Serious Performance Issues (latency/server response time)

[Raist]

Again....need to pay attention to the progress of the casting bar.

And not trying to "sweep it under the rug". Been working on the latency issue specifically for this game for well over a year now. Not just for myself...but more so in trying to get people on track to get their issues addressed. My issues pretty much got a permanent fix of sorts back at the first of the year, but occasionally we have to revisit things because the traffic patterns sometimes shift faster than TWC catches up and I have to shoot them an email. But, I haven't had to do that since sometime back around Easter....they've been pretty spot-on for the most part with catching it. A few times I've started generating the reports to email them, and then the modem reboots on it's own and everything is cleared up again before I actually get around to typing up the email.

A lot of people complaining about the very same things you have been were suffering from lag (that includes the landslide dilemma)...but it is beginning to sound like your issue may actually be two-fold, or perhaps just that one mechanic that you may be overlooking---the proper indicator of when an action is taking place. The proper indicator is the casting bar. If your timing is aligning properly there, then it may simply be attributable to your latency.

People with good latency that are moving appropriately according to the proper indicators seem to be doing fine.

Here is a little video I found on YouTube that demonstrates it somewhat. Pay attention to the progress bar compared to what is going on on the screen. The same principles apply to the markers and such you are complaining about:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAGNizT-6xo

[Synovius]

Again....need to pay attention to the progress of the casting bar.

And not trying to "sweep it under the rug". Been working on the latency issue specifically for this game for well over a year now. Not just for myself...but more so in trying to get people on track to get their issues addressed. My issues pretty much got a permanent fix of sorts back at the first of the year, but occasionally we have to revisit things because the traffic patterns sometimes shift faster than TWC catches up and I have to shoot them an email. But, I haven't had to do that since sometime back around Easter....they've been pretty spot-on for the most part with catching it. A few times I've started generating the reports to email them, and then the modem reboots on it's own and everything is cleared up again before I actually get around to typing up the email.

A lot of people complaining about the very same things you have been were suffering from lag (that includes the landslide dilemma)...but it is beginning to sound like your issue may actually be two-fold, or perhaps just that one mechanic that you may be overlooking---the proper indicator of when an action is taking place. The proper indicator is the casting bar. If your timing is aligning properly there, then it may simply be attributable to your latency.

People with good latency that are moving appropriately according to the proper indicators seem to be doing fine.

Here is a little video I found on YouTube that demonstrates it somewhat. Pay attention to the progress bar compared to what is going on on the screen. The same principles apply to the markers and such you are complaining about:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAGNizT-6xo

I really do appreciate your willingness to help but, at the risk of sounding conceited, I've been raiding for a very long time and am currently in world top raiding FC and my static in particular is working on AS4 atm. We are all very, very aware of castbars, when to move, when not to move, how to take advantage of the horrible performance, etc. This is not a player issue here. I'm fully aware that when I get down to 1s or even 1.5s on my Firestarter, I shouldn't use it because it's going to throw me into the GCD without any AF stacks or even the damage from the Fire III despite the animation and particle effect going off. You are right that, in FFXIV (and not in WoW for example), we have to react perhaps a full second or two before a cast finishes because, if we don't, the game will consider our characters as being present at our previous location when the cast goes off instead of our new location we are standing at when we get hit by whatever ability came out. Lots of abilities in this game suffer from the same issue. For example, to bring back the Charge ability for WoW Warriors, it is a long-distance charge similar to Shoulder Tackle by Monks in FFXIV. In WoW, however, if you are really good, you can time a stun mid-charge even though the entirety of the charge's animation takes place over about 1-1.5 seconds. If you were to stun this Warrior with a very well-timed stun mid-charge, the Warrior would be stunned in place IMMEDIATELY where you stunned them. Contrast that with "charge" type mechanics in FFXIV. Taking our own job of BLM for example, if you are standing in an AoE and you use Aetherial Manipulation to someone who is outside of that AoE, even if you are visually WAAAAAAAAY out of the AoE (by 200-300ms at least), the game will still consider you as being present at your source location instead of where you actually, visually were when the AoE went off. I've died like this in the past many times wherein I've Aetherial Manipulated to someone and after my movement has already stopped and I'm standing next to my AM target, I die and my corpse is lying some 25 yalms away from the AoE that exploded. It does not matter if I have flawless routing directly to Gilgamesh for this with 10ms latency. The same effect would occur because the game does not seem to update positions as often as other MMOs. The same issue with AM occurs with Dragoon jumps, Monk Shoulder Tackle, Ninja teleport, DK charge, and any positional abilities like these.

And, FWIW, the video you showed about "casting while moving" is something I do every single raid. I am always "stutter stepping" between my casts when I have to move. The fact that this is possible does not mean it's a good thing. If it were the case that this were possible solely because code existed to allow for movement yet complete casts after a certain % of the cast has completed, that would be one thing. But the reason this is possible is not solely due to that - it's due to the fact that even if I move when my Fire IV is at only 70% full, the cast will usually complete successfully.

Further, how is it that you think I am suffering from "lag" in this game and that's actually my issue when you say you don't experience this performance issue at all yet my connection to the server is better than yours both in total hops as well as latency? My impression that you are simply conditioned to accept and deal with the poor performance whereas many of us who came to FFXIV from other MMOs were immediately (and still) blown away by the poor performance of this game's servers.