Quote Originally Posted by Vhailor View Post
Or.... (c) don't excessively rely upon server-side execution of every action. Latency is 'felt' in FFXIV (and FFXI before it) far more than any other title I've ever played. This is something SE can change, and it's of particular importance since a key reason for GCDs in the first place is to minimize the feeling of latency. They're failing in that regard with FFXIV because of their network code. Making this change could also ease the amount of data transmitted between client and server, which could potentially allow SE the ability to reduce the actual GCD.
A MMORPG is required to rely upon server-side execution of every action because otherwise players can just roll over other players and monsters in PvP and PvE content by turning nagle off. That is what happened in Mabinogi.

The server has a timestep. The sever queues everything received, sorts it into half second timesteps, and sends player "update movement" steps every half second. Meanwhile it updates player stats, and the results of actions every 3 seconds. So a 2.5 second GCD is 5 timesteps on the server at microsecond precision to allow spell speed and skill speed adjustments. If the client commands could be trusted we wouldn't have a bot problem at all. So that is why everything is done on the server.

And believe me, some companies have already tried and failed at the "render everything in the data center" already.

http://iphome.hhi.de/eisert/papers/sigmap07.pdf

And nVidia is also still pushing this cloud gaming stuff http://www.nvidia.ca/object/cloud-gaming.html

The reason FFXIV is "laggy" at all has more to do with the nature of the north america internet. Korean and Japanese games aren't routed half way across the world, thus they don't experience anything like North America does. The fact that FFXIV works at all with the current choreographed battle dances is something of a miracle. Games with better "real time" play, simply don't work in North America because the NA's internet is rubbish-tier compared to Japan and Korea. All NA internet is good for is watching cat videos.