Either make dodging AoEs possible, or make them not instant-kills

[Kiteless]

And to make it even better, Canadian ISPs are notorious for being almost universally awful, so someone having problems is pretty much guaranteed.

[SethLex]

I agree with OP. For me Titan for example is a latency check, not a dps check - one I generally fail. Or, if you are moving constantly, it's more like a roulette, because u are sure to get out of your plumes, but you might step into other ppl's AOE death traps.

The most annoying part is that for you everything appears to be ok (judging for what you see on the screen) only to discover 1s later that you were not in fact miles out of the AOE, according to the server at least.

I don't mind long fights, I don't mind hard fights - these are things I can tackle with patience and perseverance. Latency issues however, there's nothing I can do about them. :|

Please fix or adjust fights accordingly.

[Ryuko]

I agree with OP. For me Titan for example is a latency check, not a dps check - one I generally fail. Or, if you are moving constantly, it's more like a roulette, because u are sure to get out of your plumes, but you might step into other ppl's AOE death traps.

Exactly. I tried to be 'constantly moving' when I know an AoE is coming, but then I might be running into someone else who is doing the same thing (moving so that they can get a guaranteed avoidance from AoE). Titan during and after heart phase is a VERY small arena. If you have to be moving to preemptively avoid something, you are GOING to run into someone else, and possibly MPK your teammates if they run into your circles. It's frustrating that, to survive, we have to use all of these counter measures. I love this game, but I do miss the mechanics in other MMOs where simply getting out of the circle in time was enough.

[Sneakaboo]

Indeed. I'll be one of them. This doesn't even affect me personally that badly except that there's always someone in my group, ANY group that has just enough latency to where this becomes an issue. It's infuriating and ridiculous. Who sets their server to update location every .3 seconds?! I've played ancient ass games that didn't do that!

Hell if it's to ease the server load, sure, fine! But make it more accurate at the very least inside dungeons!

I'm about to give up, game has become unplayable since the maintenance.
Next to that I just find myself not enjoying a game with a build in 450ms, or with the server stability.

I was under the assumption both would be addressed but I some how doubt they will fix their server checks.
Not sure why they do it like this, no other MMO seems to do it.

Is it cheaper or are they just incompetent, who knows but I'm pretty sure the majority of the people will not be discussing this in 2-3 months.

[Kiteless]

I think it has something to do with limiting clientside hacking (can't hack much if almost everything is handled serverside). Which is what you hire GMs and have a working report form for.

[Ryuko]

I think it has something to do with limiting clientside hacking (can't hack much if almost everything is handled serverside). Which is what you hire GMs and have a working report form for.

This. I'm pretty convinced this is the one and only reason they do everything this way -- to prevent hacking. If you let movement be more of a client side thing, it wouldn't be long before people figured out 'jump' hacks and merely clicked on a spot out of an AoE to avoid it. You'd likely see their body 'teleport' (or run really fast) to that spot. Of course, this IS cheating, and something that should be reported... but there's nothing you can do to stop entire linkshells/FCs from doing this and never getting caught unless someone happens to report it. It's sad because I doubt a majority of players would cheat... but some will, so that means we all must suffer? I wonder how other MMOs ensure that client-side 'hacking' is not possible even with better location checks (WoW for example).

[SKYeXile]

Do it right? No MMO's give the client control like that.

What FFXIV needs is proper collision prediction on their AoE's. I'm fairly certain that their AoE collision is just a simple check that does not compensate for latency at all, which would explain getting hit by stuff that you clearly seem to be out of.
A collision prediction system that would compensate for latency would work like this:
- AoE spell finishes, create a list of players it would hit.
- Calculate each player's predicted position (i.e. where they will probably be on their screen) when taking latency in to account, which would be: (current position) + (velocity) * (latency)
- If the predicted position is outside of the AoE, do nothing, otherwise, hit them.

Since players are generally going to move in a straight line to get out of AoE, a simple prediction like that is very safe. For extra security, the server could check where the client was when the AoE went off on their screen, and hit them if they were still in it.

Actually alot of games use this sort of "clienetside" code, what most players dont know is that what their sending is still sanity checked by the server using timestamps,it gives the effect of clinetside but still has the server being the authority. Im not sure about it being used in MMOs besides planetside 2 and in turn EQ next.

you can read valves details on it here: https://developer.valvesoftware.com/...yer_Networking
Scroll down to lag compensation.

But yea, this is why so many FPS players rage, all like" i was around a corner" not on his screen you weren't!" or like, "but i hit him!..." OH no you didn't!...your client is out of sync!

not exactly sure how it would work in a pve environment, im sure it would be possible though. i guess it would be the same, if your client is sending data of where it perceives PVE mobs.


i think part of the problem now is how often the server process data, 3 times per second is alittle too slow(even though my client sends 6 packets per second...), also i think it often processes packets later than it should.

[-Magister]

This issue is everywhere in many forms and it is a problem with data processing, this is a gamebreaking problem that will kill endgame before it even starts, the game needs to be responsive and if that means giving the client more control then use some of the sub money to hire a couple GMs to watch for those who would exploit and be quick with the banhammer. Heres another thread to check out: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...04#post1277004

[RhaesDaenys]

Same problem. Getting terribly frustrated getting hit by things on HM Titan that I shouldn't be.

[Xbob42]

As for preventing people from hacking, having serverside checks after the fact is fine (so if you really weren't physically able to do something, it'd basically retroactively put you back where you were and deal damage to you accordingly, kinda like GGPO resets, but on an individual level.) but games like WoW also had GMs watching top-tier fights live (and invisibly) to check for shenanigans, as one possible example of how things are done.