NPC's and party members disappear in Eureka

Due to the number of people in NM trains NPC's and party members disappear due to the number of items on screen. I could live with this but instead of picking a character I have no interaction with it always goes for my target. Needless to say the results of this is less the desirable. If there is no way to stop the disappearing entirely then the game should not lose my current target nor party members.

Hello Claviusnex, Thank you for posting on the Final Fantasy XIV Technical Support Forums

Does this happen at a specific place or time and how often? Have you tried anything to rectify this?

Hope to be of assistance.

It happens only in Eureka when there are many players at the same location and are pulling mobs or we are on the NM and mobs are running in. It is related to the number of characters (player and NCP). Too many and the game stops displaying some of them. Typically it will be my current target and random players in my party. Their names go dull in the party list as if they are out of range yet they are standing next to me. The result is I cannot target them to raise or mana shift. If I move around enough I can regain a visual on my original target but have to reselect it. I have also had cases where a mob NCP is invisible yet will still one shot me. I'm not the only one seeing this. Just about everybody in a Fate train will run into it when the Eureka instance is very full and concentrated in the same location.

As far as setting I've turned off all battle effects for party and other players. While this helped being able to see what is going on better and reduced graphics lag it does nothing in regards to congested area character vanishing.

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Originally Posted by Ariellendera

Hello Claviusnex, Thank you for posting on the Final Fantasy XIV Technical Support Forums

Does this happen at a specific place or time and how often? Have you tried anything to rectify this?

Hope to be of assistance.

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This has been a problem since 2.0, when many players would gather together for Odin and King Behemoth FATEs back then. It's just that now, in Eureka, it's more apparent since we are in a zone full of NMs that many, many players gather together to fight. We need some sort of setting or filter. We need the ability to prioritize our own party members from not disappearing during the fight. The same needs to be applied to NMs, because when a NM isn't targetable, you also do not see the Area of Effect attacks they do.

It's actually a very poor playing experience in Eureka when this is the case. There are times I cannot select members of my party to heal or raise, even though they are within range. I will have to run around and turn my camera to try and get them to be displayed on screen and not grayed out(as if out of range) on the party list. This also leads me to being distracted and dying more often on healer.

First time I ever experienced this in game was during Ixion fates. I also have this happen at every NM in Eureka and as a healer, my only resolution is to run around frantically to hopefully find my party members who are in range but unclickable. What I started doing as a temp fix during Ixion battles is to place a waymark and let party members know to go to the waymark if their HP is low or "Heals at A and B". While this is hardly a solution, it is the only sonar type method I can think of besides running around trying to locate people who are actually there.
My object count settings are set to max btw.

Although, I agree that party members, friends, and NPCs should take priority or be exempt from the disappearing, it is done at random.

This was a feature placed in 2.0 to alleviate performance issues that were caused by too many characters on the screen (mainly FPS). There is no other way around it, and to stop it would either crash the game or at the very least, make your game unplayable. The only perma way that SE could remedy this and keep everything on screen is to rewrite the code and effectively cut the graphics quality of the game way down. They should make certain characters priority, however.

But even the above solution would only offer minimal benefits as the 'character on screen' issue is more of a CPU bottleneck. Even on a modern quad core I5, which most are below this spec.

So basically this has been around since 2.0 and then SE had the bright idea to make a whole zone that would do this and add to that "punishment" for dying half of the time you cannot see it due to the aforementioned bug ? Wow..just wow.

I'm fairly certain that back in the 2.0 days, SE claimed that all platforms would begin culling players when the density got to be around 200 in an 8 yalm radius or something like that. Chocobos contributed heavily to the problem, and bosses would usually be among the first things to vanish from the screen. SE eventually added priority culling so that the large scale fate bosses and your party members would always remain on screen. Now we're in Eureka with a limit of 144 players per instance, and we've gone backwards 3 steps with culling at lower numbers of sprites, bosses and party members vanishing. I'm unsure if spell effects go into the sprite count or not, but that might be a setting that can help?

Probably has to do with the massive amounts of mobs in eurika.

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Originally Posted by Xeon

Probably has to do with the massive amounts of mobs in eurika.

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It is. If you get a full instance, add in the spawning mobs and dragged mobs it is easy to end up with a high object count.

I understand the need to limit this to a degree. The problem is a player's current target should never be removed. Likewise if a player is in a party the party members should never be removed. The same should go for the boss even if not targeted. I would also say any NPC's within striking distance of the player should remain visible or when hidden unable to strike the player. The real priority should be to hide any environmental objects/non-dangerous NPC's that use graphics resources, players outside of a party and last NPC's outside of target range. In all likelihood just hiding other players would resolve this problem as it isn't an issue when groups are distributed across an instance or the instance is under capacity.

This all should have been taken in account when making Eurika. They had to know that this would happen. Eurika right now is a bad design. It needs to be overhauled and redone.

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Originally Posted by HaelseMikiro

I'm unsure if spell effects go into the sprite count or not, but that might be a setting that can help?

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Unfortunately, filtering the effects of others does not help with this. It only helps with visibility, to get rid of that white mish-mash of skills engulfing the NM.

I have also tried to reduce the Character and Object display count setting(Which is in System Config. > Other Settings) to see if that done what I hoped it might. But to no avail, I set this setting to "normal" and then "minimum" but it only helped with FPS. I still had grayed out party member names even though I had less displayed on screen. There is no priority for your own party members. It may however help slightly with the visibility of the NM, but I'm not certain.

Having the same issue. The last three NM bosses I attempted never showed up on screen, even when I was standing on top of where they supposedly are(based on where the melee dps are fighting). I wind up getting bronze because even spamming Flash and Circle of Scorn doesn't cause the boss to show up in my enemy list.

request: can a friendly mod pass on the idea of adding "prioritize bosses and party members" as a graphics option to avoid many issues.
Its less of a issue if a random in alnother alliance disappers instead
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as a main healer this issue breaks aoe heals cause it classes them as out of range, and the tank despwning why he's the main-tank makes healing him a nightmare
Thankyou for your time <3

Thank you for the update Claviusnex.

I'd recommend disabling some of the battle animations in the character configuration settings. Also, under the graphics options in the System Settings. Make sure to enable 'Occlusion Culling' and 'Use lower detail models on distant objects.' This may help with the overall amount of objects in screen.

We hope we can be of assistance in helping you enjoy the exciting world of Final Fantasy XIV!

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Originally Posted by Einmimiria

Thank you for the update Claviusnex.

I'd recommend disabling some of the battle animations in the character configuration settings. Also, under the graphics options in the System Settings. Make sure to enable 'Occlusion Culling' and 'Use lower detail models on distant objects.' This may help with the overall amount of objects in screen.

We hope we can be of assistance in helping you enjoy the exciting world of Final Fantasy XIV!

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Are you for real? We the community have known for years to do this. We’re all doing what you suggested in Eureka, and still have the problem listed in the OP.

I didn’t realize our forum moderators were so out of touch.

It's getting worse!

https://i.imgur.com/nlI8IkW.jpg

That person off to my left? They're fighting a Squib.

In town, I healed a person that was apparently fighting a squib(combat noises and damage numbers showing up, but nothing in their target or on my enemy list when I healed them).

Edit:

Now in video form!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTrAd0miQdI

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Originally Posted by Einmimiria

Thank you for the update Claviusnex.

I'd recommend disabling some of the battle animations in the character configuration settings. Also, under the graphics options in the System Settings. Make sure to enable 'Occlusion Culling' and 'Use lower detail models on distant objects.' This may help with the overall amount of objects in screen.

We hope we can be of assistance in helping you enjoy the exciting world of Final Fantasy XIV!

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That is not the problem. I've done it an it makes no difference.

Haven't you read my posts or any of the other players updates about having the same problem? The implementation of object culling is broken. It will cull my current target. It will cull my party members. It will cull the boss and mob NPC's and still let them kill me. It will do all of this while showing other players that I do not care about seeing. Culling should never remove my target and make me have to find it and reacquire as the target. Culling should never remove players that are in my party. Culling should never remove a non-targeted boss or mob NPC and allow it to still kill me (should never be culled actually). Culling should remove other players that don't have a direct association with me. Culling should remove any benign graphics objects that have movement. Not only would resolve the problem in Eureka but with Ixion, Odin, S Ranks, etc.

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Originally Posted by Claviusnex

That is not the problem. I've done it an it makes no difference.

Haven't you read my posts or any of the other players updates about having the same problem? The implementation of object culling is broken. It will cull my current target. It will cull my party members. It will cull the boss and mob NPC's and still let them kill me. It will do all of this while showing other players that I do not care about seeing. Culling should never remove my target and make me have to find it and reacquire as the target. Culling should never remove players that are in my party. Culling should never remove a non-targeted boss or mob NPC and allow it to still kill me (should never be culled actually). Culling should remove other players that don't have a direct association with me. Culling should remove any benign graphics objects that have movement. Not only would resolve the problem in Eureka but with Ixion, Odin, S Ranks, etc.

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Yes, I have read your posts and I understand the issue you are having. However, you never stated the specific settings you changed (aside from battle effects, however I am unsure if this setting is off for everyone else in the thread, so I left it in) and it is impossible for me to know which settings are on and off in your particular client. Thus, I must suggest those things so they are not overlooked.

I apologize for being testy but it is frustrating losing the boss then being killed over and over by the boss/add you can't see nor see its AoE field marker. One knows where the boss is because you can see all of the melee players you don't care about standing around hitting something. A player can also have a pretty good guess as to whether the death was caused by the culled boss or by a culled add by the kill pattern of the players around them. Being ranged mine seem to be more invisible adds the way they run around during the boss fight but I've also been run over by invisible bosses.

Before retiring I worked for over 30 years in software architecture and design for large operating systems and databases. I understand the rationale and need for object culling. Something is not right with the algorithm being used to cull objects. Based on some of the behavior I've seen while trying to locate the boss it wouldn't surprise me that there are distance based decisions used to cull objects that are farther away. If I'm correct it would be a problem for ranged players if distance was a higher priority than current target, party members and bad guys. It might or might not explain some of the adds behavior as well. I also wouldn't be surprised if it culled some of the objects behind the player's field of view. This could explain some of the player deaths to adds if they are culled and use an AoE from behind. The only reason I am focusing on object culling is this problem does not show up when there are fewer players in the same locations so no items need to be culled to maintain performance.

Ok, Ill Chime in, it seems that the game client doesn't prioritize what to render, so no matter the settings, the graphical detail, or the platform, this is happening, when you get that many players and combat class NPC's in a small area, NM spawns, Enemies, and players will phase in and out of exsistance.

The client needs to prioritize enemies, party members, and the environment above everything else.

Ill make it clear, graphics settings dont make a difference, player effects dont make a difference, platform doesn't make a difference, This is happening to all of us.

Lost out on a few more NMs last night because the boss didn't appear on my screen, so I couldn't attack it. Non-stop bronze is kind of annoying. Time would be better spent soloing mobs around my own level...if they appear on my screen(see video in my last post).

Agreed to all since my last post,
Don't even get me started on the Morbol nm where those spinning adds will will spawn in-front of you be immediately culled and reappear abit after they kill you....... when someone moves and they are re-rendered.

another example:
the maintank (in own party.....) gets culled, along with the dragon nm, I had them in voice but for those that didnt in party it was impossible to dodge the tail swipe cause you cant see the boss or tank.

Einmimiria even you must agree this shouldn't happen no matter the effect settings :). (would like your 2c)
honest sugestion: would it be possible to leave a targeting circle if a enemy is culled so you can see the way the mob is facing for mechanics (or rotations even, thank god i dont play positional melee)

Like everyone already said this is a problem that can't be fixed with any in-game setting.
This issue happened many times in past and that's not the first time.
It happened at Odin fate back in 2.0, at Ixion Fate, at Hunts when they appeared and now in Eureka.
The game can only display X amount of objects and that X is a fairly small number for an MMORPG.
Now it is silly enough to not prioritize enemies and party members above anything else.
Thus Im losing my target all the time and party members dissapear even when they are next to me making me run around like crazy trying to res them or heal them.
The "Maximum" object to display setting is a joke. You can have the hardware but the game can't display over than few PCs on your screen.
I trust this issue is reported back to JP Dev team. Right?

I'm thinking there was a conscious design decision at some point to never spend time fixing this issue, because it would only show up as an occasional problem for a few weeks at a time, and when the novelty/appeal of new zerg content wore off then the problem would fix itself by virtue of less people enjoying said zerg content at a time. In the case of Eureka however, we now are in a situation where we can expect this issue to be a problem for every content patch from now until the next expansion launch, and also for the first month of said expansion with w/e the new world bosses are. It's past time for SE to do some future proofing here

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Originally Posted by KonataFB

Agreed to all since my last post,
Don't even get me started on the Morbol nm where those spinning adds will will spawn in-front of you be immediately culled and reappear abit after they kill you....... when someone moves and they are re-rendered.

another example:
the maintank (in own party.....) gets culled, along with the dragon nm, I had them in voice but for those that didnt in party it was impossible to dodge the tail swipe cause you cant see the boss or tank.

Einmimiria even you must agree this shouldn't happen no matter the effect settings :). (would like your 2c)
honest sugestion: would it be possible to leave a targeting circle if a enemy is culled so you can see the way the mob is facing for mechanics (or rotations even, thank god i dont play positional melee)

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I understand where you are coming from and I can understand how it can interfere with your enjoyment of the game. However, I have no direct control over how the servers operate or how the game will interact with your computer. Since the player only has control over their hardware and client, I can only make suggestions that might help their individual situation. Unfortunately, there is no way to tell the game which objects are important to any individual player, so we are left with changing some of the other visual elements in an attempt to alleviate the problem.

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Originally Posted by Einmimiria

I understand where you are coming from and I can understand how it can interfere with your enjoyment of the game. However, I have no direct control over how the servers operate or how the game will interact with your computer. Since the player only has control over their hardware and client, I can only make suggestions that might help their individual situation. Unfortunately, there is no way to tell the game which objects are important to any individual player, so we are left with changing some of the other visual elements in an attempt to alleviate the problem.

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Its a valiant effort, but i spent 5 or 6 hours testing graphical settings and filters, for this issue, it doesn't make a difference, and seems to be a flaw in the Renderer, this really needs to be forwarded to the Dev Team so they can look at this issue.

I cant comment on the ps4 and the mac builds, but it seems that this flaw is present in all versions of the game.

Its not so much of a problem at hunts, but at FATEs like Ixion, and NM's in Eureka, its very much present.

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Originally Posted by Einmimiria

I understand where you are coming from and I can understand how it can interfere with your enjoyment of the game. However, I have no direct control over how the servers operate or how the game will interact with your computer. Since the player only has control over their hardware and client, I can only make suggestions that might help their individual situation. Unfortunately, there is no way to tell the game which objects are important to any individual player, so we are left with changing some of the other visual elements in an attempt to alleviate the problem.

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This is not a player preference issue. It is a bad algorithm written by the developers or if you prefer a code design bug. While the developers might decide to resolve this with client customization options it is not a client customization problem. No player wants their current target to disappear before their eyes. No player wants the boss or other enemy NPC's to disappear. When a player sees a party member greyed out they need to be sure that player is truly out of range and not occluded otherwise they waste time trying to locate a player they will never find. In other words no player will ever want their party members to disappear. This is a combat oriented game where you have to be able to see your enemies and their attacks at all times to be effective. As you cannot win these fights alone you also have to know where your party members are or else you lose. Not being able to target a party member, who likely died from an invisible AoE, for a raise because they are occluded can mean the difference between winning or losing. These are basic functions needed just about any place you go in FF XIV but are even more critical in Eureka.

I'm going to bring up something I use to tell the content and marketing people when I was still working in mainframe operating system/middlware architecture. It is something that seems to get lost in content oriented companies because it isn't glamorous and shiny. You can have the best content, graphics and other whizbangs in the world but if the underlying infrastructure is junk you will fail as people have to be able to play the content to enjoy it. Object occlusion is part of the underlying infrastructure and with it not working satisfactorily it doesn't matter what Eureka looks like, how good its fights are or the rewards. It is no fun and never will be fun which means it fails in what it is intended to do.

Hmmm while their are times that happens it's more of a rare experience for me, being everyone has different types of setting and brands it might be more to do with the device than the game. My system is 4 years old, still high specs and so far the only time I've ever encountered this is when the area is mostly 20's and doing Pazuzu. I have not experience this on other fates as often if anything is more when people bring a large amount of mobs with them otherwise seems smooth. Running it in 4k as well and only lowered effects from other players do to them blinding my sight.

The GM is correct, is everyone playing it with a 64bit system for example or minimum requirements will impact game play. Keep in mind there are various factors that can effect it and graphics cards....well they are questionable. Maybe it's time for an upgrade?

It makes sense way more action than normal in Eureka fates kind of puts your system to the test.

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Originally Posted by Einmimiria

I understand where you are coming from and I can understand how it can interfere with your enjoyment of the game. However, I have no direct control over how the servers operate or how the game will interact with your computer. Since the player only has control over their hardware and client, I can only make suggestions that might help their individual situation. Unfortunately, there is no way to tell the game which objects are important to any individual player, so we are left with changing some of the other visual elements in an attempt to alleviate the problem.

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I have not had a chance to Eureka yet, however I've had this issue, on a high end computer, in multiple S ranks, the biggest being Ixion.

This has nothing to do with a person's hardware. But everything to do with how the game and server chooses how to handle a high count situation.

Hardware makes no difference (I have a i7-7700 with a 1080Ti (MSI Duke)and a PS4), settings make no difference. There is literally nothing we can do to fix this.

So i filed a bug report on this issue, and while i can understand the logic of you being unable to find your party members because of a "chaotic battle", that SHOULDNT apply to a 20FT tall Notorious Monster.......

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Originally Posted by Einmimiria

I understand where you are coming from and I can understand how it can interfere with your enjoyment of the game. However, I have no direct control over how the servers operate or how the game will interact with your computer. Since the player only has control over their hardware and client, I can only make suggestions that might help their individual situation. Unfortunately, there is no way to tell the game which objects are important to any individual player, so we are left with changing some of the other visual elements in an attempt to alleviate the problem.

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Hi Einmimiria,

Thanks for all the work you do on the Technical support forums. I know that front-line support folks like yourself can't fix this issue as it is a problem for Development to look at. It's endemic to how the game operates and no player controls or configurations can alleviate this. Would you at least be able to confirm if you have passed on this feedback to the relevant teams? I think that would give a lot of us some peace of mind. I've experienced this problem since the first time I participated in an Odin kill in 2.0, trying to heal/raise occluded teammates while guessing where the enemy is and what he's doing is a very poor experience. It's a QOL change that could make a huge difference in the player experience when participating in large-scale encounters.

Thank you for the reply Hestzhyen.

Yes I have forwarded all this information. However, be aware that this does not necessarily mean that the suggestions listed here will be implemented.

Thank you for visiting the Final Fantasy XIV Technical Support Forums.

Can't even do anything in it without game freezing up every few seconds. Don't know how every so pose to get the new relic gear if keep getting disconnected every few seconds because of how many in eureka at once. This was worst idea for relic quest ever seen. They need to fix it where you can use mounts at any level and add instant's to it like they use to have for areas in Stormblood to help with congestion. When these spikes are happening shows my ping is 40. Looks like to me its there servers that is causing all the problems.

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Originally Posted by Einmimiria

Thank you for the reply Hestzhyen.

Yes I have forwarded all this information. However, be aware that this does not necessarily mean that the suggestions listed here will be implemented.

Thank you for visiting the Final Fantasy XIV Technical Support Forums.

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Thanks for the update. I'm sure it isn't going to be the easiest to fix but that's why the developers get the big salaries, right. ;)

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Originally Posted by Einmimiria

Thank you for the reply Hestzhyen.

Yes I have forwarded all this information. However, be aware that this does not necessarily mean that the suggestions listed here will be implemented.

Thank you for visiting the Final Fantasy XIV Technical Support Forums.

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Thanks Einmimiria. I won't come hunting you if things aren't changed by next patch or anything. I work with with devs to solve problems for a living so I know if there is a solution, it won't be implemented right away, if at all. It's just reassuring to know that they know so there's a chance it will be fixed. :)

Hello everyone.

As this issue has been escalated and we cannot proceed forward via the Technical Support forum, this thread will be moved to 'Closed Concerns.'

Thank you for visiting the Final Fantasy XIV Technical Support Forums.