r/ffxivdiscussion: What can Square Enix do to help fix the terrible netcode of FFXIV?

Cross-posting this from the r/ffxivdiscussion subreddit. The comments have some pretty good insight on the game's netcode and server architecture and why the game's latency and response time can feel sluggish/janky at times.

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https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscus..._the_terrible/

Original post:

The netcode in this game is quite awful. Every time I see someone's character on my screen I'm actually seeing where they were 0.5-1 second ago because the client receives character position data from the server so slowly. This is especially an issue in PVP when you're a melee class trying to chase down an opponent.

Also a poster from the slidecasting thread linked the youtube video: https://youtu.be/hToWKu79Jm0

One characters jump animation on the first computer is already complete by the time the 2nd computer even sees that character start its jump animation. Why is the time difference between seeing the character jump animations on the two computers so large? I'm assuming they're on the same network because both of those computers are in the same house.

It sounds a lot like this is also the reason why slidecasting exists. I saw from the slidecasting thread that slidecasting is "effectively taking advantage of the gap between the spell cast being completed on the server side and on the client side." Why is that gap so large and what can SE do to resolve that?

Is a fix for something like this plausible, or would it be too difficult for SE because it would consume too much time and resources?

Edit:

Some notes gathered from this discussion -

Poor netcode and player position update rate were intentionally designed as a crutch to prevent server overload.

Current server architecture is too old and inefficient to handle increased player update rate frequency.

Square Enix thinks fixing inadequate netcode/servers would cost too much money and time and won't significantly increase profits.

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Here's some additional links from a user's comment that I thought was worth mentioning:

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/119219

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/444667

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/112171

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/461667

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Update 8/9/2023: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscus...res_a_visible/

Another post with more discussion on FFXIV netcode.

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Feel free to discuss amongst yourselves as well. Cheers.


Edit: Copying other poster's comments that have some good information to my original post.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

Ping isn't really the issue here. It boils down to tick rate and throttling performance to keep server loads and costs in check.

SE have historically always been super cautious on all aspects of the infrastructure behind their MMOs:

Remember how unsubbing for a period of time in FFXI would get your character data literally removed from the live servers and swapped to cold storage? You had to contact them and politely ask to have your character manually restored originally.

FFXIV has always had a slow GCD and tick rate, both means to significantly lower CPU load. Another area where they saved server CPU cycles was launching the game with comical levels of client trust.

Memory usage? IMHO that's one of the real reasons we don't get a proper glamour log style system. It would require the addition of several extra data arrays per character, adding to the footprint noticeably when you're talking a few hundred characters per zone.

In WoW I had a better experience PvPing with ~200ms latency from the UK to US west coast servers. I PvP'd pretty much exclusively through Vanilla and BC to the highest level and had no problems whatsoever. It was only when WotLK and Arena landed that the ping gave me problems and that was specifically down to the amount of precision needed to pillar block long enough to get out of combat drinking in. No rubber banding, things didn't hit me when it felt like they shouldn't. I had no problems grounding pom pyros etc.

FFXIV PvP is just a lower quality experience all round because SE aren't willing to foot the bill on the backend with a faster update rate.

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lmao they wont ever fix it because they're lazy and they dont want to invest in this game

Just be glad you didn't have to do titan hard back in the day when it was new.

It was so bad back then that even as someone who lived like 20 minutes away from the og data centre I had to memorize the mechanics to the point of predicting them before they occurred simply because of just how much latency there was due to the tick rate. You'd be a solid 3-4 seconds (give or take a couple hundred ms) out of an aoe and it'd still consider you in it and you'd be thrown off the edge without his line aoe landing even remotely near you.

They then "improved" it at some point... I don't remember when but I think it was either before or during hw and it was just barely good enough... that said, I doubt it'll ever be fixed without a complete rework of casting tho. Slidecasting is almost a requirement nowadays.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by GaiusDrakon

lmao they wont ever fix it because they're lazy and they dont want to invest in this game

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I mean, hiring new devs and adding more voice acting than before is definitely not investing at all in the game. You know, the most expensive parts of game development.


But OK. Its way easy to just fix all these underlying engine issues.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

I mean, hiring new devs and adding more voice acting than before is definitely not investing at all in the game. You know, the most expensive parts of game development.


But OK. Its way easy to just fix all these underlying engine issues.

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Unironically believing in SE's PR lies

They just put brand new servers in. Maybe they'll work on that.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kpxmanifesto

Original post:

The netcode in this game is quite awful. Every time I see someone's character on my screen I'm actually seeing where they were 0.5-1 second ago because the client receives character position data from the server so slowly. This is especially an issue in PVP when you're a melee class trying to chase down an opponent.

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This is called ping. It takes time for the information to travel from your computer to the server, for the server to process it and then for a response to be sent and received by you. If it's where they were that long ago then maybe the ping is that high.

Quote:

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One characters jump animation on the first computer is already complete by the time the 2nd computer even sees that character start its jump animation. Why is the time difference between seeing the character jump animations on the two computers so large? I'm assuming they're on the same network because both of those computers are in the same house.

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Again, ping. It doesn't matter that they are on the same network, because SE's server is not on the same network. The information travels from computer #1 to SE's server then to computer #2. This affects all games and MMORPGs, but you wouldn't know that it does unless you put 2 computers side-by-side.

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Originally Posted by Ath192

They just put brand new servers in. Maybe they'll work on that.

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Probably just replaced faulty hardware. Reality is the servers are some cheap crap which is why they have to give you "fake" login queues at like 4am because more than 10 people logging in at the same time makes their servers catch fire.

Why is this a problem again? Unless you play PvP?

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Originally Posted by Denji

It was so bad back then that even as someone who lived like 20 minutes away from the og data centre I had to memorize the mechanics to the point of predicting them before they occurred simply because of just how much latency there was due to the tick rate. You'd be a solid 3-4 seconds (give or take a couple hundred ms) out of an aoe and it'd still consider you in it and you'd be thrown off the edge without his line aoe landing even remotely near you.

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I still experience having to memorise and move at least 1-2 seconds (or more) before any mechanic tells, that's the main reason I'll never do any hard content in this game. Even doing fights in normal mode is a terrible experience since I obviously can't memorise what I've never seen so I'm tanking the floor very often. I've even recorded fights to see if I missed tells and watched guides to be sure I was looking for the right things when I go back to try again and still get hit.

Spread mechanics are also terrible in this game since the locations we see other players is not where they are. Often I'll get hit hard or killed when on my screen we'd spread but am sometimes told I was "chasing" another player when on my screen they'd stopped so I continued to move for the spread. I've seen others struggle with it too.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

This is called ping. It takes time for the information to travel from your computer to the server, for the server to process it and then for a response to be sent and received by you. If it's where they were that long ago then maybe the ping is that high.

Again, ping. It doesn't matter that they are on the same network, because SE's server is not on the same network. The information travels from computer #1 to SE's server then to computer #2. This affects all games and MMORPGs, but you wouldn't know that it does unless you put 2 computers side-by-side.

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It is yes, but other games must do something different since it only happens to this degree in FFXIV for me. Lag is often a thing in other games but not to the degree that combat is simply an exercise in frustration.

It's not a lot of fun when the lag / latency / ping is a mechanic in itself.