Game responsiveness/“server tick”

I’ve been loving FFXIV and really enjoying the PvP. I just wish the game was a bit more…responsive? I’ve seen this discussed around the internet, FFXIV combat has some sort of input delay or server ticks that make the combat feel just slightly slow. Can this ever be addressed? It’s noticeable in pve but extremely noticeable in pvp. The obvious comparison is WoW but also almost any other online PvP game. Skills/actions usually feel immediate. I’m FFXIV it always feels like there’s a slight delay?

There a lot of factors. Are you east coast or other country? Do you play wireless or wired? If you are closer to the servers the better responsive you have the further away you are the more unresponsive the game is. I strongly advice wired on this game.

Taking measures to reduce your ping (VPN maybe, wired connection, and similar) can help a little bit, but the server tick rate on this game is definitely on the low end, and you will see at least some responsiveness issues regardless.

I’m east coast and have solid ping. It just seems like a server/design issue more than anything? Its not atrocious but it’s definitely there, more so than something like WoW, ESO, Lost Ark.

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Originally Posted by Rolder50

Taking measures to reduce your ping (VPN maybe, wired connection, and similar) can help a little bit, but the server tick rate on this game is definitely on the low end, and you will see at least some responsiveness issues regardless.

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This seems to really be it. Have the devs ever discussed increasing the server tick rate?

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Originally Posted by Khalitas

I’m east coast and have solid ping. It just seems like a server/design issue more than anything? Its not atrocious but it’s definitely there, more so than something like WoW, ESO, Lost Ark.

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I'm sorry to tell you, but the servers are on west coast. So you will feel unresponsive of the game until SE add east coast server. Knowing they're history the chance are slim. WOW,LOS Have east coast servers and ESO servers is on Texas.

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Originally Posted by Khalitas

I’ve been loving FFXIV and really enjoying the PvP. I just wish the game was a bit more…responsive? I’ve seen this discussed around the internet, FFXIV combat has some sort of input delay or server ticks that make the combat feel just slightly slow. Can this ever be addressed? It’s noticeable in pve but extremely noticeable in pvp. The obvious comparison is WoW but also almost any other online PvP game. Skills/actions usually feel immediate. I’m FFXIV it always feels like there’s a slight delay?

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The game behaves in a slightly different manner that makes it feel "slow", the most classic mechanism of this being the "if you're in the AOE when it goes off, you get hit, if you're out you're out, even if you move back in." That's just how the game is designed, but I get it could, from the perspective of someone coming off WOW especially, make it feel "slow". There's also some infrequent animation locks on using OGCDs, especially notable on the dragoon class and NIN prior to assassinate becoming DWAD. TBH, maybe I'm just more used to every game within the MMO genre behaving differently after 20 years. Maybe after so many years of playing I'm used to FFXIV. Maybe I'm just plain getting older. But FFXIV just doesn't feel any slower or less responsive to me than any other game in the genre. It's not a pure unadulterated twitch-rules game.

A lot of people say there is a "server tick", but in my experience with most mechanics, avoiding an aoe by the time the cast is complete means you avoided it. Sometimes you have to avoid it earlier than that the higher your ping is, but that's it.

There isn't a thing where you can avoid an aoe before the cast time and still get hit (unless it is one of the few mechanics in the entire game that works differently). Just never had that at all. For people that do, it's just ping or a computer/ISP that delays network traffic.

Weaponskills/spells are instant, but abilities are slow because there is an animation delay. Note very carefully the difference between a weaponskill/spell and an ability. An ability can go through a whole animation before finally executing the effect.

You probably experience that the effect of an ability doesn't display the result (deaths, stuns) immediately. I think part of that is the animation delays and part of it is ping. In pvp, by the time your stun reaches the server and communicates that it worked to you, the player has moved a long distance and then finally gets stunned. Maybe there is an actual server tick for the result of your actions, I don't know. But one way or another, this tick doesn't affect your ability to avoid attacks before a cast finishes.

I notice the effect of ping most in pvp, chocobo racing and the delay on pressing abilities.

There is a server tick for dots and they tick every 3 seconds.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

A lot of people say there is a "server tick", but in my experience with most mechanics, avoiding an aoe by the time the cast is complete means you avoided it. Sometimes you have to avoid it earlier than that the higher your ping is, but that's it.

There isn't a thing where you can avoid an aoe before the cast time and still get hit (unless it is one of the few mechanics in the entire game that works differently). Just never had that at all. For people that do, it's just ping or a computer/ISP that delays network traffic.

Weaponskills/spells are instant, but abilities are slow because there is an animation delay. Note very carefully the difference between a weaponskill/spell and an ability. An ability can go through a whole animation before finally executing the effect.

You probably experience that the effect of an ability doesn't display the result (deaths, stuns) immediately. I think part of that is the animation delays and part of it is ping. In pvp, by the time your stun reaches the server and communicates that it worked to you, the player has moved a long distance and then finally gets stunned. Maybe there is an actual server tick for the result of your actions, I don't know. But one way or another, this tick doesn't affect your ability to avoid attacks before a cast finishes.

I notice the effect of ping most in pvp, chocobo racing and the delay on pressing abilities.

There is a server tick for dots and they tick every 3 seconds.

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https://i.imgur.com/oLZp8hl.gif

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

There isn't a thing where you can avoid an aoe before the cast time and still get hit (unless it is one of the few mechanics in the entire game that works differently). Just never had that at all. For people that do, it's just ping or a computer/ISP that delays network traffic..

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Oh there is and it's everywhere you look. The damage to a large number of attacks is calculated early. Which is why not only do you get hit when you run out at the last instant. But it also means you can run into the bad. And not get hit as it explodes around you. Because you weren't in it half a second ago when the game calculate dthe damage..

It's a pretty big gripe about the game because it makes learning and understanding things that much more difficult. Because there's no consistency between what you see and what is actually happening.. especially in situation where several mechanics happen at once. And your trying to see which one got you..

Server has slow update rate. Normal game updates dozens of times per second while FFXIV updates once per few seconds

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Originally Posted by Jin-

Server has slow update rate. Normal game updates dozens of times per second while FFXIV updates once per few seconds

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Yes, one update every 3 seconds AFAIR.


Cheers

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Originally Posted by Khalitas

I’ve been loving FFXIV and really enjoying the PvP. I just wish the game was a bit more…responsive? I’ve seen this discussed around the internet, FFXIV combat has some sort of input delay or server ticks that make the combat feel just slightly slow. Can this ever be addressed? It’s noticeable in pve but extremely noticeable in pvp. The obvious comparison is WoW but also almost any other online PvP game. Skills/actions usually feel immediate. I’m FFXIV it always feels like there’s a slight delay?

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Player to player interactions are just extremely sloppy in this game, it's also pretty evident in PvE when trying to land clutch heals on people who are about to die for whatever reason, you land your heal, you hear the effect go off, then they die anyway because the heal wasn't registered in time or the damage came sooner than your client thought.

My best guess is that there's simply a ton of processing delay between the server processing my actions and then the result of that being sent to the other player's client. There's also just about zero inter client prediction which is kind of odd given how much client trust this game has.

It's not as simple as just 'your ping's bad at all'. I used to PvP religiously on NA servers from the UK back in WoW and the only time it became an issue was in Arena with the extra latency making it harder for me to pillar LoS to break combat and drink.

Meanwhile, even with that extra cross Atlantic latency, when I slowed, stunned or rooted people, it took effect almost instantly with the effects clearly being visible on my screen. In FFXIV it feels like you root someone and they still get a second or so of movement before it's properly registered. Far more than ping alone accounts for.

IMHO Unless SE decide to take PvP seriously and up the rate at which combat is processed, I don't think it'll ever not feel 'sloppy'. Of course, this goes against SE's historical dislike for investing in high performance infrastructure to cope with such a change.

Long story short, the server adds some latency to the calculation of how it tells your client how to handle animation/gcd lag. The further you are from the server, the more artificial latency is added by the server when it returns data to your client. That said, there are ways to fix the dev's mistakes but they are bad boy tools that will get your account yeet'd if SE even gets wind of what you are doing. So don't say anything!

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

Player to player interactions are just extremely sloppy in this game, it's also pretty evident in PvE when trying to land clutch heals on people who are about to die for whatever reason, you land your heal, you hear the effect go off, then they die anyway because the heal wasn't registered in time or the damage came sooner than your client thought.

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Yes, the actual process of applying it is very slow. It cycles through the party list or the enemy list and applies buffs or effects.

It's most visible in hunts or big fate bosses when 100 people are there. It cycles through a certain amount of people up to a maximum and if you are far enough away, the mechanic affects you last after watching all the others get hit in sequence for 10 seconds or it just doesn't affect you at all. You can stand in a donut aoe but if you are at the back of that 100 people you are safe because the game is too slow to process an attack on that many people and doesn't try.

Dunno if it's tick rate or what but I often lose my opening melee hit on a pull when the tank has to pull to the party or to a corner, because the enemy transitions to being 'behind me' in the instant between when I enter the attack button press and when the attack fires and my attack fizzles.

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Originally Posted by vetch

Dunno if it's tick rate or what but I often lose my opening melee hit on a pull when the tank has to pull to the party or to a corner, because the enemy transitions to being 'behind me' in the instant between when I enter the attack button press and when the attack fires and my attack fizzles.

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I have that sometimes. It happens because the enemy has moved behind you already but there is a delay as it shows it traveling there.

The delay the game has in applying effects probably comes into it a bit, because it seems to process an attack on players/enemies one at a time and very slowly. Most people probably see this with party buffs where the people lower on the list get buffed too late, but it happens with the application of any attack. What it shows you is that the application of each attack or buff is just very slow and inefficient on the server as well, at least in an aoe situation and when using abilities.