[GAMEBREAKING] Ability/moving objects delay and unresponsiveness (affects everybody)

[Vektrat]

First of all I'm sorry for ignoring the bug report template, but since this is a general game issue (I don't know anyone who doesn't have this, and many MMOs suffer from this at launch), I will just explain it like this, and I hope it's detailed enough.

Relevant information
Char name: Vektrat Pirineu
World name: Ragnarok (EU legacy)
Playing from: EU
Connection: Optic fiber 100Mb (ISP: Movistar) (speedtest, ping has 0 jitter), tested from multiple connections (even from a supercomputing facility, not kidding).
Frequency: Always and constantly
Area:: Everywhere (instanced, and not)
Who else: Everybody I've talked to
System info:: Windows 7 x64, 8Gb RAM, Intel i5-3550CPU, Gigabyte MB, on SSD.

For reading fellow players: Please mention where you are playing from and in what world if possible!

There is an obvious, and great delay between the character being played locally, and the server information (from game actions, and other players' actions); this results in a frustrating experience for the player given the amount of unresponsiveness he/she feels while playing.

The very same issue happened in SWtoR, I went through the trouble of finding an old post (http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=159300) that details this issue into a lot of depth, in case you devs want to see exactly what's going on (there's even some videos, and comparison videos to other games of how it should be). For one here's this WoW example video of how it should be (regardless of your opinion WoW's responsiveness is excellent, wasn't on launch). On a side note, SWtoR managed to fix this issue for a perfect feel of responsiveness.

By looking at the video you can already tell that this is not what happens when you mount in FFXIV, however, mounting is just a harmnless example, this issue is annoying, frustrating, and gamebreaking for melee classes, I'll detail why next.

An obvious example that everybody knows about this as well, is the danger zones on the ground (red areas). People says they get hit even when not on them anymore, because of this delay (according to the server they were still on it, because client side the area stays longer than it really is, but it also appears later (though this doesn't have an immediate effect and can't be noticed by the clients unless you know of the issue). For the same reason, you may see players running out of the areas (in your screen), too late, when they really moved out of it long ago (this is a case where the delay manifests itself at maximum, because you're adding the delay you get from seeing the area on the ground, + the delay of reaction time of the player in his screen).

Some examples where this can be noticed:

• Red danger areas on the grounds ("but but... I moved before it fired!")
• When trying to interrupt/stun a mob that is casting, you launch the counter skill BEFORE he ends casting, yet, the interrupt fails (according to the server you did it later, because you were receiving delayed information)
• When mounting: Click the mount skills, press autorun exactly when the casting bar ends (whistle), then notice how the character runs a bit, chocobo spawns, then it stops.
• When a triggered skill becomes available (for example Haymaker after dodging), and when you use it just before availability ends, you start casting it, but since you started casting it before it was over in the server, then it gets interrupted, giving you a large innactive time, and without the skill firing).
• When, as melee, you try to hit a mob that is moving and it becomes virtually impossible because according to the server, you're WAY further from the mob from what you can see on the screen, making the skill you're spamming/trying to use repeatedly starting in your screen, but not finishing to cast/getting interrupted non stop as long as the mob runs (as a monk this sucks, because it makes you lose all your buffs, besides doing 0 DPS). Note that you can hit the mob if you run (in your screen) IN FRONT of it, which is totally stupid, but in other players screens, and in the server, that would translate into you running behind it.
• Trying to hit a mob that, while not moving, rotates (for example if the tank moves around it). You won't be able to land mob position bonuses at all (flank, behind), in fact, this can be easily noticeable if you are "tanking" a mob, and you move around it, change sense, etc, you will see the mob following exactly your patterns, but great delay (I'm sure according to the server the mob is always facing you).
• Stunning a moving target: If you're lucky enough to land a stun on a moving target, you will see the target still moves for a while, then finally stops and gets stunned, this is the spot where, according to the server, you really stunned it, when you thought it was done a few yards earlier.
• Using a skill/item and "then" dying: This is a bit trickier to see, but an example (logs below), you are at 200hp, use a potion that heals you for 100hp, a mob hits your for 250hp, you die (because accoding to the server, you took the potion AFTER the mob hitting you, however, in your log the potion will appear to heal you BEFORE). This has an extra annoying added issue: the item or skill you used WILL GO INTO COOLDOWN, so after all, the server will detect it as used, just not WHEN it was used. The effect will be rendered useless (you're dead), but you'll lose the resource/get cooldown.

Some logs (battle log copy&paste) showing this last issue:

You use Second Wind.
   You recover 491 HP.
The Coincounter hits you for 459 damage.
You are defeated by the Coincounter.

You hit the elder hapalit for 67 damage.
You use a mega-potion.
  ? You recover 330 HP.
The elder hapalit hits you for 189 damage.
You are defeated.

As you can see, in both cases I should have survided, and on both cases potion, and Second Wind were on cooldown after I released. In fact on a boss who was hitting me, once I cast return on his face, return "landed" in my screen, but I appeared dead at the boss' feet, with return cooldown, and the log looking good.


Video compilation of a few of the examples listed

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sND93HHDlQ8
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3leMnErroL0 (thanks Arkulin)

The following list is for the first video in the list:

1. Moving before cast ends: Moving before the cast ends will still fire the heal, in some cases the skill won't fire, but the animation will.
2. Delay when summoning the mount and immediately pressing AUTORUN (since I can't hotkey autorun, I decided to press R for autorun at exactly the same time I pressed my [useless] skill 1, so that you can see the highlight when I start autorunning). You willl see the cast is over, and the character starts running but when chocobo spawns it stops. The last two moves are the same, but starting to autorun before the chocobo is fully summoned, just like in the first test.
3. Trying to DoT a goobbue, at first it seems he's in range, but when the server check is made, my skill is denied and doesn't land, since it doesn't immediately fail (or land), there's a cooldown period that is rendered useless (can't do damage, etc). I'm even following the goobbue with the run speed stance.
4. Trying to stun a wolf, the same issue as before; this is repeated a few clips.
5. Successfully stunning a wolf (as you can see, I had to cast the stun before the wolf reached me in order to avoid the previous issue). When stunned, the wolf continues moving for a while, and finally gets stunned (this is the place where in theory, I really cast the stun, thus what the server really saw).

As you can see, skills keep "missing" while the mob moves, this is incredibly annoying and frustrating as a monk, since it makes you lose all the buffs that take quite a large time to build up, and thus making your DPS 0, and gimping down your future DPS by a lot.
Note: I took those videos in a perfectly stable connection, just when the servers came up after the maintenance of the 4th of September.



Why is this annoying:

• A general unresponsiveness and character loss of control feeling
• Impossibility to fight on moving targets, precarious fight on rotating characters (I don't even want to think about PvP with this, I expect A LOT of angry melee classes mad if PvP releases with the current status of things)
• Loss of resources/cooldown triggers on actions that had no effect
• Deaths/hits of red danger areas when they shouldn't have happened
• Inability to interrupt mobs offensive skills/actions because they land too late

I believe this is a poor implementation issue; client lag is discarded, and fellow NA players also have this issue, not having to deal with overseas latency, though this is just speculation. My second though is that this could really be a server distance issue.

In summary, it obviously sucks to play a game where everything you see is happening with a delay of >0.5 secs.


A more technical side note

There is many techniques to fix this issue when latency is due to synchronization or mostly from the server side (thus not the client's connection, ISP, or whateveR), mostly lag compensation ones (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lag_%28...g_compensation, https://developer.valvesoftware.com/...d_Optimization, ...).

The trick is to "cheat" the server by letting the client give feedback or register actions before they've been confirmed by the server (a fully client confirmation environment would be really insecure towards hacks), but while the client gives the player the feeling his actions were executed, the data can travel to and forth from the server, and in case of illegal actions they can be discarded when really executed on the server.

Something that is harder (and impossible in a 100% way) to fix, is players seeing other players with delay, because in this case, both server-client latencies are added (so client->server->client), however this can be reduced by reducing the other issues.

What is unacceptable is that server objects (such as mobs) have SO MUCH delay (in fact the same as other players in your screen), because they're just server-->client objects, and this is the issue most critical right now (the other will grow in concern in PvP).

Thanks for your support and hopefully this will be addressed
Vektrat