Lack of SE Response to Lag

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Originally Posted by Duuude007

Fixed. Also: not hardly as common as you are letting on.

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Thanks. I missed that out. Though it isn't just me if you haven't noticed all the other threads about this very problem?

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Originally Posted by Delsus

The kind of lag they are talking about is you run from an AoE and although you were out of it on your screen you still get hit, I had a particularly bad one once, in Titan, when other players said I was out of it.

For the most part I am Ok on the latency side since I got a fibre optic connection, what my complaint is about is people crying to SE about latency when they say a VPN virtually fixes it for them.

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You don't have a clue what they are talking about. Since January 14th players all over the world have started getting 10 second freezes with the game suddenly running at super fast speed to catch back up. I was in Titan HM and everything froze for around 10 seconds followed by all circle bombs and the landslide dropping in a split second. The fact that people from different countries with their only thing in common being that they play ARR are all getting the exact same thing happening after a certain date, tends to make us lean towards this being a problem on SE's end.

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Originally Posted by Sylve

Except housing prices are coming down quite hard ...

SE can't reasonably HAVE a response. Why? Because the strength of the complaint is as follows:
I'm lagging! SE its your fault, fix it!

These people have not posted screencaps of pingtests and traceroutes. In one of the lag threads, we managed to single out Verizon FiOS as a cause of the lag some people are experiencing. The amount of people who believe that theres a single path from their PC to the SE servers that only they may access astonishes me. These people have no idea how the internet actually works, and seem content to simply scream at SE to "Fix it" when there is nothing SE can reasonably do to change the path your PC takes to get to its servers. It's on the users to contact their ISPs and clear up any throttling issues, or bad routes.

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Here's a tracert I ran to Excalibur server. Happy?

https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/12...0/850/3gx7.jpg

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Originally Posted by Galliano

Here's a tracert I ran to Excalibur server. Happy?

https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/12...0/850/3gx7.jpg

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Oh, hey, looks like you're going through that same Level3 router someone else was saying is dropping packets.

Also, what SE did, that we know of at least, in 2.1 is they made the game use more bandwidth when in most end game dungeons. Going from polling every 0.3 seconds to every 0.1 seconds that is. So the average amount of bandwidth going through these routers, went up.

SKY have now confirmed the problem is with Level 3 Montreal.

http://helpforum.sky.com/t5/Fibre-Br...1579761/page/2

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Originally Posted by Galliano

SKY have now confirmed the problem is with Level 3 Montreal.

http://helpforum.sky.com/t5/Fibre-Br...1579761/page/2

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Yay Sky... Hopefully whoever handles it sorts it out fast ^^;;

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Originally Posted by Kal-El

I'd just really like a response to say "Hey we're aware of the issue and we're doing X Y and Z to try and fix it." Just so we know that this issue will be resolved.

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It never will be resolved. You're playing a Japanese MMO hosted in Japan from presumably either the US or EU. Short of paying for VPN access, there's nothing you can do to improve the situation (except upgrade from dialup to a decent broadband connection).

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Originally Posted by Millimidget

It never will be resolved. You're playing a Japanese MMO hosted in Japan from presumably either the US or EU. Short of paying for VPN access, there's nothing you can do to improve the situation (except upgrade from dialup to a decent broadband connection).

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The US servers are hosted in Canada. That's why traffic goes through the level3 Montreal nodes. But yes, since the problem lies outside of the verizon/sky networks, what either network can do is limited. Other than reporting the issue to level3, I dont see what more can be done. Maybe SE needs to pay them or something?

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Originally Posted by Millimidget

It never will be resolved. You're playing a Japanese MMO hosted in Japan from presumably either the US or EU. Short of paying for VPN access, there's nothing you can do to improve the situation (except upgrade from dialup to a decent broadband connection).

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JP players are also having this problem. So this isn't a valid statement.

As I said before..... Square should really contact Level3.net about their gaming services and figure it out. Users have little control over the issue.

Until then your only fix is a VPN.

PingZapper WTFast BattlePing are all viable options.

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Originally Posted by Galliano

SKY have now confirmed the problem is with Level 3 Montreal.

http://helpforum.sky.com/t5/Fibre-Br...1579761/page/2

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But...But...It's SE's fault! D:

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Originally Posted by Tupsi

But...But...It's SE's responsibility D:

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fixed that for you

Funny all the people saying "use a VPN"

I tried wtfast and laughed when their own software told me that my connection was better without it.

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Originally Posted by Tupsi

But...But...It's SE's fault! D:

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That's the same thing Verizon has said. It's a problem with Level 3. http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...a-Data-Center/

Using a VPN(WTFfast paid) and Fios I was just getting 1 second spikes in TitanEX.

Enough with trying to defend SE. It's on their end. People can post whatever story they want on here. Verizon is not throttling FFXIV because it thinks it's torrent traffic. My torrents don't get throttled.

I can go download and upload torrents as long as I want. They don't care...that's why I switched to FIOS. NOTHING else on my PC lags. Just this game.

Even when I am not going through Level 3 I get latency....

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Originally Posted by Taliph

Funny all the people saying "use a VPN"

I tried wtfast and laughed when their own software told me that my connection was better without it.

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The idea is that the VPN would bypass the bad router. The little test they run won't see that.

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Originally Posted by remidi

Using a VPN(WTFfast paid) and Fios I was just getting 1 second spikes in TitanEX.

Enough with trying to defend SE. It's on their end. People can post whatever story they want on here. Verizon is not throttling FFXIV because it thinks it's torrent traffic. My torrents don't get throttled.

I can go download and upload torrents as long as I want. They don't care...that's why I switched to FIOS. NOTHING else on my PC lags. Just this game.

Even when I am not going through Level 3 I get latency....

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And yet it's been shown to be routers with Level3 and at least one other backbone provider that are failing. That's not something SE controls. They can tell them and ask them to fix it or whatnot, but they can't directly do ANYTHING about it.

And before someone pipes up about them doing something in 2.1 to cause this, yeah they did do something. They changed the poll rate for positioning in end game instances from 0.3 seconds to 0.1 seconds. That increases the bandwidth used by a decent amount. So if you want, they can take that change back.

Also, you don't get to decide which route you take unless you use a VPN to bypass whatever route you're currently getting.

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Originally Posted by Taliph

So you mean that you have to pay in order to see any real improvement?

Regardless, same issues with it and without. And more lag spikes with it. Seems to me SE needs to work something out so their traffic is no longer qos'd into oblivion by random routers.

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They can't? They don't control these companies. They can't control the routing, especially when Level 3 is just about ALL there is to get anywhere decently quick without routing all over the place. They're not even SE's ISP at the servers.

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Originally Posted by ispano

The idea is that the VPN would bypass the bad router. The little test they run won't see that.

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So you mean that you have to pay in order to see any real improvement?

Regardless, same issues with it and without. And more lag spikes with it. Seems to me SE needs to work something out so their traffic is no longer qos'd into oblivion by random routers.

In reply to your edit, ispano, they do in fact control what their packets look like. It's widely known that p2p traffic (what their packets look like to qos) is scheduled with lower priority at major hubs. Change the packet shape, fix a lot of the "dropped packet" issues. (Also known as lag spikes)

Edit 2: also, if they were to move position checks client side, they wouldn't even have to reshape their packets, tho both would be ideal in fixing this issue.

Uh they already responded to this... zome out your camera.

Honestly people. >:)

For me, it became nearly unplayable this weekend. Others in my FC and LS had the same issues. Some people have been experiencing more lag and disconnects than others since the game started. I play on a JP server and know that I will be dealing with more latency than others (I often say I traded trolls for lag), but I see disconnects happening to those who reside in Japan too.

I also would like to know if using Pingzapper would work if I game only on a ps3.

Out of curiosity, what if SE added time to the aoe effects? For example, I see the red aoe zone and run out of it only to still be hit by the attack (even if the mob's cast had yet to finish). Why not extend the time from, say, 3 seconds to 5?

eta: It would be nice if SE would say "We are sorry you are experiencing this, we are looking into it." (not just the camera thing =_= )

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Originally Posted by ispano

but they can't directly do ANYTHING about it.

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They could spread out their data centers.

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Originally Posted by Delsus

People saying "SE YOUR NETWORK SUCKS" then says how a VPN makes it much more playable makes me laugh every time.

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^ this

SE isn't reacting on it because it really has nothing to do with them. I've only been in about three or four parties where some guy claimed he got lag-plumed or something, but then again "LAAGGGGG" is the safest way to save face in any online game.

That said i do occasionally get the freeze-then-go type of lag, but stuff like that just happens. If it's happening more than you think it should, it most likely has something to do with you. You guys, with the funny lag signatures, who consistently complain about lag, i'm pretty sure it's something on your end.

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Originally Posted by ispano

They changed the poll rate for positioning in end game instances from 0.3 seconds to 0.1 seconds. That increases the bandwidth used by a decent amount. So if you want, they can take that change back.

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I would happily take the change back to 0.3 seconds over 10 second freezes. I had no issues with the old poll rate anyway so now it seems like where there was no problem there is a huge problem.

You shouldn't need to get another program to fix or reduce server lag. Ps3 users don't have this option.

SE needs to respond to this or just do something about it.

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Originally Posted by Galliano

I would happily take the change back to 0.3 seconds over 10 second freezes. I had no issues with the old poll rate anyway so now it seems like where there was no problem there is a huge problem.

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Agreed, my lag and old poll rate were never this bad and since 2.0 update (roughly) there are times it seems fine and then times where I can have a 5-10 lag spike. Last night during Titan I froze multiple times for a good 5-6 seconds and everything stopped. It wasn't just me, everyone in my party was getting HUGE lag spikes... I could see if maybe it was just me... but 7 other people spread all over the USA? It can all be 'us'. It has to be something with either the servers or the packets.

Already spoke to my net provider (to make sure I was good) and they said it's not anything from my/their side. And I did a test on my net connection as well and I am getting more upload/download speed than I'm paying for.

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Originally Posted by Wyvernheart

You shouldn't need to get another program to fix or reduce server lag. Ps3 users don't have this option.

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That means it's not directly SE's problem - VPN software doesn't change or enhance the game in any shape or form, it PURELY works with your intetnet connection and as we seen, an ISP admitted theres a problem with someone (That isn't SE btw) that's causing issues.

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Originally Posted by Tupsi

That means it's not directly SE's problem - VPN software doesn't change or enhance the game in any shape or form, it PURELY works with your intetnet connection and as we seen, an ISP admitted theres a problem with someone (That isn't SE btw) that's causing issues.

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I am pretty sure SE is the company that decided to stick their data centers in one area for a huge number of people. If I buy a bicycle and tell my workers to make deliveries with the "company car" and then they are late who is to blame... Me buying the wrong product or Huffy?

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Originally Posted by Tupsi

That means it's not directly SE's problem - VPN software doesn't change or enhance the game in any shape or form, it PURELY works with your intetnet connection and as we seen, an ISP admitted theres a problem with someone (That isn't SE btw) that's causing issues.

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It's not just one ISP... It's

Comcast
BT
Sky
Timewarner
Verizon
and I'm sure many other services. I mean come on.. wtf are we supposed to do? Timewarner isn't even near me, all we have here in Boston is Comcast, and Verizon for big names that advertise gaming. Google Fiber isn't marketing around yet. That's A LOT of services that need to put pressure on Level 3. For it to have gotten to this point is absurd. The location that you live at is a damn gamble that may or may not affect the rubberband symptoms.. I will tell you one thing I am tired of the finger pointing from users here, from services, from Square. We know it's level 3, we can't get on them as users cause they won't talk to us... so SOMEONE needs to do something about this who can. FiOS users have been plagued with this way before people in Europe felt it horribly we've been sitting on our hands for a month now almost two...

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Originally Posted by Edellis

^ this

SE isn't reacting on it because it really has nothing to do with them. I've only been in about three or four parties where some guy claimed he got lag-plumed or something, but then again "LAAGGGGG" is the safest way to save face in any online game.

That said i do occasionally get the freeze-then-go type of lag, but stuff like that just happens. If it's happening more than you think it should, it most likely has something to do with you. You guys, with the funny lag signatures, who consistently complain about lag, i'm pretty sure it's something on your end.

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Please go, you bring nothing we haven't heard to the table. It may be on our end, but the people who can actually do something are a company that doesn't bother to lift a finger. Go read that 170 page topic with Japanese users coming in saying something is wrong and they're rubberbanding, go see the guy who said he's right next to the Data center in Canada and still rubberbanding. Oh what's that? Not gonna huh? I thought so. you just want to parrot useless dribble.

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Originally Posted by Delsus

People saying "SE YOUR NETWORK SUCKS" then says how a VPN makes it much more playable makes me laugh every time.

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sorta makes sense. Most VPN traffic is going to be for business use. as such the routers tend to give a higher QoS to that traffic over udp or dynamic port tcp which is what the game uses.

also since MTU size is normally limited to 1500, the packet size for the game may be fragmented which means smaller but faster transmission.

My issue has been resolved I am editing this post, Thanks !!!!!

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Originally Posted by Dhex

Level3.net drops 20-60% of packets - also they add 800-900ms static (400ms more per hop during prime time) per tracert test within 3 hops from Dallas -> Chicago -> Montreal (SE NA Server Clusters) and two hops between Montreal servers.

Tracert to both the World Server (test Ragnarok) and instance servers go through this Level3.net

Level3 Communications - http://www.level3gaming.com/?level=customersPage

FFXIV is routed via Level3 - my ISP (Verizon FiOs 100up50down) cannot help you once they hit the Level3.net nodes - it's outside their control.

Calling Level3 as an individual is a fruitless effort - they only speak with companies.


So there's nothing you can do but re-route yourself via a VPN for the time being.

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This. From Sacramento on AT&T Uverse, once the jump hits Palo Alto, ping skyrockets. Contacting everyone and their mother did nothing. Emailed traces and pings to no avail.

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Originally Posted by Destroyer

Hi, I thought about making a support ticket ingame, but decided to post here. When the game was first released, I experienced no significant problems with latency or dodging AoE attacks, fortunately I had a good ping and a steady connection and everything was going great. About a week after patch 2.1 - not immediately after, it did not seem - my connection to the game became terrible at everything but early morning hours. When lagging it makes the game near unplayable at its worst and even impacts crafting and gathering, making even simple play a struggle.

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Exactly the issue I have. It was the first hotfix after 2.1 where I started having rubberband lag with a few seconds of freezing and then everything racing by to catch up. I had a little bit of lag prior to 2.1 depending on what time of the day, but now it has to be like 2am before the game is playable. Only way I can get around it is using Pingzapper. My tracert comes up normal each time I run it too, so I can only imagine it's the P2P throttling issue that hundreds with my ISP (TWC) also seem to be having. I'm also in New York, so it's not like I'm all that far from the Montreal datacenter.

I dunno maybe the idea of having a single datacenter for All NA/EU customers might be the problem.... just saying

The US and EU should get their own datacenter and this could solve a lot of the ping problem and the severe congestion the game gets on prime time (which is maybe why we get mass 90k's?)

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Originally Posted by Thunderz

I dunno maybe the idea of having a single datacenter for All NA/EU customers might be the problem.... just sayin

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Games with far more people on singular datacenters/servers doesn't have this issue, yet they're also not on Level3 - So no that isn't the case.

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Originally Posted by Kal-El

Please show me where I said "SE YOUR NETWORK SUCKS".

I've asked for a response. "Much more playable" isn't good enough to be honest. Still getting lag spikes and 90k when this wasn't happening before last week. There is obviously a problem either on SE's end, several ISP's end or somewhere in the middle. It's therefore in SE's interest to determine what the problem is or they'll lose a portion of their player base due to this. "ISPs fault. Too bad" isn't the way to resolve these issues.



It lowers the rate of rubber banding but doesn't eradicate it and 90k error is common. Could be disconnected 5 or 6 times in a night while the last time I DC'd was Beta/Early Access.

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After 15 years of playing these games, I have reached the conclusion that, as absurd as it may seem, game companies don't really care about losing subscriptions. Or if they care, they don't show any sign of that. That's the reason almost all games go FTP.

I add that I like this game a lot, overall (else would not be paying a monthly fee), and I hope it doesn't follow that route. I hope also that SE agrees. :P

P.S.
And yes, a dev chiming in now and then on these matters would be very appreciated...

Bump and +1

had it for 1 week now.. unacceptable.. paying for this service

funny story came from it though.. got a huge lag spike in titan extreme after the super bombs when he landed.. anyone familiar with the fight knows he does a landslide after.. i saw it was all frozen so i just moved a bit to a random place (during these lag spikes you still actually move to everyone else, this was confirmed by people on TS in the CT vassago fight, they actually directed me where to run to get out of the fire aoe when i couldnt see it)

and yea, the lag then went fast forward all the way to the next bomb phase and i had survived everything.. we went on to win lol

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Originally Posted by Edellis

SE isn't reacting on it because it really has nothing to do with them. I've only been in about three or four parties where some guy claimed he got lag-plumed or something, but then again "LAAGGGGG" is the safest way to save face in any online game.

That said i do occasionally get the freeze-then-go type of lag, but stuff like that just happens. If it's happening more than you think it should, it most likely has something to do with you. You guys, with the funny lag signatures, who consistently complain about lag, i'm pretty sure it's something on your end.

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Okay, so let's say it's not SQE's fault or problem, just for the sake of argument.

Why then, is XIV the only MMO's to have problems like this to such a great degree for such a wide range of people? Shouldn't we be seeing problems of this nature across the board with every single MMO; Because if it has nothing to with the company running the game and everything to do with the internet connections of the users, every game should have this problem.

Why only SQE and XIV though? Why does only XIV require it's playerbase to use a VPN and not every other MMO? Something in the logic just doesn't add up, and if people can't see that, then there's no point trying to convince you.

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Originally Posted by frostmagemari

Okay, so let's say it's not SQE's fault or problem, just for the sake of argument.

Why then, is XIV the only MMO's to have problems like this to such a great degree for such a wide range of people? Shouldn't we be seeing problems of this nature across the board with every single MMO; Because if it has nothing to with the company running the game and everything to do with the internet connections of the users, every game should have this problem.

Why only SQE and XIV though? Why does only XIV require it's playerbase to use a VPN and not every other MMO? Something in the logic just doesn't add up, and if people can't see that, then there's no point trying to convince you.

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The funny part is it's neither. It's in between. SE made the decision to put the servers there since it helped reach both regions somewhat equally, not to mention financial reasons. Now some routers, perhaps only 2 or so, that some people have to go through are having issues. I've had the SAME issue in other games where a backbone router was failing. It sucks, but except for calling them and telling them, SE can't do squat.

As for the person who said they could spread out their data centers, you have to put yourself in their shoes. Is it worth the cost? Is the cost to do so going to outweigh the loss of some subs? I mean if they don't get a decent bump in subs from doing it, it's not worth it. We can argue all day about liking that decision or not, but that's how they make that decision.

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Originally Posted by ispano

but they can't directly do ANYTHING about it.

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Originally Posted by ispano

As for the person who said they could spread out their data centers, you have to put yourself in their shoes. Is it worth the cost? Is the cost to do so going to outweigh the loss of some subs? I mean if they don't get a decent bump in subs from doing it, it's not worth it. We can argue all day about liking that decision or not, but that's how they make that decision.

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One of these things is not like the other.

You can't claim SE's hands are tied, than admit they could do something but just don't want to pay for it. That doesn't mean they can't do anything directly.

They could also compensate for the lag in-game like a lot of other games do. This is why most feel they don't have this issue.

Heck, there was constant rubberbanding in FFXI (how often would you run and see other players sprint really fast to catch up to you), but it was never going to prevent you from completing content.

So yes, no matter how much you want to ignore it, SE does have options. They just aren't doing them as far as we know.

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Originally Posted by ispano

The funny part is it's neither. It's in between. SE made the decision to put the servers there since it helped reach both regions somewhat equally, not to mention financial reasons. Now some routers, perhaps only 2 or so, that some people have to go through are having issues. I've had the SAME issue in other games where a backbone router was failing. It sucks, but except for calling them and telling them, SE can't do squat.

As for the person who said they could spread out their data centers, you have to put yourself in their shoes. Is it worth the cost? Is the cost to do so going to outweigh the loss of some subs? I mean if they don't get a decent bump in subs from doing it, it's not worth it. We can argue all day about liking that decision or not, but that's how they make that decision.

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A problem is that for a lot of ppl posting, the game didn't *start* like this. It has since become this way in the last week or two (me included). As such, there is a contrast there. It was working fine for quite a while, and now it isn't working fine.

Regardless of where the fault lies, the point is, the game *was* okay for quite a while. :(