Patch 7.2... Servers are still popsicle sticks and Elmer's glue

Ever since this patch, for myself and others in my general region, the lag has been completely insufferable. Common disconnects, >1 second lag, and rubber banding everywhere. Happens in and out of instanced content too.

I've dealt with hardware issues in the past (having to re-instance during Abyssos since my internet would log me out every 2 hours on the dot), and given how widespread these issues are in my circle, as well as my excellent connection on other games, I'm lead to believe that these issues are in fact with the servers. I haven't seen a 2002 since EW dropped, and now it's several times a week? Great!

TL;DR servers suck, everyone knows it. Patch made it significantly worse.

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Originally Posted by tatezanamatsu

Ever since this patch, for myself and others in my general region, the lag has been completely insufferable. Common disconnects, >1 second lag, and rubber banding everywhere. Happens in and out of instanced content too.

I've dealt with hardware issues in the past (having to re-instance during Abyssos since my internet would log me out every 2 hours on the dot), and given how widespread these issues are in my circle, as well as my excellent connection on other games, I'm lead to believe that these issues are in fact with the servers. I haven't seen a 2002 since EW dropped, and now it's several times a week? Great!

TL;DR servers suck, everyone knows it. Patch made it significantly worse.

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It's not the patch. It's that Square Enix has scaled back their server infrastructure because they know they can just wait it out and let the player count naturally decline. They regret building the new data centers.

NA does not need 4 data centers you're right lol

It's not happening for me at all, so it's not the servers. It is likely an issue on the route that your traffic goes through, such as a bad node.

I've seen 1 other person say they've had this, out of all the people I've met doing content.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

It's not happening for me at all, so it's not the servers. It is likely an issue on the route that your traffic goes through, such as a bad node.

I've seen 1 other person say they've had this, out of all the people I've met doing content.

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Yes, we all know that Square Enix is a poor, poor baby who have absolutely zero agency and cannot, absolutely CANNOT communicate with the ISPs to get them to get routing right, unlike Sony, Nintendo, Activision-Blizzard, oh no no, poor, poor baby.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

It's not happening for me at all, so it's not the servers. It is likely an issue on the route that your traffic goes through, such as a bad node.

I've seen 1 other person say they've had this, out of all the people I've met doing content.

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I would say.. its the data center...

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...94#post6688194

Yep, I made the mistake of going to Diabolos to do my dailies + get my weekly holosaber. Got booted after 2nd roulette now can't log back in, Can't transfer out.

Sub should be free if they can't even provide a stable service, This crap is happening once a week at this point.

Get your act together Square Enix.

Recently, I've gone from getting disconnected once in a blue moon to getting disconnected multiple times per play session, sometimes seconds after logging back in.

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Originally Posted by Kes13a

I would say.. its the data center...

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...94#post6688194

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That is a Crystal-specific issue. Is not affecting Aether or Primal.

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Originally Posted by JohnConstantine

Yes, we all know that Square Enix is a poor, poor baby who have absolutely zero agency and cannot, absolutely CANNOT communicate with the ISPs to get them to get routing right, unlike Sony, Nintendo, Activision-Blizzard, oh no no, poor, poor baby.

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One way or another, the countermeasures for DDoS need to be better when they get so many attacks in a short space of time.

You can't get back to Maduin either. So I can't move my main back to do his island before reset... Gotta love it.

the discussion has been focussed around NA data centres, but we have the same issues in EU ^^ no matter if I'm playing on Chaos or Light, my ping has been super high for a few weeks (usually around 1500-6000+ in raids) which has got worse since 7.2 dropped & it has got nothing to do with my location and my ping is generally very good outside FFXIV.. most of my FC friends have the same issues and also regularly disconnect, especially after DC travel; some of us even get pings around 17000+ at worst. I've never had these issues before, but now it's really interfering with my savage raiding experience due to the regular delays/lag ._.

I wonder if the Japanese servers have these issues.

Has anyone had their game crashing when they teleport into a starter city, especially Limsa Lominsa and when you go into /gpose, the game crashes like half the time since 7.2 released?

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Originally Posted by Basteala

I wonder if the Japanese servers have these issues.

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Doubt it, They take really good care of Japan & Korean (Eastern) Playerbase.

They even get exclusive stuff that NA will never get, And if they do it'll be on Cash Shop.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

Can't say I've had crashing, but it did feel like it was taking longer than usual between screens when I was in Gridania doing the season event, like there was a noticeable delay going between aetherytes/cutscenes, and I know it can't be due to Maduin being busy. (3AM on a weekday? Not bloody likely.)

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I have noticed that too, it feels like I'm playing on a HDD when my game is installed on a SSD. The game itself seems to take longer to boot and show the SE logo and when it crashes and I reboot it, the FPS is like half of what it usually is until a few minutes later. It could be my device (ASUS RoG Ally Z1 Extreme) since it was recently updated with a new BIOS and such.

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Originally Posted by livaeri

the discussion has been focussed around NA data centres, but we have the same issues in EU ^^ no matter if I'm playing on Chaos or Light, my ping has been super high for a few weeks (usually around 1500-6000+ in raids) which has got worse since 7.2 dropped & it has got nothing to do with my location and my ping is generally very good outside FFXIV.. most of my FC friends have the same issues and also regularly disconnect, especially after DC travel; some of us even get pings around 17000+ at worst. I've never had these issues before, but now it's really interfering with my savage raiding experience due to the regular delays/lag ._.

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On the bright side it will go away once the player count craters once again.

It's almost like... it's not an actual malicious DDoS if the problem happens when people are playing actively....

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

It's not happening for me at all, so it's not the servers. It is likely an issue on the route that your traffic goes through, such as a bad node.

I've seen 1 other person say they've had this, out of all the people I've met doing content.

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A: That's called "anecdotal evidence", sir
B: SE's own Lodestone post disagrees with your assertion.

The amount of times this has happened lately is unacceptable. And no, "just get a VPN lol" isn't the answer. This is a severe technical issue that reeks of cost-cutting measures. Wouldn't surprise me if they didn't go with the cheapest possible company to run and maintain the servers.

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Originally Posted by Auro_Seldaris

A: That's called "anecdotal evidence", sir

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No, it is not. It's not happening for me, therefore it's not the servers.

If it was the servers, it would happen for everyone universally. If it's a node on the way to the servers, it would only happen for some people.

I've also been doing content in the game and the amount of people actually saying they have this right now is barely a thing like it was some months ago, since you can tell by the amount of people getting random disconnects and lag in PUGs, and I've just barely seen such a thing happening recently despite doing Extremes a lot with random players.

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B: SE's own Lodestone post disagrees with your assertion.

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It doesn't, because the lodestone post says it's Crystal-only and OP is on Primal. This is a rare case where the infrastructure setup was actually good by isolating the issue to Crystal. Were it more intertwined, the entire game would probably be unavailable.

"It's not happening for me, therefore it's not happening at all" is peak "wOrKs oN mY mAcHiNe" energy.

Bruv, you have Aether privileges. If they let the "Do Content DC" go down, they would catch all kinds of heat. So some other DC has to get the short straw. Wouldn't surprise me if keeping Aether running wasn't an internal priority in the server infrastructure.

"An entire DC just shit the bed, and actually that's a good thing" is painfully tone-deaf, man.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

iT's nOt hApPeNiNg fOr mE, tHeReFoRE it's NoT ThE SeRVeRs.

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You're never beating the shill allegations bro.

Maybe you're right. Maybe it's not the servers. Maybe it's everything around the servers. What the fuck ever - this is a game that requires a subscription to be played so you should *expect* the game to function. Sorry these guys didn't have the future sight to not play on Crystal? lmao

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Originally Posted by Auro_Seldaris

A: That's called "anecdotal evidence", sir
B: SE's own Lodestone post disagrees with your assertion.

The amount of times this has happened lately is unacceptable. And no, "just get a VPN lol" isn't the answer. This is a severe technical issue that reeks of cost-cutting measures. Wouldn't surprise me if they didn't go with the cheapest possible company to run and maintain the servers.

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They went with the cheapest Japanese company they could for the NA servers, which is an obvious recipe for routing disasters.

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Originally Posted by Daralii

They went with the cheapest Japanese company they could for the NA servers, which is an obvious recipe for routing disasters.

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Color me surprised by that shocking information. Absolutely gobsmacked. /s

Can't remember what person here wrote it, but someone said "Japan used to be 20 years ahead of the world in the 2000s when everyone else was in the 80's, in the 2000's when everyone else was in the late 2000s, and 20 years behind everyone in the 2020s" Very much feels like it, on a tech savviness level now.

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Originally Posted by Auro_Seldaris

Color me surprised by that shocking information. Absolutely gobsmacked. /s

Can't remember what person here wrote it, but someone said "Japan used to be 20 years ahead of the world in the 2000s when everyone else was in the 80's, in the 2000's when everyone else was in the late 2000s, and 20 years behind everyone in the 2020s" Very much feels like it, on a tech savviness level now.

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Just for the sake of also having evidence, here's a thread from 2023 with some records of the awful routing and the packet loss that results from it. The company is Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, which for some reason is federally owned.
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/482155

Is this NTT again? Different ISPs seem to have their turn having issues with NTT nodes. A while back it was AT&T so there were a swathe of us being affected. Before that I think it was Verizon. I don't know if SE only has them available to deal with or what but if they do have other options and this is an NTT issue again, I would hope they would consider them.

"Primal PF is dead and/or trolling, I guess I'll see if Aether is open yet."

"Oh sweet, I can actually transfer there!"

...Immediately before they announced DC travel was broken last night. There's still no way to leave the DC travel queue btw. I just had to call it and go to bed.

The server issues are getting frustrating, to say the least.

Combination of things, but honestly I would say that the biggest issue is Square Enix servers, they do a lot of band aiding, versus direct maintenance or upkeep to actually maintain quality services, and they don't really hide it either, e.g., aggressive login buffers.

Also to my knowledge it is actually very rare for a transit/ISP node to get directly targeted, as these are usually more robust than endpoint nodes, e.g., load balanced, and more redundancy behind it, versus what you would expect to have at an endpoint node, and not to mention transit nodes will typically have a lot higher bandwidth. So it is more practical to attack a specific world/lobby server.

A reason why usually for instance, a DDOS doesn't affect everyone on the server or specific DC, is because to my knowledge the way the infrastructure works, is you have the main lobby server for each datacenter, which will be used for queuing/buffering, fetching main character details (connected world etc.,), and then that would connect you to a specific IP address for that world(s) to maintain your session, and it might be that 1 of those IPs is disrupted/DDOS'd, so it would only affect those connecting to that IP/'server', and then everyone not connected to it would remain fine (even if they are connected to the same world)... A common misconception make is that the entire DC/Lobby only has that single IP/node.

PSN I think do something similar in that they have the authentication/lobby server, and these authenticate, fetch details etc., then it offloads you to a different IP to actually maintain that session... This is why you can sometimes remain connected on PSN despite other folk not being able to connect, or being unable to reconnect if you logout willingly.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

No, it is not. It's not happening for me, therefore it's not the servers.

If it was the servers, it would happen for everyone universally. If it's a node on the way to the servers, it would only happen for some people.

I've also been doing content in the game and the amount of people actually saying they have this right now is barely a thing like it was some months ago, since you can tell by the amount of people getting random disconnects and lag in PUGs, and I've just barely seen such a thing happening recently despite doing Extremes a lot with random players.
It doesn't, because the lodestone post says it's Crystal-only and OP is on Primal. This is a rare case where the infrastructure setup was actually good by isolating the issue to Crystal. Were it more intertwined, the entire game would probably be unavailable.

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Does it matter?

The ORIGINAL SIN is that they went with NTT at all. They took the CHEAPEST option to host their servers. They still stuck with NTT when they "upgraded" their infrastructure.

This is like saying: "well, it's not my fault that the building collapsed and killed 10 people. blame the earthquake"

Yeah, well, OK, you chose to build in an earthquake zone in the first place because it was very cheap.

I once saw around 20 people disconnect in Gridania during a technical issue that was acknowledged by SE, while only me and one other player were unaffected. Claiming the servers are fine just because one person has no issues is technical ignorance. The statistical fact is, NA servers experience more problems than those in Europe or Japan.

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Originally Posted by kajv95

You're never beating the shill allegations bro.

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Perhaps you misunderstood. I'm not saying their server infrastructure is good or that their code is any good at making use of it, but that OP's specific issue is not something I'm seeing reflected among players generally when I join parties in PF and DF every single day, which is normally the case when it's a general problem affecting a significant amount of players.

For example, some months ago you'd see average people in PF randomly disconnecting or taking it in turns to, or the entire party saying everything went "slow" then caught up and reporting lag a lot. That's the sort of thing you'd expect to see when playing the game if it was affecting more than just OP, especially in Extremes where the mechanics could go very wrong due to that.

And this thread isn't actually about Crystal it's about OP's specific issues.

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Originally Posted by JohnConstantine

The ORIGINAL SIN is that they went with NTT at all. They took the CHEAPEST option to host their servers. They still stuck with NTT when they "upgraded" their infrastructure.

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I don't really know the details of what they chose or if they chose NTT and what the alternatives are, but given the apparent "political issues" that I think SE said is affecting NTT, it would certainly be logical to change it if they can.

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

you have the main lobby server for each datacenter, which will be used for queuing/buffering, fetching main character details (connected world etc.,), and then that would connect you to a specific IP address for that world(s) to maintain your session, and it might be that 1 of those IPs is disrupted/DDOS'd, so it would only affect those connecting to that IP/'server'

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If you do a tracert it hops through another IP to get to the lobby server. Similarly, it hops through another IP to get to an individual server on Aether, so attacking the one it hops through probably knocks all 8 servers with one stone. Unsurprisingly, the one it hops through is not responding to ping requests because they are trying to prevent things like that, but I imagine that if the attackers don't know the IP there are only 255 likely candidates and we know it won't be a lot of them due to their use as lobby and server IPs.

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Originally Posted by tatezanamatsu

Ever since this patch, for myself and others in my general region, the lag has been completely insufferable. Common disconnects, >1 second lag, and rubber banding everywhere. Happens in and out of instanced content too.

I've dealt with hardware issues in the past (having to re-instance during Abyssos since my internet would log me out every 2 hours on the dot), and given how widespread these issues are in my circle, as well as my excellent connection on other games, I'm lead to believe that these issues are in fact with the servers. I haven't seen a 2002 since EW dropped, and now it's several times a week? Great!

TL;DR servers suck, everyone knows it. Patch made it significantly worse.

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This is your internet provider
i was with BT for a while and had all these same issues, you should maybe look into finding a better company to provide your broadband

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Originally Posted by sindriiisgaming

This is your internet provider
i was with BT for a while and had all these same issues, you should maybe look into finding a better company to provide your broadband

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There are a lot of places where there is a regional monopoly and a better ISP isn't an option, but that's also irrelevant in this case.

https://i.imgur.com/YOlPY2C.jpeg