Sticky thread for NA tech support for NTT has now moved and been locked...

[Kerwin]

I am sure SE took all of that into consideration when they picked the server location, maybe they got a great deal for the servers I will not pretend that I know the reasoning behind the move. Is this such a wide spread issue that SE should invest man hours into fixing it? This issue does not have an impact on me so I am trying to understand, how wide spread of an issue this is.

The sticky thread that was locked had over 30 pages of reports condensed between Comcast users, Cox users and more. The thread would continue to grow steadily if the moderators had not locked it away.

You are lucky that NTT does not effect you like it does me. I envy you. But this problem with NTT is pushing me further and further away from the game and Square Enix as it is starting to draw a very unpleasant picture showing me the lack of support SE has for some of their player base.

SE Moderators telling me to contact my ISP then closing and locking my ticket will not resolve the issues I am having, but the tech support moderators seem to think that this is a good enough resolution.

(And I have contacted my ISP. Multiple times in hopes for a result but I get the same answer: "We cannot work with the NTT since their network is outside of our own. Contact Square Enix support to find a resolution.")

[Awha]

The sticky thread that was locked had over 30 pages of reports condensed between Comcast users, Cox users and more. The thread would continue to grow steadily if the moderators had not locked it away.

You are lucky that NTT does not effect you like it does me. I envy you. But this problem with NTT is pushing me further and further away from the game and Square Enix as it is starting to draw a very unpleasant picture showing me the lack of support SE has for some of their player base.

I am not trying to downplay your issue, but would the cost required of SE to move servers guarantee that another group of players will not be impacted while your situation is improved? Where does a company draw the line? Also if it is location wouldn't a VPN help to alleviate the issue or is the issue beyond that.

[Kerwin]

I am not trying to downplay your issue, but would the cost required of SE to move servers guarantee that another group of players will not be impacted while your situation is improved? Where does a company draw the line? Also if it is location wouldn't a VPN help to alleviate the issue or is the issue beyond that.

VPN has not done anything for me. I still end up getting pathed through NTT and the rubberbanding, 90k, and lag still occur. I would rather not pay another subscription for a program that does not help.

Moving the server, as greedy as it sounds coming from me, would vastly improve the quality for everyone in NA. Even the Montreal location was far more reliable than the California location.

There was a reason why Square Enix chose to not announce the server location. Because I'm sure if they had told us prior to the move, they would have gotten a ton more flak.

[Awha]

VPN has not done anything for me. I still end up getting pathed through NTT and the rubberbanding, 90k, and lag still occur. I would rather not pay another subscription for a program that does not help.

Moving the server, as greedy as it sounds coming from me, would vastly improve the quality for everyone in NA. Even the Montreal location was far more reliable then the California location.

There was a reason why Square Enix chose to not announce the server location. Because I'm sure if they had told us prior to the move, they would have gotten a ton more flak.

I do get what you are saying, I am not sure where the older servers were located but say if they move them back and people that experienced lag issues that were solved with the server move. What should SE do at that point? Also I am sure a move of that scale again would not be cheap or hassle free for the company and the majority of players that are not negativity impacted. I do not envy SE when it comes to dealing with issues such as these.

Well, as someone who supports applications and tech for a ginormous bank with thousands and thousands of customers, any customer impacts are bad. As soon as we get notified that three or more people are experiencing the same issue, it becomes a top-priority, drop everything to solve type of mission. I've never interacted with a customer directly and dealt with their ire, but I have been rooting through server logs and packet captures for days at a time to solve problems. I have already worked 40+ hours this week and not a single customer has commented about the issue we are working so hard to solve at the moment. It's been passed back and forth between US and offshore teams six times. Customer service, whether the customer reports it or not, is something we take very seriously.

I say all this to draw a comparison to what I see as a customer of SE. The fact that there are some significant long-standing complaints about this issue is mind-boggling from my perspective. This has been going on for MONTHS and SE basically says "not our problem, please understand". Uh, guys, it IS your problem even if you don't own the infrastructure- your customers are having a terrible experience and your reputation is the one most vulnerable to the complaints. Customers don't know that you have zero technical control over their connection- they only know they have a terrible time with XIV and XIV alone. It's up to the company to do what's right by the customer. Corporate clients have leverage that individuals only dream of... USE IT!

Our customers had issues booking for travel due to a third party issue- a vendor that provides the tech services to book for travel had issues with their ISP between us and them. We escalated up, paged everyone on the continent, and spent hundreds of man hours looking at the issue. In the end we decided to do what was right for the customer and took a whole datacenter out of rotation. We did what we had to to preserve the customer experience, even we were not the ones who were at fault. SE has simply, from my perspective, not tried hard enough to solve this. I don't think they're incompetent at this point- just extremely uncaring.

I do get what you are saying and great on the company you work for to go to such lengths. I will not pretend to understand how the budget for FFXIV is allocated, but it seems at the core this boils down to money. I am sure they had their reasons for removing a data center or the move, and if I was experiencing the same issues as others in this thread I would be livid. Nevertheless, even in that situation as someone that does not know the real reason for the server move, do we really think SE did not take into consideration those that would be negatively impacted? Maybe they expected as much and felt the movie outweighs the potential lost of players due that were negatively impacted. If this issue impacted more players I would question why SE does not do more, but as harsh as it sounds it seems like this issues does not impact enough players to warrant extra effort on SE's part.

When this happen it sucks, I had to stop playing a game I enjoyed due to them closing and merging a cluster of servers together to save on costs. My ping went from 20, to 200+ maybe I gave up too easily but I knew they were never going to bring back the old NZ servers, so I stopped playing after I tried everything I could to improve the situation. From a consumer perspective that was my only option since if my only hope for improvement lays in the hands of the company and comparing the scale to the overall picture I knew the company was not going to bend over backwards to help me. Just seems like your company is the expectation and not the rule since from my experience most corporations will not go to such lengths to solve the issue of a handful of players when looked at it from a whole.

Hope that makes sense.

[Hestzhyen]

I am sure SE took all of that into consideration when they picked the server location, maybe they got a great deal for the servers I will not pretend that I know the reasoning behind the move. Is this such a wide spread issue that SE should invest man hours into fixing it? This issue does not have an impact on me so I am trying to understand, how wide spread of an issue this is.

Well, as someone who supports applications and tech for a ginormous bank with thousands and thousands of customers, any customer impacts are bad. As soon as we get notified that three or more people are experiencing the same issue, it becomes a top-priority, drop everything to solve type of mission. I've never interacted with a customer directly and dealt with their ire, but I have been rooting through server logs and packet captures for days at a time to solve problems. I have already worked 40+ hours this week and not a single customer has commented about the issue we are working so hard to solve at the moment. It's been passed back and forth between US and offshore teams six times. Customer service, whether the customer reports it or not, is something we take very seriously.

I say all this to draw a comparison to what I see as a customer of SE. The fact that there are some significant long-standing complaints about this issue is mind-boggling from my perspective. This has been going on for MONTHS and SE basically says "not our problem, please understand". Uh, guys, it IS your problem even if you don't own the infrastructure- your customers are having a terrible experience and your reputation is the one most vulnerable to the complaints. Customers don't know that you have zero technical control over their connection- they only know they have a terrible time with XIV and XIV alone. It's up to the company to do what's right by the customer. Corporate clients have leverage that individuals only dream of... USE IT!

Our customers had issues booking for travel due to a third party issue- a vendor that provides the tech services to book for travel had issues with their ISP between us and them. We escalated up, paged everyone on the continent, and spent hundreds of man hours looking at the issue. In the end we decided to do what was right for the customer and took a whole datacenter out of rotation. We did what we had to to preserve the customer experience, even we were not the ones who were at fault. SE has simply, from my perspective, not tried hard enough to solve this. I don't think they're incompetent at this point- just extremely uncaring.

[Kerwin]

I do get what you are saying, I am not sure where the older servers were located but say if they move them back and people that experienced lag issues that were solved with the server move. What should SE do at that point? Also I am sure a move of that scale again would not be cheap or hassle free for the company and the majority of players that are not negativity impacted. I do not envy SE when it comes to dealing with issues such as these.

Another move would be quite costly indeed. And the downtime I'm sure is not ideal. JP SE would never allow it, it's a pipe dream.

But I would think the end result would greatly improve customer connections. I heard Texas has some good server locations.

Regardless, they can keep it in Cali. Just fix the damn issue with NTT and provide some sort of progressive updates. SE shouldn't let their customers sit for months without any conclusive reports besides stating the obvious when it comes to the data center itself not being the issue. We know that's not the issue. Why there was ever a report about it still boggles me today.

Even the EU reps got involved including information regarding their connection issues. This problem is tiresome. Every day.

So far the NA side has had inconclusive moderator responses with copy pasted replies stating to forward ports, clear cookies, and standard procedures of "did you restart or is it plugged in?"

We did what we had to to preserve the customer experience, even we were not the ones who were at fault. SE has simply, from my perspective, not tried hard enough to solve this. I don't think they're incompetent at this point- just extremely uncaring.

I've got to say, if I was one of your customers, with the way you have explained things, I would be very satisfied to employ you and understanding if ever there was any issues. I also agree with you that so far this portrays a terrible image for Square Enix. And something needs to be done in order to reflect a good customer/company relation.

[KaldeaSahaline]

I posted several page long argument discussion (namely against the data set demanding guy who thinks he knows..when he really does not know really whats going on)

I've seen friends leave this game over this....and all of them..have one thing in common.

1: If they switch away to VPN - it works.
2: If they switch away to Cell - it works.

They all use the same type of internet connection.

This is a routing issue.
Blaming the Datacenter...is stupid.

Is there a "thing" between the game and the ISP? Most certainly.
Is it NTT?
I doubt it....

You are looking in the wrong place if you think its squarely on NTT.

Am I the 'dataset requiring guy'? If so - don't give me a book. Give me clear instructions on how only FF14 is affected, and how it's my problem that my otherwise PERFECT internet service has an issue with a singular game I play.

I know it's a routing issue. I have no issues with that. I want to know why it's MY ISSUE, and not SE's. What can I do differently. I want to know why I need a VPN to play a game for the first time in 15 years. I want to know why I've never needed this service before, in any game, in any location in the WORLD.

I've spoken with 3 parties:

My ISP Comcast (this includes actual management in their tech support division because I had actual documentation detailing my issue and the techs SITTING at my house agreed and called management to get it going). The end result of the near hour long call was the issue is clearly on SE's end, notably with their chosen ISP the NTT San Jose node. He said that they will contact NTT, but that it likely won't lead to anything because they aren't NTT's customer, but that it will provide a cross reference for SE.

I called SE who flat out said, get lost it's your ISP. Despite overwhelming evidence indicating otherwise. I spoke to 4 different people who gave me the exact same runaround or flat out hung up on me. One even was like I have no idea what you're talking about and wouldn't transfer me to someone who could help me. They explicitly told me I had to call back (and wait in that god forsaken queue).

I called NTT NOC and spoke with their tech support and they confirmed the issue was on their end, but that unfortunately because I am not their customer I would need to contact SE and have them contact NTT to resolve the SLA breach. I called SE back and they said they would NOT contact NTT and that I should contact my ISP.

[Kerwin]

snip.

I've been through the same thing.

In the end, Square Enix is the one to look bad since it's their service that is being effected.

Fusterating.

[hynaku]

They could make it so can play game offline so can do none party quests, beast tribes, and crafting without worrying about being disconnected in middle of one of them. Know I have been disconnected in middle of crafting a expensive item just to login to see lost all the mats you pay a lot of gil for.

[Sigma-Astra]

It's really disheartening that I have to grow accustomed towards lag inside of a game I'm paying for when....I have several other games I've paid for without such a problem.

There are some days where it's just unbearable rather than tolerable and losing your Enochain because of a lag within the server tick outside of your own control is just god awful frustrating when you're trying to play your best and have fun.

I had a better connection when the servers were in Canada.