Do you think regional servers will help?

I was sad to see the news that regional datacenters would be used because of all of the complaints from the player base. Before i get to my opinion of this, i would like to present some facts.

My "lag" (latency) from my computer to Durandal server is 176-198ms. That is about .2 seconds. I live a third of the way around the world from Japan (flight from my city to tokyo is 7264 miles, the world has a circumference of 24901 miles.) You can not get much farther away without being in the middle of the atlantic ocean, so let's just say that i am close to as far from the servers as you can get without living in Greenland.

The complaints that i have heard and the "lag problems" (as some call them) that i have experienced are well beyond this latency, usually coming to a couple of seconds or more (ifrit eruptions.)

If the datacenter was in your city, you would AT BEST shave off about 1/5 of one second of latency. do you really think that this would help?

I would suggest that instead of we the player base complaining about where the servers are located (which is often just a crutch for inexperienced players), maybe we should look into our own ISP or ask SE about implementing countermeasures for the full latency to the user (including graphical lag, responsiveness to the user [looks to be under control for 2.0] and such).

I think that regional servers are a sad idea and will break up linkshells and unintentionally push us into national groups rather than having a global community. It will also make it so that no one on your server will have a "JP Button" and that will be sad.



What do you think? is less than half a second no matter where you are worth breaking up the global community?

Originally way back when 1.0 came out the lag was crazy awful. I read that part of this was because the server was encrypting and verifying every request. So every item sold, every button press was an encrypted server request. This was to cut down on cheaters/botters/RMT supposedly. I think they streamlined it eventually but never changed it.

FFXIV is a very server-centric game. Not much is offloaded to the client. So if they are not willing to budge on that point then I guess one of the ways to reduce lag is to bring the servers closer - but its not the only way.

But my point was that if they bring the servers closer, it would barely be noticeable. I do not personally think that the possibility of a tenth of one second reduction in latency makes any difference nor is worth the cost in community or dollars or complexity of having multiple datacenters to coordinate.

Some people will benefit more than others.
If you already have a good connection, then regional servers is as you said, close to pointless.

200ms to 50 ms is very noticeable if you are in PvP, but not so much in PvE.

As for why a change is ~150-200ms is very noticeable, look at this:
http://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/...time/stats.php

Average human reaction time is 215ms so a number in that order of magnitude will register.

the main issue of the lags in FFXIV is not because the servers are located in Japan.. its about the game client and server structure. Quesse has described it quiet good.

Play action paced MMorpgs like Phantasy Star Online 2 (servers located in japan as well) and you'll see that you wont experience a huge lag like in FFXIV.


the gamescom 2012 demo was played on Japan server as well, and as you have seen it was quiet fluent. no comparison to now. Best example that these huge lags were caused by the "shity" client and server structure is the recent atomos event.
when many people want to teleport at one place at the same time, it takes up to some minutes some times. that has nothing to do with the latancy and the distance between user and server location.


the latency in MMorpgs is not that important like when you want to play an egoshooter. but i think and im sure its a complete misbelief when you say the main issue is about server location. no its not.



Ask JP players how they experience the delays. they also have these delays when selling items or what ever, although the server is located in japan. Japanese players also have massive delays.

Quote:

---

I was sad to see the news that regional datacenters would be used because of all of the complaints from the player base. Before i get to my opinion of this, i would like to present some facts.

---

There are some complaints but there are also a lot of happy people. Not that it's scientific, but a majority of players seem to be happy to trade a significant community of people that don't seem to want to play with them for an improvment of network performance.

As much as I like playing with foreign-language speaking players, it's a lot easier to get things accomplished when more people around you are willing to play with you and speak the same language. Then, on top of that, your pings are lower and game experience is smoother. It's easy to see why the yeas dominate the nays. In some ways, it's kind of sad, but since it does make it easier to enjoy the game, it's not all bad.

Quote:

---

Ask JP players how they experience the delays. they also have these delays when selling items or what ever, although the server is located in japan. Japanese players also have massive delays.

---

Not as massive as ours. In battles like Ifrit, if you're not standing on a crack, you don't get hit by it, unlike with most NA players getting hit by cracks even when they've run away and clearly aren't standing on it on their own screen.

I'll say the same thing.

THe biggest problem is the client/server software.

Actually, I even know some games are programmed to anticipate lag.

In Team Fortress 2, when you play something like Sniper. If the head of your ennemy is right under your crosshair when you click to shoot : BOOM HEADSHOT. Even if the ping is 150 ms. (It don't seem very high, but Team Fortress 2 is very fast paced)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Randelmire

I'll say the same thing.

THe biggest problem is the client/server software.

Actually, I even know some games are programmed to anticipate lag.

---

Games can't anticipate lag. There are client-side compensation tools in some games but these are highly imperfect. Especially in shooters that utilize this, it results in tons of double-kills where both players kill the other person because the ping compensation allows both players to register hits on the other before either one's death is actually recorded. I've yet to meet a ping compensator I liked. It's better to just not have the lag in the first place instead of trying to compensate for it.

You're right that the server response is a major issue, but when you put together improved server response with better ping, the improvement is massive.

Uh.

Yeah, going from 250-300 ms ping to sub 80 is noticeable. People literally complain about the lag all the time.

And you can still pick whatever server you want, regardless of the region you're in.

Christ these topics are like f**kin' cockroaches.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Alhanelem

Games can't anticipate lag. There are client-side compensation tools in some games but these are highly imperfect. Especially in shooters that utilize this, it results in tons of double-kills where both players kill the other person because the ping compensation allows both players to register hits on the other before either one's death is actually recorded. I've yet to meet a ping compensator I liked. It's better to just not have the lag in the first place instead of trying to compensate for it.

You're right that the server response is a major issue, but when you put together improved server response with better ping, the improvement is massive.

---

I wasn't using the right words, but that's pretty much what I was trying to describe...