.3 Second Positional Update Delay (Requesting Dev Response)

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Originally Posted by Althea

Modern games with good network code actually use timestamps and even employ some predictional methods to figure out if it was actually possible for you to get out of an AOE.

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the problem with your "friends" analysis is you get predicted into an aoe that you werent really in, so it turns into the same problem
client sending timestamps to the server is a recipe for race conditions, there are allready enough
there are some decent thoughts though, server can timestamp telegraphs so the client can display them accurately and client can slam the server with pos update upon exiting/entering area of effect

this is all fine if the servers didnt have race conditions and processing lag (~500ms), why do you think there is no /ping command?

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Originally Posted by Ceol

It seems like this could certainly be a symptom of the 300ms delay, but it could also be due to SE's servers being so bogged down, they aren't processing the data in time. If that's the case, upping the update frequency would hurt them even more.

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I don't think anyone knows for sure what's causing it. I targeted the positional update because, in order to bandage the issue going from beta to release, that's what they lowered. They took it from .5 to .3 and a lot of people saw improvement. Whether it's the positional delay, their servers being bogged down, or the way in which the client communicates with the server though.. one thing remains, and that's that it hasn't been a problem in any other MMO. Not during release, not during regular play, not at all. So there has to be something others are doing that SE isn't. Can SE fix it? I don't know.. but I would like to know whether or not they're even gonna try.

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Originally Posted by Ceol

Wouldn't that just let people make programs that tell the server a player avoided an AoE no matter where they are? There has to be some server-side validation.

It seems like this could certainly be a symptom of the 300ms delay, but it could also be due to SE's servers being so bogged down, they aren't processing the data in time. If that's the case, upping the update frequency would hurt them even more.

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You can't assume people can arbitarily hack your client, otherwise there's no hope. Sure, the client is easier to hack than the server, but if you assume everyone can just godmode their client, your game is pretty much screwed. I mean, other MMORPGs don't have people walking around being invulnerable to everything. To do something like take control your client would actually be pretty hard and likely leave a rather easy to detect trial so you just got to have faith that you can catch that kind of stuff.

This is indeed the one mmo that has huge delay for me, and I played a lot of them.

I cannot even interrupt spells unless I move as soon as i start to cast it, if it is halfway cast, it will complete. It is such a joke, as my ping to my server is:

Reply from 199.91.189.20: bytes=32 time=87ms TTL=236
Reply from 199.91.189.20: bytes=32 time=75ms TTL=236
Reply from 199.91.189.20: bytes=32 time=74ms TTL=236
Reply from 199.91.189.20: bytes=32 time=80ms TTL=236

It is actually decent, and I could abort spells instantly in other mmo with double or triple that ping.

I only played up to level 47 dungeons so far, and as bard I can get out of aoes when I move instantly, but I am not going to raid even though I maxed all combat classes.

This is because I can see how hard it is to get our of red already for other players, and I know it is not their fault, since even I have to be always on my very toes.

There is really no excuse to make a game this year with such horrible player movement tracking.

On top of that game is not even secure and bots are using all sorts of client hacks.

Why not offload position to the client more? It is not like bots will teleport better when client is more trusted. They already do whatever they want.

Let's say we've this scenario:

0.7s - Client sends data (still in fire)
0.71s - You move out of fire
0.99s - AE goes off on server
1.00s - Client sends data

Now, at 0.99s, what data does the server have? All it can see if you're in fire so you take the damage. The data that come 0.01s later is too late, and this is why you get hit by AE despite seemingly dodging it. Timestamp wouldn't matter, because the server already made its decision prior to the next client update. Now, you can have server wait up to an extra 0.3s to consult the client info, but that'd mean even more lag, and this game is laggy enough as is.

Funfact: Every not tripple-A-i-have-an-infinite-amount-of-money-to-rebuild-a-game-from-scratch F2P game is able to deliver a fluint gameplay experience. Guess what? These people didn't deliver this. TWICE.

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Originally Posted by Risae

Funfact: Every not tripple-A-i-have-an-infinite-amount-of-money-to-rebuild-a-game-from-scratch F2P game is able to deliver a fluint gameplay experience. Guess what? These people didn't deliver this. TWICE.

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I imagine the design of this game is due to fear of hacking. It's always easier to hack your client than the server. However, hacking hasn't rendered every other MMORPG where client does most of the heavy lifting unplayable, so one should not be this paranoid. From what I understand, while hacking your client isn't terribly difficult, it's virtually impossible to not leave a trail behind. You can buy a book that tells you how to hack WoW but you'll almost certainly get banned in a matter of minutes because of WoW Warden. Even less intrusive game needs at most hours before they noticed you're doing something really weird with your client if you're doing anything beyond just teleporting.

This is a great post, it gets tiring watching people say silly things in chat to myself and/or others.. when we're having issues with this. We're not bad players, on our end.. we've clearly gotten out of the way in time, based on the cast bar and/or ground effect.. yet, we still get hit. It's absolutely a problem, and it's getting kind of old, among other things. I really wish they'd take this seriously and make some real fixes :/

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Originally Posted by TheRac25

the problem with your "friends" analysis is you get predicted into an aoe that you werent really in, so it turns into the same problem
client sending timestamps to the server is a recipe for race conditions, there are allready enough
there are some decent thoughts though, server can timestamp telegraphs so the client can display them accurately and client can slam the server with pos update upon exiting/entering area of effect

this is all fine if the servers didnt have race conditions and processing lag (~500ms), why do you think there is no /ping command?

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I'm not really savvy with network programming, but didn't Yoshida's team had a session with Blizzard at some time? From what I understand, WoW doesn't have that type of problem, so if they are able to get advice from there, why not do it? I mean, it's pretty much clear SE is kinda a novice to PC programming. They had alt-tab crashing in 1.0, with a stock error message you could search for and end up on the MSDN page explaining exactly which code you have to add to prevent it. Took them the jump to 2.0 to fix it.

Netcode seems to be a similar issue. It's just much more complex than making a single player game running on user's machine.

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Originally Posted by Shinjee

This is a great post, it gets tiring watching people say silly things in chat to myself and/or others.. when we're having issues with this. We're not bad players, on our end.. we've clearly gotten out of the way in time, based on the cast bar and/or ground effect.. yet, we still get hit. It's absolutely a problem, and it's getting kind of old, among other things. I really wish they'd take this seriously and make some real fixes :/

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I feel your pain. There is really no way to prove you got out of it on your screen, and there ARE people who use it as an excuse, so you just get lumped together with those.

SE are studiously ignoring this issue hoping it will go away. Titan has to be the most frustrating fight in the game. Firstly you have to have ADHD like tendencies to remember the rotation, then compound that with the positional lag nightmare that ensures unless youve moved BEFORE plumes/landslide animation has begun your guaranteed to get hit and its a recipe for disaster.
This positional lag occurs everywhere but its so much more noticeable on Titan. I know im not in the minority here, a large percentage of EU and Oceanic players are experiencing this.
I wish SE would at least acknowlege the issue or come up with a workaround. At the minute some players are complaining Titan is too easy because they DONT have the positional lag meaning they dodge, and dont get hit,which is exactly as it should be. Fix the lag, then adjust the difficulty if needs be.

being in Canada which is where the servers are and having the same issue pretty much shows this as not a distance from server problem. my ping is great most of the time. i always have Excellent connection listed to my world yet the moment i enter an instance with less than max players from my server I have additional lag if I do have all my server players the lag is about half of random groups add this to the .3 delay and tells can show to me at the point the servers have already counted down most of the cast bar yet on my screen the cast bar is full and the ground tell just appeared so I evade with lots of time left before the cast bar ends and wham get hit with the Damage.

As someone who fits in the middle of both latency groups, I have good days and bad days where AoE is horrible for me or not. Doing Titan the first attempt was a bad day, as every time he landslides anywhere near me I would fly off; even when I was out of it before the cast bar was at 10% complete. Other days I can run out wait til 98% and run back in and not get hit.

I played wow for a long time. Upgrading my computer right before mop came out to a better graphics card (I easily exceed all of FFXIVs min recs) but I never had any issues with AOE there. Nor in RIFT, DC Universe, D&D Online, XI, or a slew of others that I attempted to get into at one point or the other. I'm looking forward to when addons make it, because there is always a "latency fix" I used wow's before the computer change; still did after but it didnt have a noticeable effect.

Wow I ran on high(custom) settings and got anywhere from 35-70fps in average play; 25mans I could tank to 2fps. FFXIV I run at 23-36 fps and yet the aoe and npc/mob load is the worst I've ever seen in any of the games I've played.

Fates are horrible for me, Instances run at 36fps when I remember to check it. the ping to check servers needs to be fixed or they need to accept that the memory has to be larger so that the local client can handle some of the issues (and therefore the ping can also focus on less and succeed more)

Errrrm, don't think this is still a problem, wireshark says it's 0.1sec positional updates, with positional updates also given with skill commands submitted. Tested quite a bit to make sure it was accurate. Seems this happened ~week or so ago, I know it used to be .3sec updates.

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Originally Posted by Sunarie

Are there work arounds?

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The only real workaround is the make everything client side based instead of server side based. This would make everything you see on the screen actually happen.

An example of a client side based game is WoW, and you can compare how much smoother that game plays.

One of the first thing I learned in this game is that you need to move out of dmg around ~0.5 seconds before it lands. I thought it was how the game was built.

I've been playing mmos since EQ1 and have never seen these sorts of issues to this extent. I'm running the game on its highest settings and still get between 40-60 FPS, with most boss fights being in the 50s, so it isn't an FPS issue. The character select screen always says I have an "excellent" connection, and I haven't checked on this game, but in WoW I get between 80 and 100ms latency; I'm on the east coast in America.

Despite all that though, I CONSTANTLY get hit by aoes even when I'm 2-3 character lengths out of the red zone when the cast finishes; so far Titan and the Chimera in Cutter's Cry have been the worst offenders.

On top of this I also get "hitching" issues, which is something I haven't seen since Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. For those that don't know, hitching is when there is a slight pause in the screen and your movement, that then rapidly corrects itself, giving your character the appearance of being a cart hitched to something that is stopping and going.

Furthermore, I've been a high end raider in EQ, I played WoW for 7 years and was a raider in that game as a main and off tank nearly the entire time, on MUCH crappier computers than I have now, and I have never before seen bosses and encounters in a game that are ONLY hard because you're getting hit by boss moves when you clearly shouldn't be. I can't think of any encounter in any dungeon or raid in any mmo I've played before that this was so true of. It's really unacceptable from a company like Square.

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Originally Posted by ByakkoSeven

Errrrm, don't think this is still a problem, wireshark says it's 0.1sec positional updates, with positional updates also given with skill commands submitted. Tested quite a bit to make sure it was accurate. Seems this happened ~week or so ago, I know it used to be .3sec updates.

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I don't know that I would consider Wireshark an official source.. as the .3 second update thing came from Yoshi himself, along with a statement that those with a great connection would still see a .1 second delay on the cast bar (perhaps Wireshark misinterpreted this?). Given the responses, and what I see in the forums, and the video examples, something is still an issue. Using skills after you get out of an aoe doesn't work for everyone, though it does seem to work for some. Please don't assume it's not a problem for others, when it clearly is, just because you don't have issues with it.

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Originally Posted by Sybreed

I've been a high end raider in EQ, I played WoW for 7 years and was a raider in that game as a main and off tank nearly the entire time, on MUCH crappier computers than I have now, and I have never before seen bosses and encounters in a game that are ONLY hard because you're getting hit by boss moves when you clearly shouldn't be. I can't think of any encounter in any dungeon or raid in any mmo I've played before that this was so true of.

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This is what really gets me. I'm not new to raids or dungeons. I've been playing MMOs since I was 18, got a job, and could afford them myself (mom and dad wouldn't pay a sub). That's a decade of MMOs for me.. from Shadowbane to WoW, CoH/CoV and Rift.. I've played almost every MMO on the market at some point (and I'm including a slew of F2P MMOs I've messed with), and done end game stuff for a good 5-6 of them. This is the only game I've ever been hit when I was out of a ground effect before the cast bar was done.

The lag is deliberate which is why this issue is depressing. It's not like SE is just using cheap hardware that randomly lags, or that their servers are in Antarctica so everyone has poor ping to it. The game chooses to do most thing on server side and the price you pay is lag, and in this case crippling lag. The problem is that on an ability like WotL, if you move the moment you saw the ability, you'll get out of it with at most 0.5s to spare. Assuming WotL is 2.0s cast, that's 25% on cast bar left, which is actually a pretty reasonable time to escape an AE. However, now add in 0.3s of lag (possibly more), and your margin of error is way smaller than what you think you have. Basically the last 20% of the cast bar might not really be there depending on lag, and that's what frustrates people because you can't rely on your screen to be accurate.

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Originally Posted by Ceol

Wouldn't that just let people make programs that tell the server a player avoided an AoE no matter where they are? There has to be some server-side validation.

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That's why 99% of big-budget multi-player games use predictive netcode with rollback.
http://www.gabrielgambetta.com/fpm1.html

How a game like this exists in this day and age is beyond me...

To see rollback netcode in action, take a look at any FPS or a fighting game with GGPO-style netcode (this is P2P, but the concept is the same).

eg. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0TZdY9_XHo

One client "thinks" the opponent opponent died so the "KO" sound plays. However, the opponent did actually manage to block in time so the match "rolls back" to a previous state and continues.

The worst part about this whole thing, is that if it's causing this many problems with simple encounter mechanics (to be honest, Titan, for example, is an insanely simple and straightforward boss, yet the fight is made hard by these issues), it's going to make any truly challenging fights with extremely complex mechanics and high damage attacks, and absolute nightmare. Basically the more challenging and complex Square wants to make this game (a good thing) the more we have to worry about it actually being a BAD thing, because its hamstrung by these ridiculous lag issues.

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Originally Posted by Sybreed

The worst part about this whole thing, is that if it's causing this many problems with simple encounter mechanics (to be honest, Titan, for example, is an insanely simple and straightforward boss, yet the fight is made hard by these issues), it's going to make any truly challenging fights with extremely complex mechanics and high damage attacks, and absolute nightmare.

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I think you're correct..my theory is that's why some of the people doing Turn 5 Coil at the moment think it's bugged. Can't know for sure as I don't know the strat, we aren't there yet (still working on Turn 4). A guild managed to down it (awesome job Blue Garter!), but they also said they felt sorry for all who are having latency issues.

after a thread with 1.4k posts and no response from the devs/mods, this one appears.

I really think is sad that after i finally managed to beat the dam laggy Titan HM, i find out that coil is WAY EASIER then Titan HM!!!(i still only tried the first 2 stages, and it was a breeze)
and this is cause the insane difficult the lag creates on Titan HM stage.
already been 2 months and i'm tired of this type of threads, its clear they just want to have a cheap server and don't care about non-japonese players.

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Originally Posted by ilitirit

That's why 99% of big-budget multi-player games use predictive netcode with rollback.
http://www.gabrielgambetta.com/fpm1.html

How a game like this exists in this day and age is beyond me...

To see rollback netcode in action, take a look at any FPS or a fighting game with GGPO-style netcode (this is P2P, but the concept is the same).

eg. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0TZdY9_XHo

One client "thinks" the opponent opponent died so the "KO" sound plays. However, the opponent did actually manage to block in time so the match "rolls back" to a previous state and continues.

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In those games...players bitch about "rubber-banding". It is not as perfect as you think it is.

Mechanical changes could be a solution to this problem.

Take Guild Wars 2, and Star Trek Online - both have twitchy AoE mechanics like FF14, yet neither have this problem. The reason is because STO and GW2 both have a "dodge roll" mechanic, whereby the player is effectively immune to AoE's for ~1 second, they do not need to physically exit the AoE to avoid the damage, they merely have to execute their dodge roll.

For example, in Titan players attempting to exit the plume may still get hit if they didn't exit get out more than a second in advance; with a dodge roll mechanic, the players would dodge roll out of the AoE, giving them 1 second of AoE immunity. Now, even if the server doesn't recognise them as having exited the AoE, they still didn't eat the damage. Afterall, mechanically what the game should be recognising is that people saw and responded to the threat in a timely manner, rather than quibbling to the death whether or not they reached the edge of the AoE 0.3 seconds sooner

This is the main reason i've given up FFXIV, its just unplayable being Australian, and they wont ever fix it... Took me weeks to pass stone vigil AoE's so i have no hope in the later game..

so off to Rift i went and its a much more pleasant experience i can tell you.

I am a FC leader on Sargatanas and we have a lot of Aussies and Kiwis who have this issue. Some have unsubbed from the game, others are toughing it out for their 90 day before reassessing the game.

This problem is crippling NA Server players not in the Americas and it's a really stupid problem to have considering this game relies on AoE dodging a lot. Both WoW and SW:ToR had AoE dodge problems on launch, both listened to their community, both fixed it, and both are doing alright in the MMO market (for the former that's a massive understatement).

SE focus on dazzling us with new content, or fixing that error 90000 server error but refuse to acknowledge that half their playerbase is being gimped. When PVP comes out it'll be far far far far more obvious.

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Originally Posted by DanteMog

This is the main reason i've given up FFXIV, its just unplayable being Australian, and they wont ever fix it... Took me weeks to pass stone vigil AoE's so i have no hope in the later game..

so off to Rift i went and its a much more pleasant experience i can tell you.

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Kinda a shitty excuse as I play regularly with 2 AU and one has had no issues at all getting past Titan HM for 3 of his jobs for relic and then other times jut to help other people. He also plays on an N/A server like you. I'm playing from Japan on a N/A server too. Your issue is also your internet on top of the .3 delay. You should honestly look at going to Tonberry the unofficial Oceanic server.

Comparing the lag in this game to any other MMORPG is simply not applicable. A game like WoW may be laggy due to inadequate hardware. The problem is intermittent, as when people do log off the problem obviously goes away. FF14 isn't like that. That server lag is built into the game. You'll never find a time where your own spell interrupted as soon as you moved like it does in virtually any other MMORPG. In the case of hardware, all you need to do is either spend more money for hardware or wait for people to quit. In FF14's case, neither more powerful hardware nor quitting solves the problem. The server lag is part of the game itself.

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Originally Posted by Amiantos

Kinda a shitty excuse as I play regularly with 2 AU and one has had no issues at all getting past Titan HM for 3 of his jobs for relic and then other times jut to help other people. He also plays on an N/A server like you. I'm playing from Japan on a N/A server too. Your issue is also your internet on top of the .3 delay. You should honestly look at going to Tonberry the unofficial Oceanic server.

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The lag is a problem, not people's internet. The fact that people can play other MMOs just fine, and that people have yet to present an example of this issue happening in any other MMO is proof enough of that. It's not a crappy reason to leave the game, and it will cause many to leave from all over the world. The issue quite literally makes some end game fights impossible, if not extremely frustrating. Just because you and your friends don't have it, doesn't make it not a thing. All of the NA/EU servers are located in Montreal, Canada... switching servers isn't going to help. Dismissing the problem or denying it's existence is just going to hurt the game in the long run.

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Originally Posted by Amiantos

Kinda a shitty excuse as I play regularly with 2 AU and one has had no issues at all getting past Titan HM for 3 of his jobs for relic and then other times jut to help other people. He also plays on an N/A server like you. I'm playing from Japan on a N/A server too. Your issue is also your internet on top of the .3 delay. You should honestly look at going to Tonberry the unofficial Oceanic server.

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Next thing your going to tell us how Telstra is so good and the bestest of them all!

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Originally Posted by Sunarie

The lag is a problem, not people's internet. The fact that people can play other MMOs just fine, and that people have yet to present an example of this issue happening in any other MMO is proof enough of that. It's not a crappy reason to leave the game, and it will cause many to leave from all over the world. The issue quite literally makes some end game fights impossible, if not extremely frustrating. Just because you and your friends don't have it, doesn't make it not a thing. .

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Honestly I got the feeling FF14 is out to become the first MMORPG that is completely destroyed by only technical issues, not gameplay issues. That is, people cry about lag or similar technical issue in every MMORPG in existence, but I don't think you'll ever go back and say, "Remember that MMORPG? It failed because it was too laggy". But FF14 is doing a very good job to become the first one.

I considered ignoring this as it has 11 pages at the moment, but the fact is that I have very good latency where I live, but the mysterious SE lag still hits me when I am WELL out of an AE patch. So I am just good to add my two cents and say this is pretty much game breaking for me and I have not had this issue since I started MMO's with EQ vanilla. I am all about challenges, so long as they are fair. This is simply not fair.

Yes, this is a continuing problem that needs to be rectified. Ignoring this issue will only serve to further aggravate and infuriate the remaining player base who are already finding it difficult to find any sort of amusement end-game. Not mentioning all the other withstanding issues in the game, this is by far and away the most important one. SE simply should not have given priority to server-side positional recognition when the polling only happens every 0.3 seconds. Make it client-side priority first and that would be halfway to alleviating this issue.

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Originally Posted by ByakkoSeven

Errrrm, don't think this is still a problem, wireshark says it's 0.1sec positional updates, with positional updates also given with skill commands submitted. Tested quite a bit to make sure it was accurate. Seems this happened ~week or so ago, I know it used to be .3sec updates.

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Out of curiosity, how are you able to tell which outgoing packets contain positional updates? I've taken a look via WireShark recently to try and diagnose a network issue and the packets bound for FFXIV servers appeared obfuscated/encrypted from what I saw - not completely, as some things like character names appeared at times... but all other data was unintelligible using WireShark alone.

You scrubs, you're just zooming in too far. Quit whining and learn to use your camera.
-from YoshiP w/ love.

But seriously, this is surely this is a huge issue that needs to be fixed, and SE has done nothing but dodge the the issue. At least it works in castes' favor once you learn to abuse the faulty, lag-ridden cast bar to do a cast straight into a move.

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Originally Posted by Astarica

Honestly I got the feeling FF14 is out to become the first MMORPG that is completely destroyed by only technical issues, not gameplay issues. That is, people cry about lag or similar technical issue in every MMORPG in existence, but I don't think you'll ever go back and say, "Remember that MMORPG? It failed because it was too laggy". But FF14 is doing a very good job to become the first one.

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I honestly cannot think of any MMOs I've played that have had that this issue. Rubberbanding? Yes. Disconnects and server crashes during launch? Yup... but never being hit by aoes when I'm out in time.

It's not a network or a netcode issue. It's graphics lag.
Turn down your settings and switch off fps-limit.
You will never have an issue with aoe again.

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Originally Posted by Mishari

It's not a network or a netcode issue. It's graphics lag.
Turn down your settings and switch off fps-limit.
You will never have an issue with aoe again.

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That's almost as useful as Yoshi saying that people can't pass Titan because their camera is zoomed too far in. :/ I, and many others, have tried those (even though according to the benchmark I should be able to play on the highest settings with room to spare).. that didn't work.

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Originally Posted by Sunarie

That's almost as useful as Yoshi saying that people can't pass Titan because their camera is zoomed too far in. :/ I, and many others, have tried those (even though according to the benchmark I should be able to play on the highest settings with room to spare).. that didn't work.

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I know, it sucks.
The client is not optimized and SE has to do something about it.
But still, it helps.

Edit: Where did Yoshi say something like that? Thats ridicolous.