February 2021 FINAL FANTASY XI Digest

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.

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.

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Originally Posted by 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.

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One way to improve the lag would be to not all cluster on one server.

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.

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Originally Posted by 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.

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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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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Originally Posted by Leny

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.

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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.

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

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Originally Posted by Pixela

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

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Why would players leaving XI start playing XIV?

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

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Originally Posted by Catmato

Why would players leaving XI start playing XIV?

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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.

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.

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Originally Posted by Pixela

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.

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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.

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.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

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.

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

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Originally Posted by Pixela

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

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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.

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

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.

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Originally Posted by 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.

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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.

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.

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 in our Technical Support section.

We greatly appreciate your assistance! :)
Thanks,

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Originally Posted by 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 in our Technical Support section.

We greatly appreciate your assistance! :)
Thanks,

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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?

Greetings Ollarud,

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Originally Posted by 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?

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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!

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.

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Originally Posted by 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 in our Technical Support section.

We greatly appreciate your assistance! :)
Thanks,

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

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.

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:

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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.

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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:

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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/i...d654-9432112-2

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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:

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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.

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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.

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.

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 so we can further investigate.

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

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)

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.

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?

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/t...n-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

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we ask that you please check your information and re-submit a detailed bug report using the template we supply.

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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.