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

[Clavaat]

-snip-

In regards to your point about other Data Solutions/CDNs: I don't pretend to know exactly what their contract states, however the game is only 5ish months old. If SE signed a contract with Ormuco, it is certainly longer than this, so no they cannot work with anyone else. That being said, up until this issue, neither Ormuco nor Level-3 were causing any issues. SE may be able to threaten a breach in contract case and sue them if this goes beyond a specified amount of time, but we have no way of knowing what that is (see my post about workflow conditions in tech).

As ReplicaX stated, this started occurring when SE increased the polling rate. This is what everyone wanted and, in theory, was an improvement on the system. However, bugs like this occur, as Level-3 could handle the upgrade. The only guarantee I can give you that they are working on it is money: SE would -not- want to bleed money by paying for what they are not getting out of Ormuco's communications, and thusly, Level-3's. FFXIV has pulled SE out of sheer bankruptcy into profits, and they would not squander that by losing customers because of someone else's actions. That being said, SE doesn't have a team to go out and fix a Data Solutions issue, so they have to wait for Ormuco/Level-3 to find the problem and fix it, or rollback to 0.3s polling which would anger people again.

[Tiggy]

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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?

The internet is a large system, and many of the individual pieces are very localized and expensive. In most cases there may only be one company nearby that you can work with. Much in the same way most people only have 1 cable provider to choose from in order to get a cable modem. It is very possible there is a local monopoly and they simply don't have a choice. This would mean their only recourse would be to move the servers to some other location in the world. This would be costly in both time and money.

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.

It isn't likely they are ignoring it. It is more likely that SE is contractually obligated to keep this information between just themselves and the companies involved. It's a public relations issue that tends to be in these contracts. That means we won't hear anything about it, and one day it will probably just start working better.

RMT - which as an aside, apparently is another thing that SE 'can't help', cannot efficiently stop.

On Balmung it has improved drastically over what it was near launch. One tell every 3 days isn't nearly as bad as the ten I used to get when I ported to a town.

All in all there isn't much they can probably tell us. We've seen them take the positional update and improve it to .1 so we can clearly say that we know they are aware of the problem. We just need some patience in waiting for the companies to fix their networks. SE themselves can only push those companies but so hard. In the end SE isn't the one that actually has to fix the problem, and that's going to cause unknown delays in getting it resolved.

[Laraul]

Everyone is using traceroute, seeing a ping spike or packet loss and assuming that hop one of the Level 3 routers is responsible. But it only appears when requesting a response from that particular server. Not the SE server.

This is what I'm getting by using a simple ICMP ping test....
C:\>ping -n 30 -l 1492 199.91.189.36

Pinging 199.91.189.36 with 1492 bytes of data:
Reply from 199.91.189.36: bytes=1492 time=88ms TTL=244
Reply from 199.91.189.36: bytes=1492 time=91ms TTL=244
..........
Reply from 199.91.189.36: bytes=1492 time=89ms TTL=244

Ping statistics for 199.91.189.36:
Packets: Sent = 30, Received = 30, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 88ms, Maximum = 93ms, Average = 89ms

If the level3 hops we're impacting server response times it would show up using this test. It's not. Therefore Level3 is not responsible.

I think you people are trying to find something that isn't there.

[CrAZYVIC]

Well in my country we paid 7 dolars per 200 mbs download and upload speed...

If they change the entire game delay to 0.1 instead of 0.3. This will reduce the lag a lot.

But they cant do this. Or their "Low quality servers will Crash and will become unstable". (Dont we all remember the horrible start this game had in the "2013" gentlemen, because server overload issues? lol)

Im using a programs for reduce the ping, i have 200 mbs of upload/download. I have all Rules in my router in order, i have a Godly Gaming PC, my ping is 45 - 49 to diabolos servers and i still lagging LOL.

They Need a better server infrastructure. I have played, FFXI,TERA, WOW, AION, Pso2... This is the only game where i lag.

[Versiroth]

As someone else mentioned, they should design all of their AOEs like this... (Also, I apologize in advanced for my poor paint skills)



That way, you'd still be fully punished if you're lazy, but being on the move would be more forgivable than it currently is. And people with lag wouldn't get one shot when they're barely still in the AOE area.

[Yukiko]

In regards to your point about other Data Solutions/CDNs: I don't pretend to know exactly what their contract states, however the game is only 5ish months old. If SE signed a contract with Ormuco, it is certainly longer than this, so no they cannot work with anyone else. That being said, up until this issue, neither Ormuco nor Level-3 were causing any issues. SE may be able to threaten a breach in contract case and sue them if this goes beyond a specified amount of time, but we have no way of knowing what that is (see my post about workflow conditions in tech).

^this!

The solution is to change game mechanics, even just temporary, but its been refused from SE because content will become incredible easy!

[ReplicaX]

As ReplicaX stated, this started occurring when SE increased the polling rate. This is what everyone wanted and, in theory, was an improvement on the system. However, bugs like this occur, as Level-3 could handle the upgrade.

It would suck if the polling rate had to be rolled back as it has helped many players.

Also to make something clear on my previous post for folks. Changing the polling rate on the server maybe a simple command or change in code. However, its affects are no easy task to balance out the best result. Which is why SE has been monitoring server performance and likely using other collection methods.

[warren-ragnarok]

Yoshi P doesn't (want to) understand the real issue here. If the game can check player position against AOE on client side (like most MMORPG if not all), people will be fine even with 200-300 ping. But that will be a massive job to do.

granted im not a game programmer or anything, but i think the main reason they dont enable client side checks is client side checks are easier to exploit....but thats just a guess....

ive also had the lag issue since 2.1 started, with a 50Mb down 25Mb up connection with verizon fios, pingzapper cleared it up for me. (im in the los angeles area)

[Clavaat]

granted im not a game programmer or anything, but i think the main reason they dont enable client side checks is client side checks are easier to exploit

This is one reason. However, I think the big reason is the push for technology to move to server-side programming in general. It works for businesses, why not MMO's? This allows for more dynamic programming, as the server handles a lot of the workload, putting less stress client-side. (i.e. more, not all, users have accessibility to this game, regardless of PC specs). In theory, this is a fantastic push forward technologically speaking, but not necessarily in practice. If they fix this bug, and retain the 0.1s polling, we would see a very clean game.

[ReplicaX]

Everyone is using traceroute, seeing a ping spike or packet loss and assuming that hop one of the Level 3 routers is responsible. But it only appears when requesting a response from that particular server. Not the SE server.

In the last 45 days I've run 1000s of traceroutes. Using mixed sample sizes 10-1092, very relaxed 5 to 15sec per trace and all on 50 trace tests.

The end result is simple: Packet loss at the Destination, forget all of hops for a second. Packet loss at the Destination aka SE server.

Regarding Hops in all my testing the results are the same: All Verizon T1 = zero packet loss. Verizon/Level 3 Exchange hops = zero packet loss. Level 3, Ormuco, Destination = Packet Loss

That is the simplified results, my route is only 12 hops and approx 300 miles to the server. Latency avg is 50-60ms, spike difference avg is 210ms. Data is being dropped and Verizon has been harassed to high heaven on the issue by many. Their T1 Network Engineers regardless of how many tickets or another tech to review end result is the same. We contacted the Level 3 Server Team and to this day Level 3 will not update Verizon.

I'm not saying I'm right or wrong, just sharing my experience.