Yoshi P addresses lag. Its time to deliever...

[Synra]

I know a lot of people place the blame for lag on connection. However, this is still SE's fault, because they didn't compensate for it.

These are Japanese developers. They don't make a lot of online games like our western developers do. They also enjoy a far more powerful internet service in their country. Fiber right up to everyone's house as I understand it. Western game makers put a lot of effort into minimizing or compensating for the delay in our long distance copper heavy network.

Normally this might not be an issue, but SE also designed a lot of the end-game bosses with very lag sensitive mechanics. Titan HM and EX are the prime examples of this.

These two points are why SE is at fault here. They need to recognize the kind of network we are forced to play on. They need to provide better netcode that can compensate for lag problems, like making character positioning client authoritative. They also need to take lag into consideration when they design a boss fight. For our EU friends, they also could have provided localized servers.

You can blame ISPs and routes all you want, but it's still SE's responsibility to provide a playable game, especially when we are paying a service fee.

[Deheuty]

I know a lot of people place the blame for lag on connection. However, this is still SE's fault, because they didn't compensate for it.

These are Japanese developers. They don't make a lot of online games like our western developers do etc...

I couldn't agree more - the fact that YoshiP thinks that to play endgame in FF14 one needs to have such unrealistically high fidelity internet connection (that perhaps can only be reliably obtained in Japan) just goes to show how Japan-centric SE is in developing this mmo. I mean, double digit ping values?? Which planet is he on? If all YoshiP cares is about Japanese player base, then please, do me a favour and state so at pre-launch. At least I know I belong to the second class player base and perhaps not grumble about it - I don't grumble about free-to-play mmos having lag too because well, it's free.

Latency is a reality. Lag is a reality. Dropped data packets are a new internet phenomenon I suppose? Other mmos have circumvented these problems some way or another by minimizing its impact on endgame and somehow as paying customers for FF14, it is unreasonable for customers to expect that SE devote time to resolve this?Problems like routing etc.. are these unique problems? Are these unexpected problems? Shouldn't one have the foresight to accommodate these issues? So what if it is hard? Does that absolve them of responsibility to deliver a 'workable' product for all players and not only some?

Programming a graphically intensive game is also hard - so it is okay to deliver a slipshod end product to sell to customers?

Surgeons have a hard job too - so it is okay to occasionally kill a patient in surgery by mistake?

Having a 'hard' job is not a reason to not do it right.

It is simply a lack of foresight and experience in creating a mmo for a global community and they are just not willing to pay the price of resolving that satisfactorily now.

[Clavaat]

-snip-

I'll play Devil's Advocate a bit: They are using some new techniques that may change how MMOs work in the future to potentially run better. Everything is moving to server side programming in business, so why not MMOs? It's a good idea in practice, but it came with some bumps. Most connections recovered no problem from this. 0.3s delay (which almost all MMOs currently have): Why not try reducing this to 0.1s? Functionally, this worked for much of the population, but this specific issue pertains only to certain portions of its player-base. If it gets resolved, which I imagine they are working on, it will make the game run smoother for everyone again.

A lot may say "don't fix what isn't broken", but that's just technology. If you stay stagnant in tech and never try anything new, we wouldn't have some of the capabilities we currently do. The reason they wouldn't have been able to test this on a FTP model is simply that, for the time being, these new practices are cost-heavy.

[Deheuty]

I'll play Devil's Advocate a bit: ...The reason they wouldn't have been able to test this on a FTP model is simply that, for the time being, these new practices are cost-heavy.

Somehow your reasoning appears to me as -- some of us are paying to be 'lab rats' to try out this new technology and suffer its consequences? Sounds like a good deal...