Animations and game music stop, game continues 'normally'
I've been having a strange and annoying problem for a while now where it seems that any action I take has a chance to 'freeze' my game. As in, animations for abilities will cease playing, music will stop. However, I AM able to continue playing, albeit with no animations; though it seems random whether I get stuck in a running or an idle animation. The actions that can trigger this effect vary from changing class (in this event my hotbars appear blank until the game catches up), using an ability, emoting, or even opening an in-game menu.
I know the game is still functioning underneath the issue because damage still ticks in real time, and new abilities I perform take their effect, even though no sound or animation is played. I am able to move and fight, but since I rely on the sensory information provided by the animations and sounds, I cannot perform my duties in game well enough to be satisfactory. The effect will generally last for about several seconds before the music continues and every animation that would have played during the hang plays at once. Every so often, the game will hang for longer, sometimes up to 20 minutes. I have been avoiding instanced duties because of this, as I'm unsure whether they will mechanically function on my end.
Initially I thought it was some server side desyncing, considering it started during the periods of great congestion leading up to and during the Shadowbringers release but as time has gone on and the issue has not subsided or been acknowledged in the public sphere, I assume it is something wrong on my end, though I am unsure what it could be. I'm honestly at a loss.
My issue is almost identical to the problem described in this thread: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...plays-normally
But the fixes they've attempted have no affect on my issue and my game isn't installed on an SSD in the first place. No changes took place in my system or configuration to cause this issue either, this is the same computer set-up I've been using since June 2018.
the system I'm running is:
Intel Core i7-8700 CPU @3.20GHz
16GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti
I am currently attempting a defragmentation of the HDD my game is installed on, and if that doesn't work I was considering backing up my character config and doing a clean install. I've been spending more time troubleshooting the game than playing it - occured 5 times within ten minutes of practice on a training dummy - and really need all the help I can get.