FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PLEASE FIX THIS MASSIVE LAG PROBLEM!

[Ervin]

It's still not acceptable. Most companies tend to solve issues like this one way or the other. It's quite annoying when XIV is the only game having these issues for most players.

I can sit down and play whatever MMO there is, on US servers from europe and have zero issues except the slightly higher base latency. Then it comes to XIV, decent latency (would like a pure EU choice either way), then around 18.00-22.00 the increadible 5-10sec lag starts again.

It's not acceptable for a sub-based game where we pay for top of the line service. I havent experienced anything close to as bad as this currently is during 12+ years of MMOing, not even in F2P games.

[Setzer_Gabbiani]

If only more people understood this... no matter how many times it's been shown to be true, some just refuse to accept it. Guess it's just easier to whine and complain then to follow the proper support process and actually get it fixed. All it took to get mine resolved was to take a few tracerts, open a suppoprt ticket with SE, and send a few emails to my ISP. Sure, it's been an ongoing process, but Time Warner has been working on it, and it continually improves.

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\DarrenBoyd>tracert 199.91.189.74

Tracing route to 199.91.189.74 over a maximum of 30 hops

<initial hops removed for security>
  4    26 ms    23 ms    27 ms  xe-7-0-0.chrlncpop-rtr1.southeast.rr.com [24.93.64.42]
  5    26 ms    31 ms    32 ms  bu-ether34.atlngamq46w-bcr00.tbone.rr.com [107.14.19.48]
  6    28 ms    28 ms    29 ms  ae-0-0.pr0.atl20.tbone.rr.com [66.109.6.171]
  7    80 ms    79 ms    80 ms  te0-0-0-10.ccr21.atl02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.12.109]
  8    79 ms    75 ms    74 ms  be2050.ccr21.atl01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.0.165]
  9    88 ms    86 ms    91 ms  be2168.ccr21.dca01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.31.94]
 10    96 ms    96 ms    94 ms  be2148.ccr21.jfk02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.31.118]
 11   121 ms   111 ms   107 ms  be2106.ccr21.ymq02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.3.50]
 12    49 ms    51 ms    50 ms  38.122.42.34
 13    63 ms    64 ms    64 ms  10.2.2.1
 14    64 ms    99 ms    64 ms  192.34.76.2
 15    63 ms    63 ms    68 ms  199.91.189.234
 16    63 ms    63 ms    63 ms  199.91.189.74

Trace complete.

They've brought me back to Charlotte again, but this time around I'm not getting the 25-48% packet loss. It's still pulling in around 7% during prime time, but it's a VAST improvement. Not bad for about 15 minutes of work pulling in the PROPER people to resolve the problem.

Sadly, you misunderstand that not every problem that concerns ingame lags is solved by contacting the provider. I already opened a ticket with SE days ago - still no response in any way. The connection i get from my provider has been tested - everything fine on that side.
If this would be an early access game, an indie game still in development or anything else, okay i would understand. But a game that has been redone and has been released months ago with a monthly fee? Every hint & tip i read so far has been provided by players - not support. Asking a monthly fee for that kind of unfinished product is just ridiculous.

[HugeDino]

It's a routing issue, not really SE's issue. I have Time Warner Cable, and when I use my connection normally, the lag is horrendous. However, if I use my VPN with a totally different route, I have no lag issues whatsoever.

Yeah, it's proven to be a routing issue, but how has SE, when some of the longest-running forum threads are about this specific issue, not given any official statement on it? If this is a routing issue that's ISP specific, why is it ONLY this game that anybody has a problem with? If it is strictly a routing issue one would think Square has the means to make a phone call to TWC and make the routing for their game stop sucking ass. I've sent multiple tickets to SE and gotten the same canned response, saying
"Regarding your request for technical support. Please find your answer below. If you are disconnected during play or logged out due to an unstable connection, there is a possibility of a transmission issue.",
even though I clearly outline the issue, provide tracerts, links to forum threads of others with the same issue, and certainly do NOT describe it in any way to lead someone to believe I am somehow disconnecting from the game. I'm calling Square tomorrow.

If only more people understood this... no matter how many times it's been shown to be true, some just refuse to accept it. Guess it's just easier to whine and complain then to follow the proper support process and actually get it fixed. All it took to get mine resolved was to take a few tracerts, open a suppoprt ticket with SE, and send a few emails to my ISP. Sure, it's been an ongoing process, but Time Warner has been working on it, and it continual
blahblahblahblah
I'm not getting the 25-48% packet loss. It's still pulling in around 7% during prime time, but it's a VAST improvement. Not bad for about 15 minutes of work pulling in the PROPER people to resolve the problem.

Nobody paying for this game monthly should have to jump through hoops to get a half-ass result on the issue of horrible lag/freezing/rubberbanding issues. Square needs to buck the f*ck up and realize this problem, or else I'm not renewing my sub, and I'm personally going to the Squeenix offices and giving a wedgie, swirlie, and handjob to EVERY Square employee that helped create and ignore this problem.

[misterdapi]

This:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-user-with-lag


AND
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...P2P-throttling

[Raist]

to quote Dennis Miller... "I don't mean to go off on a rant here...", but these last few posts have just flipped a switch I guess.

[rant]
Some of you keep assuming it is only affecting FFXIV. I assure you, it is much more widespread. Just take a look at TWC's own forums under connectivity, and you will see reports of issues with bandwidth, latency, and packet loss in general, and not just for FFXIV. When I pulled it up just now, there was a thread showing about issues with Starcraft2.
http://forums.timewarnercable.com/t5...p/connectivity
And this isn't some year old thread that got bumped (though, there are plenty of them out there that have cropped up the last 7 years). This was started TODAY, and another poster even stated having issues with WOW as well.
http://forums.timewarnercable.com/t5...p/12569#U12569

These kinds of threads have been on their forums for months now... and it's not just for FFXIV. In fact, I've only seen FFXIV mentioned a few times there... but when it was it was in reference to high latency and packet loss being found in route. And it isn't just TWC--it's at other ISP's forums, other game developers forums, and various user sites that discuss games.

The point is, it isn't just one specific game's issue, but more a widespread issue with congestion in routing that is impacting specific corridors. Your other games may behave better simply because they are following different routes, or their twitch factor is not as impacted because there is lower natural latency--there can be various elements at play here, simply because of where you are starting from, where you are going, and how you are being directed there. You may be taking a vastly different route to get to a west coast US server or a New York based server than you do to Canada from where you are... and this can make a profound difference on your routing options compared to getting into Montreal. When you run into a troubled route, there may not be many mechanics to help you avoid high congestion because of limited pathways available to Montreal with your ISP's partners, whereas they may have far more options to New York or Washington.

Bear in mind that when your ISP looks at your LOCAL connection, it is likely going to look OK... otherwise you would be having VERY widespread issues. The problems are being detected along specific routes--typically beyond the local segments, and most often outside of your own ISP's direct network hardware... but it IS on their PARTNER'S network. Something that fails to be understood here. You have a business agreement with your ISP for providing reliable service. They in turn have business agreements with their partners to provide reliable service, which they extend to you when providing you your service. Therefore, they have an obligation to investigate issues that are identified with their partners that are affecting your service. The trick is getting them to acknowledge there is a problem that needs to be investigated. Providing tracerts and/or pathpings provides such evidence.

And btw... this isn't working to fix your problem with FFXIV as much as it is fixing a problem with your routing service. This specific problem with FFXIV is a symptom of a problem with your routing. It could just as easily be an issue with accessing other content in Canada--it just so happens you found the problem accessing FFXIV. But the problem is with routing service to Montreal, and possibly other areas of Canada, and maybe also the MidWest, and Washington, and the VA/DC areas. For instance, it could potentially be any traffic to anywhere that gets routed through Ashburne, VA or the DC area because of problems coming from TATA's segments there. If your ISP is partnered to use their particular segments (like, say TWC's NOC in Herndon VA), they may run into trouble when routing through there if a TATA circuit there goes AWOL under heavy loads. This is a systemic problem within networking partners' segments that needs to be addressed when discovered regardless of what content is being accessed--their routing/maintenance policies are failing to provide reliable service for their business partners and it needs to be addressed. PERIOD.

As for SE's silence on the matter, they have publicly acknowledged there are networking problems and that they are aware of routing issues and are investigating the problems... both here and the producer himself has come forth and touched on it in interviews. They typically do not release specific details until they are sure they can be released--so long as they are dealing with ambiguous information, they will hold off on releasing information in case it turns out to be inaacurate. It's kind of a JP thing I guess.. or perhaps just SE, who knows. But it is how it has been for nearly a decade now with them, and really is not out of the norm for them once you understand this is how they always operate. They have been noted that it is ISP's that need to be worked with concerning the matter.

This does not necessarily mean YOUR ISP that you contract with (ie: TWC). Internet Service Providers exist on varying levels including but not limited to Government Entities and Universities--it's not always the commercial endpoint like TWC that is providing the service. It is a vast array of entities that manage small sections of a vast array of networks that must all work together to get you from point A to B. Look at Hawaii as an example. Local subnets throughout the island are managed by a small handful of entities (University of Hawaii plays a big role here), and they must partner with a select few people to get to either eastern or western mainlands where it then must get sloughed off to a backbone to fan out to the rest of that mainland. There can be multiple points of failure just getting to that mainland backbone, and then heaven knows how many points of failure after that. You can be talking well upwards of 20 hops to get to Montreal from Honolulu, depending on just how your routing is handled. In a post over at that same TWC forum linked earlier about lag from Hawaii, it was taking a guy 13 hops just to get to LAX in California.

So, yeah... even though it may be a copy/pasted, canned reply to them when you contact them about connectivity issues for them to say it is a transmission error... they are actually being pretty accurate in that description. There is a problem transmitting your data from point A to B. While that can also encompass communication issues at their server level, it also includes issues with communications between the client and server--that includes problems that fall within the scope of jurisdiction for your ISP, SE's ISP, and all the points in between you and your client. Note this also includes your local system and network--it could be even be your protocol stack in Windows that is hosed. The point is there are a lot of points of failure that need to be diagnosed, and more help may be needed as it may be something out of their direct control. In fact, this point has already been well established--that a large majority of the problems stem from 3rd party ISP issues.

Thus, it has become an issue that needs to be addressed by ALL the ISP's involved-- yours, theirs, partners of each entity at those endpoints and any point in between where the congestion is identified as being problematic. The problem is that this has become a moving target. Your best advocate is going to be the ISP's at the endpoints at this point (yours and SE's ISP's). But, those ISP's at the endpoints have to acknowledge there is a problem in the route. Since it typically is not found in the local segments, but somewhere deeper in the route and often halfway across the country, they need to be looking BEYOND your local segments. This is not typically done by your helpdesk/local guys--they are likely more along levels of Tier1 and tier2, what you need is T3 or higher. That's where providing a simple tracert or pathping can help--it provides details that can be escalated to the NOC for proper evaluation at the higher tiers.

And it's not jumping through a bunch of hoops to do it either--it's a simple tool that exists in all versions of Windows that can be used to generate the data needed to tell them where they need to look. You don't even have to bother with the whole copy/paste from the DOS box... you can output it directly to a text file. Here's an example:

Open a CMD Prompt. From the Run or Search box on your Start Menu or Charms bar, type the letters "cmd". Run that command/executable that shows up in the search results or in your Run box. This will open the black DOS box with a flashing cursor for inputing a command. Type this command, editing it for your server's IP address and the name/path of the output file you want to use and press <enter> to run it:

tracert 199.91.189.74>>C:\FFXIV_TRACE.txt

This will output the trace results to a text file called FFXIV_TRACE.txt at the root of the C: drive. When your blinking cursor comes back on a new line, it has finished running that trace. Youcan press the up arrow key to pull up that command from the history and run it again by pressing the <enter> key again. Each time you run it, it will append the results into that same file. So, if you run it 3 times, then it will log 3 traces in that one file. Then you can email that file or open it and copy/paste to your heart's content to get it to SE and your ISP for analysis. The process just takes minutes to do, and can lead to improvements without any further work on your end... as mentioned earlier, it only took a few emails about 2 months ago to get the ball rolling on my connection, and they are still tweaking things.

For future reference, this same process could/should be done anytime you are having stability issues with your connection to specific content--or just web access in general. It shows specific details about your connection that they can use to replicate your specific issue for diagnosing the problem. In case some of you didn't know, they can terminal into nework devices and run pings/traces from varying points along the route you provide, so they can focus more on your specific problem and <hopefully> find just where your issue is coming from. THAT is why it's so beneficial to generate and forward these simple reports--it provides a roadmap for addressing specifically YOUR issues, and not some generic test that comes back as good connectivity--it allows them to actually see where your specific communication problems are occuring.[/rant]

TLDR: It is not just FFXIV experiencing problems. It is widespread across various content and NOT just online games. SE has acknowledged it as a communication problem happening at the ISP levels (this is not just your ISP, or theirs--it includes the partners of those ISP's that work together for world-wide web connectivity), and have encouraged people to report connection details both to SE and their ISP's in the hopes of moving towards a solution to the problems people are having. So for users to get the "canned" replies about errors in transmission, and recommendations to contact their providers--SE is actually providing a fairly accurate description of the problem, as well as a plausible course of action. Through cooperative efforts with some players and ISP's, progress has been made in some markets--but it is not a fast and simple fix that can be applied globally. It is a moving target that must be addressed on at the least a regional basis, possibly even down to a more local granularity. Thus, the more people that can provide more specific details (ie: tracerts/pathpings) to provide a better roadmap to where the problems are occurring, the more progress can be made. It isn't a highly complicated/lengthy process to generate these reports to copy/paste them into support tickets for both SE and one's ISP--many users have tried to provide assistance in doing this---repeatedly. For many of those who have followed through with this process effectively, they have seen progress in resolving their issues. We simply need more people to lean on the endpoints (SE and their ISP) to look into the matter beyond just the local segments, as it has been shown that the problem appears to be outside of those localized networks and with the routing partners.

[gant2k1]

lol whos gonna read all that ^^

[yoshi71089]

lol whos gonna read all that ^^

I did, and it actually was a good post. Very informative; points out that the problem is larger and more wide-spread than the community is aware of.

[Mailstrum]

I live in Michigan it takes me 8 hops for me to get to the servers in monteral 5 in Michigan for frontier then 1 in chicago and 2 in monteral. I get horrible lag and 90k errors at least 10 times a night. Its crazy.

[misterdapi]

So, everyone says Tata Communications is the problem, looks like we need to let them know.


A list of Tata Communications office locations worldwide.

Tata Communications would love to hear from you!

Send them your trace routes now!
helpdesk@tatacommunications.com

customerservice@tatacommunications.com


San Jose (Also known as the Palo Alto Hop)

2077 Gateway Place
Suite 150
San Jose, CA 95110
USA
Tel +1.408.437.4710

Montreal (Yeah, where all the NA/EU servers are)

1555 Rue Carrie-Derick
Montreal, Quebec
Canada H3C 6W2
Tel +1.514.868.7272

So Its seems that people rather talk about how bad the lag is. Here is your chance to improve it.

Tata Communications would love to hear from you!

ILL and VoIP customers:
Call: 1800-419-2200 or
email us: helpdesk@tatacommunications.com

Broadband and other customers:
call: 6060 7070 or 1800 209 7070
email us: customerservice@tatacommunications.com

Fax Number: 022 6667 1029 / 022-66605335

[Kyri]

If this isn't bad enough every few patches controller users get hit with this "bug" that causes us to do the stupidest things like pause and not move for 4 seconds, or autorun for 5 seconds or spam the x or up or down button every 0.100 seconds for 5 seconds even make the camera spin randomly for the same amount of time. This makes endgame absolutely impossible in many situations for controller users. How am I supposed to fight titan/demonwall ADS when im going to get hit with a "stop moving" "Auto run off the edge" or up up up up spam for 5 seconds every few minutes, sometimes sooner?? Its bad enough we have to cramp our index fingers hitting ls/r2 all the time to fight.. I miss FFXIV 1.0 controllers, not only did my fingers hurt a whole lot less I NEVER had this problem.

(no I do not play on wireless controllers, I don't have lag(except once a blue moon) and ive watched/listened to other people have their controllers do the exact same thing at the exact same time)