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

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Originally Posted by JijaYanin

Yoshi P addresses Mac client issues:

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...641512f05a9e14

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Thank you for posting that. I was having trouble finding it even though others had mentioned this response. I am glad to see that they have pulled the Mac version until this gets resolved. Adding more fuel to the fire won't help while they are trying to fix it. I think he provided a good explanation of what happened, and a sincere apology. It doesn't help my performance, but it is much appreciated. I'm going to keep my Mac license while they work on it. I plan to beta test El Capitan which should be available shortly. So, if you get a beta client running on Metal up, I'll be happy to test it for you. :P

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Originally Posted by Avenger

This boggles the mind:



On what planet is adding an extra layer of middleware going to INCREASE performance?

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I think he's stating that OpenGL is a fairly bloated API compared to Direct X. He never stated anything about performance being improved by the Middleware. What he was saying is that an OpenGL Mac client would have cost them a lot of money and still not have performance on par with Windows. It was simply more cost effective to go with the middleware, and the company in question actually specializes in ports for Mac.

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Originally Posted by Naoki_yoshida

We have judged that there is still a lack of information on the Mac version and its system requirements. We are planning to make an announcement which will include detailed information on the product, system requirements, and screen resolution. Until this is done, and I am personally satisfied that our users are adequately informed, we will be suspending the sale of the Mac version.

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An important part of this would be releasing a Mac version of the FFXIV benchmark, to enable players to determine how well the game will run on their hardware configuration.

Kudos to Yoshi-P for suspending the sale of the Mac version and offering refunds.

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Originally Posted by Sakei

I think he's stating that OpenGL is a fairly bloated API compared to Direct X. He never stated anything about performance being improved by the Middleware. What he was saying is that an OpenGL Mac client would have cost them a lot of money and still not have performance on par with Windows. It was simply more cost effective to go with the middleware, and the company in question actually specializes in ports for Mac.

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It would have been much clearer to say:

"Because we thought even a native OpenGL Mac version would have poor performance regardless, we didn't think it was worth the effort, so instead we decided to save time and money by releasing a version that uses the Cider/Transgaming middleware to translate DirectX into OpenGL, resulting in the very poor performance that many of you have observed." :(

It may have been clearer but I'm sure you can see that it would come across as very abrasive, Avenger. They had faith that Transgaming could deliver at least acceptable performance at a much lower cost to them. The game has been run in a wrapper before with acceptable performance. You can still find the old wrappers online, but they don't work with the current clients.

I'm a little confused. Is he saying the only thing they're going to do before restarting sales of the Mac client is get the tech specs and recommendations in order? The top of the line MBPs cannot run it too well. The top of the line iMacs as well. So what, tack on a system requirement of something no Macs have or something?

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Originally Posted by Sakei

I think he's stating that OpenGL is a fairly bloated API compared to Direct X. He never stated anything about performance being improved by the Middleware. What he was saying is that an OpenGL Mac client would have cost them a lot of money and still not have performance on par with Windows. It was simply more cost effective to go with the middleware, and the company in question actually specializes in ports for Mac.

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In plain English, the game client the Mac uses is the Windows client, but the underlying WINE/Cider/Cedega implementation tries to translate DX9/DX10/DX11 calls to equivalent OpenGL calls, to which there is no 1:1 mapping for. Developers don't target the Mac because they don't feel there are enough people using the Mac platform for games to justify building a DirectX and a OpenGL version of their games. Where as a lot of other (typically open source, and emulators facilitating piracy) software don't use advanced features of DirectX/Direct3D or OpenGL and are much easier to map functionality.


Like imagine DirectX is German and OpenGL is Arabic. Neither person speaks each others language but they both have a translators that speak English. So the DirectX "German" is translated into an intermediate representation in "English" , and then the intermediate representation "in English" is translated to Arabic. So that translation also loses intonations and emphasis that was in the original language that is up to both translators to understand the significance of. It's a bi-directional communication.

I won't get a refund, while I've been criticizing the OSX client harshly I do want this to happen with a proper setup and a good implementation. I'm curious about how SE will handle this. I just hope that the emphasis placed on Metal is well researched. I'd hate to see this happening a second time by raising expectations and colliding with what customers expect.

If you save 3 bucks every comment you read in this thread you should be able to buy a PC already.

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Originally Posted by Evangela

If you save 3 bucks every comment you read in this thread you should be able to buy a PC already.

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Yeah, but I do a ton more by working on OSX.

Possibly. I read it to mean that they both need to make obvious improvements overall, but also to work out what is and isn't a viable machine to run it on.

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Originally Posted by Sakei

It may have been clearer but I'm sure you can see that it would come across as very abrasive, Avenger. They had faith that Transgaming could deliver at least acceptable performance at a much lower cost to them. The game has been run in a wrapper before with acceptable performance. You can still find the old wrappers online, but they don't work with the current clients.

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Personally I find ambiguity and beating around the bush to be vastly more infuriating than clear and unambiguous statements of why someone did something. It should be possible to gracefully explain the truth in clear and unambiguous terms.

Your hypothesis may be correct - I see nothing wrong with stating it clearly in plain language.

Actually the clearest part seems to be here:

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Originally Posted by Naoki_Yoshida

With regards to our decision to use middleware rather than having native OpenGL, the biggest reason behind this choice was development cost. As I mentioned earlier, very few games are sold for Mac systems, and the prevailing opinion is that the majority of Mac users aren’t interested in games. This results in an extremely high risk for development.

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(emphasis mine)

Unfortunately the subsequent paragraphs confuse the issue by talking about performance - which is certainly a reason NOT to use middleware.

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Originally Posted by Evangela

If you save 3 bucks every comment you read in this thread you should be able to buy a PC already.

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The Mac is a PC, and FFXIV runs great on it running Windows. FFXIV also runs fine on PS4.

However, I still would like to have a Mac OS X FFXIV client that actually works well so I can play without having to use Windows or a game console.

OpenGL is not the best way to go. Even big multi plattform open source projects have dropped OpenGL develepment in the Windows version because they don't get the performance like with DirectX.

There is also an interesting sentence in the big text:

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With the adoption of DirectX11 for Mac, and the replacement of OpenGL with a new graphics API in Apple’s next OS, the fundamental gap in current performance issues may soon be eliminated.

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Please look forward to it.

My guess is maybe Transgaming might take advantage of Metal for their Cider product. I wouldn't be surprised if Wine proper eventually does that. It will give them far superior graphics power. MIght take a bit, but Nvidia has the engineers and money to do that faster than the public Wine volunteer project.

It would still rely on translating calls from DirectX to Metal if Transgaming were to do it. Metal is new, so I won't expect much until concrete numbers are thrown to the public.

I'm not going to request a refund. I'm going to wait it out. I don't mind the middle software but it need to run somewhat better performance.

http://games.slashdot.org/story/15/0...al-fantasy-xiv

Also, an alternative to Transgaming since it was bought out by NVIDIA:

http://boilingsteam.com/codeweavers-...hines-porting/

Anna Johnson I want to thank Square Soft for making the Mac Client. I am sure you will solve the problems and I am keeping my Mac Client and using it. I hope this helps with its further development. These highly technical programs always run at first with problems. But, you have included a large segment of players who like your game and want to continue to play it. Thank you so much. I appreciate your kind courteous attitude towards us who use the Mac Client. Your game is great. Wonderful graphics. The players are awesome. smile emoticon

Well, there a few things people needed to pre-consider prior to even purchasing a MAC port. So in a sense this is partially a consumer error as much as it is an error on Square Enix not releasing details on how the mac client was being handled.


1. Non-Native Mac games are often ported using a 3rd party. Which in turn will use a wrapper of sorts.

2. Even people on Windows have been having some issues with Nvidia drivers recently; causing game crashes etc...

3. The newer updates, graphically were done with dx11 in mind, not opengl.

4. Marketshare of MAC is still relatively low in comparison to all other platforms. Windows has been on a surge again recently and with Windows 10 on the horizon expect MAC share to take another hit (it didn't do so well past quarters iirc)

4a. This means corners will be cut in order to minimize risk and make profit.

5. As others stated Transgaming didn't do a good job with another somewhat popular game, look it up.

Now, I'm not white knighting SE as they should have told people outright that this was going to be ported by Transgaming and that it wasn't going to be Native OpenGL. However, MAC costumers should have made a more informed decision. Why would you purchase something that could potentially have so many issues from the start? Currently drivers from nvidia have been shoddy, dx11 client sometimes acts funky (for some people; not me), and it is a 3rd party port. What combination of that does not spell disaster?

Finally, people may get mad at me for this, the logic of MAC is for ___ and Windows PC is for ____ is just outright bs. Both can be just as good at video editing and what have you. It's not like Adobe products are only native to one and not the other. (I switch between premiere/after effects on a mac and pc depending on where I am working)

The only difference is that people who purchase a "top of the line mac book" get slightly more price gauging for cherry picked parts than some windows pc companies, and I guess better look design? (I don't like aluminium unibodies etc and I don't like laptops)

Needless to say "whoops" on both parties ask for a refund if you need it and move on.

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Originally Posted by Mardel

Well, there a few things people needed to pre-consider prior to even purchasing a MAC port. So in a sense this is partially a consumer error as much as it is an error on Square Enix not releasing details on how the mac client was being handled.


1. Non-Native Mac games are often ported using a 3rd party. Which in turn will use a wrapper of sorts.

2. Even people on Windows have been having some issues with Nvidia drivers recently; causing game crashes etc...

3. The newer updates, graphically were done with dx11 in mind, not opengl.

4. Marketshare of MAC is still relatively low in comparison to all other platforms. Windows has been on a surge again recently and with Windows 10 on the horizon expect MAC share to take another hit (it didn't do so well past quarters iirc)

4a. This means corners will be cut in order to minimize risk and make profit.

5. As others stated Transgaming didn't do a good job with another somewhat popular game, look it up.

Now, I'm not white knighting SE as they should have told people outright that this was going to be ported by Transgaming and that it wasn't going to be Native OpenGL. However, MAC costumers should have made a more informed decision. Why would you purchase something that could potentially have so many issues from the start? Currently drivers from nvidia have been shoddy, dx11 client sometimes acts funky (for some people; not me), and it is a 3rd party port. What combination of that does not spell disaster?

Finally, people may get mad at me for this, the logic of MAC is for ___ and Windows PC is for ____ is just outright bs. Both can be just as good at video editing and what have you. It's not like Adobe products are only native to one and not the other. (I switch between premiere/after effects on a mac and pc depending on where I am working)

The only difference is that people who purchase a "top of the line mac book" get slightly more price gauging for cherry picked parts than some windows pc companies, and I guess better look design? (I don't like aluminium unibodies etc and I don't like laptops)

Needless to say "whoops" on both parties ask for a refund if you need it and move on.

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So, you are saying that people should have known the Mac port would have been half-assed? How does this excuse SE for anything? Go back and review the prices for each of these clients, they're all the same. So, why should it be acceptable for only one client to be unplayable and unable to even maintain a consistent framerate? There is a bad job, and ooh we royally screwed over our customers bad. This was the latter.

According to an article I read, they are offering refunds on the mac client through the SE store and have entirely stopped the sale of the Mac software.

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Originally Posted by Sakei

So, you are saying that people should have known the Mac port would have been half-assed? How does this excuse SE for anything? Go back and review the prices for each of these clients, they're all the same. So, why should it be acceptable for only one client to be unplayable and unable to even maintain a consistent framerate? There is a bad job, and ooh we royally screwed over our customers bad. This was the latter.

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If you read everything I said no it doesn't excuse SE, but yes they should have known it would be half assed. In fact it was 0 ass, SE had a 3rd party do it; thus they took very little part in the creation of the MAC client. Plus like I said they did offer refunds, take it, unbunch panties, and move on.

Patch notes say performance has been improved on mac. Any one notice improvement?

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Originally Posted by Blayde

Patch notes say performance has been improved on mac. Any one notice improvement?

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I'll check it out tonight and report back. I felt as though there was some improvement following hot fixes the other week too. Although before you get too enthusiastic, it was more a case of being less awful than it was being better.

I'm running a 2012 MBP Retina though, so those of us with more recent kit may get more optimistic results......

While I have a Mac, I have not yet tried the Mac version of the game. I run it currently via Windows. I've seen SE's previous Windows and iOS ports, and they we're never very good. And I don't believe in miracles.

I do have Starcraft II from Blizzard, and the Mac version runs very well. Not quite as good as the PC version (but close). Ditto for the Mac version of WoW. Clearly decent Mac Ports exist. The only fault is SE not putting the same amount of effort as the other games into the Mac version of the game.

After last nights patch, i noticed about the same performance full screen ie 23 fps @ 2560x1440 (27 inch iMac, 3.5 ghz i7, 16 gb ram, Nvidia GTx 780m 4gb video card). I noticed in the patch notes that default full screen has been switched to windowed. So i tried some of the 1280x900 and 1290x700 something windowed. In Windowed mode, i was getting high 30s to low 40s fps, and much less stutter. I did roulette as a healer, and got Sastasha. The client worked well for 90% of the dungeon. Only a couple of times did it do the graphical garble dance on the mini map and peoples health bars, but cleared up quickly. While startling, it did not affect gameplay at all and we cleared the dungeon normally.

Also i notice the vegetation is much more shimmery in the Mac client than that Windows one. It is especially so in sunlight while moving, the trees and shrubs have that weird sparkly shimmer that is distracting and headache inducing, and somehow its more pronounced.

Anyway, you might want to try Window-ed instead of Full screen, and see if that helps your fps.

Very basic test of FPS on title screen where the FPS is crazy high so I figured it'd be easier to identify variation. FPS fluctuated in the following ranges:

Window 1280x720: 128-145 FPS
Full Screen 1280x720: 111-133 FPS

So maybe a 10-15% performance difference between the two, which means the my game 20 FPS might now be 22...

Can't access the refund page...

I just did a quick test, and it's still pretty awful. I did only run it in full screen though. Random graphical glitches everywhere with random repeated icons flashing up all the time. They've also not removed the "Beta" icon from the launch menu either, which, in fairness, is probably accurate.

Long story short, while I'm sure there have been some improvements it's still not close to ready. Of course if you've got more recent kit than I have you might have a better time of it.

I finally got around to running the game after last night's patch. It's worse. It's unplayable. I guess I was lucky before the patch because it ran like 95% of time and now it crashes half the time when I load the game world.

I tried it out and it has improved. However, the framerate is still horrible. The upper end of the frames goes a bit higher and the lower end too. I get from 19 to 65 fps now rather than 9 to 60. So, you can see a difference. Please keep working towards a consistent framerate. You are getting close now. Lock it in, and then work on boosting frames please.

this should of had a benchmark made far in advance to collect data, that could of avoided a lot of these issues now D:

I have to agree with you guys, the state of this current version is such they are really going to have to do a lot of work to make it stable. i had to exit the game completely after it got into one of those weird artifact nightmare glitches with any text on the screen. It just garbles into random special flashing characters like bad 90s html with the flash tag and random ascii. i exited the client, launched it again, and thankfully my party hadn't kicked me yet. I guess its the randomness of the performance that is most unsettling. You go along thinking its fine, and then it isn't.

But when it works, its pretty cool to have a Mac client for this game. I really hope they fix it.

There seem to be less tremendous downward spikes in framerate, but it's still quite poor. I still principally use the Windows client, but I log in occasionally on the Mac client to do less intensive things. Based on its present performance, I would expect that things won't be fixed for at least a few months.

Reading the past few replies, it blows my mind some people came in this thread trying to defend square with things like "mac isn't important enough to make perfect" (it obviously is since they tried to make a mac client) and "of course it won't work as well because its a wrapper". The thing is, it doesn't work 50% of the time. Whether it just crashes or has graphical glitches that basically force you to restart the client. Absolutely unacceptable any way you look at this. And they obviously know this since they stopped sales, which i do commend them for. Plenty games out there work just fine for mac, there's no excuse to release a shitty product. Just don't do it at all if you aren't going to do it right.

Thing is we'd just really like to see them fix it... Think about all the Mac World of Warcraft players that are now ready for something new and fresh. My Mother falls into that category. She's played WoW on a Mac for years and its worked really great. I talk this game up to her a lot, but until the Mac client was released there's no way a person like her could play it. She won't bootcamp, she doesn't want a Windows machine, and doesn't want to turn her Mac into one. I really don't think she's the only one, and Square is missing the boat here on all those people. Like I wonder how many Mac copies they sold... wouldn't that be some sort of indication that there is a viable Mac market for this game? At least until everyone heard it was a disaster...

Have played this latest patch and the performance has gotten even worse. Things are so choppy it's silly. Not sure what exactly they tried changing but certainly did not help improve anything.