Mac client the exact same way. There was even 6 months where you couldn't access the trading post (GW2's Market Board). That company is terrible and their product, Cider is the worst. They basically forked a really old version of Wine under a permissive license, patched it up with some "proprietary stuff", hired a really good salesman and have been swindling the hell out of the gaming industry for a while. :-/ I sincerely feel for you, especially since at least with the GW2 client, you didn't have to buy it again to get the Windows version.

[zerovisual79]

This is totally unacceptable. This is unplayable and my Macbook Pro is about a year only. I cannot even get up to 20 FPS. Did you guys even play this before releasing it? I am in the same boat as everyone else. I will wait a little to see if you can resolve this, but if not I am going demand a refund.

I was also told this is running in a wrapper. Are you kidding me. You should have advertised that. It should have just said FFXIV in WINE.

This is an embarrassment to your company and the fact that you released something like this is just sad.