The Mac OS X Client's absymal performance is a joke.

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Originally Posted by Nemna

That is pretty smooth looking. My MacBook is very similar to this, but a generation earlier (so it has an Nvidia card). Maybe that IS the difference.

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No, that's not it either. My iMac has an AMD 295M and it is having the same problems as the others

I just want to add to this.

2014 5k iMAC which is latest spec it runs slow and is awful! Why should I pay £40 to have to still bootcamp in windows this is unacceptable and should have been tested.

Doesnt work too well on 2014 mbp either.

How do we get a refund?

Thanks for this thread.
Just saved me money.
Maybe I'll bootcamp now....I want to stop lugging my PS4 when I take trips home to NY.

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Originally Posted by Nemna

I've posted this in a few threads, but I actually get better results running the Windows client in a full Windows VM (Parallels) than I do using the Mac client "natively".

Mac client, 1680x1050: ~10-15 fps
Windows client, in a VM, 1920x1200: ~20-30 fps

Something is very broken and I wish SE would say something official rather than letting the forums dump on Mac users for owning Macs and having the gall to purchase the Mac client. :(

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Oh shit! This is scaring me because I was playing FF14 under Parallels too. How can it run worse when using less resources? D:

I have a Mac Pro, I'm hoping it'll be beefy enough to handle it until SE (hopefully) irons out the issues.

I have a fully upgrade/highest-end spec Macbook Pro Retina 15" purchased last year, 2014- the client is a piece of junk port. I'm back on the Windows version which I also paid for and was denied access to early access. I'm filing reports and hopefully SE will reimburse their customers for the scam that this has turned into. :/

Just tested on my Macbook Pro Retina 15 inch (Mid 2012), i7 2500+ (i think...) Nvidia 650M graphics with the latest Yosemite version. Running it at around 1200 x 800 resolution with about 25-30fps at a crowded Dravania village (forgot the name). Have not played intensively on it yet to experience any crashes or graphics glitch.

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Originally Posted by Madsamurai

Just tested on my Macbook Pro Retina 15 inch (Mid 2012), i7 2500+ (i think...) Nvidia 650M graphics with the latest Yosemite version. Running it at around 1200 x 800 resolution with about 25-30fps at a crowded Dravania village (forgot the name). Have not played intensively on it yet to experience any crashes or graphics glitch.

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"Please look forward to it..."

I'll chime in with my two cents.

I made the mistake of buying the Mac client. I already knew it was a transgaming Cider port, but I was reassured by some hasty internet research that indicated they had done the original LoL Mac port and Guild Wars 2...

After making the purchase, I read the forums and saw people's posts about how bad the performance was. I braced myself, but thought 'I'll be okay, cause my machine has better specs'...

Turns out. Specs don't matter much of anything. It's unplayable.

My Frame rate tops out at 42 in secluded or small areas, but drops to 18-20 in large or populace places. Whenever an animation is on screen, such as a weapon skill, the game stutters. The client crashed when I tried teleporting the first time.

The oddest thing is that the animations in the title screen and character select screens run at over 60 fps, smooth as silk. But when the game has loaded up, performance just drops to nothing.

I seriously hope SE have plans to COMPLETELY revamp the Mac release. Because this feels like an Alpha product at best.

System Specs:
i5 4690k 3.5Ghz
16Gb DDR3 RAM
Geforce GTX 970 4Gb

Tested Resolutions:
2560x1440 (Windowed, as it wouldn't correctly display at Full Screen)
1920x1080 (Full screen)

Just want to add my voice as being very disappointed with the Mac version. Considering I am paying an extra $60.00 for this after already having the Windows and PS3 version I would expect something of equal quality.

I came back just for the Mac version but I don't think I will be staying long.

I have a fairly high end machine and the game doesn't even run at all. It crashes at start up. People claiming this is somehow a problem with Macs are so clueless. I play a bunch of incredibly beautiful games at very high resolution with very high graphics enabled. It's not the platform, it's the intensely disrespectful way in which the client was developed, as a Cider garbage port. It took years for the EVE Online Cider port to be passable. If Square sticks with this, maybe your $60 will get you something in... 2-3 years.

Think about this, the cider port here is emulating windows xp, with win32 APIs. 32 bit! That's why you're all experiencing horrible performance. It's 100% thunks 100% of the time.

Anyway, my machine:

iMac (27-inch, Late 2013)
3.5 GHz Intel Core i7, 32GB RAM, 512gb SSD, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4096MB VRAM

When I start the game it immediately crashes with this lovely error http://cl.ly/bkm2 and looking into the crash logs in the wine p_drive, it seems to indicate memory issues (such that the app can't create a large enough buffer for the display) and I suspect it may be due to having a 4gb graphics card while the app runs in 32 bit mode on Windows.

I can't even jump on the low FPS complain-train since the game doesn't even launch.

I've been playing XIV since the beta of ARR, and while I hate that my first forum post will be about this, I too feel the need to chime in. First, my specs:

System Specs:
3.2Ghz i5
24Gb DDR3 RAM
Geforce GTX 680MX 2Gb

I tested several resolutions, with anything from low to high settings. Like others, full screen at native (2560x1440) res doesn't work, as the game sits "high", with the lower third of my screen black, and the upper third of the game UI inaccessible.

Performance is just terrible, and this is the same machine I've been playing the game on via Bootcamp for almost 2 years. I typically get 45-55fps or so with my settings, unless an area is highly populated; Mor Dhona always pushes it lower, but it's still completely playable.

In the Mac client, poking through Ishgard and Western Coerthas, I hover around 13fps, dipping to <10 if basically anything is happening. What I find really odd about the performance is that my average framerate is unchanged regardless of my settings. I see perhaps a variation of 1-3fps between the lowest "laptop" preset the "high" desktop one. I find that very curious, as it's clearly not any setting I can modify to eke some better performance out.

I know it's ported, Wine, Cider, blah blah. I wouldn't have been surprised to see a slight drop, but this is just unplayable. Were it an option to simply load up my game in OS X, the way Blizzard does cross-platform, it would suck, but I wouldn't be as disappointed since it didn't cost me $60 for the Mac version on top of the $60 for the Windows version.

I don't know what has to happen here, but this feels beta quality at best. Aside from miserable performance, while changing visual settings, the game suddenly stopped accepting mouse clicks, forcing me to restart it. I got the "no ground" bug in Ishgard, which, while entertaining, is a problem. Especially when polygons are flickering red and green, and... well, then there's the third screen shot here, which I have no words for:

No Ground
Glitchy Ground
Wut

Since I boot into Windows almost exclusively to play XIV, the thought of being to load it up while remaining in OS X is a wildly attractive proposition. I'm not posting here just to complain, and I don't even want a refund - I want this version to just WORK, and right now it really doesn't.

One last thing I want to say is that I have an insane amount of respect for the FFXIV dev team - I really do. More than I do for any other group of developers. The content, the world, and attention to detail in XIV is second to none. Because of that, I hate to have to come here and post this, but I feel obligated to chime in. Whether TransGaming needs to get themselves in gear, or the Mac version would have to be brought in-house (again, ala Blizzard), I'm not sure. But nothing would please me more than to be able to play this under OS X.

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Originally Posted by Tessara

... the way Blizzard does cross-platform ...

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Of course, if it was the way Blizzard does cross platform, it would be excellent and there would not be this constantly growing number of people reporting unacceptable, embarrassingly bad results from this joke of a product. I don't think people appreciate just how great Blizzard's Mac support has *always* been, and I do mean always. This result just makes me want to go play WoW, despite how tired of it I am.

Well this clearly is just a bad port and NOTHING to do with settings, if reading all these posts wasn't enough here are my specs, Mac Pro 3.33GHz 6 core Intel chip, 16gb RAM, Nvidia GTX 970 4gb. I also tried on my wifes brand new 5k iMac which is fully upgraded and the same exact results. No matter the setting I get missing polygons and 20 fps at best, most of the time it is sitting around 7 fps (and this is in the starting zones).

This makes me incredibly sad since I am brand new to the game and was playing my trial out on bootcamp with the expectation of the mac client coming out. This really puts a bad taste in my mouth now that I can't play the game on my mac OR bootcamp without dishing out another $60.... Bad form SE.... Bad form.

Just adding another voice - super bummed out by how horrific this mac client is. I easily get 60 fps with high laptop graphics anywhere on bootcamp ff14. Switch to mac side - barely can break 20 fps with the absolutely bare minimum graphics.

Will be seeking a refund on this order.

Can't believe square enix found this acceptable to be released. Definitely hurting customer trust with this one...

Played about 2 hours on my mid 2012 Macbook Pro. 15-25 FPS on avg. Got crashed out to the desktop once when i am in Dusk Vigil but experienced no graphic glitches yet. Definitely not the best FFXIV experience although i had expected worse after reading all these horror stories of the Mac port. Not going to ask for a refund.. so here's hoping a patch is on it's way to fix and optimise the heck out of this.

I had been using my PS4 to play before the expansion and I decided to get the mac client. Super disappointed and I'm probably going to ask for a refund if they can't help me. They really could have expanded their audience by making it mac compatible but honestly it's just garbage. I think my max FPS was 14.

Tried on two macs.

Late 2012 27" iMac, 3.2GHz, Nvidia GTX 680MX 2GB. Had to turn nearly every single setting to the lowest and still the game acts like it's overloading. Even out in Middle Limosa, where there's nothing around to speak of, lots of stuttering, delays, etc... Bit painful to look at. Load up Bootcamp and the game is flawless... /boggle

Tried it on my new mid 2015 15" MBP with the dual cards. Again, had to turn everything possible down to the lowest setting and it still sends the computer into a frenzy while the performance is so far under par for any game, it's sad. BTW, when porting to OS X, maybe...I dunno, actually realize keyboards are different mmkay? Yay for changing all the default key binds that do not exist on a MBP. Luckily they do on the iMac, but still...

Also, wasn't aware of an option to see fps, so how're everybody gauging it?

Damn I didnt think Mac version was this bad from what I read in this thread.

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Originally Posted by Moggei

Also, wasn't aware of an option to see fps, so how're everybody gauging it?

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Theres alot of ways to check your FPS but as for Macs I have no idea.

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Originally Posted by Moggei

Also, wasn't aware of an option to see fps, so how're everybody gauging it?

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In the menu where you configure your graphics there is an fps counter on the top right. You can go to various areas and open up that menu to see what the FPS is like there.

This isn't just a bad port...it's possibly the worst port ever. How could they have built something that runs worse than a generic windows VM that has tons of extra overhead in it. I am far better off running Parallels and playing it than running my Mac client. This is the most disappointing experience I have had with FFXIV and I've been playing since 1.0 CE Launch...

I bought the Mac client for the same reason as Askel24 did. Although I can still play on PS4, this is just extremely disappointing. With a fps of 12 it's just impossible to play any kind of decent content.

I'm also very disappointed in the way the OS X client performs on my rMBP (early 2015). I was able to get above 20 frames per second when I had the my resolution set to 1152x720. Charging for a wrapper that can be done by anyone to get this kind of performance is not tolerable. The game is clearly not optimized properly. 60 USD for a half done job is not fair for the Mac user. Transgaming's technology is just a Wine wrapper with fancy wording.
The OSX version still lacks proper documentation and information for the user. Keeping customers in the dark is not the way to go.

With all the experience SquareEnix has, you would think that this kind of customer treatment wouldn't happen. Even from SquareEnix's point of view I would question Transgaming's porting to OSX. From our perspective it took a while to make this port and yet you get the same performance as using open source solutions like Wineskin. Getting the same experience with Wineskin (setting it up for a couple of hours in one afternoon) took me a few clicks and some downloading time.

What's worse is that with this price we don't get even Collector's Edition of Heavensward. We just get a copy + paste version of FFXIV's Windows Version in a wrapper.

I hope SquareEnix can settle this down in the long run or give us a clear way on how to get our money back. Also, question Transgaming's work, because it really is embarassing.

Still no response from SE either. Pretty clear people are very unhappy with what they have spent their money on here... you would think some form ofresponse recognizing that something is wrong would be issued.

I bought the Mac Client to migrate away from PS4, and had exactly the same issues last night. Setting various screen resolutions just caused a horrific strobe effect on my Retina MBP, and I couldn't muster a frame rate about about 15fps last night. Throw in a couple of crashes as well, and all in all it was a disaster.

I played around with the graphics settings as much as I could without it crashing and couldn't make it any better.

I don't see any means by which this was ever tested. You can't have issues like that, this consistently, on day 1 and have never seen them before. Especially on a platform where the hardware versions and OS's are so locked down and stable.

Can hardly expect us to gather information when there have been none. It is not like there has been a beta or even a benchmark, only thing we had was basically a release date.

Something something wait a few days says the guy already DRK level 58+
Seriously, if you are not going to help the Mac problem, stop yelling at Mac users. SE sold a product and it should work as well as the other products. It is running worse than ps3. It is not an issue with Mac hardware or Mac OS. These machines than wow and league just fine in Mac, and run ff fine in boot camp.

This is terrible news. I don't play many action games but the Borderlands series worked great, cross-platform multi-player with voice chat, even on my nearly 6-years-old iMac. It was using Transgaming's Cider conversion as well.

I know that MMO graphics demands can be more intense, but any customer should expect decent performance, regardless of platform, on decent hardware. On newer Macs I expected the game to do 40fps+, not frame rates in the teens walking alone through a stream on "Laptop (low)" settings. I completely don't understand how SE even released it performing that poorly. I was hoping SE could somehow leverage their engine's OpenGL (-ish?) support used in the Playstation version to get nearer-to-native performance on Macs, but even using the DirectX conversion in Cider shouldn't slow down performance this much. It seems like a problem SE should be able to fix.

I was ready to recommend Heavensward to Mac-only friends, but I'm really glad I held off on the "Recruit a Friend" invites. C'mon, SE. Fix this. Kudasai.

Overall, the application actually runs fairly well for me. I've got some minor gripes, like sound quality, but the game sits around 30 fps overall, and dips down to 20 when I'm in a fate in the new zones. I have everything running on the Laptop (low) settings as well. Have you tried closing all other applications before you run it and tuning the settings low?

It may not look pretty in the end, but getting it playable was my goal.

I'm wondering if SE is waiting for Metal on OSX to go live before releasing a native client. Luminous Tools doesn't currently target OpenGL as I had thought, but given the amount of games on iOS, I think it's reasonable to expect them to have experience with Metal. Maybe the Transgaming wrapper is just a stop gap until Metal support is complete?

Has anyone who has put in a ticket/refund been responded to? I think I might go down that avenue myself... :(

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Originally Posted by Kyan

Has anyone who has put in a ticket/refund been responded to? I think I might go down that avenue myself... :(

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Both my wife and I submitted a request yesterday to have our mac orders refunded and we both heard back from them this morning saying that they would. They apologized for our issues - but didn't have anything more to say about the subject other than the generic response.

On the bright side - they were very quick to respond and didn't give us any issue about wanting a refund.

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Originally Posted by Kyan

Has anyone who has put in a ticket/refund been responded to? I think I might go down that avenue myself... :(

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Yes, several people have done that. I've also read that on the Japanese forums, the developers acknowledged the issue and said they were looking into it, but I can't confirm that. I'd like to know if someone who is multilingual can see if there's a similar outcry on the non English forums and if the developers have responded to it.

I'm going to play with my install tonight and see if I can work out anything more about what's going on as I've seen some people saying that they're able to play without issues. I only toyed with it for about 15 mins last night before my girlfriend arrived.

I've got an early Retina MBP so wasn't expecting great performance, but I was at least expecting competent. I'll let you know if I have any interesting results.

This is a problem with Transgaming, OS X user if you open Content inside that game .app file, you will see all the Windows game files in there.

Transgaming is just a wrapper client to emulate over DX9.

The fact that they're so quick to issue refunds and SE's apparent reluctance to openly address this issue tells me that a quick solution is most likely not forthcoming.

I submitted a request to have my Mac license transferred over to PC so we'll see if I get a similar response.

Really disappointed. I was super excited about a native Mac client but it seems like the only effort put into a $60 Mac release was a cheap wrapper of the PC client :(

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Originally Posted by MiniTofu

This is a problem with Transgaming, OS X user if you open Content inside that game .app file, you will see all the Windows game files in there.

Transgaming is just a wrapper client to emulate over DX9.

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Quoting myself here, like I said 1-2 months ago when they said Transgaming. I knew these issue would come and I've been telling people this is a wrapper not a native. They all either ignored me or deny my assumptions.

Here we go here, where we are. c: good luck spending $60 on wrapper for OS X.

Was speaking from 15+ yrs of pc (win/mac) gaming experiences.

So are they giving refunds for this without much trouble? Guessing they haven't commented on it being so bad.

I would suggest a refund or transfer license to PC version. Play it in Bootcamp with proper Nvidia / AMD driver support the game at least instead of running Transgaming wrapper with some OpenGL emulations which trottle the game performance down to its knee with so much render overhead.

Windows 10 bootcamp will be very nice in July if you guys can get your hands on a copy Win10. DX12 will help reduce the CPU load.

I made the mistake of not doing my research.. I totally never thought it would be in a wrapper, because honestly I could have figured this out myself. I could have ran it in parraells or bootcamp and would have avoided the purchase. Not sure what I am going to do yet. I get around 25 FPS, which is playable but only for dorking around. I have my PC version for raiding. I thought the Mac version would be cool to run on my laptop from bed for crafting/gathering. I totally cannot believe they didn't do a native port. I figured they would have their sh*t together like Blizzard. I will give it a week or two to see if they respond.
Really not worth full price though.

There are proper ports from Transgaming. I've ran FFXIV on my Mac with an unofficial wrapper and it did run better than this catastrophe.
This is ashaming for both companies, Transgaming for doing such a poor job and Square for allowing this to be released.
And Hypie is probably just one of those usual trolls. Already have this little boy on my ignore list so I don't have to read the verbal diarrhea of this youngin'.