The USA has lousy infrastructure. Please work with us and improve your error handling

First and foremost, I understand that Square Enix is doing everything they can to try to procure the additional hardware needed to add more worlds, and I appreciate the communication that they've done with the players regarding the situation.

However, I feel like Yoshi-P and the development team don't understand the problem that your average middle-class American player is facing, so I'd like to talk about it here.

When compared to other parts of the world, especially Asian countries, the United States has really lousy, unreliable infrastructure supporting the internet. A lot of this is due to the age of the equipment - The US was the first country to connect to the internet, so the technology in place is much older and less optimal than that of Asia, especially Japan.

This is an issue that is outside of the players' control. Even using the most reliable ISP in my area (Comcast lol), using a wired connection, and using the newest commercially available standard of DOCSIS, I still have to check my PC for error 2002 due to packet loss, which can happen every 5 minutes or so. It's this situation that makes the login queue frustrating and unpleasant.

This type of packet loss is something that is shared by almost all American players - even those who live within 10 miles of the datacenter. Our infrastructure is just bad and prone to packet loss.

I'm calling on the development team to take this into consideration and change the way the game handles error 2002. Rather than forcing the client to exit in this situation, it should attempt to reconnect without closing the game and forcing the player to start the queue again from the back of the line.

Please work with us. You guys have done great up until this point.

Yep US network infastructure sucks that is for sure.

I mean... yes? You're not wrong about how terrible our access to quality internet is in the US. That the infrastructure is incredibly outdated overall across the country. I just think you're conflating what SE can do about it from any realistic expectation lol.

Sauare Enix is a massive company valued at 6.31 billion dollars, and all I’m asking them to do is to update the game’s code and the server’s code to accommodate for packet loss so the vast majority of their Western players can use the login queue as intended. I think it’s a reasonable request.

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Originally Posted by Welsper59

I mean... yes? You're not wrong about how terrible our access to quality internet is in the US. That the infrastructure is incredibly outdated overall across the country. I just think you're conflating what SE can do about it from any realistic expectation lol.

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Adding contingencies to your net-code for inconsistencies in client connections is pretty standard practice, and something they seemingly didn't effectively implement in their queueing system judging by the fact that it closes your client when it throws an error.

Think about in game, when you drop a bunch of packets the game doesn't usually instantly boot you; it'll often fast-forward through all of the actions that took place while you were dropping packets, and right itself as your connection stabilizes.

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Originally Posted by Welsper59

I mean... yes? You're not wrong about how terrible our access to quality internet is in the US. That the infrastructure is incredibly outdated overall across the country. I just think you're conflating what SE can do about it from any realistic expectation lol.

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SE absolutely has the means to handle it better, they just need to be invested in doing so. There are plenty of other games, programs, applications etc. that do so already. I don't have the issues I see with logging into FFXIV with the vast majority of other programs I use, so there is something there to be improved upon.

you're right. I'm still using twigs and hemp twine to syphon what internet I can. DARN THE US!

The thing is, you can only tweak the code so much before it starts going spaghetti. The best solution, getting more servers, is currently impossible due to a shortage of the materials used to make semiconductors (even if one is willing to pay above MSRP, like Square-Enix was willing to do).

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Originally Posted by MrMordio

Sauare Enix is a massive company valued at 6.31 billion dollars, and all I’m asking them to do is to update the game’s code and the server’s code to accommodate for packet loss so the vast majority of their Western players can use the login queue as intended. I think it’s a reasonable request.

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Ah I get what you mean. Yeah, I agree, but I don't know the logistics of the matter. Though, and this is just a tangential point, that 6.31B isn't really an appropriate measure for what you're asking for. I doubt that even 10% of that value is coming from FFXIV alone when you account for the fact they're also a publisher for a wide variety of things in Japan unrelated to games, including books, TV shows, merchandising, etc. Games are no doubt the bread and butter of their revenue though, but given their FY20 listed their MMOs as just hundreds of millions, it really isn't that much by comparison to other profitable genres. Just like Konami, who also have their name on home appliances like washing machines, these companies get a lot of their money from a wide variety of things.

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Originally Posted by Welsper59

I mean... yes? You're not wrong about how terrible our access to quality internet is in the US. That the infrastructure is incredibly outdated overall across the country. I just think you're conflating what SE can do about it from any realistic expectation lol.

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Did you actually read the entire post or just the first line? All he's asking for is an adjustment to how the client handles 2002 errors, which is completely reasonable and well within their capabilities.

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Originally Posted by MrMordio

Sauare Enix is a massive company valued at 6.31 billion dollars, and all I’m asking them to do is to update the game’s code and the server’s code to accommodate for packet loss so the vast majority of their Western players can use the login queue as intended. I think it’s a reasonable request.

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the US is a country with a GDP of... wait for it... 20.94 TRILLION dollars. makes sense you would ask a couple billion dollar company to accomodate your infrastructure issues.

might ask your congressman or senator to upgrade your state's infrastructure. it is a reasonable request after all.

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Originally Posted by Kes13a

the US is a country with a GDP of... wait for it... 20.94 TRILLION dollars. makes sense you would ask a couple billion dollar company to accomodate your infrastructure issues.

might ask your congressman or senator to upgrade your state's infrastructure. it is a reasonable request after all.

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Infrastructure week is coming soon! We promise!tm

Its the unfortunate side effect of living in wholly? capitalistic society, where profit margins are everything and making money for the BoD, top brass, and stockholders matters more than taking care of employees and customers.

Its funny, the telecom I work for has spent billions in the last couple years on 5G and and servers to support it, but a lot of the company runs on crap 15 years old that's obsolete and hard to get parts for. Its insane. And even when there's an outage on a connection that's used internally, we still have to open tickets for troubleshooting, then prove to the team that owns the cable that its not on our end.

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Originally Posted by Darthgummibear

Did you actually read the entire post or just the first line? All he's asking for is an adjustment to how the client handles 2002 errors, which is completely reasonable and well within their capabilities.

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Read it, but the brain went to some weird extreme. The emphasis on infrastructure in the post lead me to believe it was about changing the whole shebang to avoid the error. Probably just assumed the request itself was an explanation of the ideal way it'd work rather than the obvious request lol.

Yeah it's all our fault. I mean I have ZERO issues playing many, many other online games, but your right all our fault.

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Originally Posted by Blud3y3z

Yeah it's all our fault. I mean I have ZERO issues playing many, many other online games, but your right all our fault.

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I dont think anyone is saying that it is all your fault. but line infrastructure in the US is, to put it mildly, poor. maybe in the larger centers it might be better. could it be an issue, it sure could, but certainly not the whole issue

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Originally Posted by MrMordio

Sauare Enix is a massive company valued at 6.31 billion dollars, and all I’m asking them to do is to update the game’s code and the server’s code to accommodate for packet loss so the vast majority of their Western players can use the login queue as intended. I think it’s a reasonable request.

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You're phrasing this as if this is a small thing to ask for when it really isn't. Changing the code of both the servers and the game for this purpose are two huge jobs.

I do think it should be done and I hope it will be. But I wouldn't count on it happening any time soon. Even with the hardware shortage getting new servers would be a quicker task than reconstructing the amount of code needed for your request.

Also we need to consider that for the new code to be up to your standards it may need additional servers to function properly. So we're back to square one - the hardware shortage.

I trust US and Japan when it comes to internet. I can get 220ms consistently on US central. Playing from Kuala Lumpur. Slightly better on US West.

I wouldn't be surprised if the lobby connection depended on some sort of server side finite state machine.
In that case a hard timeout is not surprising.

If this is the case, a possible issue with reconnecting if there is a disconnect is probably being able to tell when the disconnect is intentional and when it is due to a faulty package.
Creating an infinite loop of reconnection may not be the wisest choice.
I'm not well versed in networks, though.