February 2021 FINAL FANTASY XI Digest

[Akihiko_Matsui]

The latest FINAL FANTASY XI Digest is now available! The digest covers key features from the most recent version update. Check out the video, try the version update, and leave a feedback based on your experience of playing the new content.

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[BST]

Amazing update.

The best part about this content (Odyssey) is it can't be Mercenary exploited, making players team up again. Please think of this for any future Content!

[Tsukihika]

Absolutely nothing has been done (yet again) regarding the severe ffxi server data transfer delay experienced by abroad players, that makes Odyssey battle content Sheol: Gaol in particular, utterly unplayable. Why is this issue not even mentioned on current known issues?! Have you read the various bug reports and reported issues from western playerbase at all?!

And to emphasize the frustrating nature of this issue from player perspective regarding Sheol: Gaol...

JUST BECAUSE THE CONTENT WORKS AS INTENDED ON YOUR LOCAL COMPUTER THAT HAS ZERO LATENCY, DOES NOT MEAN IT WORKS AS INTENDED FOR ABROAD PLAYERS THAT HAVE SERVER ACCESS LATENCY TO CONSIDER. THERE IS IMMENSE DELAY ON EVERY ACTION THAT REQUIRES SERVER SIDE COMPUTING. PACKETS RECEIVED FROM SERVER ARE THROTTLED TO CONSTANT ~R3000 AND OVER, WHILE PACKETS SENT REMAIN AT STABLE S150-200 WHOLE RUN. ALL THIS EVEN WHILE IDLE AND DOING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WITHIN GAOL. ALL ACTIONS HAVE TO WAIT FOR THIS CONSTANT DATA STREAM SENT FROM SERVER TO FINISH LOADING BEFORE THEY EXECUTE. WHICH IS EXTREMELY FRUSTRATING.

Please rebuild the content to require less data transfer with ffxi server. Get rid of the unnecessary moogle inventory access within gaol if need be. Us players can manage without that easily if it makes the content finally playable.

As for positive feedback... the new items are really nice stat wise!

[RandomCanadian]

Maybe my early assessment is off or I'm missing something but I'm not farming segments for an hour to have a shot at a single nm that needs to be killed 30+ times. I like the grindiness of this game in general and many ideas behind the setup of the new content is intriguing... but farming 2-3 hrs for 3 moglo II ki's is too much.

[Xilk]

The Update Gear is really interesting. It looks like alot of thought and care was put into it. Thank you!

However, the biggest problem with Odyssey is the Latency in Sheol Gaol. For everyone I play with the Receiving amount is always 2.4k ~3k in sheol Gaol. Go to other zones and there is not a problem, but in that zone it is REALLY bad. It makes the fights frustrating instead of fun. Its VERY difficult to make a skillchain or a magic burst because you cannot time it right from the latency. Its often hard to tell what is even happening in the fight. I think that I missed pressing the button because I dont' see a weaponskill actually happen for 5~10s AFTER I pushed my macro button. The latency is REALLY horrible.

I also suggest making it so moglophone can be stored up to 3x on the moogle, JUST like Omen.

Also, for odyssey, having 3x fights in a row and job lockouts is interesting. But there is no motivation to do it. Players will simply buy 1 moglophone II, kill 1 boss, and leave. If you can get augment reward bonus buy doing 3x fights there would be some motivation.

However, I still probably won't do it, because I cannot access my inventory to change gear for jobs. When I change jobs, I need to spend 10 minutes to swap gear from storage, mog safe, safe2, and locker to get the gear I need and put away what I don't need.

This makes swapping jobs in between battles very tedious. I would need more wardrobe space to play sheol gaol as intended.

[Ozaii]

I think that the gear released this month is fun and interesting as well as the way it was implemented albiet laggy but that's tolerable. I however do wonder why it was that drg was not on the heavy armor piece?

Considering that this is what drg lacks as a job. A good meva stp piece. However it is on the thf dnc blu bst piece. Which I am guessing its due to the pet stats. But the wyvern doesn't need as inflated stats as the bst. Where the master can really benefit from resisting an amnesia or paralyze, or a nuke aga from something like mt4 iroha. Unlike bst that can equip malignance in such fights and ignore most magic sources. Drg cannot.

Drg is now the only dd in the game to not have access to a good meva stp option at this time. And I personally believe that something should be changed or adjusted to help drg with this.

[kusa]

I'd like to enjoy this Odyssey content but cannot because of the lag. Please don't dismiss it as a user problem. There are too many complaints to make it a coincidence.

[Titorinho]

I would like to echo the sentiments of NA and EU community about the lag detracting from our experience in Odyssey. The content is not enjoyable in its current state.

[GoltanaBuukki]

The lag is terrible. It's not possible for some of us to even attempt higher Vengeance+ difficulties until this is fixed, because players do not see any actions for several seconds after it has been performed on the server side. It would be a waste of segments, which already is hard to accumulate daily. This makes it near impossible for mages to support their team, and tanks have a hard time keeping the monster's attention due to not seeing hate-reset moves until it is too late. This needs to be of the highest priority if you expect people to support Odyssey for the year. It isn't nearly in Sheol ABC, but it's significantly worse than Dynamis-Divergence. Please address this as soon as possible.

[Aurone]

The lag is absolutely horrible in Sheol: Gaol and therefore unplayable. I know a lot of people that experience the same.
Please make an effort to fix this issue or it will likely make a lot of new and veteran players quit the game if this is the quality of new content we can expect.

If it wasn't for the extreme lag, the idea of Sheol: Gaol is a very interesting one. A bonus for doing 3 NM without exiting Sheol: Gaol should be applied though.

[Ineluki]

A lot of people bring up their issues with the lag...add me to that list.

[Shystie]

Lag issues for me as well!

[Eldain]

Lag here it Scotland as well mate.

[Gwydion]

Thanks SE for I-level Sic/Ready-5 pants and Pet Level+1 feet for Beastmaster. This and new-pets should have come out with the release of SoA, but I digress. Better late than never!

[Baniak]

Added gear and whole idea behind Odyssey is spot on, but lag in Gaol is enormous. My inventory doesn't even load for 3min+ in lobby. Party members "teleporting" from place to place, instead of moving. Can't see WS animations or WS damage in chat. There is 5-8 seconds(!!!) delay between keyboard click and reaction. It's totally unplayable.

[Careman]

Extreme lag from Sweden aswell. Totally unplayable.

[Helicooter]

Same here, lag removing all the fun. Unplayable content.

[Shaedhen]

I will just add myself to the list. Lag is simply unbearable. It's a shame because the way Sheol: Gaol works is refreshing and interesting, but I currently just can't enjoy it since I feel perfectly useless while in there.

[Mastewang]

Horrible lag for me too, sucks!

[Whitebarry]

Was looking forward to some new content! But it's not fun when you can't do it!

[eeternal]

Thank you SE for making Odyssey. It does indeed have potential and brings something challenging for players to team up and work together.

Having said that, I think there are 3 main priorities that should be taken into consideration, should you want players to continue doing Odyssey and they are:

1) Sheol: Gaol has an obnoxious lag to the extent of 10-20 secs delay; for that reason, it is hard to clear it especially if you want to do +15 vengeance - Honestly, this should be the #1 priority to fix. (Playing from the Middle East with stable 700Mbps)
2) Pretty sure some players can't log everyday due to work or real-life commitments. Why can't we store 3 KIs like Omen? is it an issue because you think players will farm the content quickly? if so, farming segments is super time consuming and takes a great deal of efforts, especially if you want to max augment those items..
3) I think its better to reduce the amount of segments for KI, 3k is too much honestly, ~2k should be very fair.

Lastly, thank you.. really looking forward to Odyssey as it seems to be super fun. But please fix these bugs ; ; or just try to play it from a western server and test it yourself.

[yubs]

Gaol is unplayable content due to lag. For a company like SE to ignore this and think it's ok to leave it like this is unbelievable

[Ewa]

Concept is great, but its unplayable with current lag. PLEASE fix it and dont ignore EU/NA players!

[Havelock]

Great update, but I can't play because the lag is huge in Gaol. Im having same issues as other people reporting in this thread. Please prioritize this!

[Cherrywine]

Hello!

I have a slightly off topic request, but would it be possible to add Mog Segments as an option for Copper Voucher currency exchanges?
That would be so wonderful and help newer players that are returning/trying FFXI for the first time get a jump start on the new Odyssey content via Deed rewards.

[Xelltrix]

This issue also needs to be addressed in Dynamis as well as Sheol and Gaol. Sometimes it even occurs in Omen, though that is at least more uncommon.

[Rokada]

Please put resources into reproducing and verifying the unacceptable lag that has blighted new content ever since Dyna-D (specifically when you added the rank meters for R15-25 gear).

This seems to be an SE server side issue, whether it's processing power, network throttling or just too much trying to happen at once.

Dyna-D lag: 1-2s at least on every run
Odyssea A/B/C lag: 1-2s at least on every run, can be worse
Odyssey Gaol lag: 1-2s lag for some characters, 6s or worse for many others

In Gaol I can reproduce constantly a 1-2s lag for 1 of my paid accounts, whereas I get constant 6s lag on my other account. On the very same computer (full logout and log back in as other char). This is not a client side issue.

My suspicion is something in the code for keeping track of Rank item progress is the issue in Dynamis D (since that's exactly when the issue started for me). For Odyssey and Gaol I have no idea what it is you're doing that's so different from the rest of the game that causes constant network response latency, meaning some actions are not displayed on the client or shown in the log at all.

Please investigate as a top priority. I would be happy to help in any way I can.

[RandomCanadian]

So the new content and gear is very interesting. I see the feedback on playstyle/gear design for BST has been put into action. Much appreciated.

I really do look forward to playing it but the following two issues really need higher prioritization than recently mentioned in the Q&A:

Gear inventory / lag:
Given that gearing multiple jobs is essential to Odyssey gameplay, we really need to have job-specific inventories (like 40 slots each) that only load when playing that job . This would allow people to properly gear job (or continue gearing more once they are not paralyzed by inventory restrictions) and reduce full inventory load between each zone. And hopefully help address lag issues overall. Given I know nothing of the technical side of this game, I appreciate that it might be a difficult feat to program but I think its essential to the survival of the game.

Gaol access:
3000 segments is too much. I'm really hoping this is something you will adjust sooner than later. My well-geared character can only farm 1000-1500 per 30 min... so I require 3hrs of farming for one 3-boss run. This is too much time sink. In omen, you get the same effect on piecing out content by just having access gated over time. Please reduce the requirement, introduce new ways to gain segments, or do something to make it palatable to normal players who can't dedicate so much time to the grind. ***Farming 3 hours over 6 earth days to participate in 45 min of new content suuuuuuuucks.***

I trust the lag issues that are drawing so many complaints will be resolved asap and are just attributed to growing pains. To me, the above two issues are the next most important, ahead of job rebalancing. Maybe you intentionally put the price of entry high so you could address the lag issues while giving everyone a bit of access? That would make sense. Good luck smoothing it out, always thankful that this game is still being supported. Nothing else out there like it.

[Sp1cyryan]

Please correct the latency/lag issues in Odyssey.

[Merlin00]

Unable to play Odyssey due to the lag/communication problems with server.

[Wotasu]

Please look into the matter about lag/latency I'm experiencing 5-10seconds delays on action taken. Load icon never stops loading while in Gaol.
I would like to do this content, but with the high latency I am unable to.

[Lehmie]

I invited me here to say how nice is the nee content, thx SE ;) But please repair the content with the huge lag, its relly not playable. I hope (^^*)

[Tsukihika]

Already posted a bug report regarding this issue, but our linkshell party had another strange thing happen on Sheol: Gaol content earlier.

Our original intent was to do some further testing, how clicking the Veridical Conflux present within Sheol: Gaol seemed to suppress whatever thing is causing the severe server side lag present within this zone for many players.

Clicking this Veridical Conflux seems to indeed rapidly load all player inventories and suppress the packets received from ffxi server, as can be observer in-game from the send/receive values on upper right corner. As long as player stays on this Conflux menu, no server side lag is detected and content behaves as intended... Leaving this menu, however, once again causes server to spam client with massive amounts of data. As can be observer from the in-game send/receive values.

Now here is where the strange thing happened. After warping to boss area from lobby. All party members having clicked the Veridical Conflux. All of us were somehow able to access trust magic that we had not unlocked in-game yet. Personally i had access to Ygnas trust! among various others that i had yet to unlock. From which i can only surmise that our personal trust magic lists got sent into some weird zone specific global trust list. And all of us gained access to this list upon clicking the Veridical Conflux.

Upon leaving Gaol our trust magic lists were back to normal.

Or is this some intended feature for Gaol that i have missed? It would certainly be handy to have access to trust magic of whole party, but this feels like a proper unintended bug...

[Keagan]

Amazing update.

The best part about this content (Odyssey) is it can't be Mercenary exploited, making players team up again. Please think of this for any future Content!

yes it can

[Immortal]

No idea where that even came from in the first place, just because of the job change thing I guess? Most people these days have 3+ characters, each with fully capped support jobs on their mules. Not being able to merc content is a dream, SE would have to nerf multi-boxing in some form.

[Tsukihika]

Bumpin the thread for better exposure.

Can we have some reaction from community representatives / forum moderators, that they are actively following these threads and aware of the issues? Ideally within the next 24 hours.

[Rokada]

1. SE seem to have added a lot more network traffic when Dyna-D added RP upgrades to gear/weapons. Whatever system is being used to track RP is likely the reason we now get high latency on actions and movement in Dyna-D.

2. Odyssey A, B, & C, seem to have the same general latency issues as Dyna-D

3. Odyssey Gaol, has pushed this extra network traffic to the point that lag is reaching 6s for actions for some players. Packets are likely getting dropped altogether between the server and client as well.

SE please investigate this and give us an update to say that you are. I'm willing to wait until the end March before I quit the game, but if nothing is said before that my patience will be exhausted.

[Tsukihika]

Since the community reps were a no-show within given time frame, and made it clear they're not even following these forums much... I went ahead and dropped a formal Square Enix FFXI support center ticket regarding this issue and requested proper investigation. Let's see if that sparks any action...

[Immortal]

Why is it ok that we are constantly ignored yet we pay a subscription price ? XIV players are not ignored and constantly have NA reps responding. I don't see the reason.

[Leny]

Why is it ok that we are constantly ignored yet we pay a subscription price ? XIV players are not ignored and constantly have NA reps responding. I don't see the reason.

Because you refuse to punish the company for it's sleights. Openly acknowledge they're doing wrong, but here you are with an active character, paying.

[Immortal]

Yes because I am of the line of thinking that if we cancel our subs they will just shut the game down, but instead of that we should be very vocal.

[Leny]

Counterproductive to say the least. You can't be afraid and complain that you're enabling the fear.

Also, fighting with you is just as unproductive. The ever increasing amount of lag needs to be addressed. Let's not distract from that.

[Alhanelem]

Counterproductive to say the least. You can't be afraid and complain that you're enabling the fear.

Also, fighting with you is just as unproductive. The ever increasing amount of lag needs to be addressed. Let's not distract from that.
One way to improve the lag would be to not all cluster on one server.

[Leny]

I mean hey, it's easy to fix. Force half of asura off and close it to new accounts. Done and Done.

Except that square will actually lose tens of thousands of dollars on transfer income, so that's a hard "no". It also has absolutely nothing to do with Asura. But if you knew how it worked you wouldn't have said that, and it's pointless to try to correct you. It's even worse than yelling at a wall, at least the wall isn't willfully ignorant.

[Alhanelem]

I mean hey, it's easy to fix. Force half of asura off and close it to new accounts. Done and Done.

Except that square will actually lose tens of thousands of dollars on transfer income, so that's a hard "no". It also has absolutely nothing to do with Asura. But if you knew how it worked you wouldn't have said that, and it's pointless to try to correct you. It's even worse than yelling at a wall, at least the wall isn't willfully ignorant.
You know, most major MMOs, including FFXIV (and WoW), routinely offer free transfers from higher to lower population servers to balance server populations, typically with further incentives like a boost to XP and lifting of restrictions on what you can take with you. This is acknowledging the fact that supar server performance caused by overpopulation can harm player experiences and potentially cost them more than the transfer fee.

That's all they would have to do here. And since they sometimes offer discounts on server transfers for come-back promotions, I don't see any technical reason why they wouldn't be able to do this. Because SE itself runs another MMO that uses this kind of load balancing tool, there is really no excuse, not even money, to not offer it here.

Both over- and under-population present issues that impact player experiences. Over populated worlds (Asura, possibly Odin) may have more frequent/worse lag issues, longer waiting to get into content (or in some cases, being able to enter at all), more RMT, etc, while underpopulated servers create their own inconveniences to the player by making it harder to find what you need on the AH and having to plan ahead to do group content and such. incentivizing the playerbase to balance out the populations will make the experience better for everyone.

[Tsukihika]

The gaol related issue has honestly nothing to do with amount of players. When this lag/delay occurs, there isn't even dozen of players present within the zone. It is certainly some weird bug in the game code that throttles server side bandwidth.

Players clustering on a single server merely means more congestion, more competition, longer wait times (which they have addressed to some extent). There's a hard cap how many character models player side client loads, probably to avoid client side frame rate drops. That's why players don't exactly lag in say port jeuno, for example, where there can be hundreds of players bazaaring overnight. Having to load the max amount of character models possible can, of course, stress some older machines and slower connections more. In-game settings even have actual slider for this to reduce the amount of models loaded. Easing client side graphical load (fps).

The real issue arises on situations like Domain Invasion Mireu (and more recently gaol), where the same ffxi server gets spammed by thousands of packet requests every second. It is simply unable to keep up with this due to the send/receive bandwidth of ffxi being capped at 3k something. And your actions end up in a queue to wait server side confirmation while it deals with all the requests sent before that action. And this, is the core issue of all things related to connection lag, as there is simply nothing player can do about the situation, short of moving closer to servers located in Japan, or possibly using a VPN connection (which doesn't always work) that enables lower latency between player and server by ideally reducing the amount of "hops" necessary to reach each other. Some MMOs like elder scroll online work around these issues by limiting the number of players present in each server/zone, and thus setting soft cap on the amount of packet requests each server has to deal with. Even ffxi has partially done similar work around by splitting Ambuscade instances to Legion_A and Legion_B. Although this approach was probably taken more in response to ease ambuscade wait times.

This is my personal viewpoint of the issue anyway. :3

[Tsukihika]

Got the following response from ffxi support center ticket regarding the gaol issue. Posted them links of all the official forum bug reports and other threads regarding this.

"Dear Customer,

Thank you for contacting the Square Enix Support Centre.

We are sorry to hear that you encountered a problem in FINAL FANTASY XI. Posting on the forum is the right thing to do, please keep an eye on it for updates. We will also forward your information and link to the game team.

Thank you for your patience, we do apologies for the inconvenience.
Kind regards,

The Square Enix Support Centre team"

So there's some hope of the game team at least becoming aware of the issue. Hopefully it doesn't take them until next month update to fix... but would be better than nothing i suppose.

[Alhanelem]

Gaol does seem special. I don't really see so much of the lag other people have been complaining about for a long time in Dynamis D, Gaol seems to be worse and there are times I can try to do it with no one else doing it on this server. So clearly something that didn't get enough testing before release, or was only tested in isolation.

[Pixela]

This has nothing to do with how many players each server has, it's unique to specific kinds of content.

Also, keep in mind that a post has to be translated and then sent to the developers and they have to consider it and then it has to be translated back. I would not expect to even hear anything (if they plan to address it at all) for weeks. I doubt they even have anyone that can test this outside of Japan, unless the community staff do so.


Because you refuse to punish the company for it's sleights. Openly acknowledge they're doing wrong, but here you are with an active character, paying.

This is incredibly stupid.

You do not use these kinds of tactics when you in a position of weakness, Square would happily shut FFXI down if player numbers dropped. It's always more cost effective to have your players on one game rather than 2.

This is like working for a restaurant that has been closed for months during Covid lockdowns and demanding a pay rise or you'll quit.

[Leny]

Closing is the better situation. It's better to end a toxic relationship than beg for attention.

[Catmato]

It's always more cost effective to have your players on one game rather than 2.

Why would players leaving XI start playing XIV?

[Alhanelem]

Actually, I'd argue it's more cost effective to get your players on both games rather than either one.

[Pixela]

Why would players leaving XI start playing XIV?

I said it's more cost effective, and that they want it to happen.

They later found out we wouldn't go, so it would be a loss if they tried it. Which is why the game is still being updated and is still alive.

[Monsuta_Man]

Disheartening to hear players talk about shutting down. New faces coming around these parts speaking their minds so it must have gotten bad at this moment. Closure would be nice. It looks like they have the foot off the pedal. I commend the team for doing these updates because they seem to be the company's whipping boys.

[Alhanelem]

I said it's more cost effective, and that they want it to happen.

They later found out we wouldn't go, so it would be a loss if they tried it. Which is why the game is still being updated and is still alive.
This really isn't true and you know it, (okay, MOSTLY not true). I say mostly because SE legitimately didn't think the game would keep as many players as it did for as long as it has. But from the beginning of XIV's development, the original plan was for the games to actually be connected- XIV wasn't actually meant to be a replacement.

[Tsukihika]

It really is awesome how the developers themselves are still creating new content and keeping the game going. Thanks to these fairly frequent updates and improvements, old returnee players in particular can experience completely new, and hopefully improved ffxi all over again. Perhaps even form new bonds of friendship and reconcile with their old ffxi buddies from years back. I for one have no plans to ever un-sub from the game, even if I were to use it as nothing more but glorified social chat room. Going down with the ship! Sincerely wish though, that the game team would communicate with us western players more, so that we can all equally work together to improve the game and make it the best it can be. Even if the developers themselves are busy, well, developing the game :p. Surely some other game team representative can communicate with us players actively and work as intermediary to pass our thoughts and concerns even indirectly to developers. The lack of communication from their end, even on these "official" forums, is extremely disheartening indeed. This would perhaps be important matter to address at some point, when it comes to the longevity and future of ffxi as our most beloved MMO game?

There was some talk on other forums sometime ago, how old ffxi player from many years back regretted losing contact with their old ffxi friends over time after leaving the game behind. And certainly, these bonds we have formed with other ffxi players over years, from all around world, no doubt remain extremely important aspect and can for some even be the only reason they remain subbed to the game. The dev team making ffxi more "solo friendly" lately (trust system) could actually be considered counterproductive, as it takes away from players truly needing each other, in order to tackle the challenge ahead (battle content). This game truly is at it best, when players have to rely on each other, form actual bonds and know each other (jobs and their levels/gears), as opposed to simply being forced to do something together FF14 style with total randoms you never meet a second time in your life. Despite occasionally playing FF14 myself on the side and always checking new expansion content out, that game quickly becomes utterly boring daily-task-solo-grind, where you might as well just be playing some single player game instead. Although player experiences naturally vary, and this is merely my personal one. The FFXI dev team should definitely move ahead with player cooperation in mind, rather than the recent trend of solo-centric, time gated and easy gameplay, similar to countless failed MMOs out there where people simply quit/unsub once their goals are reached, or they are unable do advance further due to some forced artificial limitation (time gating content). The whole idea behind an MMO is after all, to play together with and interact with other human players.

[Pixela]

This really isn't true and you know it, (okay, MOSTLY not true). I say mostly because SE legitimately didn't think the game would keep as many players as it did for as long as it has. But from the beginning of XIV's development, the original plan was for the games to actually be connected- XIV wasn't actually meant to be a replacement.

This is not true at all but lets not get into a long winded argument about it, lets just agree to disagree.

[Alhanelem]

This is not true at all but lets not get into a long winded argument about it, lets just agree to disagree.
It absolutely is true, very early on there was a plan for the games to be linked to gether, like you could go through a portal in the mog house, to go from one world to the other. It never made it past the concept stage, but it was part of the plan at one point. You can deny it all you like, but XIV was not intended to directly replace XI. If they really wanted to do that, they would have simply shut the game down, whether it was still making money or not, in order to pressure those players to come to XIV. Which they obviously never did.

Sorry, I will not buy into the anti XIV conspiracy theories. And that's what they are, conspiracy theories. There is no proof of any of the claims being made.

[Pixela]

.......................

[Feanorsof]

Enjoying the new content however as with many others I have found the lag in Sheol Gaol makes it unplayable at the moment.

[Zehira]

I like both XI and XIV. My friends from XIV have said a similar thing. They are happy XI does what it does well they do not like the outdated engine. They don't wanna talk about it even one of them has bought a copy. I know a bunch of players on a private server also play XIV.

Let's please stop that nonsense.

[Alhanelem]

I like both XI and XIV. My friends from XIV have said a similar thing. They are happy XI does what it does well they do not like the outdated engine. They don't wanna talk about it even one of them has bought a copy. I know a bunch of players on a private server also play XIV.

Let's please stop that nonsense.
Honestly, while XI looks dated to a degree I think it has aged well and certainly looks good for the time it was created in.

[Zehira]

I respect everyone's opinion.

Back in between 2012-2013, FFXI veterans had a kind of hope that XIV would be like FFXI 2.0. SE actually changed it to more a WoW clone theme park. I can understand why we are perma-banned from the official FFXIV forum. Even if they shut down this official forum then my account is worthless for good.

For the time being, FFXI has borrowed a lot of helpful features from FFXIV to make it better due to the QoL. More RMTs and bots born. Honestly, Asura never needed the trust system in the first place I guess which is why we need more new content to avoid problems and look more to team up. I am playing either one of the two MMOs I am currently a member in an endgame linkshell I play with once or twice a week then spend more of my time in FFXIV.

[Okieeomi]

Greetings and salutations adventurers,

Thank you for all the feedback you've provided on the latency being experienced in the Sheol: Gaol thus far.
We understand that the responsiveness and stability are very important when enjoying this new content.

We would like to request that players who are experiencing any sort of latency issues in Sheol: Gaol to follow the instructions within the thread How to Report Lag in Sheol: Gaol (https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/57873-How-to-Report-Lag-in-Sheol-Gaol?p=634342#post634342) in our Technical Support section.

We greatly appreciate your assistance! :)
Thanks,

[Ollarud]

Greetings and salutations adventurers,

Thank you for all the feedback you've provided on the latency being experienced in the Sheol: Gaol thus far.
We understand that the responsiveness and stability are very important when enjoying this new content.

We would like to request that players who are experiencing any sort of latency issues in Sheol: Gaol to follow the instructions within the thread How to Report Lag in Sheol: Gaol (https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/57873-How-to-Report-Lag-in-Sheol-Gaol?p=634342#post634342) in our Technical Support section.

We greatly appreciate your assistance! :)
Thanks,

Thank you so much for acknowledging our issue. I've followed your instructions on submitting a report via Technical Support, but myself and others are experiencing an issue there as well. Upon filling out all the required and non-required boxes and hitting submit, we are returned back to the page with an error stating that not all boxes have been filled out. I have attempted this multiple times myself and have read posts from others with the same problem. Is there an alternate method to increasing the visibility of the Gaol lag, or a possible fix for the Technical Support submission page?

[Zhexos]

Greetings Ollarud,


Thank you so much for acknowledging our issue. I've followed your instructions on submitting a report via Technical Support, but myself and others are experiencing an issue there as well. Upon filling out all the required and non-required boxes and hitting submit, we are returned back to the page with an error stating that not all boxes have been filled out. I have attempted this multiple times myself and have read posts from others with the same problem. Is there an alternate method to increasing the visibility of the Gaol lag, or a possible fix for the Technical Support submission page?

We apologize for the inconvenience. We looked over the form and believe it should be working now. I'm sorry for the trouble but can we ask you to please try submitting the report again?

Thank you!

[Tsukihika]

Ping and Tracert commands sadly won't be much help when it comes to troubleshooting this particular issue, as there is nothing wrong with Client to Server connection. Most these can do is allow SE to ping player machines on their end in order to investigate connectivity issues.

All player commands do reach server without issue. This can be proven by comparing player who experiences input lag and player that has no input lag whatsoever. Player that experiences no lag will see all actions used by "lagging" player immediately and without any delay. Because server successfully sends this data to player that does not lag. However this is not the experience for player that has input lag within Gaol, as something in Server to Client connection errors out and spams this player with endless amount of unnecessary data. Causing actions sent to server wait in queue before they are sent back to players. Which "lagging" player experiences as 10 second wait time before anything happens.

Some people on the Japanese side of forums mentioned the possibility of some Windows service interfering with Server to Client game data transfer. And ffxi server thus throwing error due to unsuccessful data transfer, and spamming player with same data over and over. Perhaps this is something worth investigating as well? Despite however disabling and enabling various network related windows services on my own end, these have not affected the Server to Client connection at all.

It would be extremely useful if Square Enix released us more technical information to work with, as something certainly and without any doubt, errors out in Server to Client data transfer, which is the root cause of this whole Gaol input lag.

[Pixela]

Greetings and salutations adventurers,

Thank you for all the feedback you've provided on the latency being experienced in the Sheol: Gaol thus far.
We understand that the responsiveness and stability are very important when enjoying this new content.

We would like to request that players who are experiencing any sort of latency issues in Sheol: Gaol to follow the instructions within the thread How to Report Lag in Sheol: Gaol (https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/57873-How-to-Report-Lag-in-Sheol-Gaol?p=634342#post634342) in our Technical Support section.

We greatly appreciate your assistance! :)
Thanks,

Thank you for looking into this and passing it onto the developers for us.

[Jmr]

It would be great is Sheol: Gaol would be fixed before there are any "updates". The matter has been put to your attention well over a month ago and yet, nothing has been done. But lets face it; this is party of a much, MUCH bigger problem when it comes to creating the game properly and this "problem".
For all the European players I've ever talked to in FFXI

- Most of the players, NPC's and monsters never loaded in besieged
- Dynamis always lags like hell due to the high number of players/monsters. Stuff literally warps over your screen (And its not my optic fiber with ping 240 to Japan, not my insanely good PC playing a 18 year old game...)
- Domain Invasion: Mireu never(rarely) loads in if you are not there when it pops. If you arrive like 20, maybe 30 players will load and you'll never get to see the monster.

All of these problem are caused by exactly the same incompetence. Packets from the server are constantly throttled, and it makes the game unplayable when to much information is being sent. It's 2021 and it is about time that you lot upgraded your servers and programming to match the current times. So far you've been stuck in the year of release. You've given up console support years ago too so what are you waiting for really? Other than either not wanting to make the investment or pure laziness? Most of us having been paying you monthly for close to 18 years so surely, we can get more than R3000 in this day and age.

[Kenshi]

So I got a reply , and as I expected they send the error is on the players end, indeed they seem to don't know there are problem in sheol gaol (and instanced content in general) and send a standard conection issues reply:

Greetings,

The issue you are describing is most associated with interference with the game data. Errors 3113, 3100, 4001, or 1160 may occur as a result. Most of the time, it results from certain security/privacy changes on Internet Explorer. Other times, it occurs when an application running in the background causes interference, such as anti-virus software, firewalls, media players, web browsers, communications software, etc.

Please make sure all background applications (including anti-virus programs such as Norton, Kaspersky, Windows Defender, etc.) have been disabled and/or closed to minimize game interference before attempting to log in.

Once your PC has been restarted, Right-Click the FFXI launcher icon once more and select “Run as Administrator.” This option can also be set permanently by Right-Clicking on the FFXI launcher icon, selecting Properties, then under the Compatibility tab, check the box that says “Run this program as an administrator” and clicking OK.

If the suggestions provided above do not resolve the issue, there may be a communication error.

If you are receiving the error FFXI - 3113 - Protocol Timeout Error, ensure that Client for Microsoft Networks is installed in your Windows network properties. If it is installed, you may want to try uninstalling and reinstalling it.

Check the following Port Ranges on your router/modem to ensure that the following Port Ranges have been opened/forwarded/triggered:

TCP: 25, 80, 110, 443 and 50000 - 65535
UDP: 53 and 50000 - 65535

*You may learn how to do this by visiting http://www.portforward.com/
Find your specific router's brand and model number from the 'List of Routers' and you will be provided a step-by-step guide on how to access these port settings.
Otherwise, your ISP may forward these ports for you.*

If you have properly configured your router, and you are still experiencing these issues, our next suggestion is to bypass the router, and connect your computer directly to your modem. Please ensure that you power down both the modem and the computer for at least five minutes before attempting to connect to FINAL FANTASY XI.

Note that Proxy servers and satellite connections do not work correctly with FINAL FANTASY XI.

If you continue to receive these same errors when you are connected directly to the modem, then the problem lies with your ISP. We would recommend contacting your provider and advising them that one or more of the ports previously provided to you are being blocked or filtered, and that you do need access on these ports.

From the information you have provided, we have identified that the account in question is a European account. Unfortunately, you have reached the North American SQUARE ENIX Support Center, and we cannot assist with European accounts.

If the provided trouble shooting does not provide enough assistance, please contact the European SQUARE ENIX Support Center through this link: http://support.eu.square-enix.com/index.php

We hope they will be able to assist you with the account once you reach their support. Please take care.


but wait the bugs doesn't end here, I sent it in the EU support page and it got sent to NA!!! Thats the e-mail I got after sending the report:

Thank you for contacting the SQUARE ENIX Support Centre.

This email has been sent to notify you that your ticket was received properly. We appreciate your patience and apologise for the delay in responding to your ticket directly.

If your issue has already been resolved and you are no longer in need of support, the URL below will provide you with a "Cancel Ticket" option to close your open ticket.

https://support.eu.square-enix.com/info.php?15561757-c34f7439e0fc9ffe72b22580a746d654-9432112-2

Please be advised that any e-mails sent to this address will not be answered.


As you can see the ticket url is EU, but I got a NA response.
If the issue is already frustrating, dealing with the support center is even more frustrating and this is goin to lead to players unsuscribe from the game.

[Alhanelem]

Ping and Tracert commands sadly won't be much help when it comes to troubleshooting this particular issue, as there is nothing wrong with Client to Server connection. Most these can do is allow SE to ping player machines on their end in order to investigate connectivity issues.It can certainly be an issue on the end of the server that handles Odyssey specifically. You really can't rule anything out, anything network related you should always, always do these things no matter how sure you might be that it isn't the problem. There's no valid reason NOT to do it, even though it is *almost* certainly a processing issue on the server and probably not a networking issue. A whole bunch of people submitting completely normal ping and traceroute results should clue them in to this assuming that's the case. So understand that even though the problem probably isn't a connection issue, submitting the data will still push them in the right direction.

As for the post above, the quote contains an EU site URL, and they refer to the "Square Enix Support Centre," which uses the EU spelling of what in US English would be "Center." I don't see the bug here.

[Kenshi]

As for the post above, the quote contains an EU site URL, and they refer to the "Square Enix Support Centre," which uses the EU spelling of what in US English would be "Center." I don't see the bug here.

Exactly, I used the EU site and I got a automated reply from EU but a tech support reply from NA, you didn't checked the tech response, I'll quote it:


From the information you have provided, we have identified that the account in question is a European account. Unfortunately, you have reached the North American SQUARE ENIX Support Center, and we cannot assist with European accounts.

[Pixela]

All they need to do is remove or alter the trust lockout system, they are sending too much data up and down the very limited pipe and when you addon lag due to distance from server and anti cheat checks it's overloading the limited bandwidth the XI server is allowed to deal with. The server is capped at 56k, no matter how good your ISP connection is.

I sat in Gaol and called every trust to lock them all out, and when my trust magic list had no trusts I had no lag.

[Tsukihika]

Bugged trust system in Gaol certainly appears to play large role in what is causing the annoying input lag. Giving access to every trust that party members possess would be handy and interesting feature, but makes no sense whatsoever from lore standpoint. As that specific player has yet to bond with said trust. They definitely screwed up something when they coded that "global trust list" into Gaol.

Another issue, that is definitely not helping the situation, is that they appear to send the "RP" data related to graphical RP meter in content like Dynamis Divergence, Odyssey: ABC (izzat meter is just recycled RP meter) and Odyssey: Gaol (probably recycled the system using same code but made the RP meter itself invisible) every freaking frame. In other words, they spam player with that single RP-related data 30 times a second (30 FPS)! Resulting in player always sitting on something like 2k+ receive even when they are standing idle during these events and doing nothing. They should have coded these systems much better and made it update once per second instead of every frame. Even the ffxi 3 second interval tick update cycle would be more than fine for game this old. This is the impression i got from reading various other forum posts and chatting with other people experiencing the same issue anyway.

[Yoji_Fujito]

Hello,

I’d like to share some details regarding the severe lag some users have experienced due to increased communication load in the Odyssey areas, particularly in Sheol: Gaol.

After investigating these occurrences, we found that the communication load between Sheol: Gaol and the servers is higher than those of other content. Our results allowed us to track down the cause to some extent, so we’ll proceed with further examination and come up with a countermeasure to help reduce the load. This countermeasure is planned for implementation in the March version update.

We are still looking into cases of players being unable to access Sheol: Gaol in the first place, but it’s possible that the countermeasure may help alleviate this issue. If you are still experiencing these symptoms, we’d like to ask you to submit a bug report (https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/57873-How-to-Report-Lag-in-Sheol-Gaol?p=634342#post634342)so we can further investigate.

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and frustration these issues have caused.

[Pixela]

The issue with people not being able to access gaol in the first place is possibly just that they don't have 3 jobs to enter and the game doesn't tell them that's the problem.

Thanks for the response, it means a lot to players struggling with the issues (many that can't post here)

[Pixela]

Just want to take a moment to point out there is similar (but not as bad) lag in Dyna D and has been for many years.

[Tsukihika]

Finally some hope!

This issue has indeed been extremely frustrating for countless players. And has even created a situation, where certain players that experience no lag, were able to advance further than other players within Sheol: Gaol content. Giving them unfair advantage over others when it comes to this particular battle content. As defeating the higher tier enemies under this heavy communication load was nigh impossible task. All because the various bug reports issued since the addition of Sheol: Gaol about this lag, even here on official forums where Square Enix support center recommends to post any issues, were left ignored and unanswered for several months straight.

Regarding this. I would like to ask the game team what official measures are being taken (if any), in order to ensure that legit bug reports and reported issues will not go unanswered for months in the future?

[Qeepel]

Greetings Tsukihika!

Thank you for your feedback and for sharing your concerns!

In response to your concern regarding bug reports, please rest assured that we do not ignore bug reports and they’re handled as they are received. Also, it may take some time for investigations to complete and depending on the bug/case, it may require some additional time before a solution can be found.

When we receive a bug report, they are moved to the appropriate category based on the report. If the report was moved to the insufficient information category, we ask that you please check your information and re-submit a detailed bug report using the template we supply.

For your convenience, the template and information on each of the bug report categories can be found here: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/35051-Welcome-to-Forum-In-Game-Bugs%21

We sincerely thank you for your patience and understanding with this matter. Please keep an eye out on playonline.com and the official forums for any future updates.

-SQUARE ENIX MODERATOR

[Alhanelem]

we ask that you please check your information and re-submit a detailed bug report using the template we supply. If only people actually followed instructions...

Remember guys, you need to provide all the information. Even if you think it's not relevant. The people behind the game can make that call. Whenever you're investigating any kind of issue, whether it's an NPC not acting right or the graphics bugging out or a quest not working, the cause could be literally anywhere. It could be a network issue, isp issue, gpu issue, whatever, no matter how much you think it couldn't possibly be. Always fill out the reports completely and don't leave snide remarks like "Not telling" or "none of your concern" unless you enjoy having your reports rejected.

I have worked in game dev QA, and in particular dealt with user bug reports. I've seen and heard everything under the sun, so trust me when I tell you, if you can't put the proper care and attention into a bug report you can't expect the dev team to be able to do anything with it.

[Kenshi]

The only bug report I posted was on 05/31/2019 https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/55492-Error-with-Blood-Pact-Rage-messages

Almost 2 years and the issue is still there, I dunno what you consider "some time", but 2 years...

About providing more info, I can provide a lot more info, but I have seen ppl banned on forums for posting technical aspects of the game.

Taking 2 years (or more cause its still not fixed) to fix a issue is not acceptable, and that frustration is why I don't post (and won't post till they fix that one) other issues like nostos bats or apex bats being considered single entities so the messages read: "The Nostos bats hits..." (probably other monsters too but thats the ones i have seen) or the NMs in Odyssey having "The" on their names, when they should be proper noums.

[Alhanelem]

The only bug report I posted was on 05/31/2019 https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/55492-Error-with-Blood-Pact-Rage-messages

Almost 2 years and the issue is still there, I dunno what you consider "some time", but 2 years...

About providing more info, I can provide a lot more info, but I have seen ppl banned on forums for posting technical aspects of the game.

Taking 2 years (or more cause its still not fixed) to fix a issue is not acceptable, and that frustration is why I don't post (and won't post till they fix that one) other issues like nostos bats or apex bats being considered single entities so the messages read: "The Nostos bats hits..." (probably other monsters too but thats the ones i have seen) or the NMs in Odyssey having "The" on their names, when they should be proper noums.I'm simply referring to the people who go to the bug reports and post stuff like "Fix this thing i did bla and didn't work bla bla" instead of using the template and filling it out. If you don't carry out that step, they will simply reject it whether it's actually a bug or not. I.e. if you don't do it, you're not even getting to first base, let along getting all the way around the field.

[Tsukihika]

Back on January, i was personally expecting Square Enix to notice this Gaol issue and fix it on January version update. However, it became soon apparent once update landed back then, that the issue has neither been fixed (lag remained the same) nor do they seem to be aware of the issue to begin with (nothing was mentioned on "known issues"). Soon after that i decided to go ahead and create account here on official forums in order to raise their awareness to this issue. And despite properly following all the guidelines related to posting bug report here on forums, this bug report was falsely shoved into "technical support" section of forums.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/57694-Severe-lag-on-Sheol-Gaol-area-only

If this was done in an attempt to imply that the issue is in any way related to technical issue on customer side. Then this kind of action would be extremely insulting way to treat paying customers. No different from tossing someone into the fat people group just for being a little chubby. Personally i just decided to shrug it off as technical issue on Square Enix side. They also never answered my questions regarding the status of this (now proven) technical issue on their end.

Despite several people posting different kind of bug reports related to this issue back on January. The issue was again neither acknowledged nor fixed on February version update. It wasn't until players, enraged by this lack of support, started contact Square Enix official Support Center and post tickets about this issue, that they seemed to finally become aware of this fault on server side.

Undeniable fact of the matter is, that handling of these official forum posted bug reports do leave much to be desired even if someone on their side do read them. And please note that i'm only counting the properly done, and filled according to given guidelines, bug reports here.

[Pixela]

I'm curious what the changes will be and if they can be used to address the lag in Dyna D for western players too.

[Vonima2]

Hello,

I’d like to share some details regarding the severe lag some users have experienced due to increased communication load in the Odyssey areas, particularly in Sheol: Gaol.

After investigating these occurrences, we found that the communication load between Sheol: Gaol and the servers is higher than those of other content. Our results allowed us to track down the cause to some extent, so we’ll proceed with further examination and come up with a countermeasure to help reduce the load. This countermeasure is planned for implementation in the March version update.

We are still looking into cases of players being unable to access Sheol: Gaol in the first place, but it’s possible that the countermeasure may help alleviate this issue. If you are still experiencing these symptoms, we’d like to ask you to submit a bug report (https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/57873-How-to-Report-Lag-in-Sheol-Gaol?p=634342#post634342)so we can further investigate.

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and frustration these issues have caused.

Thank you very much for this reply! Much appreciated.

[kusa]

lag issue in gaol seems resolved, thanks!

[Rokada]

A quick test of just entering the Gaol lobby on a character that would always get 6 second lag and inventory would take over 7 minutes to load, is showing positive results this morning. Lag is gone in this simple test, /wave emote is almost instant and it took 38 seconds for the inventory circles to finish. Later I will test full 6 man party, but certainly I'm feeling far more positive this first attempt at a fix is good.

Please can you put something in the official patch notes thread more about this "countermeasure", rather than it hiding in this digest thread as a quick detail share. I for one would really like to know if the dynamis-D and Shoal A/B/C areas would also benefit from this countermeasure, and in fact that you can acknowledge there is a bad lag effect in these zones (and has been since the rank system was introduced). It perhaps only affects players outside of Japan, but a lot of us have been quietly putting up with it in the hope it would get fixed each and every month. In no other parts of the game do you get situations where you can run across the zone and a mob doesn't load for up to 5s, with the first you knowing about it is that you're almost dead from an invisible attacker. It makes a mockery of gear swapping in macros, and impossible to react to threats in the manner we've become skilled at.

The biggest fear I have currently is that further additions to the game (Empy+3 gear) will suffer the same kind of lag as Dyna-D/Shoal because SE just isn't aware of the issue, or willing to admit it. I have $25 dollars each month going into this game and I would like to know I'm investing my time in a game that will continue to be fun.

[Baniak]

It seems to be fixed completely. Thank you for listening SE!!

[Wotasu]

My Latency problem seems all gone thank you for whatever you did!

[Monsuta_Man]

Things tend to resolve smoothly when players voice a concern, and their concern is addressed. thank you.

[GoltanaBuukki]

I didn't receive any lag today attempting Gaol content. Thank you for implementing the fix!

[Leny]

I can appreciate everyone is happy they finally fixed it, just don't forget that it took them months to do so. It should have been resolved in hours or at most days.

[Alhanelem]

I can appreciate everyone is happy they finally fixed it, just don't forget that it took them months to do so. It should have been resolved in hours or at most days.Clearly you don't understand software development.

Even if they identified the problem within 5 minutes of it being first reported, it can take a lot more than "hours or at most days" to fix them. But usually, identifying the exact cause of a problem takes a lot longer than that, regardless of the team behind it. This wasn't likely a simple fix like a text error or typo in a script.

Do I think it took longer than it should have? Yes. But your demanded time frame is unreasonable and unrealistic.

[Leny]

They didn't care enough to listen for over a month, so no, complaint is completely valid.

[Alhanelem]

They didn't care enough to listen for over a month, so no, complaint is completely valid.
Your proof that they weren't actually aware of the issue or investigating it in any way is....?

Just because they don't make a post doesn't mean nobody inside has heard of it or bothered to check.

Further, I didn't say the complaint was invalid, rather I said that your expectation of a fix within your specified timeframe isn't.

[Tsukihika]

Your proof that they weren't actually aware of the issue or investigating it in any way is....?

Just because they don't make a post doesn't mean nobody inside has heard of it or bothered to check.

Further, I didn't say the complaint was invalid, rather I said that your expectation of a fix within your specified timeframe isn't.

We don't have any proof right now that they were aware of the issue from day one either though. Neither did they release any information about this issue since the release of gaol, despite player community openly talking about the issue even here on official forums. Far as we know right now, they only became aware of the issue after us players raised a proper fuss last month by posting support tickets into SE Support Center. And since that is the only information right now that we can utilize, unless SE official claims otherwise, white knighting their lack of service to customers will do nothing but harm to the ffxi player community. There is nothing wrong with demanding adequate service as paying customer.

As a software developer myself, and taking all the variables into account that we know about the issue now, this particular issue was certainly something very easy to fix in game code. Especially when we consider that clicking the veridical conflux present within gaol completely suppressed lag while you stayed on that menu. Which i myself even personally reported their way on several occasions. This was especially frustrating issue because us players were able to pinpoint the possible cause, without having even seen the game code itself, but none of us were able to do anything on our end, short of informing SE where this issue lies.


This was already requested before, but please release the technical details what exactly was wrong and caused this awful gaol lag. So we can better troubleshoot such issues in future if any arises.

Also, please investigate similar communication load related to Odyssey A, B and C zones, as well as Dynamis Divergence, as these battle contents have very similar pointless communication load happening that directly impacts player experience of the content.

[Kenshi]

Gaol lag is fixed but like Tsukihika said, the lag is still present in Dyna D (I have not tested other Odyssey zones still).