Interface, Sound, and Animation Delay/Lag

Hello,

I've looked all over the place and cannot find any definite answers to this issue. I've been playing FFXIV for about 2 years now and this issue hasn't really been present except a few months ago switching classes had a slight delay with the skill bar icons and sound not ocurring for a few seconds.

• Now that Stormblood has launched, I have had an enormous amount of issues of this nature. The issues I will list occur regularly and often.
• When mounting, my character model and mount are completely invisible and no sound occurs, but I can move around.
• When casting spells and abilities, particle effects do not occur until a few seconds later where they all happen instantly together in a flurry, this applies to people around me as well.
• Character models sometimes do not load in for a minute or longer, including enemies (I can hit them with untargeted AoE abilities, such as Shadow Flare and they will show up in my enmity list, however I cannot target them or use any targeted skills on them).
• Sometimes my character model just does not perform any animations whatsoever and is a stiff model moving around (no run animation or anything).
• Music also does stutters every once in awhile when these delays occur. One severe example was that I was just sitting in the Mists a few minutes ago, I switched to a different class and the skillbars, sound, and particle effects for changing classes did not occur until a few seconds later, around 10 seconds. The music also stopped momentarily and continued to stutter every few seconds despite not doing anything at all.
• Sometimes when opening up menu interfaces, such as the map, inventory, or configuration, they will not appear for about 10 or more seconds. The map will appear, however the actual contents of the map are blank. When trying to teleport, the confirmation does not appear for 10 or more seconds.

I have had just issues of this nature back to back to back constantly in my playtime and I am not entirely sure why they occur except for potentially having to do with my processor being 4 years old or my SSD being weird (Samsung Magician states that it is healthy, so I am not entirely sure if I should believe this). It may potentially be a graphics issue as well, but I do not know for certain.

I have also just reinstalled the game from scratch today since the issues started occurring yesterday, but they continue today. No one else I know or have spoken to has or knows about this issue.

Computer Specs
Processor: Intel i5-3570k 3.40 GHz
RAM: 8.00 GB DDR3
GPU: NVIDIA GTX 1060 6GB
SSD: Samsung SSD 850 EVO 500GB
OS: Windows 8.1 Home 64 bit

To keep my response short, I highly suspect a problem with the Data Center server portions since the NADC upgrade, the latency according to resmon.exe has been higher and very spike happy on the the Data Center sever connection, the World Server connection shows no issues and the Log-In sever connection isn't hanging. To give some numbers, normal is 90-120 latency for the world server, the data center server is rarely less than 30-40 higher. Previously since the upgrade the DC one hs been spiking to around 250, causing the 'fast forward' effect or just death, since logging in Friday afternoon, the DC side one would spike over 300 and DC me if I didn't stop literally every action on my character and wait it out, if it broke 400 DC was assured. -- My conclusion is this excessive lag is a synch issue with the World based and Data Center based servers, namely the Instance server but also the the DC sub server used for synching all player clients, why a fixed POTD party has far better chances of working than a matched. There is likely a hardware and/or software issue here, every moment keeping servers up is more time they can analyze and gather telemetry data to try and find the cause.

Thank you for the response, however I have had no issues with disconnecting or latency involving my issue. In fact, whenever my animations are delayed, they still occur normally even if I cannot see them immediately. Example, I am able to cast SMN Deathflare at the last possible second and it will still go on cooldown, deal damage, and appear after the delay. I believe my issue may be client side or hardware related on my PC and maybe not entirely server related.

The mob spawns and whatnot, their synching of your client and world server is all done on a Data Center level server, meaning everyone on your data center used the same one as you. The servers function in multiple entwined layers, each serving different functions, if this has only been occuring recently, like since the NADC upgrade its highly likely the cause. The invisible char and mount model/texture is very much a congestion issue, the visuals of your character are saved on a separate database, that is connected by the data center server that synch information from your client to your world server and to all other sever based game aspects. Our clients hold limited information in MMORPG's, what we generate ourselves is the terrain, UI, sounds, and the base cut-scenes (everything except our and others character visual data)

Sound queues for activated skills and abilities as well as their animations come yo our clients externally, its why when there is a server side 'hiccup' as it were we tend to experience that fast forward effect. The world map specifically has a modified world map version now, when clicking on a quest for a location the new map will show, which is very generic, but has connecting lines to each zone change but also shows just the erythrocyte. The response lag you have is very much classified as 'server lag', as the synching from your client input to the game server is lagging.stressing.

If you want to do some tests... I see you have Win8, I applaud you for not going to 10, im a 7 user myself, My system is a bit better than yours, AMD FX8350 4.0ghz (close to 4 ears old too but higher end), 16gm RAM, GTX 1070 FTW2, several WD- Black 1TB (no raid) -- I mention this because I have experienced similar issue and run the game on max with 60-120 FPS during play on my 1080p 23" LCD monitor. More specifically to the testing, Open the Run command likely found in your start menu, open it and in the text imput line type: resmon.exe

Then click 'Ok'

--Once running, on the Overview tab check the box on the CPU section that has the game application, ffxiv.exe for the dx9 32-bit client or ffxiv_dx11 the 64-bit client.
--Once that is done, select the Network tab and you will see two instances of the game application listed, if you are at char select or start screen there will be only one, once you log in you will see two.
--They should be similar in number on the latency column, go ahead and drag shrink the other columns, they are insignificant.
--During play take note of the numbers, the moment you begin to experience these issue take a look, one of the latency values should be much higher than the other.

** I personally have two monitor to work with, if you only have a single display for this test, run the game in windowed mode and shrink it just enough to see the values, walk around use anthers, don't need to do any combat as running in windowed may be difficult.

If you feel up to doing this you can post back your highs and lows and shat happens when you experience these slow downs, I predict one will spike over the other.

I looked at the latency values while the menus were lagging, in this case the menus took over 30 seconds to load and my latency values did not fluctuate further than 10 away from each other and stayed around 50 the entire time, which I had seen previously already. That is why I believe it is not a server issue for me personally.

EDIT: After some more observations, when my animations and music cut it does seem like that one jumps to around 75-87 while the other stays at about 36. The spike only stays for about 1 second it seems.

I've experienced these same exact issues when my own network was congested, such as when my AV was downloading updates (granted, I have an extremely low-bandwidth connection.) I know I'd have obscene ping if I pinged the server during these times. However, you stated that your ping is stable and fine when you encounter these problems. I wish I could help, as I've seen exactly what you're describing. I do have the same processor and amount of RAM as you, but I doubt it has to do with that, as I've only encountered it when my connection is poor. Perhaps it's packet loss? Have you tried running a traceroute to your DC's IP address?

Hmm, other possibilities could be cooling related on your PC's end..you can try a free HW monitor, I use this one to monitor my temps, unlike most others its not loaded with bloatware or a trojan, the free ver will do everything you need and wont artificially inflate your values to try and get you to buy their 'fix' tools.
http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html

Basically anything over 50c for temps is usually bad, if your 1060 is overly hot you can a software program to manually adjust fan speeds and set up a custom fan curve, they are designed for overclocking purposes, so just ignore anything that's not fan speed related. My 1070 is EVGA, so I use the precisionX16, you can get it from the EVGA website, use the x16 one, the other one only works right with win10, but the auto update feature is dumb and will keep trying to update to the win 10 ver, so if you go with that one be sure yo uncheck auto updates.

Alternately you could be running the 32-bit client unknowingly, under the launcher settings change it to dx11 client, that could be a potential issue, if he dx11 fails to start (DX error) you will need to fix your DLL DX DLL files this tool will help you with that:
http://www.dependencywalker.com/

In the end driver updates on EVERYTHING is helpful, sound, network, video, chipset(MB) bios, if you feel comfortable with that, it seems you are having really bad hangups and if it isn't latency... I know resmon is kinda slow to update if you are using wireless that could be the issue there...

If you are concerned about your individual conn speed I would test it here: http://www.speedtest.net/
Pick a server 100 miles or few ideally, try multiple ones, if thers one held by your ISP it will generally be better or ones in larger cities.

If you have not already, turning your graphics settings to low, so see if maybe its a drastic FPS drop or something.

Last thing I can think of, given im quite tird now and trying to suggest many things to try, sending in a ticket to the online support, you will need to provide a copy of the System Info readout the game has, with everythign you normally have open and running with the game, run it (its found under the config option on the launcher or from the game folder: SquareEnix\FINAL FANTASY XIV - A Realm Reborn\boot directory, ffxivsysinfo64.exe for the 64-bit read out and the regular ffxivsysinfo.exe for 32-bit.

I'm sorry I wasn't able to fix this, but if all else fails the online support will usually fix your issue.

Assuming the IP for the NA datacenter is now 204.2.229.92 based on the Resource Monitor and some other online sources, I pinged it and did a trace route and it looks like there is no packet loss.
100 Pings:
https://puu.sh/wniMw/d7ebb9379c.png
Trace Route:
https://puu.sh/wniOp/74c3ba4566.png

I did these while not experiencing the issues in game, I could attempt to do a ping or a trace route while the issue is occurring, but I am not sure if that is relevant or not.