r/ffxivdiscussion: What can Square Enix do to help fix the terrible netcode of FFXIV?

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

XIV doesn't even need to trust the client for that specific issue. It's why those TOS-breakers work; it's all a client-side fix. When your client asks the server for permission to use an ability, XIV's client (stupidly) behaves the same way for both an affirmative and a negative response. This creates latency where it doesn't need to exist. Many modern online games have clients that take action only on a negative response. The only change that needs to be made to fix it is updating the client's behavior to ignore a positive response instead of rolling back your animation lock in both cases.

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I'm pretty sure server also doesn't have position prediction. So the movement ticks are stepped locations and not assumed path, which is so archaic in online games alone. Client has linear position interpolation, but that's different obv. They don't even need to relay the prediction, just act as server side position interpolation for damage authority so we aren't literally getting exploded for something that happened between packet + tick alignment. It just feels bad, especially for a game that relies so heavily on a low tickrate architecture.

Also considering the amount of.. Issues.. (PvP speed, Bots) We see with movement, we know the server doesn't have true authority on player movement and it likely just does OOB valid checks (like most MMOs). The player's movement wouldn't be as client snappy if it was 100% server authority. You'd either feel like you're in molasses, or jittery the higher latency you have. But you don't. Ex: https://youtu.be/2PTdjwlO5nU

XIV's server barely cares what time you did the thing, it unravels the ball of spaghetti in it's wide packet and tick intervals and just kinda hopes for the best apparently. Do we even know if it uses timestamps in the payload, or is it just setting things as high/low priority? :/

Counterstrike 2 is implementing 'sub-tick' prediction. CS2 not only uses server side prediction, but also larger packets to help unravel the spaghetti and assist with those extremely fast predictions.

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Originally Posted by Fiel_Tana

It is yes, but other games must do something different since it only happens to this degree in FFXIV for me. Lag is often a thing in other games but not to the degree that combat is simply an exercise in frustration.

It's not a lot of fun when the lag / latency / ping is a mechanic in itself.

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Not really. If you play WoW or other MMO's it would do the exact same thing as that video you posted. This is just how general networking works. In shooters they use a higher tick rate (sometimes) and use background checks server side to update information and basically take a guess on the players position. Its why sometimes you die when you were clearly behind a wall. Latency is a thing and it will always be nearly impossible to completely hide it regardless of how fast internet connections get. This games netcode isn't anywhere near as bad as people make it out to be.

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Originally Posted by GaiusDrakon

Lol? People actually believe this?

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Yes because I work in IT and we experienced the same problem. It was impossible to get any kind of server hardware. New cisco 9000 series switches were over 12 months out for availability and the only way to get one was to pay way over market price. Same with servers and practically everything else. We had to go after refurbed dell servers to get our new network up and running because it was all we had access to.

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Originally Posted by R041

and it likely just does OOB valid checks (like most MMOs)

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They don't even do that. Check an RMT bot heavy day, watch them do the MSQ. They just warp around at will, often under the map. Figuring out how to get out of bounds manually is pretty fun (and it's fascinating how much time Square spends on patching things related to it that give literally *zero* in-game advantage over things like...hats not displaying on one of their races or the horrible job design), but if the goal behind poking at invisible walls was to just be out of bounds? I've never done it myself, but I wholeheartedly believe the bot-advertised ability to just...tell the server "I'm at X:0 Y:0 Z: -5" and poof, you're there.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

They don't even do that. Check an RMT bot heavy day, watch them do the MSQ. They just warp around at will, often under the map. Figuring out how to get out of bounds manually is pretty fun (and it's fascinating how much time Square spends on patching things related to it that give literally *zero* in-game advantage over things like...hats not displaying on one of their races or the horrible job design), but if the goal behind poking at invisible walls was to just be out of bounds? I've never done it myself, but I wholeheartedly believe the bot-advertised ability to just...tell the server "I'm at X:0 Y:0 Z: -5" and poof, you're there.

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Yeah, conditional OOB checks I guess, like we see in raid. lol

I see those fools under the floor for hours, so there's literally nothing actively pinging coords for OOB unless you trigger it through a mechanic or something. Also housing.. All of housing suffers from OOB issues. (Which we use for fun, but still)

It's just embarrassing and makes it seem like XIV lacks server side collision and movement prediction altogether.

Im no expert on network side of PC im more of the dude that build and repair PC´s. But I Remember an old mmo I love to play now and then and some one asked could the company not do anything about the awful rubber banding and lag the game has. And some one had a simple explanation that the game is way to old and they could maybe do some kind of fix but no really solve the problem with out having to basically remake the game or transfer it to a newer engine with newer fresher code. And I seen the same discussion with eve online people talk about fixing things or adding new things but becuse the game is old the devs have to try fix things or add new things by trying to work around old spaghetti code and it´s allot of work to do and some times not even worth trying to do. So in the end some new features people want to see can´t be implemented becuse of the old code.

And believe it or not FFXIV is starting to become rather old and I bet new features or fixes would take allot of time to do becuse of well old engine and old codes.

As I said i´m no expert what so ever with network or software im just relaying something I heard more knowledge people than me say about old mmos.

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Originally Posted by GaiusDrakon

Lol? People actually believe this?

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bro a raspberry pi 4* costs 200-300 bucks rn and car companies were buying brand new washing machines just to rip out the guts because they had compatible chips.
i got a low-end education laptop for a hundred bucks back in december because every store mass-ordered thousands of them because people needed to work from home and when all the back orders were finally fulfilled there was a flood of extra-crappy laptops on the market. i also bought an AC just a couple days ago that's -entirely- mechanical. the most recent piece of tech in it is the green LED followed by the brushless motor in the fan.
it was bad. really bad. they weren't the only company that were in actual bidding wars just for hardware and we're still in the thick of it. it'll be a few years before things go back to normal.

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Originally Posted by Ransu

Not really. If you play WoW or other MMO's it would do the exact same thing as that video you posted. This is just how general networking works. In shooters they use a higher tick rate (sometimes) and use background checks server side to update information and basically take a guess on the players position. Its why sometimes you die when you were clearly behind a wall. Latency is a thing and it will always be nearly impossible to completely hide it regardless of how fast internet connections get. This games netcode isn't anywhere near as bad as people make it out to be.

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Are you meaning to reply to someone else because I didn't post a video. Also I have played WoW and many other MMOs and no, they do not have the same issues FFXIV does that are being talked about in this thread. Occasional lag and even rubberbanding at times, yes, that is often the connection between player and server or at times a slow computer. What is being talked about here are entirely different issues.

The video specifically posted in the OP. That scenario occurs in every mmo.

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Originally Posted by Denji

bro a raspberry pi 4* costs 200-300 bucks rn and car companies were buying brand new washing machines just to rip out the guts because they had compatible chips.
i got a low-end education laptop for a hundred bucks back in december because every store mass-ordered thousands of them because people needed to work from home and when all the back orders were finally fulfilled there was a flood of extra-crappy laptops on the market. i also bought an AC just a couple days ago that's -entirely- mechanical. the most recent piece of tech in it is the green LED followed by the brushless motor in the fan.
it was bad. really bad. they weren't the only company that were in actual bidding wars just for hardware and we're still in the thick of it. it'll be a few years before things go back to normal.

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Originally Posted by Ransu

Yes because I work in IT and we experienced the same problem. It was impossible to get any kind of server hardware. New cisco 9000 series switches were over 12 months out for availability and the only way to get one was to pay way over market price. Same with servers and practically everything else. We had to go after refurbed dell servers to get our new network up and running because it was all we had access to.

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?_?

The market price went up because there's a shortage... no one calls that going "above the market price". Do you people not believe in supply and demand or some shit lmao

the japanese are not good with the cyber please understand

Ping isn't really the issue here. It boils down to tick rate and throttling performance to keep server loads and costs in check.

SE have historically always been super cautious on all aspects of the infrastructure behind their MMOs:

Remember how unsubbing for a period of time in FFXI would get your character data literally removed from the live servers and swapped to cold storage? You had to contact them and politely ask to have your character manually restored originally.

FFXIV has always had a slow GCD and tick rate, both means to significantly lower CPU load. Another area where they saved server CPU cycles was launching the game with comical levels of client trust.

Memory usage? IMHO that's one of the real reasons we don't get a proper glamour log style system. It would require the addition of several extra data arrays per character, adding to the footprint noticeably when you're talking a few hundred characters per zone.

In WoW I had a better experience PvPing with ~200ms latency from the UK to US west coast servers. I PvP'd pretty much exclusively through Vanilla and BC to the highest level and had no problems whatsoever. It was only when WotLK and Arena landed that the ping gave me problems and that was specifically down to the amount of precision needed to pillar block long enough to get out of combat drinking in. No rubber banding, things didn't hit me when it felt like they shouldn't. I had no problems grounding pom pyros etc.

FFXIV PvP is just a lower quality experience all round because SE aren't willing to foot the bill on the backend with a faster update rate.

Any troll saying that S-E wouldn’t buy servers cause it would cost too much and lol they wont pay above market value. End of the day so many things use semi conductors. There was mass shortage and then of course it’s supply and demand but a games publisher isn’t going to compete with say a car manufacturer who need them for their on board computers for their production cars cause most use the same parts. You can only offer so much money and be outbid by others. Thankfully that whole side of things has stabilised and we’re seeing them upgrade and replace their hardware.

I also would imagine any change to tick rate or cooldowns or anything that side of things would be an expansion release not a patch. So if I want to inhale the copium for a minute let’s see what fanfest brings. If nothing is mentioned then by all means people can continue to voice their concern and frustration with their approach to net coding. Remember the japs can make a super fancy music playing toilet but a functioning website? No…

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Originally Posted by CStrife912

Any troll saying that S-E wouldn’t buy servers cause it would cost too much and lol they wont pay above market value. End of the day so many things use semi conductors. There was mass shortage and then of course it’s supply and demand but a games publisher isn’t going to compete with say a car manufacturer who need them for their on board computers for their production cars cause most use the same parts. You can only offer so much money and be outbid by others. Thankfully that whole side of things has stabilised and we’re seeing them upgrade and replace their hardware.

I also would imagine any change to tick rate or cooldowns or anything that side of things would be an expansion release not a patch. So if I want to inhale the copium for a minute let’s see what fanfest brings. If nothing is mentioned then by all means people can continue to voice their concern and frustration with their approach to net coding. Remember the japs can make a super fancy music playing toilet but a functioning website? No…

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Covid isnt a excuse when the servers have been bad for YEARS. It would have been if the servers suddenly gone bad during covid and they had to get replacement asap. They twisted their thumbs for years because of it doesnt affect the JP playerbase they dont care.

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Originally Posted by CStrife912

Any troll saying that S-E wouldn’t buy servers cause it would cost too much and lol they wont pay above market value. End of the day so many things use semi conductors. There was mass shortage and then of course it’s supply and demand but a games publisher isn’t going to compete with say a car manufacturer who need them for their on board computers for their production cars cause most use the same parts. You can only offer so much money and be outbid by others. Thankfully that whole side of things has stabilised and we’re seeing them upgrade and replace their hardware.

I also would imagine any change to tick rate or cooldowns or anything that side of things would be an expansion release not a patch. So if I want to inhale the copium for a minute let’s see what fanfest brings. If nothing is mentioned then by all means people can continue to voice their concern and frustration with their approach to net coding. Remember the japs can make a super fancy music playing toilet but a functioning website? No…

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We can't blame Covid for an issue that's been prevalent for a decade.

They've likely had powerful enough servers to handle player movement prediction and timestamped actions to tell the server "No he didn't step in that, check my receipt".. It's just effort they haven't bothered with for 10 years, and an army of writers is cheaper than an army of engineers.

But you're right that, maybe.. Considering they're putting money into other upgrades, just maybe they'll do something about that damned AoE that clipped me 4 seconds ago. lol


Edit: I want to reiterate - There ARE ways to improve our experience while still having low tick servers. There are several ways to go about it, and they can combine multiple methods to make it even better. Increasing tick rate isn't the only option. Online Games are all about smoke and mirrors, as long as it doesn't frustrate the player. What they're doing right now is no smoke, no mirror, all frustration.

Necroing this post so I don't have to make a completely new one. Another somewhat interesting thread about netcode issues was created today in /r/ffxivdiscussion. I'll also update the original post of this thread with the link.

Crosspost from /r/ffxivdiscussion: Does it bother anyone else how there's a visible running and walking delay on other players?

Original post: It always urks me watching people running and walking in place and how clunky people turn and move. Is this a result of this tick rate thing I've heard of?

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscus...res_a_visible/

Feel free to have a look yourselves. I'm just glad more and more people are voicing their concerns about the game's awful netcode.

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Originally Posted by kpxmanifesto

Necroing this post so I don't have to make a completely new one. Another somewhat interesting thread about netcode issues was created today in /r/ffxivdiscussion. I'll also update the original post of this thread with the link.

Crosspost from /r/ffxivdiscussion: Does it bother anyone else how there's a visible running and walking delay on other players?

Original post: It always urks me watching people running and walking in place and how clunky people turn and move. Is this a result of this tick rate thing I've heard of?

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscus...res_a_visible/

Feel free to have a look yourselves. I'm just glad more and more people are voicing their concerns about the game's awful netcode.

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They'll never fix it because simps will defend the bad netcode. There are people who will unironically tell you to your face that this game is the most responsive MMO on the market.

FFXIV is still using netcode from 2001. Yes, it uses FFXI's netcode where the server has to ping the user before anything happens in the game. This is why there's no real private servers out there, everything has to be approved in the server itself before you see it happen on your screen. It's a server-side game.

Client-sided games are more direct; what you do on your screen happens immediately and then gets approved by the server; this lowers delay because you can keep sending data over.

The only reason private servers for FF14 don't exist is that nobody wants to undertake the unspeakable enormity of scripting. SE doesn't invalidate quite enough stuff to really motivate the proper obsessives. "Walking simulator" versions of FF14 server emulators have existed for a very long time, in various stages of disrepair at different points in time.

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Originally Posted by Amnmaat

FFXIV is still using netcode from 2001.

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Thats not an excuse for bad netcode. Netcode is something that falls under basic management. Just like when adding extra content you might run into memory issues (compression, RAM management), making sure the netcode doesnt cause lag is a thing that needs to be maintained over time.

That client side data needs to get approved before the movement takes place is trivial for netcode. The client doesnt need to wait for this, they can just move and send the updates, only when the diffirence between client and server expectation exceeds a treshold it can rebound you to the proper position the server stated. This is called lag compensation and is a massive balance factor for netcode. Without it playing online will cause people to get nausea as lag in movement towards expectation is quite inconvenient (this is why some people in racing games can get dizzy when in cockpit view). Good netcode only corrects upon detecting errors, and this game already does that.

The real problem is that we get delayed information, and simply do not get the delay added upon the lag compensation. Causing a lot of mechanics to feel unfair since the server already decided you got hit while on your screen it was a miss. And worse is, this gap can be 1s. That is simply not acceptable. In that second you can get several roundbacks in pinging. The game is highly unreliable in showing you proper information. Which means that a lot of AoE markers just arent reliable information on knowing when the hit takes place. Causing a lot of mechanics that could have been a plain dodge system, now need to show the information well ahead in time (and often it does through boss animations).

But this bad netcode caused 1 good thing: it realy pushed the 'boss animation is relaible' part where markers are just to hint about its impact shape etc. Even if the netcode improves, that design shouldnt change. I dont want a 'its down to reflexes' everywhere.

I’ve just about filled out my games forum bs whining bingo card.

“muh bad netcode” ✅

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Originally Posted by ChonkGoblinSuprem

I’ve just about filled out my games forum bs whining bingo card.

“muh bad netcode” ✅

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go back to doing the msq

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Originally Posted by TheNight

They'll never fix it because simps will defend the bad netcode. There are people who will unironically tell you to your face that this game is the most responsive MMO on the market.

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Some people like the current netcode. It's really well-designed and fun to me. Why don't you just unsub and stop playing this game you mean hater. Square has so many things on their plate. If you improve the netcode you might alienate a 90-year-old quadriplegic Congolese grandfather because the cruel toxic community might eject him from Party Findering Aetherfont, the most difficult dungeon ever.

Why do you hate poor indie developers? Leave the netcode alone. Some people ENJOY it.

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Originally Posted by Amnmaat

FFXIV is still using netcode from 2001. Yes, it uses FFXI's netcode where the server has to ping the user before anything happens in the game. This is why there's no real private servers out there, everything has to be approved in the server itself before you see it happen on your screen. It's a server-side game.

Client-sided games are more direct; what you do on your screen happens immediately and then gets approved by the server; this lowers delay because you can keep sending data over.

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I think you're misunderstanding how client/server games work, not to mention massively underestimating just how much client trust FFXIV has put in the player over the years.

Back in ARR it was possible to tell the server you levelled up through handins and such. And no, I'm not even kidding, go dig around and you'll find videos of RMT bots quite literally levelling themselves up multiple levels nigh instantly whilst merrily stood around in town.

Suggesting that everything has to be approved via the server is also wildly missing the mark, have you missed all the RMT teleporting around usually under the world? Go stand by the Uldah Aetherite and you'll generally get a bit of a rude awakening, if you don't see any activity there, again go look on YouTube. Countless examples.

IMHO the issue at the core of FFXIV's netcode is as I've said many times, it boils down to cost savings on SE's part. A slow tick and update rate to keep server and connectivity costs as low as possible. SE have history here and they've always done their best in MMOs to reduce server costs wherever they can get away with it.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

If you improve the netcode you might alienate a 90-year-old quadriplegic Congolese grandfather because the cruel toxic community might eject him from Party Findering Aetherfont, the most difficult dungeon ever.

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Good. :)

/10char

Gonna necro this post because I feel that it's relevant to the release of the latest patch: The Fall Guys Collab.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Just some examples of the excellent netcode we're working with here. It's like 2.0 Titan all over again.

Keep posting these. Let the devs understand that this type of gameplay doesn't work with the current backend systems.

https://i.imgur.com/XhEvZJX.mp4

https://i.imgur.com/RrJvV1o.mp4

https://media2.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2...M6Hx/giphy.gif

https://media4.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2...akuO/giphy.gif

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It's time they fix their netcode. Enough is enough. The game is incredibly popular, is now SE's crown jewel, and there is no excuse for this anymore. They are no longer the little guy or underdog and this has been a real problem for a long time. If any other MMO had this issue people wouldn't have let it go this long.

The first step to fixing a problem is admitting there is a problem.

Unfortunately, SE adamantly insists there is no problem when this is mentioned. So I doubt this will be fixed anytime soon.

Dont worry, its going to be fixed as a key feature for the next expansion. Need a good selling point for 8.0, right?

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Originally Posted by xbahax92

Dont worry, its going to be fixed as a key feature for the next expansion. Need a good selling point for 8.0, right?

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With a focus on unnecessary details like: "Oh look how a less 0.00001 sec delay in response will do to your gameplay!" instead of focusing on making it better.

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Originally Posted by Morphiana

It's time they fix their netcode. Enough is enough. The game is incredibly popular, is now SE's crown jewel, and there is no excuse for this anymore. They are no longer the little guy or underdog and this has been a real problem for a long time. If any other MMO had this issue people wouldn't have let it go this long.

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FFXIV been carrying SE on the back for a while now, but yet they refuse to invest in this product with new engine so devs can finally implement stuff that this old a** engine don't allow, hire more devs to add more content per expansion and so on. They prefer to torch money with NFTs and idiotic game ideas where have been done for the last 10 years expecting somehow to bring massive profits.

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Originally Posted by Takamorisan

FFXIV been carrying SE on the back for a while now, but yet they refuse to invest in this product with new engine so devs can finally implement stuff that this old a** engine don't allow, hire more devs to add more content per expansion and so on. They prefer to torch money with NFTs and idiotic game ideas where have been done for the last 10 years expecting somehow to bring massive profits.

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Forspoken has entered the chat.

Jokes aside, in addition to wasting money on projects that end up being failures, a part of that money goes to shareholders as well. SE's gotta pay out those profits to owners of the company's stock to keep them happy.

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Originally Posted by Swordsman

Forspoken has entered the chat.

Jokes aside, in addition to wasting money on projects that end up being failures, a part of that money goes to shareholders as well. SE's gotta pay out those profits to owners of the company's stock to keep them happy.

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Pretty much all of AAA is in this boat of trying to reuse the same ideas over and over again to maximize the profits they have off the ideas they own. A lot of games are passion projects that start out flawed and then become good later on, then these ideas get bought up and get their first AAA releases, then the ideas are re-released into other games until the bubble pops and the idea is shelved. Final Fantasy's bubble popped around FFX ages ago and went into a sort of slow decline, which went into a turbo decline on the back of FFXIII. They never really recovered from the FFXIII and FFXIV 1.0 implosion and I doubt there is a way to salvage the final fantasy name as it has been spent. Warcraft on the flip side is more like an idea that has already had it's decline, and now is ripe to be used again if the company stopped wasting resources on strange storylines and what not in the MMO.

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Originally Posted by Colt47

Pretty much all of AAA is in this boat of trying to reuse the same ideas over and over again to maximize the profits they have off the ideas they own. A lot of games are passion projects that start out flawed and then become good later on, then these ideas get bought up and get their first AAA releases, then the ideas are re-released into other games until the bubble pops and the idea is shelved. Final Fantasy's bubble popped around FFX ages ago and went into a sort of slow decline, which went into a turbo decline on the back of FFXIII. They never really recovered from the FFXIII and FFXIV 1.0 implosion and I doubt there is a way to salvage the final fantasy name as it has been spent. Warcraft on the flip side is more like an idea that has already had it's decline, and now is ripe to be used again if the company stopped wasting resources on strange storylines and what not in the MMO.

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I haven't touched wow since Mists of Pandaria, but it looks like the latest retail wow expansion is doing ok so far. I heard the current story, dialogue, and cutscenes weren't bad, but they were made to be kind of goofy and childish as if the game were trying to appeal to a younger audience. It could be that the story writers genuinely want the wow story to go in this direction, or they're just trying to appeal to the widest audience possible to maximize profits. I'm betting on the latter.

i feel like its not that the devs are lazy, its that the priorities are skewed. Sure, the engine and netcode is being held together by the engineering equivalent of Duck-tape and sticks, but look at that vista!