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

[Nomski]

What people who say it's not SE fault seem to forget, Yoshida stated the reason for the servers location is because would be ideal for players from US and EU, it clearly is not the case. The game is unplayable and not enjoyable with the state it is in. What's great is they seem to ignore this and make all the mechanics hinge on 1 hit kill mechanics revolving around latency. Titan EX is just one giant middle finger to anyone who doesn't suffer from latency issues. I wouldn't hold your breath for a proper response regarding this.

[Melithea]

WTFast Battleping Pingzapper

I'm not paying a $60-$100/year gamer tax, on top of what I already pay for the game and a top tier Internet connection, to maybe sometimes fix a problem I shouldn't have to fix myself.

[Rhas]

What people who say it's not SE fault seem to forget, Yoshida stated the reason for the servers location is because would be ideal for players from US and EU, it clearly is not the case. The game is unplayable and not enjoyable with the state it is in. What's great is they seem to ignore this and make all the mechanics hinge on 1 hit kill mechanics revolving around latency. Titan EX is just one giant middle finger to anyone who doesn't suffer from latency issues. I wouldn't hold your breath for a proper response regarding this.

How would SE know that there would be an issue with level3 in Montreal, Canada before they launched the service there? They didn't.

[Rhas]

I'm not paying a $60-$100/year gamer tax, on top of what I already pay for the game and a top tier Internet connection, to maybe sometimes fix a problem I shouldn't have to fix myself.

I do not pay for those services either. I fixed my own connection by doing what I posted at the top of page 18. It completely fixed my issue. It was my problem in the first place. for the most part I have had no lag with all but a select few services (including FFXIV) I pay for over a 50mbps connection as well so I also thought the same that it couldn't possibly be me but SE as the problem.

I was wrong. It was my computer that had the issue.

[ReplicaX]

Most of it *isn't* SE's problem or anything they can even fix.

There is, however, a documented problem involving the transition of networks in montreal, canada (Not part of SE's network). There is nothing SE can do out of its own personal realm of control.

All I am going to say at this point is there are many ppl on this forum that had no packet loss or latency issues prior to SE changing the polling rate for positional updates on players in instances. After the polling rate change many ppl now have issues.

SE controls the polling rate of its servers. Increasing the polling rate increases the # of calculations by the server and requires more available bandwidth between the server and client.

Bandwidth isn't free for you or them. We all have to pay for it. Funny how the issues started at the same time as the polling change.

[Nomski]

How would SE know that there would be an issue with level3 in Montreal, Canada before they launched the service there? They didn't.

Well they shouldn't have made statements like that then.

The entire reason I stayed around and played 1.0 was after Yoshi-p came on board and made the game playable. Because of that I continued to support the game through the entire 1.0 subscription phase even with the case of constant disconnections. To which they said we can't fix it, but in ARR that won't be the case.

If they would just come out and say "Sorry, we are trying to resolve this", I'd continue to sub. At the moment, I'm never going to make the mistake of subbing for 6 months again.

[Miiu]

[...]

I agree with that. SE even pointed out that the increase would stress the servers too much so they only made the changes to a few areas where the change was most important. Sadly this was already enough to "overload" the system for some people. The only thing SE could do would to revert those changes back to pre 2.1. But this might alienate another part of the playerbase.

[KarstenS]

SE even pointed out that the increase would stress the servers too much so they only made the changes to a few areas where the change was most important. Sadly this was already enough to "overload" the system for some people.

It is not overloading the client system of the user and also not overloading the server. It is overloading some routers between client and servers.

Packetloss is not really what the word "loss" mean. They get not lost. They get dropped. In the most cases the packet gets dropped, because the buffer is full. Reasons for this can be to slow router CPU, more input is incoming than the output port can handle and some others.

[Miiu]

It is not overloading the client system of the user and also not overloading the server. It is overloading some routers between client and servers.

Packetloss is not really what the word "loss" mean. They get not lost. They get dropped. In the most cases the packet gets dropped, because the buffer is full. Reasons for this can be to slow router CPU, more input is incoming than the output port can handle and some others.

My wording was off there. Ofc what I meant is that the whole system is having more stuff to deal with. SE's server asking for more information which puts more stress on everybody. Your client + connection, the route between you and SE's server and SE's server itself. Since not everybody has the problem of rubberbanding position lag etc. we can eliminate the game server itself as the source of the problem because it would be equally bad for everyone if that was the case.

[Autymnfyres]

Yes they are and so is Cogent. I have personal experience dealing with both managing a Top 10 popular game server. With allotted bandwidth to handle high polling/tick rates. They both are horrible companies to deal with.

-------------------------------

I appreciate ReplicaX and some of the other posters here who take the time to share their own tech knowledge and personal experiences about this very frustrating topic. Really, it has helped a bit. However, others muddy up the forum with general overall defensive posts for SE that in no way help anyone who IS, HAS or CONTINUES to deal with the lag problem.

Now - since we've been 'properly educated' by some other caring FFXIV ARR forum gamers -- tell me this please:

Are these two companies - Level3 and Ormuco - the ONLY ones available for SE to contract with for this substandard service? Is there a monopoly or can SE in fact do what other powerful, product-oriented companies do IF they care about their end-product customer? Can SE present a simple consequence of contractual obligation and determine they will take THEIR business elsewhere?

Or is it that they are actually completely knowledgeable about the lag issue (and they are since we have so many threads in this forum and over in Tech), and they have decided NOT to address it? There is no 'they are WORKING on it'. If they cannot give we, their customers absolutely ANY information to provide a reasonable response to our not being able to play their game regularly without undue interruption, then they are not being responsible to US.

Regardless of whether the 'problems' may well take a long time to 'fix' - we'd like to know and have a timeframe, a reasonable timeframe so we can make our gaming decisions. Of course there are all sorts of variables in the situation. And most of our players are not demanding "FIX IT NOW THIS INSTANT", though that would be the most satisfying.

What I'd like to know is whether the North American subscriber population (*although I know it happens to players elsewhere as well...) has anything to look positively about in the reasonably near-future. Are there any forth-coming actions by SE that will provide an avenue for decent FFXIV ARR gaming within the parameters that other major mmo companies provide for North American gaming customers for the majority of the time during their subscriptions. Perhaps the North American subscriber base is not monetarily worth addressing the fix. I'm fairly certain most companies about to put out a name brand product in a major consumer market do a myriad of pre-production research projects with which, technological concerns are most definitely included for the geographic area concerned.

Are there temporary, short -term tech problems when gaming in most mmo's - I'd say I have experienced that. But those types of problems are either short-lived (a week or two...) or the communication from the company is forthcoming. This includes other issues as well such as RMT - which as an aside, apparently is another thing that SE 'can't help', cannot efficiently stop. I've heard so many explanations, descriptions, conspiracy theories and discussions about the gold sellers in these game forums, ingame and in real life conversations that I'm tired of. Yes, there are particular situations unique to each mmo gaming company related to the gold selling. However, if the other PAID subscription base competing games can manage to keep it at a low level of annoyance - and THEY DO, then SE should be held to the same bar. Period.