Latency issue in this game...

[Sunarie]

FFXIV uses a different netcode structure than other MMOs. Basically what happens in other MMOs is your client can see whether you were in an AOE or not and tell immediately when you took damage. SE went with the server being in charge. So what you end up with is:

Boss starts AOE on server end
You see AOE on client end and start to move
AOE cast ends server side and damage is sent out

Now, whether the whole "you moved" part gets back to the server before the server ends the AOE and calculates damage depends on latency and packetloss. In one of the interviews that Yoshi did recently (available on Reinhart's translation thread), it was implied that playing with a "3 digit ping" wasn't good. This would mean you need to be under 100 ms to not see any sort of delay, with very little packet loss.

Most people in the US/EU aren't going to have that steadily, and if you get into the higher range for latency it's going to start being difficult, if not impossible for you to dodge. Changing their netcode would involve lots of time and money, and unless they lose a bunch of subs to that issue, I don't see it happening. Instead they like to blame player's networks it seems (again, implied from most recent interview). Part of that probably has to do with Japan having a much different (better) internet infrastructure as a country. I imagine that anyone getting over 100ms ping there is a rarity, here it's common.

All of that being said, with the 2.1 patch they did try and help it along by increasing the positional update interval to .1 seconds. I don't believe it's possible to get it any faster than that realistically. If you're still unable to dodge, then endgame may not be for you in FFXIV :/ Yoshi said in the interview that people who want to do the endgame stuff and hard content need to have excellent setups, which in this case also means internet connection and hops.

[Ri_ri]

Yoshi said in the interview that people who want to do the endgame stuff and hard content need to have excellent setups, which in this case also means internet connection and hops.

Can I have a link?
My face is turning red after being palmed so much over reading this.

What it boils down to is that unlike most AAA mmos they don't provide multiple data centers so many people have quite a long distance between their computer and the servers. This gives many heavy latency.

I'll go ahead and say that it boils down to their over reliance on "dodge it or die" mechanics. In WoW most AoE is a debuff, you take a lot of damage (not at once) but you won't die. In other words, get out of the fire.
Here, you don't have a chance of getting out of the fire... once it appears, you're dead. Doesn't matter if you're near the edge or didn't even bother moving... you'll take the full damage, at once, and probably die. So if your character lagged one "yalm" into the circle... tough luck, dead.

If it didn't came down to "dodge it or die" mechanics, I think most people wouldn't even notice how bad the coding is in this game. I heard FFXI was a lag fest like this one (being in japan and so), but being a slower paced game, it didn't matter.

Edit: thanks Sunarie!
Why is he designing a RPG instead of an action game or danmaku? lol

[Sunarie]

Can I have a link?
My face is turning red after being palmed so much over reading this.

The latest interview with Game Watch that Reinheart kindly translated. It's a long one. Important bits regarding the latency are in the second half of the interview. Basically this bit:

GW: I forgot how long ago but when I started playing FFXIV I checked the Ping to Square-Enixs server. (Laugh) reason why was because I had experience of being pushed off the edge with land slide from Titan Hard Mode, I was thinking to myself “I dodged that for sure, why!” and that’s when I checked, at that time I was using the smart phones tethering to play. So when I checked it was slow. Went back home and checked again and the Ping was in the one digit and was easy to dodge. The previous FFXIV’s server lag was really horrible, but for FFXIV ARR for the lags it’s most likely a problem with the local side environment. However, there are many out there that claim it’s the game sides issue and it’s hard.

Yoshida: I can’t talk about that from my end so please do so from GAME Watch’s side (laugh).

GW: It’s really simple matter, if you can just release ping check tool to game server it will resolve this issue.

Yoshida: It’s not so easy to add that officiallly when there are several ISP’s involved.

GW: But, since we all know the IP it’s possible to add it in the benchmark program to show when players check the PC performance so they can understand the issue. I really think the current situation is unfair. People still mentioning it even after FFXIV ARRs launch must mean that there are that much people that is misunderstanding.

Yoshida: What I can official say from my end is that if you’re really going to fully go into the contents please have the best environment. But this is really hard, there are those that will say “You are the one creating the Online Game, you prepare that type of environment”, or look over it and make adjustments so you can dodge those.

GW: That’s impossible.

Yoshida: It is, if we do that we can’t make difficult contents.

GW: If you’re able to dodge with 3 digit Ping then it’s not fun as a game

Yoshida: We would need to extend the time players have to dodge. But doing that will make the content super easy, so it’s impossible.

[Billie21]

[...]

Thank you for sharing this, I hadn't seen it. I guess that answers the question of wether or not it will be adressed. They are unable to make a challenging fight that will work for people with decent equipment, so I guess the matter of renewing my sub or not got solved.
I wish I could say I was very disappointed, but although I had hope, I didn't have enough to be crushed by such a news. Just enough to wait and see.

[Maplekoya]

Thank you for sharing this, I hadn't seen it. I guess that answers the question of wether or not it will be adressed. They are unable to make a challenging fight that will work for people with decent equipment, so I guess the matter of renewing my sub or not got solved.
I wish I could say I was very disappointed, but although I had hope, I didn't have enough to be crushed by such a news. Just enough to wait and see.

What they should have done was probably to have east and west servers for NA and EU specific servers while the rest of the world continues to use tunnels as it is the norm for them. This way such threads won't keep popping up.

is terrible. I have brought the issue of latency before and people said that it's not SEs fault but mine for having bad connection( even though when I play WoW on the US server I have no problems at all) and advised me to use WTFast to improve it. WTFast gives me 25%-30% improvement yet I still get hit by Titan's ability when I run out, same goes for other instance bosses abilities. When I'm fighting mobs out in the open when doing quests I've noticed that I can dodge red stuff somewhat better. What is it that SE is doing wrong compared to WoW that so many people experience problems with the latency in this game?

Nothing wrong, I had 400+ms in WoW and was forced to use a tunnel to reduce the ping by about 30%.

[Tyrzea]

Thank you for sharing this, I hadn't seen it. I guess that answers the question of weather or not it will be addressed. They are unable to make a challenging fight but although I had hope

They addressed lobby congestion issue! The implementation of AoE is the same. Yoshida tells how difficult it is to deal with multiple ISP providers - nice try!
ffxivboot.exe establishes connection to Akamai Technology CDN - one of the best.
Then ffxiv.exe connects to the data server of your choice: in New England it is Montreal that is on level3 CND. My ping is 39-45ms.
3x45ms = 135ms: dodging is a 3 step process: plum shows, I react, server responds.
My speed numbers: 50Mbs/37Mbs. I get hit every time in Titan unless I am on the edge of the plum and escape in a split of a second!
I can only imagine how gamers whose single ping is 250ms feel!
To those who complained the game is too easy: Congratulations! you've got everything "hard" mode :-) Enjoy!

[RavenL]

Snip

So.. basically he's saying he doesn't care about those with a less than optimal connection.

[Kirosuu]

So.. basically he's saying he doesn't care about those with a less than optimal connection.

If NA EU always play high speed connection, then SEA is a monster from outer space come to earth, SEA gamers always play with high ping which is 200~300 ping is consider normal.
so yeah 3 digit ping is our daily gaming life and only a few able to see 2 digit ping
in patch 2.1, i must say connection is very smooth and that still with 150~250 ping from my pc playing in JP server

[Billie21]

So.. basically he's saying he doesn't care about those with a less than optimal connection.

I am curious about what he considers "optimal connexion".
I live in a big city, in a country that's amongts the world's most developped as far as high speed Internet goes (far more than the USA, and even more than Canada, apparently), and although I don't have optic fiber, I have standart high speed Internet for here. I have never encountered such a problem in over 10 years of playing MMOs.

I don't know much about IT, there might be a technical reason outside of SE's influence why I suffer from this problem specifically with this game, and that without this I would enjoy a smooth game experience.
But I can't help thinking that, considering all this, and considering the number of people in various locations around the world who claim they are suffering from it too, and considering that even some people living near the datacenters in Canada said they suffered from it, too... it looks less likely than the opposite.

Some people also said they were playing fine with less than optimal equipment.

Either they lied, the problem is all on the use's end, and SE just made a game that needs incredibly high quality Internet to be played (in which case, the warning "Internet connexion required" is inacurate, and I believe I have been tricked into buying a game that wasn't truthfull about it's technical requirements).
Or there is a problem on SE's end (in which case this interview is, if not an outright lie, a big mokery taking people for idiots by playing dumb to avoid admitting there is a problem when it's obvious there is).

Nothing wrong, I had 400+ms in WoW and was forced to use a tunnel to reduce the ping by about 30%.

Which would make about 280ms?
Aparently, it should still not be enough to play endgame content, according to this:

GW: If you’re able to dodge with 3 digit Ping then it’s not fun as a game

Yoshida: We would need to extend the time players have to dodge. But doing that will make the content super easy, so it’s impossible.

If you can beat endgame with a 3 digit ping, then that confirms that the speech in this interview is BS.

[Edellis]

If you can beat endgame with a 3 digit ping, then that confirms that the speech in this interview is BS.

Don't want to sound like a douchebag, but the latency you get in that that GIF in your signature is terrible enough that I doubt it's all on SE's end. I'm using a regular enough internet connection for my area, nothing special, on PS3, using wireless.

Ive been hit by stuff like that, but i'd have to be leaving the active area within miliseconds of it ending to actually be hit.


It's really easy to blame a company like this, especially when you can cry "conspiracy" anytime you like. But for gods sake, the latency you're describing has got to be a serious minority.