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

Good news for me, at least. I have been offered a refund (which I accepted). I'll give it a few months and see how reports of the Mac client are going and then decide whether I want to re-purchase it.

That's the way to do it - SE may have lost that purchase, but they've saved the subscription, which is worth far more.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Undrum

Good news for me, at least. I have been offered a refund (which I accepted). I'll give it a few months and see how reports of the Mac client are going and then decide whether I want to re-purchase it.

That's the way to do it - SE may have lost that purchase, but they've saved the subscription, which is worth far more.

---

That is kind of the hidden loss here... Square-Enix had an opportunity to expand it's customer base to all these Mac users... And unfortunately, Square-Enix did not bother to check on whether or not what they offered us was worth playing. It is not imho... All those new subs, so much money on the table lost. I hope they understand what they did here, and how they are shooting themselves in the foot.

so i followed their instructions, deleted the files in library. still the client wouldn't launch, so i launched it via terminal the boot loader was updated

now this is a thing.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CIXM1tIW8AANAAu.jpg



I am not spending another 12 hours redownloading....... just no square

RT this to raise awareness if you would https://twitter.com/aizei/status/614122878510997504

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Undrum

Good news for me, at least. I have been offered a refund (which I accepted). I'll give it a few months and see how reports of the Mac client are going and then decide whether I want to re-purchase it.

That's the way to do it - SE may have lost that purchase, but they've saved the subscription, which is worth far more.

---

Very happy for you, Undrum! Hoping they reply to me soon! :)

I would love to hear from Mac Pro users. I'll have to test mine when I get home from this work trip. The whole reason I was happy for a mac client was traveling around. Now that has been shattered...

Apparently, some users on the MacRumors forum tried it on a Mac Pro. Same crappy performance. This just makes me think the port failed to properly recognize hardware.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by JijaYanin

Apparently, some users on the MacRumors forum tried it on a Mac Pro. Same crappy performance. This just makes me think the port failed to properly recognize hardware.

---

You're probably right. Based on the recommended system specs they posted today, I feel like most people's systems in here should have no trouble running the game at a high level. But something about the port is not utilizing our hardware properly.

Fascinating this thread is at almost 20 pages. Its the longest thread I currently see for several pages back on the main tech support forum. Still no real info about the from square. Not even officially acknowledging that there is something wrong with it.

My biggest issue is when companies don't take ownership of mistakes. They just act like they don't know about it. Worst thing you can do is pretend you don't know about an issue while your customers are angry about it. People tend to be much calmer when they know you know theres an issue and are working on it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Blayde

Fascinating this thread is at almost 20 pages. Its the longest thread I currently see for several pages back on the main tech support forum. Still no real info about the from square. Not even officially acknowledging that there is something wrong with it.

My biggest issue is when companies don't take ownership of mistakes. They just act like they don't know about it. Worst thing you can do is pretend you don't know about an issue while your customers are angry about it. People tend to be much calmer when they know you know theres an issue and are working on it.

---

There's also a 12 page post in the General forum.
Square definitely needs to be a bit more responsive to this issue, as the post they put up this morning was nothing more than weak attempt to put the blame on the hardware.
However, taking a step back, keep in mind the OSX client was built in partnership with Transgaming. The game client itself (provide by Square) works, we all know that since most of us played via Boot Camp or Parallels. Transgaming is responsible for the wrapper portion, which is actually giving us the problems. So, there is a question of support for, which is complicated since nVidia just bought Transgaming.

While a full on native Metal client announcement would be the best outcome, a more realistic outcome would be an announcement of acknowledging the issues and stating they're working with Transgaming to resolve it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Delily

There's also a 12 page post in the General forum.
Square definitely needs to be a bit more responsive to this issue, as the post they put up this morning was nothing more than weak attempt to put the blame on the hardware.
However, taking a step back, keep in mind the OSX client was built in partnership with Transgaming. The game client itself (provide by Square) works, we all know that since most of us played via Boot Camp or Parallels. Transgaming is responsible for the wrapper portion, which is actually giving us the problems. So, there is a question of support for, which is complicated since nVidia just bought Transgaming.

While a full on native Metal client announcement would be the best outcome, a more realistic outcome would be an announcement of acknowledging the issues and stating they're working with Transgaming to resolve it.

---

I would be fine with that realistic outcome. I know transgaming did the work, but I wonder if anyone at square thought to fire it up one a couple mac models and make sure it worked. I am baffled they would release this.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Reih

I would love to hear from Mac Pro users. I'll have to test mine when I get home from this work trip. The whole reason I was happy for a mac client was traveling around. Now that has been shattered...

---

I was running it on a 2009 Mac Pro, upgraded to a GTX 660.
Windows, 2560x1600, High Laptop settings: ~60FPS
OS X, 1280x800, Lowest possible settings: ~15 FPS.

TLDR: Even a Mac Pro can't save this turkey of a port. Can't speak for the performance of the new Mac Pros, though.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AvathAlThor

I would be surprised if they scrapped the project. Some people now might be asking for a refund, but as Blizzard learnt there's a big potential market out there of Mac players, especially for a subscription based MMO. But we'll see....... *crosses fingers*

---

I don't think they're going to drop Mac support. It's advertised on the store, and at the bottom of the forum page, the Mac icon is there. I believe there's 2 issues here. First, the client base for OSX is very small, so while the development team is aware of the issue, there's not enough groundswell to get it fixed considering the other issues people have been experiencing (namely the PS4 issue). The other thing is that SE may not have much to say. Transgaming would be the people responsible for the wrapper, and who knows what the details of that contract are and how the acquisition by nVidia affects that.

I just don't think we have enough klout to get them to take action on it right now.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Blayde

My biggest issue is when companies don't take ownership of mistakes. They just act like they don't know about it. Worst thing you can do is pretend you don't know about an issue while your customers are angry about it. People tend to be much calmer when they know you know theres an issue and are working on it.

---

The frustrating thing is that they do acknowledge the issue in response to tickets. My refund email said:

Quote:

---

We are very sorry to hear about your issues with the Mac client for Final Fantasy XIV. We are aware of issues surrounding the Mac version and we are looking into this.

---

If they just put that into a public statement, I think it would help calm the situation.

Man this just went from bad, to ok, to worse for me.... I received an email from customer support that stated they will be giving me a refund, but then when I checked my bank account I realized they charged me TWICE for the one mac client...... FML

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Reih

I would love to hear from Mac Pro users. I'll have to test mine when I get home from this work trip. The whole reason I was happy for a mac client was traveling around. Now that has been shattered...

---

Sadly it does not matter, I have tried on my Mid 2010 Mac Pro with an upgraded GTX 970 4gb card and 16 gigs of ram and SSD... it actually runs way worse than my wifes 5k imac which is so crazy to me cause that has a mobile video card in it.

Bummer. Guess not much can be done at this point.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Undrum

The frustrating thing is that they do acknowledge the issue in response to tickets.

---

It definitely seems like the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing.

Technical Support has been telling me for 2 days that there is nothing they can do for me, including even acknowledging that my problem exists. But apparently the Online Store Support Team is freely able to admit the problem and issue refunds. So that's what I'm trying now because chat and email tech support is a complete waste of time.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Reih
I would love to hear from Mac Pro users. I'll have to test mine when I get home from this work trip. The whole reason I was happy for a mac client was traveling around. Now that has been shattered...

---

Not much to say, I have the mid 2015 15" MBP with AMD Radeon R9 M370X and even with lowest settings, the game stutters, glitches and all that funsies one can guess. Same for my late 2012 iMac with 680MX (more powerful than the iris chips). And now that I know how to see fps in game, neither has been above 25fps max. iMac goes can jump slightly higher to 26fps, both generally stays about 11-15fps. Both computers in Bootcamp have exactly ZERO issues running max everything (minus shadows, cause I never use them in any games) hanging cool at about 40-60fps+.


Not knowing all about the inner workings of apps/game clients, does anybody know what is going wrong behind the scenes of this wrap, besides it being a horrid transposition. I know in other games, those with uber knowledge have been able to say problem(s) ranging from memory leaks, to wrong files here or there, etc. Has anybody actually gone through logs or w/e yet? Personally, I keep feeling like even after changing every setting to lowest possible, the game isn't really seeing the changes behind the scene.

It doesn't recognize the underlying hardware, essentially.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Reih

I would love to hear from Mac Pro users. I'll have to test mine when I get home from this work trip. The whole reason I was happy for a mac client was traveling around. Now that has been shattered...

---

Isn't the Mac version is digital download only?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jobefuzz

Isn't the Mac version is digital download only?

---

Yes, but those new model mac pros are very small.

Sent in my request for a refund. I'd be glad to purchase it again if there is ever a definite fix.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sandulf

The performance of the client is, as stated by those above me, completely unacceptable for a product that costs $60. I would understand if it was a native port, but it's simply utilizing Transgaming's Cider.
.

---

D:

If they were going to do such a poor job on it, SE should ask for their money back and just do a native OS X port in-house. It shouldn't be that much more effort than maintaining a PS3/PS4 and PC version.

If people are getting such poor performance as they say they are, Parallels would even be faster.

Ok everyone I have some news directly from the phone support! So I had to hunt to find this number which is Square Enix's base support in CA (858) 790-7529 in case you want to call it yourself but be warned I waited for 2 hours in line then talked to the rep for another hour problem solving. The "reason" the game will not run on my mac pro is apparently because I have the game installed to a solid state drive /rollseyes, which seems backwards but the rep assured me they have had issues with their games in the past when installed on a solid state hard drive because of the way it writes data. So next i gave him the specs on my wife's iMac 5k which is maxed out but running the standard hard drive) and they claimed the problem was with the fact her operating system was only 10.10.1 and not 10.10.2 /facepalm. So I updated to the newest 10.10.3 and ran the game with him on the phone and alas not much improvement. I will say there definitely was some improvement in that is was less stuttery but it still would be very difficult to play in an actual instanced encounter I would imagine. Mainly because I was getting 15-25 fps just in town with no combat. He then told me they cannot directly handle the refunds since they are not attached to the square enix online support which is the email support link that was linked earlier.

He also told me they are receiving a FLOOD of calls regarding mac problems and several thousand emails per day. He confirmed they are aware there is an issue with the mac product and they are working hard to try to fix it as fast as possible but they pretty much still had no idea what the actual problem was. So theres something I guess, I suppose I will install the game to my non solid state hard drive and see if that really makes a difference... Why not I guess... I shall report back with my findings

What a joke indeed. I finally got around to installing this on my Mac and seriously, it has worse performance than the PS4. Even if I right click in some places, my frame rate drops by 50% just to turn the camera. I had to disable some other mouse utils I have on the mac, to even spin my camera around without it spinning a million times, issues like this don't exist with ANY other game on the Mac that I have.

Such a joke.

I tried fiddling with the config file that you can see in the application's package contents (under Preferences). That file seems to contain some of the settings used by the Transgaming's WINE implementation, but nothing I did seemed to have any impact on how the game plays. Ultimately I tried deleting it outright, but the game still played normally (that is 'abysmally'), so maybe its presence is purely vestigial.

(Hopefully I'm not in trouble now for modifying "game files".)

Edit: Just to be safe, I'm going to reinstall/re-patch the game. Who knows, maybe this will trick it into working. :P

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

D:

If they were going to do such a poor job on it, SE should ask for their money back and just do a native OS X port in-house. It shouldn't be that much more effort than maintaining a PS3/PS4 and PC version.

If people are getting such poor performance as they say they are, Parallels would even be faster.

---

Ok, hold on here, it's not that simple. The game engine used to build FFXIV does support PSGL and GMN(X) which are the graphics APIs used in the PSX line. It does not support either OpenGL or Metal the APIs for use on OSX. Adding support for a new API is not a trivial task. While I agree SE should build a native client, it's a rather large task.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Nemna

I tried to submit a ticket through this channel and repeatedly get this message:

Contacting Square Enix Online Support
You must provide a valid Order ID or the email address you used for the purchase. Please retry here.

I've tried with both my order ID and with the email address I used to make the purchase. I can't believe SE thinks it's okay to treat (new!) customers this way....

---

Jeeze, that sucks really bad. I had no idea you had already tried.:(

My order was cancelled today. We'll be getting the PS4 version, what a joke that they thought to list the specs AFTER release.

By the by, my girlfriend's computer has an Nvidia 650M or whatever, and hits all the other requirements. I'm pretty sure an equivalently powered Windows computer could achieve higher than 8-14 FPS on the lowest settings. The wrapper is unoptimized, and a mess, and people are paying for something that Square-Enix slapdashed out the door. Blizzard has its problems, that is certain. But Mac ports have never been one of those problems. SE needs to get it together, they could've had a super successful Mac release. They certainly had the money to develop a native port.

They need to do what WB did with the Arkham Knight PC port. Take it down, revisit the drawing board, actually work on a port. If people want the crappy client in the interim, they need to just make it free.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by cybereal

FWIW, you can plug a keyboard and mouse in the PS4 version and switch to mouse mode and play that way just fine.

---

Except for the fact that keyboards have inexplicable keyboard lag on PS4 FFXIV. It's infuriating.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sramdi

Just dropping in to thank the Mac port purchasers for the warning and to say I'm sorry you got shafted. I have a Macbook Pro and have been using Bootcamp when traveling. Thanks for saving me $60.

This is extremely disappointing. And here I thought the lesson of 1.0 was learned.

---

At least we can achieve this for people who haven't dropped money on it yet. If you're(general you) thinking of doing it, the general advice is run away, very quickly.

Given that the FPS difference between the highest and lowest settings is almost the same (both low), I'm really feeling like they messed up some configuration somewhere. I'm going to give SE a few weeks to get this sorted out, and if that doesn't work... probably just cancel my sub. Not out of spite or anything - I just don't have the time to deal with installing Bootcamp and rebooting every time I want to jump into the game for a few minutes.

This thread has been incredibly illuminating, and reinforcing that I'm by no means alone in this.

Many thanks to the previous posters on this thread! Upon AosiClericsguard's implicit advice, I asked for a refund. While I didn't get an e-mail as cool as AosiClericsguard's and KrelianJudah's, I did receive this:

Square Enix Support (Square Enix Online Store Support)
Jun 25, 16:05

Dear [name],
Thank you for contacting the Square Enix Online Store Support.
Your order has been cancelled, and you'll be refunded within the next 1-7 working days.
Best,
Xavier

The Square Enix Online Store Team


(In case people are curious: My machine is a 27" Late 2013 iMac with the proper OS and more than enough hard drive space, and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M graphics card.* My fps in Limsa Lominsa during seriously off-peak hours for my server ranged from 25 to just under 10.)


This major plus side was after a pretty serious minus side of having been online with Square Enix's Customer Support Chat for . . . nearly four hours? During which I spoke to a Customer Service agent (who didn't fully elaborate until 1.5 hours in that he was Operations and Billing, could not offer me any tech help nor refund me for the game -- and in fact claimed it was not possible to refund the game), and a Technical Support agent who -- I kid you not -- suggested that contacting Technical Support was not the way to receive technical help with the client and that I should instead "please post on the forums when you are able" because "Mac is a new platform for us and we are actively investigating all reported issues."

So seemingly, this is the place to report Mac issues. Report away, all!

(They also told me to follow up by posting on the forums when I was also contacting them because I initially couldn't post on the forums due to a forums permissions bug. And responded to non-responsivity in the Report a Bug window in the Mac client -- I found this out because the Customer Service rep told me to address the forums permission by reaching out to a GM in-game -- by telling me to try to "please attempt to try reporting a bug on a PC or on the forums once [your forums issue has been resolved]".

* - Ironically, I bought the Mac version because several folks have found the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 drivers to not always play nice with Windows 7 Professional under Boot Camp; like many, I experience serious occlusion, tearing, and redraw issues even when system windows pass over one another. It's a known issue, and most people 'fix' it by turning off NVIDIA updates from the native NVIDIA updater as well as Windows and Boot Camp updater, and rolling back driver versions until they find the one that sucks the least. But even these graphics issues don't compare to the fps I was getting.

Just coming back to say that I've been playing the mac client for a few days now, and after getting some perspective of several different types of gameplay, from different zones with different traffic... it's still horrible. Pretty much constantly telling me "Yes, I'm playable, but I'm really, really bad."

By SE's silence I guess they are okay with their product constantly telling me this.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Aizei

so i followed their instructions, deleted the files in library. still the client wouldn't launch, so i launched it via terminal the boot loader was updated

now this is a thing.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CIXM1tIW8AANAAu.jpg



I am not spending another 12 hours redownloading....... just no square

RT this to raise awareness if you would https://twitter.com/aizei/status/614122878510997504

---

If you haven´t deleted FFXIV, you could create a folder named "FINAL FANTASY XIV" in the library, and then inside the "FINAL FANTASY XIV" folder create a folder named "p_drive". Might make it launchable again.

I just wanted to lend my voice to the cause as well. I have an early 2015 Macbook Pro Retina 13" and a dual boot desktop machine with a GTX 970. The only reason I run Bootcamp on the MBP is for FFXIV. Additionally, I would love to spend more time using the Mac partition of my desktop, but since FFXIV is fairly regular part of my daily routine and wasn't available for OSX, it's stayed pretty much in Windows. I would have loved to pick up the Mac client (albeit not really for the $60 they were asking, as I already paid $60 for the digital collector's edition), but owing to everybody's experiences with it, I will unfortunately have to wait until Square Enix does something to address the issue.

Square: I love your game, but I don't think the Mac client is fully baked yet and I will purchase it when the performance is more in line with reasonable expectations.

Why was this thread moved into General Discussion? If the community moderators have taken notice, I'd at least like an update or acknowledgement of the issues being discussed before they push it to the bottom of the pile.

Just played about 2 hours again on my Macbook this morning and felt that the game has ran smoother than i did previously a couple of days before. The FPS is steady around 40-50 fps on my 3 year old Macbook Pro Retina 15 inch. Did a couple of dungeons and quest in the open world and FPS isn't dipping which is a great sign. Not sure if SE actually did snuck in fix but you guys should try it now.

Moved to the general discussion forum because it's not a issue requiring 'technical support' maybe?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Caerai

Moved to the general discussion forum because it's not a issue requiring 'technical support' maybe?

---

Probably true. According to all my interactions with SE Tech Support, it was made clear that there was nothing they could do to address any of the ongoing issues with the Mac client. So I suppose that means it's all Transgaming's problem. And very likely, they're hoping moving the thread to General will help it get buried quicker so we stop bugging them about it :/

Square should refund everyone who paid for this and call it an open beta, or rather, alpha test indefinitely, particularly if they can not do anything about the problems from a tech support perspective. What that means is, the product is simply broken and does not meet the basic promises that a finished software product implies. Work is required in development, whether by a third party company or not, it doesn't matter. It's Square's product and if they had any respect for their customers, they would own up to this mistake and make it right.

Instead they will probably ignore it, and in 6 months act completely baffled that nobody plays from the Mac client and further the false notion that people don't game on Mac.

I'm just glad I have the PS4 version as it works really nicely and since I prefer to play with a controller (supplemented by a small handful of keyboard macros) it doesn't impact me too much. I am a bit miffed about the loss of $60 though.

I do have to agree. Even with the minimum specs most of the MacBook Pro range should be able to run it. Also the minimum specs were also not released until after the download of the game so Mac users had no way to check whether their particular machine would run the game or not.

I was kind of hoping that I could play on my Mac rather than my PC when I was travelling because it's smaller so was kind of disappointed that the client just did not work. E-mailled SE and their response was essnetially "please look forward to it!" :-(

I think moving the thread from technical difficulties until general chat shows SE's view that this is no longer an issue requiring 'technical' support... which is disappointing given that no official statement has been made about the merit of the mac client