Letter from the Producer LIVE Part X: Will the netcode issue be honestly addressed?

I hope this gets addressed but tbh it's gotten to the point already where it seems clear that their lack of response thus far has been intentional.

Signed.

I used pingzapper last night and it did improve my connection but I shouldn't have to pay a fee on top of already paying subscription fee to get XIV running as it should when I don't have this issue with other online games... ><

We are dreaming if we have any thoughts of them ever fixing this.. The games going to die just like 1.0 did because of this issue and the fact they are COMPLETELY ignoring the community's concerns and purely posting/focusing on their OWN concerns, which the community does not even care about.

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Originally Posted by Drako

Thanks OP for collecting all the various posts and linking them so that we can go in and like it.

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Originally Posted by FreakinZMartin

Thanks op, liked all those comments

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:o You're welcome! I just hope our collective efforts will come to fruition.

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I still have hope, though. This issue may be more paramount to Square Enix's future plans than we previously thought. They’re going full-online, and multi-platform really is on the table, more than ever.

I was just reading Phil Roger's interview for GamesIndustry.biz earlier today, and this statement got me thinking: "the company iterated that all games from Square Enix will prioritise online play and components".
Well… :rolleyes: If that is the plan, then forgive me for speaking so bluntly, but you should really hire some of the best network programmers in the world sooner rather than later… ^^;

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On a side-related note, I was very pleased to read that "It has been great as a business to see how we have oriented ourselves around FFXIV - to see how work has flowed, almost seamlessly, seven days a week across Japan, America and Europe. It's probably the most power I have felt in the Square Enix business with the business really working as one." — Congratulations on that, SE. Really! I know where you come from, and it's by no means a small achievement, and success, to improve your corporate culture in this regard.

Also, this: "The direct relationship that [producer Naoki] Yoshida and the development team have forged with the players is superb, especially through the beta programs where we really worked with the players to shape the game they wanted." — It goes to show how much you guys have made a 180° on your way of approaching gamers, customers; and it's just great, as I said in the OP. Much obliged… Now's the time to really own that statement!

They should really put this 1st priority after 2.1.
Every time when I just manage to get out of the red zone, I need to hope that I'm not going to get hit, and I don't like that feeling.

bump to save Eorzea!

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Originally Posted by Arcaloid

They should really put this 1st priority after 2.1.
Every time when I just manage to get out of the red zone, I need to hope that I'm not going to get hit, and I don't like that feeling.

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Agreed. Two things in this post.

1. Business-wise
News recently confirmed the remarkable boost of SE's financial result for the first six months of 2013, as "profits far surpass what it was expecting for the period. Where Square Enix had originally estimated losses of up to 1.3 billion yen ($13.2 million) for the six months ended September 30, 2013, the company says that it has instead turned a profit, roughly in the region of 2.6 billion yen ($26.5 million)." Furthermore, "looking to the rest of the fiscal year, the company says that it will continue to focus on shifting to the production of online-based titles".

I have been very vocal over the whole FF XIV's netcode issue because it's evidently a dire problem. It would be sound management, bearing in mind this early success, and future online plans, that any revenue SE might have made from this release should first and foremost be used to improve the netcode of this game, in my humble opinion (and, apparently, that of a majority of people, judging by the fact that, again, there is no issue being more discussed; and posts or questions pertaining to it are the most "liked" on this forum). Building a strong network development team for Final Fantasy XIV is a good investment, not only for this IP, but beyond for all online plans. As Thomas Edison said: "There's a way to do it better — find it."

Let me emphasise that: dear SE, please don't give a single cent to your shareholders until this is resolved. Making content, as in any MMORPG, is of the utmost importance as well, but there's little to no point in making too much content when a key system of the game is flawed to a game-breaking degree —we're talking about nothing less than the network component of your flagship online game…

2. Game design
As far as the art of making games is concerned, when a huge chunk of your players say: "I don't like that feeling", "It's frustrating", "It's infuriating" —you know there's a problem.

No amount of great features or formidable designs can make up for flawed underlying systems. There's a bare minimum that gamers expect from a game, and general responsiveness of players' inputs and UI display in a 2013's game should not be subpar to titles a decade older. Especially not in a multiplayer setting. Especially not when pretty much all your competitors do better, or fixed their issues quite swiftly.

As I type this post, 6 days and 21 hours before the Letter from the Producer LIVE Part X.

The questions asking about the netcode issue are now way above any other in terms of "likes".

Will we get an answer?

Even just a polite acknowledgement of the problem, and a commitment to investigate it?

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Originally Posted by Tupsi

Unless everyone is having the issues it won't be seen as a "huge" problem...
I'm not a huge programmer but I know a game can't work for some and refuse to work properly for others without local variables, i.e something on user end rather than immediately blaming net code. If the net code is the issue, clearly it's having issues with some people's ISP routing otherwise you would have no one being able to play this game smoothly, it's just as simple as that.

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I find it extremely hard to believe that there are players that aren't having this issue. It is built in to the game. I have yet to see anyone prove that they are not getting latency. I live closer to the server (steady 20 ping to the NA server) than probably 99.9% of players and I am having the issue. I'm pretty sure everyone that claims they aren't having the issue just have poor connections so they are used to having latency in every game.

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Originally Posted by Gravehill

I find it extremely hard to believe that there are players that aren't having this issue. It is built in to the game. I have yet to see anyone prove that they are not getting latency. I live closer to the server (steady 20 ping to the NA server) than probably 99.9% of players and I am having the issue. I'm pretty sure everyone that claims they aren't having the issue just have poor connections so they are used to having latency in every game.

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Aye, I have yet to see a video of a player interrupting her casts instantly when moving, on a reliable basis (several times in a row, including but not limited to in high-level instances such as Titan or Coil).

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Originally Posted by Gravehill

I find it extremely hard to believe that there are players that aren't having this issue. It is built in to the game. I have yet to see anyone prove that they are not getting latency. I live closer to the server (steady 20 ping to the NA server) than probably 99.9% of players and I am having the issue. I'm pretty sure everyone that claims they aren't having the issue just have poor connections so they are used to having latency in every game.

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Not having this issue. Human reaction time is barely faster than 0.3s anyway. If I slide cast my last .3s so be it.

There have been issues with lag spikes during peak times, but...that's not exactly surprising or particularly concerning.

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Originally Posted by FinagleABagel

Not having this issue. Human reaction time is barely faster than 0.3s anyway. If I slide cast my last .3s so be it.

There have been issues with lag spikes during peak times, but...that's not exactly surprising or particularly concerning.

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As I said in another topic,

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[…] while I can always "feel" at least the .3s positional check, sometimes it gets much worse than that. Not saying that I find .3s acceptable unless they implement some form of interpolation so as to minimise felt latency, but it doesn't even seem to be the only issue […]

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Often, it's not just a .3s, it's more in the vicinity of a whole second, since people can complete Esuna (1s cast) while running…

For more details, please consider the following post (and the sources I'm using, a simple overview of Fast-paced Multiplayer from Gabriel Gambetta and Valve's take on the issue) which I think paint a fair picture of the shortcomings of ARR's netcode.

With this netcode players will never see whack-a-mole minigame ;(.

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Originally Posted by Bearssi

With this netcode players will never see whack-a-mole minigame ;(.

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Sure we will. You'll just need to pre-whack.

Lag isn't the issue. The .3s isn't the issue (though it's a large part of it). It's the general lack of lag tolerance that's the issue. Too many things require a round-trip to the server for the client to even respond. There's no reason the server should need to be consulted for spell interruptions. The client knows I'm moving, the client shouldn't even let me start casting. If I've already started, it should be able to stop me immediately, and let the server catch on whenever the heck it catches on. The entire game is just infested with this creeping unresponsiveness that makes it feel clunky, that pulls the player out of the game and into this terrible meta-game of guessing how input is going to be interpreted this time.

But really, I just wanted to say "pre-whack." >.>

What I want is the teleporting hacks those botters have for titan, clearly they're getting away with using them so I should too...right?

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Originally Posted by Bixby

Sure we will. You'll just need to pre-whack.

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<---classic

To be honest, most of the questions that were answered in past sessions of letter from the producer broadcast were from the Japanese forum (to be fair, many of the questions asked by English users were also brought up by the Japanese users), just as how most dev responses on this forum typically consists of a Japanese response to a recent thread in the Japanese forum first, and then an English mod searching for a (usually) dead English thread on the same topic created long ago and then resurrecting it by posting the translated response there.

Having said that, the lag issue was brought up in the Japanese forum before, but no official response was provided there either (the lag issue seems to be far less prominent in Japan, which might have affected the response priority, as the discussion never really took off).　

Anyway, I have added a really succinct question about network lag in the Japanese Ask the Producer X thread. Feel free to Like it if you think it'll help...
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post1564839

Enough is enough, I would like to hear why dodgy 1.0 server code was recycled when we were told it was being redone from scratch. Another zoom your camera out comment or no comment will just be a mockery.

Does this netcode issue affect each instance differently? I'm a bad, but I am able to complete coil t1-4, Ifrit HM, Garuda HM with no problems, but I get in Titan HM and die to weight of the land even though it looks like I'm out of the ripples on my screen. I even use sprint but for some reason sprint even activates late when I'm in the instance. Bad player + bad netcode = I die too much. :(

It's definitely something on SE's end cuz I know sometimes people get random rubber banding that lasts for a few hours. There's usually someone in my party reporting it at the same time. Then it'll go way and someone else will start getting it. I went though a period of a few weeks after the 2.05 hotfix where I would get it every other day and sure enough, when i asked people there was always someone else getting it. There's no way that It's just a coincidence and that it's on the Client's side. Something on SE's end is causing lag spike for random people.
What's funny is the lag spikes would always go away for me at peak hours. It had nothing to do with my internet; it doesn't do it on any other game. FFXIV usually runs fine for me though. I feel bad for people that have to deal with it all the time.

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Originally Posted by Wowa

Does this netcode issue affect each instance differently? I'm a bad, but I am able to complete coil t1-4, Ifrit HM, Garuda HM with no problems, but I get in Titan HM and die to weight of the land even though it looks like I'm out of the ripples on my screen. I even use sprint but for some reason sprint even activates late when I'm in the instance. Bad player + bad netcode = I die too much. :(

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In my experience and that of my FC, it became much worse in Titan HM and Coil (possibly because you can't really heal through too many mistakes in these).

In our runs, 9/10 times someone dies in Titan because he/she failed to predict the next move (Landslide or Weight of the Land) and didn't move before the red zone actually appeared (hint for you: memorise the whole sequence of Titan's skills or you just can't make it alive).

In Coil, I can't dodge half these ADS's AoE even though I see myself out well before their cast ends.

Also, I must say that personally on Ifrit HM, as a stunt (PLD, DF), I must absolutely hit (complete the animation confirmed by the sound effect) before his Eruption casts reached ~75% or else the bar will keep on and eventually completes (on top of that, the bar usually appears already ~25% filled). Which means I have a fraction of a second to hit my keybind. It became trivial when I had memorised his skill rotation, but as I was learning it, boy did I fail numerous times… (and I'm used to interrupting, I did it for years in many other MMO's, with an average-to-good reaction time, and never in another game do I see a cast bar still filling up after I interrupted it).

I used to work for several years as a systems programmer in a data center which hosted several MMOGs. Perhaps I can give a bit of insight into this problem.

The issue everyone is complaining about stems from an architectural design decision made by SE in the early stages of the game's development. The decision made was to design the game in a way which makes the server dictate the live-state of the game as opposed to the client. This is contradictory to the vast majority of online games on the market, presently, as well as in the past. I will explain below the two different methodologies.

Client Live-State:
Most of the game actions are driven by the client. However, the entities and environment are controlled by the server. When you give a command to jump, your client sends a command to the server, which acknowledges, and replies back to the client with a response to jump. Once the communication has completed, your character then jumps on your screen. Say, for instance you are fighting a monster. You attack the monster but your network connection is poor. So what happens is: You send the command to attack. There is a delay in sending the command to the server. The monster continues to attack you (successfully), as it is controlled by the server. When your connection resolves, you finally make your attack. This results in the player's experience being - 'I'm giving commands but they are delayed on my screen.' However, if a monster creates an AoE circle, it will be in real-time on the client because the server sends the command "monster A is doing an AoE attack at such and such time" When your client receives this information, it syncs to the time provided by the server, so the AoE may APPEAR late, but your reaction to it will be on time, because the client is in a live-state. So if you step out of the AoE on your client, when it goes off, your client will tell the server "The AoE landed, but the client was out of it's range", so in the end, even if you are lagging a little bit, you can still dodge the AoE.

Server Live-State:
Most of the game actions are driven by the server. When you give a command to jump, your client jumps on your screen, but in the live-state of the server you have not jumped until it receives your command to jump. So if you're lagging, it may look like you're jumping on your screen, but to the server, you are standing still. This gives the player a false sense of what is happening in the game. So how is this any different than client live-state? Well, for things like jumping its not much different, but when it comes to combat and time-intensive actions, its a whole other animal. Say for instance, monster A drops an AoE. The AoE is live on the server but you're lagging and haven't received the info yet (monster appears to be sitting there). As soon as you get the information, the monster appears to do his cast and the AoE circle appears. The difference is, you are out of sync with the server and the server rules all, so even if you step outside of the AoE, if your client doesn't get the command to the server to update your position before the AoE lands, you get hit by it. And that, my friends, is why you all died to landslide / bombs / any AoE that you were out of on your screen.

The reasons why SE would choose server dictated live-state:
-Prevents desync bugs (on the server)
-Prevents countless potential duping bugs
-Prevents (in theory) teleportation and other unauthorized client commands from being accepted
-If the player has a good connection to the server, little to no delay is observed by the player

The detractors of server live-state:
-Poor connections results in nearly unplayable conditions, specifically conditions which require fast reaction time
-Server infrastructure is more costly (servers must do much more data processing)

In the past, server live-state was extremely rare because internet connections were still poor / narrow-band.

Can it be changed?
Short answer: No.
Long Answer: Technically, yes, but it would be extremely costly and time consuming. SE Would lose millions and it would take months to over a year to accomplish.

I hope I explained things well enough for most people to understand. Let me know if you want clarification on anything.

Cheers.

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Originally Posted by Alcyon_Densetsu

Also, I must say that personally on Ifrit HM, as a stunt (PLD, DF), I must absolutely hit (complete the animation confirmed by the sound effect) before his Eruption casts reached ~75% or else the bar will keep on and eventually completes (on top of that, the bar usually appears already ~25% filled). Which means I have a fraction of a second to hit my keybind. It became trivial when I had memorised his skill rotation, but as I was learning it, boy did I fail numerous times… (and I'm used to interrupting, I did it for years in many other MMO's, with an average-to-good reaction time, and never in another game do I see a cast bar still filling up after I interrupted it).

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The global cooldown which is twice longer than most casts adds up on the difficulty with the lag making twitch interrupting impossible and the interrupter is forced to have only one skill (the stun) on action bars. Pointing an example what these discussed issues effect.

For someone who isn't a native English speaker, I've gotta hand it to you: you are amazingly eloquent. I don't think this issue could've been brought up any better than what you just did. So, well done, sir!

On topic, though, I hope this issue gets brought up as well. Having just run Stone Vigil this morning, I had a few small lag spikes, but one of them froze some of the patrolling monsters. While not normally an issue that results in a party wiping, it is still annoying when I'm chucking my axe at something (or attempting to, as the animation never finishes) that's clearly in front of me, but is in fact well behind me and on the other side of a wall. What's even worse is when a lag spike causes the other players to completely freeze in position on my screen, as then I have no idea of where it's best to tank, as well as if one of my party members have moved in front of the enemy for whatever reason. I've even had healers in my party suffer this issue, and need to spam Medica in order to heal anyone, and needless to say that just makes everyone's jobs tougher. Simply reloading the area map solves this issue (such as dying and respawning, relogging, using Return, etc.), but it's still an issue regardless.

Surely, there must be some way in which the server can help to 'catch up' without necessarily glitching and freezing character models in place.

Eloquently put, and also good on a fellow community member to explain his speculation on the issue. I do not think this issue will be addressed in the live letter. However if there was ever a well placed plea for a response, I have to acknowledge that this is it.

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Originally Posted by Sinth

I used to work for several years as a systems programmer in a data center which hosted several MMOGs. Perhaps I can give a bit of insight into this problem.
[…]
I hope I explained things well enough for most people to understand. Let me know if you want clarification on anything.

Cheers.

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Wow! That is probably the most enlightening explanation I read on the issue. Thank you very much for such an interesting read!

I have a couple of follow-up questions if you don't mind :)

1. Considering that in Japan, most customers are connected to the internet through very good connections (100Mbps symmetrical with quite low latency), do you think it could explain why SE chose a server live-state architecture? And do you think it's a wise choice considering the quality of worldwide connections as of 2013 (NA, SA, EU, Asia…), bearing in mind that's there's only 1 datacenter for each half of the world?

2. Do you know of any other games that are also based on such a server live-state architecture?

EDIT: Sinth made a thread of his own to make his explanation more visible, something which i wholeheartedly support, therefore I'll post my questions in there.

Thank you Sinth, that's one of the all time best responses I've read anywhere on these forums. ^^

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Originally Posted by Alcyon_Densetsu

Questions

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Thanks, glad I could help. To answer your questions:

1a. I would say your guess is likely to be quite accurate as to why SE would choose this model of networking in their game. In addition to the advanced network infrastructure in Japan, the geographical size of the country also provides for a reduced latency due to less lengthy hops a connection has to make between server and client.

1b. I would say it was an unwise decision based on the limited availability of localized servers (2 data centers for the whole planet). If SE had licensed servers to data centers all over the world in order to serve local communities, these issues would not be so apparent.

2. No MMOs that I know of, specifically, for the reasons stated above.

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Originally Posted by Mysteltain

For someone who isn't a native English speaker, I've gotta hand it to you: you are amazingly eloquent. I don't think this issue could've been brought up any better than what you just did. So, well done, sir!

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Originally Posted by Hyrist

Eloquently put, and also good on a fellow community member to explain his speculation on the issue. I do not think this issue will be addressed in the live letter. However if there was ever a well placed plea for a response, I have to acknowledge that this is it.

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Thank you very much, both of you, for the very kind comments. :o

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Originally Posted by Mysteltain

Answers

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Thank you for the answers :)

(Also, sorry for double-posting your topic, I just wanted to switch over there to further discuss this, since you're right making your explanation an OP will make it much more visible to this community)

m-muh eu lagg
100 ping from EU, Titan HM is a breeze.

That being said, I would like them to investigate some other instance servers, story Titan is messed up beyond belief.

Thank you Sinth for this Infos.

But i cannot understand why you had to do this and why not SE did this.

Why is SE still so silent about this?
Why dont they just say the things you explained to us?
Why is SE letting us fight each other about that in other threads...

So basically, from Sinth's explanation, we're overwhelmingly likely to be SOL when it comes to a solution for this. That is a huge blow to this game. :(

Thank you Sinth! I agree that this is the best explanation I've seen about this issue. My main is Sch, so I'm constantly watching the HP bars. Even when I'd focus the boss, I never got to actually see what the issue was. It wasn't until I leveled up my Drg, I was able to keep an eye on the boss at all times. Doing Chimera in Cutter's Cry, I finally saw it. Sometimes the message about what color his eyes are glowing would pop up, and then maybe .5 seconds later, he'd start casting Ram's voice (or Dragon's voice...whatever, I assume this is the way its SUPPOSED to work) Giving me more than enough time to move. But other times, the message would pop up and the cast bar was already like 10% in.

This issue has given me the push I needed to switch finally switch ISPs. On Monday I'll have much faster internet. If that doesn't improve the issue for me...then I just don't know anymore lol.

On topic. I really hope they address it in the Live Letter, but I'm not holding my breath. I really didn't like Yoshi's latest response...if you could call it that. To me, the silence suggests they may be incapable of fixing it. I just want to be able to see the circle, THEN move...not have to move before the boss starts casting.

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Originally Posted by theflo84

Thank you Sinth for this Infos.

But i cannot understand why you had to do this and why not SE did this.

Why is SE still so silent about this?
Why dont they just say the things you explained to us?
Why is SE letting us fight each other about that in other threads...

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Because admitting that it is working as intended and won't be changed anytime soon will be damaging to their product going forward.

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Originally Posted by Blarp

Because admitting that it is working as intended and won't be changed anytime soon will be damaging to their product going forward.

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But saying nothing will not only damge the game. That will kill the game.

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Originally Posted by theflo84

But saying nothing will not only damge the game. That will kill the game.

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Well either way SE is in a terrible position.
They announce that it's a problem, but not one they can fix in a timely manner -> queue extreme bitching and more mega-threads demanding to know why it can't be fixed
They say that they see no problems and suggest you submit a ticket (or zoom out) -> queue MASSIVE bitching

What we want to hear: We know it's an issue, and we're going to work to solve it soon (never going to happen)

Quite honestly, if this issue is a dealbreaker for you, you may as well quit now because SE is not going to fix it. I'm not saying that in a cruel way or to be obnoxious, but I truly believe that this will never be fixed.

Thank you very much for this initiative, I hope (but not too much) that they will finally give us an answer on this problem.

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Originally Posted by theflo84

Thank you Sinth for this Infos.

But i cannot understand why you had to do this and why not SE did this.

Why is SE still so silent about this?
Why dont they just say the things you explained to us?
Why is SE letting us fight each other about that in other threads...

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This ironicaly made me think of FFXIV's main theme "Answers" :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by Billie21

Thank you very much for this initiative, I hope (but not too much) that they will finally give us an answer on this problem.

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Much obliged… :o

…and I hear you.

My hopes hit a low as well after understanding the nub of the issue thanks to Sinth's explanation. As someone said in his thread, SE's facing a dilemma where both ways are bad PR: either admit they failed to take into account the huge discrepancy between Japan's outstanding connections and the rest of the world which is clearly not as well connected, and much more distant from the datacenters; or maintain the silent treatment and face some kind of exodus as people become first aware, then jaded from vainly trying to avoid events that already happened when their screens display them…

I might know a thing or two about communication and diplomacy, but in such a case, I really don't know how I would resolve the situation. It would surely imply meeting with staff leaders (especially producer, CFO and Network Lead) to really get all the data (not the kind of meeting you improvise on the fly…), and consider all possible avenues before even considering going public with any of them, let alone working out the wording. The situation is so dire and deep that it's nigh impossible for us, outsiders, to even theorise about it without solid facts and figures. So yeah, the possibility that they decide to talk in the next event after reading this letter of mine is more remote than ever. If they do address it, even just to acknowledge the issue, in corporate subtext, it will be because they would have been brainstorming for some time —the kind of neurone mashing that calls for a hefty intake of ibuprofen.

What I can say, however, is that if I were that guy, I'd think about servicing the customers and the game first and foremost because no amount of profit can justify such a failure. People get fired over much lesser blunders than that in my book, it's at the level of threatening the weight of this game in the worldwide market: huge missed opportunity. Gamers are so quick to hop these days, you'd have to be either unaffected (either because you only craft, or live less than a thousand miles away and sit on a coax/optical connection), or be a loyal FF fan to a borderline blind degree (read: adoring FF & memory games), to stay here after you've tried any other MMO out there. Heck, even playing the action-packed FF XV might trigger the wake up call that games aren't meant to be so clumsy when difficulty arises.

Still on the being-that-guy conjecture, if I had the millions, I'd probably try to pull off that re-reconversion bearing in mind the first expansion (3.0) as a redeeming window; and however formidable that would be, I don't know if it would be enough to morph ARR into anything more than FF XI-2 in terms of player base —again, numbers and research required to form an opinion on the matter before green lighting anything.

So… yeah… I guess it's highly unlikely we hear so much of a whisper about it before 2014. At least it hasn't reached media awareness yet, most journos out there are still in awe at the graphics —if I were that guy I'd probably do make it so it stays that way for as long as humanely possible.

Talk about a mess… whereas in the meantime, dear CEO Phil rogers is shouting to whoever wants to hear about it that SE now focuses on online components in all their games, rolling out the red carpet for worldwide cooperation between teams and whatnot… I just hope, for his own sake, that he knows the core tech behind their shiny new-reborn flagship and datacenters is just not yet entirely up to the task for massive integration in their whole product line. That is, if he hopes to work with current net plugs rather than those of the next decade…

Well, from what I understood, it CAN be somewhat alleviated by placing local data centers - something they promised for the EU anyway, not an "EU" data center in Canada as we have now. They might not want to do that because it costs money (surprise!) but if they don't do something about it, it will cost them even more. I'm not lagging that bad most of the time, but the occasional (I hate this word, somebody, shoot the guy who decided on it's correct spelling) packet loss and the resulting lagspike just leads to unneeded deaths on stuff like Titan HM.

The worst part about this, is that even if this game had a ton of excellent endgame, satisfying and fairly balanced pvp, perfect class balance in pve, 15 more well designed dungeons, and the housing and vanity slots stuff goes off without a hitch and is excellent, this problem will ALWAYS be lurking in the background, gnawing at people. If they don't fix this or address it in some manner, they are GOING to lose a lot of customers and credibility, pretty much regardless of anything else they do or don't do. ESPECIALLY if this issue causes people to get hit by stuff in pvp that they shouldn't be, that will raise a TON of hackles.

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Originally Posted by Sybreed

The worst part about this, is that even if this game had a ton of excellent endgame, satisfying and fairly balanced pvp, perfect class balance in pve, 15 more well designed dungeons, and the housing and vanity slots stuff goes off without a hitch and is excellent, this problem will ALWAYS be lurking in the background, gnawing at people.

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This issue is literally the only technical issue I can think of that can cause people to quit. Sure people cry about overcrowding, lag, and a host of technical issue in other MMORPGs, but it's rare for people to actually quit over that. Almost invariably people quit over gameplay stuff, but the lag in FF14 is so bad that it can actually trump gameplay elements.