Cloud Data Center Stress Test Feedback Thread (November 2023)

West coast player here. Ping is increased from my normal 20-30 to 85, obviously, although connection quality seems much higher with virtually no ping fluctuation.

Ran into a bug during UCoB where on one pull Nael's timeline was slightly accelerated and her dives mechanic started about 5 seconds earlier than normal. This was very reminiscent of the E4S sped-up timeline bug present in 5.0, which was caused by server malfunction as well. This only occurred once at random but was noticed by all players present, and none of us had ever seen it occur on live servers.

Home World: Coeurl [Crystal]
Location: West Coast [CA]
Cloudtest02

Everything is great - no issues! I have noticed a difference: I have more room for error when dodging AOEs in trials and alliance raids. I was even surprised a few times that I actually got out of something when I thought I was going to get hit. Thumps up from me!

I'm in Florida and playing in CloudTest01 and I'm having a great experience.

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Originally Posted by Reid_Dead

This occurs on Primal or Aether as well, not a cloud issue

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Good to know, thanks. None of us seemed aware that this happened on the normal servers, so it's good to learn about it.

Overall experience has been great. I am playing from Atlanta, GA, USA and experiencing much smoother gameplay than I usually experience on Crystal DC. I attribute part of this to better ping, but it also just feels smoother - examples are that the game feels less sluggish or 'stuck' when I engage in certain actions such as unlocking minions, mounts, using fireworks, and so on. Very nice so far!

I did encounter one error:

Received lobby server error 5006 while trying to connect to Cloud Test lobby server.

Running Windows 10 PC. Ran FFXIV, clicked 'start', clicked NA cloud data center (beta) when prompted for DC, clicked 'Proceed' and confirmed, and error was received.

After error 5006, game closed out entirely when I clicked 'ok' on error. Relaunched game, completed same steps, no error received and was able to log in as expected.

Last time I played (yesterday) was also on Cloud test, with no issues, so probably just some intermittent blip.

Everything running great so far, loading times seemed faster than usual too

Home DC: Crystal - Malboro
Playing on: CloudTest01

I've been testing with one of my friends who lives overseas, and just the amount of joy in his voice when he's able to do things with the same ping as me is enough to really make me enjoy playing this game again. I play with a lot of friends who are from all over, from UK to Brazil and they all have found a new love for the game, which alone makes me think this is a huge success. I made my forum account specifically to post on this test.
My ping usually sits around 90ms, and with the cloud server its down to 30ms. I've seen the change most in playing SCH. My fairy skills don't lag quite as much as they do on Crystal or Aether, shields display pretty instantly and I haven't had an issue with much else. Things like PVP, dodging AOEs in Blunderville, things happen pretty immediately, instead of waiting like a second. I know when I've gotten hit its my fault. I've done Raids, Trials, dungeons and general Gold Saucer things. I want to try out an ultimate as well before this test ends. I really hope this system is rolled out to all data centers in the future.

A few of us just completed DRS, no major issues to report. https://imgur.com/a/Bjw2GL4 We had 1 disconnect but they were able to get back in quickly.

picture: https://imgur.com/a/Bjw2GL4

Homeworld: Ravana (Materia DC)
Location: Brisbane, Australia (east coast Australia)
Datacenter for Cloud Test: Cloudtest02
Connection: Fiber optic

Averaging latency of 205-220 while playing Crystalline Conflict.

Obviously noticeable delays on casting, interacting and attacking at this level of latency.

I'm located on the east coast of the US- definitely gotten much more noticeable spikes of lag than I do on the standard NA servers from time to time. The worst it got was in a run of Rabanastre.

Region: Japan (Tokyo)
Original Home World: NA/Hyperion (Ping Avg. ~110-120ms)
Secondary World: JP/Tonberry (Ping Avg. ~4ms)
Testing - Cloudtest01 - (Ping Avg. 150ms)

From my main home world, I'm used to playing with the above latency for Hyperion and Cloudtest01 feels nearly the same as Hyperion from what I can tell. There is a noticeable difference when switching between Tonberry and Hyperion, but it doesn't make the game unplayable. As long as the PL remains at 0% (which it usually does, since my home ISP is on an NTT line and we all know SE is on NTT too...) actually game play doesn't really change so much. The Cloudtest01 also didn't seem to have any PL, so it was good experience overall.

I did not start with everyone else and experience the 3k login queues, but I'm seeing ~15 people in the queue to get in, which is nothing.

Overall, not much else to say.

Edit: I forgot, zone loading time or even moving within city aethernets are somewhat quicker. Moving within the same zone (i.e. Old Gridania), it feels faster.

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Originally Posted by Ansemaru

I'm located on the east coast of the US- definitely gotten much more noticeable spikes of lag than I do on the standard NA servers from time to time. The worst it got was in a run of Rabanastre.

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I did a run of all 3 Stormblood alliance raids and they were smooth.

If they want a real stress test, why can't we get Eternally Bonded and test things like teleport to partner? There are many things I'd like to test related to optional content.

C'mon @YoshiP, let us use the free eternal bonding for these last few days of the test!

I've encountered extremely offensive, racist usernames and search info on the Cloud test servers with no way of reporting them.

Some initial thoughts:

Latency:

Living in the northeast US I can't overstate how much better things are due to the ping. I don't need to spreadsheet multiple lines depending on how laggy the server is on a given day. Instead of stuttering from that one NTT node that doesn't pay it's ISP peering bill, we get reliable connections from cloud and cloud adjacnent infrastructure. PVP goes from a fun gimmick where I die mid DRG LB to something actually worth getting better at and strategizing in. That ping dependent animation lock bug that plagues the game suddenly disappears- I've almost forgotten that I'm playing a game with worse netcode than a '90s shooter. Going back to raiding on west coast and dying to snapshots ~0.7s later just feels awful in comparison.

I also feel like my framerate has slightly increased though I'm not sure if that's just from a smaller population.


Culture:

Playing mostly at weird hours, I've seen plenty of WoLs from JP and EU, and everyone seems to be getting along really well.


Community tooling:

The ephemeral nature of the whole test means that community tools such as hunt trackers aren't updated for the game, and people are flying blind a lot more. I wouldn't say it's explicitly a problem but it does affect testing- hard to stress test everyone rushing to an S rank when comms aren't quite up.


Testing:

For future testing, it would be nice to have a raid food vendor, so we aren't stuck with the one EW vendor food item that has rather horrific stats. Making the test closer to our mains would make problems more noticeable.

More gil would be nice, I've had to funnel 4 alts worth of gil to get a large and all the gil mounts- this is a good chance to try them before buying them on our mains so it'd be nice to see the gil amount increased to 200~250 mil.


Edit: Would be nice to have an option to override the "locked duty" thing in party finder, just so we can tell what we should unlock.


Edit 2: the fact that job skips throw your equipped gear in your regular inventory is infuriating lol

Playing from UK -
Cloud Data Center 2 - Settles around 80-90 ms (with some fluctuations going above 110)
Chaos Home Server - Around 40 ms

Actions taken so far - Created a character, went through starting cutscenes and then claimed Shadowbringers Tales and also levelled GNB and DNC to 80. Customised hotbar and done one dungeon (Dzemael Darkhold).

Overall experience so far: Plays very smoothly.
Noticeable Performance Difference: A slight graphical delay as DNC between button combos when performing Standard Step or Technical Step - but combos were always successful and did not impact gameplay. I had this once on my home server which was way worse.

I'm missing several Account-Wide optional items on my Cloud DC character.

I got my subscription rewards, Sleipnir, old promos like the maid and butler outfits, the FFX minions/outfit tokens, and a few others.

But I'm missing 4 mounts (Fat Moogle, SDS Fenrir, Fatter Cat, Kingly Peacock) and the FFVII minions.

So far, the lack of lag has definitely been noticeable! I’m in the Eastern US, usually playing on Crystal/Brynhildr, and my test character is on Cloudtest02. Everything loads in so quickly! I’m not sure how to test my ping with the cloud, but everything just feels better, more fluid. Maybe some of that could be less people, but even in crowded Limsa, I wasn’t seeing any screen stuttering and I could see everyone in the instance, rather than the delay I normally get as everyone draws in.

Didn’t get very far into level 80 since I just started last night after work, but my level 80 on the cloud almost feels as fast as my level 90 on Crystal, with no materia melded!

There was only one instance of lag that I noticed, on the first boss of Copied Factory, and one person actually had a DC symbol by their name for a second, but it was gone almost instantly. I picked that duty specifically because even with limited effects, that one always lags bad for me on Crystal, and it was a much better experience on the cloud.

I echo the poster above that I wish we could see what the locked duties are in the Party Finder, so we know what to unlock with such a limited timeframe. And really that would be a good change on the actual servers too. Keep it faded out, but after the words “Locked Duty” put the name of the duty.

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Originally Posted by _Azura_

I've encountered extremely offensive, racist usernames and search info on the Cloud test servers with no way of reporting them.

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i have one on there named Meatball Head. if you were a fan of sailormoon and seen hairstyle i used, you would get it. i see lots of food related puns

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Originally Posted by Zwynfalk

I'm missing several Account-Wide optional items on my Cloud DC character.

I got my subscription rewards, Sleipnir, old promos like the maid and butler outfits, the FFX minions/outfit tokens, and a few others.

But I'm missing 4 mounts (Fat Moogle, SDS Fenrir, Fatter Cat, Kingly Peacock) and the FFVII minions.

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All Mogstation / Store Purchased Items are unavailable on the Test Servers. So anything you bought there, even if it is "Account Wide", won't show up.

I did notice some lag on cloud2 today… went to the Gold Saucer to try out Blunderville. Just walking through the area to do my unlock quests I was getting lag and rubberbanding and sadly the actual Blunderville course wasn’t any better. Weird that everything seemed so smooth and fast last night! Crystal actually feels better today! I’ll try again later on tonight.

In the cut scene with Thancred walking towards me in "A Proper Buial" his image stuttered as it comes closer. I haven't seen this in the none cloud version. This also happens with the landscape when the light is bright as I move through the landscape.

On a good note. Images in general look way better.

location: west coast USA
Display:
* Borderless Windowed
* 100% HD
* Gamma 26
* Character Lighting 100
* FPS set to None
- Have 78 fps when I normally have over 100

I've only run 3 dungeon 15-17 with bard, healer, and tank respectively and haven't seen any lag so far.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BilonnRaolas

All Mogstation / Store Purchased Items are unavailable on the Test Servers. So anything you bought there, even if it is "Account Wide", won't show up.

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Ah, I skimmed over this bit in the info post on Lodestone
"Web services, such as the Lodestone, Companion App, optional services, and optional items, will be unavailable."
And then still getting Slepnir (must be an artifact of the old OLD optional item system) made me think I should have gotten the rest of the things.

We're about 30 minutes out from the focused stress test and I'm getting dropped connections, error 9001, every two minutes.

I think the test is working.

Edit: DISREGARD! Issue was on my end. I fixed and had no issues participating in the focused stress test.

The focused was so goofy! lol

Everything seemed fine on my end.

Small nit to pick but my cascadier swimsuit looks nothing like the one I've had for 10 years in the real game. Did they change it at some point and I have a "legacy" cascadier outfit?

Generally, positive feedback on the connection to the cloud data center. I didn't have any obvious issues with gameplay other than queues were ridiculously long for roulettes, even when queuing on a role that it says it needed.
I would say that if another test occurs that, nothing is gated. All raids are unlocked, all dungeons, trials, etc to allow all users to have all the same access right away.
It would also be nice if all jobs were unlocked to like 80 with gear to avoid the tedious unlock something, log out, log in, discard gear so I can unlock a job with a similar role process (this might be more of a me issue, but I like some variety and flexibility)

I do have an issue with moderation, or lack of it.
There were people running around with questionable names and at least one I ran into was offensive and disturbingly racist, to which I was told nothing could be done about. Which is just wrong. It doesn't matter that it is only a temporary character, it shouldn't be acceptable for even a moment.
While the hub cities can get a little spicy on normal servers, the cloud hub cities were just uncomfortable to be around. With no ability to report people, people were truly horrible.

The focused stress test was pretty crazy, but smooth. I didn't feel a single dip in connection or frame rate when everyone was spamming fireworks and OGCDs. Still PS5 user at the time though.

like many already said, these east coast servers are a gamechanger for brazilians and south americans in general... went from 200 to 140-130ms, crazy how much more fluid and responsive the game becomes

honestly, i would play a lot more if there were permanent east coast servers, i would transfer immediately even though it would cost me my house

So far, so good. I am playing in NA from EU and I have better connection to Cloud server (good) than to NA server (poor). Everything is being smooth in the test server.

Three days on Cloudtest02

Playing from Eastern Europe, with a 100 Mbps bandwidth, wired connection. Little difference with my usual experience, which is very smooth.

The connection status on the character screen is always “Good,” with an average ping of 116–122 ms. To compare, my EU connection is “Excellent,” with 30–40 ms ping.

The longest queues met:
- 945 people, moved in 14 minutes. It was in the first hours of the test.
- 394 people, moved in 7 minutes.

The only nuisance
The animations feel rough. On the first day, the frame rate was constantly around 50 fps both in battle and quiet areas. In the next days, it returned to 120–160 fps as I have on the EU server, but the movements and effects remain slightly rugged. No input or position lags, though.

Yet again, I'm very far from the data center. The performance for my distance is impressive.

Also, thanks for the opportunity to do the non-NG+ content without leveling an alt!

So far having no issues with connection. Latency is better for me on Cloud Server than on Hyperion (Primal DC), usually I have 180-210ms and on Cloud Server it would drop to 125-170. I am playing from Brazil, São Paulo. While I wouldn't want to transfer my character from Hyperion to Cloud Server because I love my current Free Company and my friends in Hyperion, it would be nice to be able to do Data Center/World Travel to Cloud Server to do some content with less lag.

I'm finding the choice of times for the major stress test on Sunday to be rather strange. Why pick a time when most of North America is still sleeping or barely waking up when it's a North American-based test that would lead to a solution for a mostly North American problem? You're effectively excluding the majority of those who would benefit in the long run from participating, and that's going to reduce the number that do participate.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

I'm finding the choice of times for the major stress test on Sunday to be rather strange. Why pick a time when most of North America is still sleeping or barely waking up when it's a North American-based test that would lead to a solution for a mostly North American problem? You're effectively excluding the majority of those who would benefit in the long run from participating, and that's going to reduce the number that do participate.

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I can’t seem to find where they said the time, but yeah that’s kind of odd…

Guys. Having your stress test at 4:30 AM when most people are asleep is not great planning on your part. It should be done on Sunday night. Alliance raid queues in DF don't come back up until 6:30AM PST. I say that to illustrate that no one is online at 4:30AM PST. It's during the slow hours for NA. I do realize that there are players from other localities testing these servers, but since it is an NA cloud server, you should be scheduling the stress test during peak NA log in times. I.e. at night.

I did just realize that it is possible that the Japan team may be the ones who have to monitor the stress test, and 4:30AM on Sunday NA time is Monday morning/early afternoon JP time. Perhaps that is the reason for the timing. It is still not a great time to preform a stress test for NA when most of the continent is still sleeping. . .

Test Period
Sunday, November 26 from 4:00 a.m. until 4:30 a.m. (PST)

The Hell Square Enix? Why are you having me be awake at 4 AM in the morning this isn't a stress test period for NA you need prime time hours during the afternoon not 4 AM in the morning.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JaydeDancer

I did just realize that it is possible that the Japan team may be the ones who have to monitor the stress test, and 4:30AM on Sunday NA time is Monday morning/early afternoon JP time. Perhaps that is the reason for the timing. It is still not a great time to preform a stress test for NA when most of the continent is still sleeping. . .

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Except it's not. 4am Pacific is 9pm Sunday in Tokyo.

It really doesn't make sense unless they're using an outside contractor to assist with the test and that contractor only had that time slot available.

All we can do is hope it goes well. I would have been happy to participate but not when it means disrupting my sleep. At least I contributed to the madness when the test servers first went online.

The cloud DC might be located nearest to NA East Coast but anyone around the globe can connect to it, so it's not really an NA-player exclusive DC like the regular NA DCs are. 4AM Pacific is prime time evening JP and middle of the day EU so there's still plenty of people to simulate load.

The whole world was taking part in that stress test basically. There is no perfect time for this. Even on weekends people would miss out. But i saw screenshots where people said they couldnt join the area because it was overloaded. So at least it was well attended.
I couldnt join, thanks to work.

Also roulette queues are long... guess nobody is doing those. ^^"

Stable connection 142ms. For an hour of play did not notice a single hang, response is quite nice, was surprised by the implementation. Connection disconnection did not happen once. With a large number of players ping reduction is not observed.
Way to go. So far 9/10 for the system, if on release will be stable below 60ms - congratulations.
Testing region: Moscow, Russian Federation.
On the home data center - Light ping is from 52 to 124 and constantly changing.