good bye FFXIV, thanks to the lag, you lost another customer.

[Edli]

To a certain extent, Latency has a bottom that you can not reduce it past because it is a product of speed and distance.

You cannot do anything about speed of light but you can reduce distance, that is how games reduce latency. When we play on private servers on counter strike for example we obviously pick the servers closer to us. I think there is a reason for that, oh yeah better latency. Having only one cluster of servers and in Canada was SE's choice. Saying SE has no fault whatsoever sounds strange to me.

[Synestr]

I think it is worth mentioning your rig / system / console as well.

When I first started playing I was using just a run of the mill family desktop and I noticed huge lag and latency issues. A lot of that was due to the lack of processing power and graphical strains. It got better as I adjusted settings but not good enough. Running T2 at that time I always ate AOE and lasers. I wen't and got a gaming laptop, issue disappeared.

I am in Europe as well and I play with an average of 114 ping. My getting hit by AOE's has gone down to maybe 10% of the time, either cos I was too slow, didn't GAS, or actual lag.

There is server lag as well. We can't rule that out. But OP, can't place it all on SE, they are merely the destination and not the vehicle nor highway. Take some responsibility and own up to some fault laying in your vehicle as well as the backroad you travel.

[ElHeggunte]

You cannot do anything about speed of light but you can reduce distance, that is how games reduce latency. When we play on private servers on counter strike for example we obviously pick the servers closer to us. I think there is a reason for that, oh yeah better latency. Having only one cluster of servers and in Canada was SE's choice. Saying SE has no fault whatsoever sounds strange to me.

The servers being closer wouldn't guarantee these issues would go away if the problem is being caused by something between you and the server you're trying to connect to. Proximity to a server can help improve latency and reduce your chance of having a problem because you have to go through less hops to communicate with the server. However, it doesn't matter how close to the server you are if there's still a bad hop somewhere between you and it. You could be five miles away or five hundred and it would make no difference if your connection has to pass through something like a overloaded node regardless.

If distance were the only factor you would never see people living on the other side of the world being able to connect NA/EU realms just fine while other players fairly close to the servers experience problems.

So blaming SE and their server location is still scapegoating and failing to grasp the real nature of the problem.

[Fornix]

You cannot do anything about speed of light but you can reduce distance, that is how games reduce latency. When we play on private servers on counter strike for example we obviously pick the servers closer to us. I think there is a reason for that, oh yeah better latency. Having only one cluster of servers and in Canada was SE's choice. Saying SE has no fault whatsoever sounds strange to me.

However, this isn't counterstrike. This isn't an FPS in which the timing between clicking of the fire button by player A next to instantly hits player B. We're rather talking about a game which has a slow pace, with a long GCD and a lenient exit timing on AoE skills. There's roughly 2 - 3 seconds or more for AoE skills to go off. They're preceeded by turning animations or other animations in most occasions. And they're heavily predictable.

Standard distance based latency in this game is not a reason to fail. Not even to be getting close calls. There's plenty of time given to avoid. And that is even with taking into account that I'm not playing from within the USA, but Europe.

If latency gets too high to make it unplayable, the problem lies elsewhere. Bringing the servers closer wouldn't have to offer any solution in that. As the ping reduction is only going to be very minimal. It comes down to roughly 1ms per 100km. So even if you bring the servers 3000km closer towards you, you're only going to see a reduction in latency of roughly 30ms. If due to a poor ISP, terrible home networking or whatever other reason out of SE's control you're current latency is e.g. 450 ms then consequently there's barely going to be an impact.

[Muzetta]

Goodbye, person I don't know.

[Synestr]

Hmm...possible diagnosis: PEBCAC resulting in a malicious iD-10-T error.

[Edli]

The servers being closer wouldn't guarantee these issues would go away if the problem is being caused by something between you and the server you're trying to connect to.

The furthest away the servers are the higher the chance of encountering a bad hop along the way. No it wouldn't guarantee that every single issue would disappear but some would. When game developers create the infrastructure and the netcode their goal is not to make a 100% perfect scenario because that is impossible. They try to improve it on their side as much as possible.

What is happening on this thread is OP blaming SE, the others in here blame OP when in fact there are three options. It may be OP's fault, SE's fault or even both. However everyone just picks one option blindly and sticks to it with a passion. Yes there is a chance it might be SE problem, completely ignoring it is ridiculous especially when we know about this game server infrastructure.

However, this isn't counterstrike. This isn't an FPS in which the timing between clicking of the fire button by player A next to instantly hits player B.

Why does that matter? Latency is latency. All you're saying is, this game is laggy but not a big deal because is a slow game. My counter strike example was about how game developers usually reduce latency and that is done by reducing distance.

[HiranaiVashai]

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.2.9200]
(c) 2012 Microsoft Corporation. Alle rechten voorbehouden.

<C:\Windows\system32>
[SYSTEM@LIGHTNING]$ tracert 199.91.189.74

Tracing route to 199.91.189.74 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.178.1
2 7 ms 8 ms 7 ms 5354A001.cm-6-5c.dynamic.ziggo.nl [83.84.160.1]
3 8 ms 8 ms 5 ms gv-rc0052-ds101-vl201.core.as9143.net [213.51.161.33]
4 8 ms 7 ms 7 ms gv-rc0011-cr101-ae12-0.core.as9143.net [213.51.158.187]
5 42 ms 16 ms 7 ms asd-tr0042-cr101-ae8-0.core.as9143.net [213.51.158.12]
6 10 ms 10 ms 7 ms ae7.ams60.ip4.gtt.net [77.67.64.61]
7 100 ms 104 ms 100 ms xe-7-3-0.mtl10.ip4.gtt.net [141.136.106.106]
8 97 ms 98 ms 101 ms ormuco-gw.ip4.gtt.net [216.221.156.110]
9 98 ms 103 ms 100 ms 192.34.76.2
10 100 ms 97 ms 99 ms 199.91.189.234
11 103 ms 101 ms 98 ms 199.91.189.74

Trace complete.

<C:\Windows\system32>
[SYSTEM@LIGHTNING]$ tracert 199.91.189.30

Tracing route to 199.91.189.30 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.178.1
2 8 ms 8 ms 16 ms 5354A001.cm-6-5c.dynamic.ziggo.nl [83.84.160.1]
3 8 ms 18 ms 9 ms gv-rc0052-ds101-vl201.core.as9143.net [213.51.161.33]
4 6 ms 6 ms 5 ms gv-rc0011-cr101-ae12-0.core.as9143.net [213.51.158.187]
5 10 ms 14 ms 8 ms asd-tr0042-cr101-ae8-0.core.as9143.net [213.51.158.12]
6 11 ms 8 ms 10 ms ae7.ams60.ip4.gtt.net [77.67.64.61]
7 100 ms 102 ms 101 ms xe-7-3-0.mtl10.ip4.gtt.net [141.136.106.106]
8 103 ms 99 ms 98 ms ormuco-gw.ip4.gtt.net [216.221.156.110]
9 100 ms 99 ms 99 ms 192.34.76.2
10 99 ms 99 ms 101 ms 199.91.189.234
11 101 ms 99 ms 99 ms 199.91.189.30

Trace complete.

What's this lag you people are talking about?

Here are my tracert results to the Lobby server in NA (199.91.189.74) and Balmung server (199.91.189.30). As you see, the ping responses I got were < 105 ms from both destinations, with 1 hop taking 100~110 ms to respond. For the NA crowd, sorry to say this, but I live in Europe, not the US or Canada or where ever in the North American continent. It's been stated that it can depend on where you are geographically. It doesn't mean distance per se but in quality of connections. If it mattered how close you lived then I should be having issues left and right while NA players should be pointing and laughing at 'my lag'.

I'm not here to white knight SE. But here's the fact, while I do notice some latency (which is pretty natural to online games) it hasn't been so bad to a point where I couldn't play. Save for 1 recent day. I've seen people from NA lag a lot more often and extreme than I have ever noticed myself. I had a spike here and there, which have been as often as once every 3 months. But rubber banding never happened until 'that day'. It was one of the few days before the patch when SE announced a several hour maintenance, not due to their servers, but their datacenter's ISP going down for maintenance. The servers themselves weren't even actually down during that maintenance, preserving the current game state that would have reset from a restart (e.g. Odin/Behemoth timer not resetting, hunt marks timers not resetting, market board wish list <= (What gave it away to me) not clearing. The two days before it is when I had severe rubberbanding issues and inability to stay logged in for more than 5 minutes, if getting on at all. The next day a similar thing happened to another group of people from the NA, though still not everyone was affected with the issue, my connection being close to normal at that point.

Any actual connection issues I experienced in the last year have been caused by my own connection dropping/hampering or my own ISP going into maintenance. I'm suspecting that NA in general has issues in the network. If someone from your side of the pond tries to transfer files to me, it might take a minute. If I send something, it takes mere seconds. I have even uploaded a file of close to 1 gigabyte to 4 people simultaniously with their download speed capping before my upload bandwith was affected.

I do agree on one thing OP and a few others mentioned. It's the 'need to use' third party programs like WTFast or PingBuster (2 common names I've heard) to get a decent connection. I think it's absurd even. But SE doesn't require or insist you need those programs/services. Because that is just it, another service and it isn't related to SE in any way. What those programs do is allow you to have an encrypted data connection directly into their network commonly termed VPN (coined by Microsoft for 'Virtual Private Network'). Those services charge you for it, and it was mainly designed for business-to-business or home-to-business connections as if it was a local (and private/privacy sensitive) network. What they do is put a proxy at the other end that has access to stronger network lanes, which might actually make your direct connection to those services, 'skip a few hops' you might normally do in exchange of making 'a hop' to them. As stated on PingBuster's site, they provide a 3 day trial (which is severely short impo) but the service doesn't work for 'everyone' because 'it depends on the connection speed between you, your ISP, and from ISP to their servers'.

I'm actually suspecting there might be more going on than meets the eye when it comes to lag and connection issues. That fragment from "last week tonight" might be satire packaged news, but it's still based on true news. Not here to brag about my connection speeds or lack of lag or white knight SE. But I do want to make you aware that it shouldn't make sense that a European player has better connection performances a lot of NA players. Think about it, my data has to go through either space or "a frikkin' ocean" while yours shouldn't need to.

[ElHeggunte]

The furthest away the servers are the higher the chance of encountering a bad hop along the way. No it wouldn't guarantee that every single issue would disappear but some would.

I know, that's exactly what I said in the rest of the post that you didn't quote.

When game developers create the infrastructure and the netcode their goal is not to make a 100% perfect scenario because that is impossible. They try to improve it on their side as much as possible.

Of course, but that doesn't really have very much to do with where the servers are located as far as it pertains to this subject. SE could have servers evenly distributed all over the world and the OP could still be experiencing problems that aren't necessarily related to the servers. Someone somewhere is always going to have a bad hop to the server regardless of their proximity to it. So trying to specifically blame SE's server location without proof (you know, ping tests, traceroutes) is still scapegoating.

What is happening on this thread is OP blaming SE, the others in here blame OP when in fact there are three options. It may be OP's fault, SE's fault or even both. However everyone just picks one option blindly and sticks to it with a passion. Yes there is a chance it might be SE problem, completely ignoring it is ridiculous especially when we know about this game server infrastructure.

The side blindly throwing stones are the ones who keep insisting on blaming SE contrary to how the internet works and all the evidence provided. The counterargument says it's most likely (not that it necessarily is, just that it's the most likely cause) a local ISP problem or a bad hop, but that you also need to use available tools to narrow it down and communicate with the necessary parties in order to possibly get it fixed.

I don't think it's asking too much for people to do some research before playing the blame game and doing nothing to help alleviate their own situation. It's difficult to help those who don't even want to help themselves.

Why does that matter? Latency is latency. All you're saying is, this game is laggy but not a big deal because is a slow game. My counter strike example was about how game developers usually reduce latency and that is done by reducing distance.

It matters because not all games and services experience latency the same. An amount that could be crippling to one game might not even register on another. I don't pretend to speak for Fornix, but I believe that was his point.

[Fornix]

Why does that matter? Latency is latency. All you're saying is, this game is laggy but not a big deal because is a slow game. My counter strike example was about how game developers usually reduce latency and that is done by reducing distance.

It matters because the minimal latency which FF XIV has does not come with an impact on gameplay. And as such the latency is acceptable. We're talking latency rates of roughly 100 ~ 140/160 ms for most European players. A fractional delay on skill timings of approximately 5% or less. For US players this will be even better.

If players complain that lag is what killed them, there's either one of two things going on:
- There's high latency due to an issue somewhere in the routing towards the servers, out of SE's hands; or
- They just plain and simple aren't skilled in playing.