Why the netcode issue exists, and why it cannot be fixed.

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Originally Posted by Astarica

Um no, because if there's a delay between your jump gets processed by the server, you'd not be able to reliably jump up across elevation, because there's a chance the server isn't aware you're 'jumping' yet and then you'd get bounced back because the server will decide you're not really jumping and thus not having enough altitude to clear the elevation. Even as laggy as this game is, I've never had a case where I tried to jump up elevation in a valid location and get bounced back by magic.

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A better explanation of this would be if you are running through an environment but you notice nothing else on the screen is moving. Your character is moving just fine and then you are dropped out of the game with a disconnect message. When you log back in you are way back from where you got dropped at because the server was not receiving new location information from your client. You were disconnected from the game but you did not know it until your client finally timed out. The same would happen if you jumped to the point you were talking about. If you are not sending information back to the server, you could jump to that point and see yourself in that point on your screen but when you disconnected and log back in you will be back on the ground because that was the last point your client sent new location information and was received successfully by the server. I have had this happen quite a few times. This raises the question however about why on some peoples machines the character completely stops for a few seconds and then shoots forward to a new position once the connection catches back up. You would think that if this is what was really happening then you wouldn't see this kind of stuff on the client side.

The cost of hardware is a rounding error compared to the expected gain/loss from a high profile game like this. WoW says they spend $50 million an year on its maintenance, and while that sounds like a lot, WoW easily pulls more than $1 billion a year or revenue (and often more). It makes absolutely no sense to skimp out on hardware, which is cheap, when you're talking about this amount of money. At any rate, it's not a proximity issue. It takes the speed of light 0.01s to go from west coast to east coast, so there's no reason to query sooner than every 0.01s in any MMORPG (speed of light isn't fast enough), so we'd expect WoW or any other MMORPG to exhibit the same problem with 3% the frequency compared to FF14.

However, this ignores the fact that in any game with PvP your 'don't die' ability better work 100% or people will definitely notice it. If an ability like Ice Block fails with 3% the frequency compared to how often you fail to dodge a WotL in PvP, you'd have people demanding heads roll. The fact that you don't hear about these issues implies this is clearly not a problem in any other game.

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Originally Posted by Astarica

. At any rate, it's not a proximity issue. It takes the speed of light 0.01s to go from west coast to east coast, so there's no reason to query sooner than every 0.01s in any MMORPG (speed of light isn't fast enough), so we'd expect WoW or any other MMORPG to exhibit the same problem with 3% the frequency compared to FF14.

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Blizz doesn't put all their data centers in one spot.

And it IS partially a proximity issue, because of the amount of hops taken. The other half being these ISPs getting overloaded (imagine one major highway from CA to east coast Canada picking up everyone along the way), and these ISP companies not caring (why should they? we don't pay them).

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Originally Posted by Allyra

Blizz doesn't put all their data centers in one spot.

And it IS partially a proximity issue, because of the amount of hops taken. The other half being these ISPs getting overloaded (imagine one major highway from CA to east coast Canada picking up everyone along the way), and these ISP companies not caring (why should they? we don't pay them).

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If it's a proximity issue then all MMORPG would exhibit the same problem as FF14 at least 3% of the time, because speed of light travels 3000 km in 0.01s, which is less than the distance from west coast to east coast, which is a perfectly playable distance for NA players. If PvP in any MMORPG exhibits the same kind of behavior as FF14 does in general, there would be a riot in the forums. The fact there are no such riots means it cannot be a proximity issue.

The underyling issue is actually pretty simple.

1. No MMORPG exhibits the same kind of negative impact due to lag as FF14.
2. FF14 exhibits no positive benefit compared to other MMORPG as a result of its netcode.

Therefore the only conclusion is that FF14 is wrong. There's no justification for it beyond whoever picked this method is dumb. It'd be like you trying to build a car out of square wheels and trying to tell people how it's really hard to get a car working with square wheels. No one cares because it's your own stupidity to use square wheels over round ones.

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Originally Posted by Astarica

If it's a proximity issue then all MMORPG would exhibit the same problem as FF14 at least 3% of the time, because speed of light travels 3000 km in 0.01s, which is less than the distance from west coast to east coast, which is a perfectly playable distance for NA players. If PvP in any MMORPG exhibits the same kind of behavior as FF14 does in general, there would be a riot in the forums. The fact there are no such riots means it cannot be a proximity issue.

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Ummm... there aren't any riots about pvp because this game doesn't have pvp. Are you just trolling now?

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Originally Posted by Astarica

If it's a proximity issue then all MMORPG would exhibit the same problem as FF14 at least 3% of the time, because speed of light travels 3000 km in 0.01s, which is less than the distance from west coast to east coast, which is a perfectly playable distance for NA players. If PvP in any MMORPG exhibits the same kind of behavior as FF14 does in general, there would be a riot in the forums. The fact there are no such riots means it cannot be a proximity issue.

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Light may be able to go that fast, electrons on a wire with many routers and other devices in between, cannot.

Apparently comprehension is hard for some people. Let's assume that FF14's underyling architecture is totally sound and the only reason for lag is due to server proximity and/or the interval of pooling. In FF14 we know they pool every 0.3s. This creates some really nasty lag.

The speed of light travels 3000 km in 0.01 seconds, less than the distance from west coast to east coast. Therefore, assuming your game expect people playing across the coast, there would be no reason to pool data faster than once every 0.01s, because since it takes the speed of light 0.01s to even reach you, pooling the data any more frequent does not improve the lag factor. So we can treat all other MMORPG as pooling every 0.01s in an ideal case. If the distance/polling interval is the only factor, this means other MMORPG should exhibit the same behavior 3% of the time compaerd to FF14.

However, this overlooks the fact that if you're a PvP environment you will most definitely notice if an ability like Ice Block is failing the same way you failed to dodge a WotL. Even at a 3% frequency, factoring in the size of the MMORPGs and the time they've been around, and that PvP creates the 'failed to dodge WotL' situations with a very high frequency (except here it'd be your CDs failed to fire), the conclusion is that every MMORPG should've its PvP forum swamped with the same complaints about firing immunity abilities only to fail to work. Yet, this is not what people complain about in PvP games, suggesting that this issue doesn't exist in other MMORPGs. So, distance/polling interval cannot be the reason why FF14 lags especially bad, because even at 3% failure rate compared to FF14, no one would consider that acceptable for PvP.

It would help if they didnt base the whole game on dancing and avoiding stuff on the ground. Even tho the issue would still persist on another design scenario with less avoid avoid spam, i still think they took the wrong decision.

Living on east coast I get around 70ms ping to everywhere on the eastern half of the US and between 100 and 140ms everywhere else in the country. So how is my location an issue with this game and only this game?

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Originally Posted by Sinth

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

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You forgot:
-PS3

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

Also, the more things the client is put in control of the easier it is to hack and cheat.

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Well thank goodness the game is so secure and there are no hackers messing things u- ohhhhh wait.

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Originally Posted by Rochetm

Living on east coast I get around 70ms ping to everywhere on the eastern half of the US and between 100 and 140ms everywhere else in the country. So how is my location an issue with this game and only this game?

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I live on the southern half of the east coast near florida and I don't have any issue with the game. It runs fine. I never checked my ping times because I don't seem to have an issue at all. I am with cox cable. I don't really know if that is relevant or not but it might be.

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When your client receives this information, it syncs to the time provided by the server

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Why couldn't this read "When the server receives this information it syncs to the time provided by the client?" For your particular session anyway.

Anyway I have tested running out at the last possible instant with monster AOEs and its always right on. No issue here.

The issue between FF14 and other game isn't just a matter of degrees. It's something versus nothing at all. Turn autorun on and start casting your 'mount chocobo' spell. You'll see that the spell obviously attempts to be cast and depending on your lag and time of the day it might even claim to finish. It'll certain go on for at least 0.5s or so in the vast majority of the time.

Now go to WoW or any other MMORPG, put autorun on and try to get on your mount. I'll be shocked if the game even displays the casting timer at all (unless you managed to accidentally ran into something and got stuck). You should just get 'can't do that' 100% of the time. This is obviously because FF14 chose to handle this issue totally differently, unless WoW and every other MMORPG has managed to invent teleportation of data, which is what is necessary to ensure the castbar never even starts at all if they operated under the same architecture as FF14.

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Originally Posted by Quesse

Why couldn't this read "When the server receives this information it syncs to the time provided by the client?" For your particular session anyway.

Anyway I have tested running out at the last possible instant with monster AOEs and its always right on. No issue here.

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When the AE fires, the server is supposed to make its decision at that moment, not some time later when the client sends the next update. In theory it can wait, but that means even more lag. It's already laggy enough right now when the server doesn't bother wait for the next client update to render its decision. Imagine what happens if the server has to wait? It'd generally be in favor of players, but the lag will be even worse.

Thank you very much! I enjoyed reading this!

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Originally Posted by Sinth

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As a thought, would extending the cast timers on the Mobs AE abilities slightly to compensate help to aleviate most of the problems?

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Originally Posted by Sapphic

As a thought, would extending the cast timers on the Mobs AE abilities slightly to compensate help to aleviate most of the problems?

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it would, longer cast time aoe = more time to move out (if want to keep the aoe radius as it is now)

Thanks for this thread that summarise the situation pretty well.

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Originally Posted by Sinth

The reasons why SE would choose server dictated live-state:
[...]
-Prevents (in theory) teleportation and other unauthorized client commands from being accepted

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That's the most sad with all this: they still suffer from hackers, even more so than anything I've seen so far (before you answer that: no, I haven't seen it all).


At this point, I'd rather suffer from visible lag and rubberbanding. I'll take the lag I can see (and potentially adjust to) over the lie that is the game at present.

Teleport is basically impossible to stop completely because to the server, the client is always issuing teleport commands. The only question is how far are you teleporting? A server model is in theory safer against other things you might want to do with your client, but it's not like other MMORPGs are plagued with hacks. In a game with very rigid rules, it's pretty hard to successfully lie to the server for prolonged amount of time. For example let's say I hacked my client to always report 'I just healed myself for 9999', and let's say server is completely trusting here and doesn't even question how this is possible. It's still hard to do anything else useful because if I ever start trying to cast any offensive spell, the server is going to notice I somehow casted 2 spells in one GCD and will suspect I'm hacking. About all I can do is stand there and never die.

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Originally Posted by Sinth

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

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So we should chalk it up to irony that the game has all of these problems?

I just dont like that SE blames our ISP's yes, my isp is at fault for giving me only up to a 25meg connection, which results in about 1.6meg/s download speeds, but that is the best i can get where i live, in North west cumbria in the uk, even if Fiber optic came in the next year or 2, i'd be charged an additional £10 a month for it, and i've never had an issue with any other mmo in the past.

It really upsets me that now i am end game, i can not proceed any further because of this, i can not even get Titan done without major carry/support. my fc is a uk only fc, and alot of us have the same problem, most people from europe are abit further away from the datacenters compared to us, but very few locations in the uk actually have fiber, unless you live in the major citys.

I blame BT.. lol

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Originally Posted by ispano

Light may be able to go that fast, electrons on a wire with many routers and other devices in between, cannot.

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Yes, I was thinking about that too.

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Originally Posted by DarkB

It would help if they didnt base the whole game on dancing and avoiding stuff on the ground. Even tho the issue would still persist on another design scenario with less avoid avoid spam, i still think they took the wrong decision.

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Most of the game it doesn't really matter. You can compensate somehow by memorizing the fights, strategic ability/spell use, good healers, etc.

Then we get to Titan HM, and all we have left to compensate is to "zoom out the camera."

The one thing that really gets to me, and what may end up being the reason I cancel is that SE seems to be.... not too bright.

Decision: Let's make it server side instead of client side like basically every other MMO out there so we have less cheating/hacking/etc.
Result: I've seen more frequent botting/teleporting/duping/hacking in this game then any of the other major MMOs I've played at release. Meanwhile the rest of us get stuck with a terrible netcode that doesn't work for a game requiring .5 second responses.

Decision: lets make it so you can only mail to people on your friends list so we have less RMT.
Result: RMT spam as rampant or more than any other MMO I've played, RMTs have multiple accounts and can easily friend each other to mail or face to face transfer. Meanwhile the rest of us who pay extra for alts, can't transfer items to our own characters.

It seems like they just spit out all these random ideas without actually thinking of the real effects. Whats more, in what may be just them trying to save a little face, they refuse to respond or change many of these decisions once its pointed out that it isn't working the way they thought and instead is just making it harder for the normal players.

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Originally Posted by Moirear

Most of the game it doesn't really matter. You can compensate somehow by memorizing the fights, strategic ability/spell use, good healers, etc.

Then we get to Titan HM, and all we have left to compensate is to "zoom out the camera."

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Not for nothing, but Titan HM is the most clockwork fight in the entire game. His rotation is 100% fixed. His strongest attack (mountain buster) can't crit. Every attack but stomps can be dodged. In fact, the final phase is so clockwork, that each "cycle" of his attack pattern lasts exactly 60 seconds, which means:

1) Mountain Buster happens every 30 seconds. Three mages can do a virus rotation to mitigate every single Mountain Buster.
2) Divine Seal and Swiftcast will be up for every set of stomps.
3) Paladins will have a defensive cooldown available for at least the first 10 Mountain Busters, if you start with shortest cooldown (Rampart).

So yes, the fight can be memorized and that will compensate handily. Titan HM is a classic noob killer but you can snooze through it once you learn the fight.

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Originally Posted by Moirear

Most of the game it doesn't really matter. You can compensate somehow by memorizing the fights, strategic ability/spell use, good healers, etc.
Then we get to Titan HM, and all we have left to compensate is to "zoom out the camera."

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It's no different in Titan HM.
You still use a memory game; it's just that if you have people who lack practice or knowledge of the encounter, someone in your group, namely said person, will drop the ball and things will go from smooth sailing to a sinking ship, very, very fast.
I tank Titan HM as a Warrior and I can survive his MB by following a rotation every now and then with some self skills.
However, if the healers aren't on top of their game and or/not alive, things can get hairy. Thus you have to have experienced players.

Not to say I disagree, but saying that currently, despite the issues which shouldn't exist, you can counter almost every mechanic in the game, simply by memorizing.
However, when the game uses red circles and cast bars for enemy abilities, you'd think things would be more reaction based, than memory based.
This is where the problem lies and why the game feels totally bonkers and just plain frustrating/annoying; even when you "win".

Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought most MMOs actually used server side hit detection? Or is there a hybrid combination of the two?

My reasoning:

I have played a game with client side hit detection, and you would have to lead attacks greatly in front of some people to compensate for their lag even if you yourself were fine. It makes sense of course when you realize the data saying where they actually are is still being sent due to bad connection.

Now a game like GW2, I have never missed a person because of their lag. The server responds right away if my hit was on the spot they were. What does happen that makes me think it uses server side is massive skill lag in large groups. Like I person a button my computer prints out it's skill request and mails it, waits 3-4 days, skill gets used bad. I would not think that is client based. PvP games in general I would have to assume use server based because it provides greater accuracy when dealing with hits, since then you are dealing with the latency of 1 person vs 2.

Therefore I would think that once again it is just shody use of a system that generally works for other games. Or am I wrong? Though personally I know once PvP comes in I will not want to hear the term client side for this game.

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Originally Posted by Sadebreth

I live on the southern half of the east coast near florida and I don't have any issue with the game. It runs fine. I never checked my ping times because I don't seem to have an issue at all. I am with cox cable. I don't really know if that is relevant or not but it might be.

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No lag here. East coast Virginia with Cox Cable as well. I only lag when I normally would be lagging(netflix, lots of streams or downloads)

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Originally Posted by Suellen

The difference is packet loss.

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Yep, this is the real killer, as it the game also uses TCP which means that missed packets are retransmitted and actions are most movements and actions are appear not to be replayed in until the missed packets arrive.

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Originally Posted by Dochas

The one thing that really gets to me, and what may end up being the reason I cancel is that SE seems to be.... not too bright.

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Lots of hyperbole in this post.

SE is going to have to eat the millions. They currently getting all of the drawbacks of server-side and none of its benefits.

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Originally Posted by Sinth

stuff

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very nice, you can copy stuff out of text books, what are you a 1st year journalism student?

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Originally Posted by Dreamer

SE is going to have to eat the millions. They currently getting all of the drawbacks of server-side and none of its benefits.

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Bold, but I agree, if after crunching the numbers they think they can still pull off anything more than FF XI-2 out of the market after a year or so like this. Hardcore fans (such the one quoted below) will remain no matter what, and if FF XI is any indication, they're in the vicinity of ~500k. Short of being able to reach double that figure, it could prove pointless to even bother.

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Originally Posted by TheRac25

very nice, you can copy stuff out of text books, what are you a 1st year journalism student?

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How obnoxiously arrogant to say this. :( You should play nicer if you wish anyone to take you seriously. :eek:

As a 1.0 and long term XI player. All these issues, along with the general design of 2.0 has put me off FFXIV.

I was hoping for another great adventure from SE, but instead I got this mess, and to even think I thought they could pull it out of the bag with 2.0. (Which was going OK untill the rose tinted glasses came off)

There has been some brilliant discussion in this thread, a rare thing for this forum

Some sort of Problem not many have mentioned before:
Avoiding Stuff depends too much on continous actions, as example: runing left, left, left, left untill you are out of a Circle.

If the server sends to the client "AoE is starting, 8 secunds left to react" and the Player on the client have 8 secunds (maybe just 4 depending on lag) to press one single button (example: defence roll) to avoid the impact - it is ok and makes fun. Most playstation games rely on that system, even high speed action games does have this mechanic!

But what with all those different sized AoE-circles? Indeet it is a problem and doesnt feel right, wen pressing one button saves you from everything (sidekick to pld with his special skill). Also seen on Ifrit how easy the fight becomes if you can interrupt a Boss. However, it is easier to design a combat with adding mechanics than to deal with LAG or netcode. If the game supports silence, stun, blind, lets make use of that... Also pressing more different buttons to avoid larger circles is possible - that leads us to classic action games and currently often seen on playstation. I do not like that direction, but if it will fix the problem i will accept it. At end the game have to be playable!

Thanks for clarifications OP. Now, at least some of us, can move on, without looking back.

not sure if this has been mentioned yet, but I was just thinking about some 'AOE-changes' that happened in the last couple of operations (raids) in SW:TOR

basically someone gets 'tagged' with an AOE-effect, and then they have to 'place' it either in a specific spot - or generally away from the group or boss (sometimes ON the boss). once the effect is placed, the player still has a couple of seconds to actually move out of it.

some variation of this is that one player gets tagged with the effect anyway, will get a HUGE hit (not deadly if fully healed off), so everyone else basically has to move away from them or else the healer won't be able to topple off the entire group for the next big hit.

it would still give people enough time to MOVE, but it would still be difficult enough to provide a challenge.

or something else from that game, the 'barrage' (found in 2 operations so far)
basically it's a little droidsomething that will follow one person and leave behind a trail that damages, so this means a) the person with the barrage has to move away from the group (preferably not by running through them) and b) the group has to be aware where the person with the barrage is

I love these mechanics. SE has copied so much, they should copy those! (no clue if such mechanics already exist in other games. they probably do :P)

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Originally Posted by Adelphe

I just dont like that SE blames our ISP's yes, my isp is at fault for giving me only up to a 25meg connection, which results in about 1.6meg/s download speeds, but that is the best i can get where i live, in North west cumbria in the uk, even if Fiber optic came in the next year or 2, i'd be charged an additional £10 a month for it, and i've never had an issue with any other mmo in the past.
It really upsets me that now i am end game, i can not proceed any further because of this, i can not even get Titan done without major carry/support. my fc is a uk only fc, and alot of us have the same problem, most people from europe are abit further away from the datacenters compared to us, but very few locations in the uk actually have fiber, unless you live in the major citys.

I blame BT.. lol

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Howdy, i live in Whitehaven, Cumbria i am on Sky BB 6-7mb less than 1mb upload and i don't really have any problems, quantity of information being sent/received does not mean quality.

Good information. But why could they not just run player scans on are characters data on there server. To detect any cheating or anything nerfouse and when there scans detects it they have the GM or employee look at it. If got something from a dupe or nerfouse means they just take it a way and send a email or in game why. and banned the person doing it. Is that not what all the other mmos have been doing with the client side stuff? With all drop tables on there server side they would have a program run if seen massive amount something pop up would red flag square to fix it and if got a massive spam shout it would red flag square. By having the items and gear time stamp to the .10s with month date and year. odds of people to have that many items in a 5-10 second window would detect botters and floor warpers on there end, but they need still make sure person legit just not fast reflexes. I would rather have few seconds or minutes delay on getting my gear. Then having a party die.