Latency is a major problem and it's far past time we addressed it.

[Trendkiller]

With the current iteration of classes, the game feels virtually impossible to play optimally in it's current state, every class I've played so far has major hang ups that are completely reliant on ping. Machinist requires 1.5 weaving multiple times every few seconds, Ninja requires multiple clipping weaves and feels horrid, even dancer has clipping issues with it's opener if you don't have low latency. SAM requires doubleweaving with 2.06 GCDs (Yes I'm aware this a choice, but they knew this was going to happen when TP was removed)

I know people will say "use a VPN" but even with a VPN these issues are still there. Different zones have different latencies, and classes will play differently from zone to zone, ever try using a dummy in Shirogane vs. somewhere like Summerford? Massive difference, and it's been super noticeable in the new areas, and dungeons.

Further, why should we have to have a VPN to even begin to play properly? It's bogus, no other game has the latency issues this game has, if you're above 50ms which is everyone outside of Japan and California, you might as well back it up on ever playing a class optimally, there's no 1.5 weaving for East Coasters, not to mention our Central American friends who've been fighting 150+ latency for years.

This isn't a non-issue, what's the point of playing if you can't play fluently? It doesn't feel good, it's not fun, it's a horrible clunky experience. Shouldn't the end goal be fluid consistent combat that you can enjoy from anywhere? Not just an area roughly the side of California or Japan? Most of us live several Japans and California's worth of distance from the servers.

For anyone who says it's personal choice to play in these optimal ways, why? Everyone should be on an equal playing field, not by accident of birth in certain locations, or living situations, it's idiotic to think someone should actually consider moving to enjoy a game, though I'm sure people have done it.

I don't know of any decent solution, I know other companies have servers in different geographic locations, most games have multiple data centers across the country, notably they'll have a data center in Chicago or Texas, you know, close to the geographic center of the continent? I know SE has some sort of deal with NTT, a Japanese company working with a Japanese company, makes sense right? But there has to be SOME way to alleviate all of this, be it server locations, class designs, server-client architectures, something.

I love this game, I love the community, the past 6 years have been a mostly great experience, and speaking from a very much ignored group of players, please care about us, we're not second class, we're not worthless, please consider our issues and do something to help us out.

[Drayos]

I think tbh it’s a case of very hard to really manage, it’s very hard to add high CPM to a job without causing ping problems.

A lot of people will bring up WoW in this case but they are forgetting before WoW had all the servers it did have there were problems. GW2 and ESO both have problems bar swapping during high latency.

Slowing down jobs is fine, but it will cause a lot of players to get bored in jobs as it’s already a complaint that jobs in this game are already “too slow” for some players.

You have to remember in most games cpm/apm is above 60 while this games is 45 at absolute highest. It’s almost to impossible to cater to both sides of this.

However I do disagree with it being with every job tbh, monk, redmage, dragoon, BLM and bard are all pretty ping friendly as they don’t have a lot less OGCDs (dragoon does but it sits on a 2.5 gcd intentionally so single weaving isn’t hard, apart from their newest ability which has a slight clipping issue)

They do need to kinda cater to both audiences, but that will come with some jobs not being ping friendly.

equalising the problem would only lose players realistically although I agree this expansion does seem to have a lot more jobs which aren’t ping friendly compared to SB.

[Drayos]

I think tbh it’s a case of very hard to really manage, it’s very hard to add high CPM to a job without causing ping problems.

A lot of people will bring up WoW in this case but they are forgetting before WoW had all the servers it did have there were problems. GW2 and ESO both have problems bar swapping during high latency.

Slowing down jobs is fine, but it will cause a lot of players to get bored in jobs as it’s already a complaint that jobs in this game are already “too slow” for some players.

You have to remember in most games cpm/apm is above 60 while this games is 45 at absolute highest. It’s almost to impossible to cater to both sides of this.

However I do disagree with it being with every job tbh, monk, redmage, dragoon, BLM and bard are all pretty ping friendly as they don’t have a lot less OGCDs (dragoon does but it sits on a 2.5 gcd intentionally so single weaving isn’t hard, apart from their newest ability which has a slight clipping issue)

They do need to kinda cater to both audiences, but that will come with some jobs not being ping friendly.

equalising the problem would only lose players realistically although I agree this expansion does seem to have a lot more jobs which aren’t ping friendly compared to SB.

Pressed it accidentally on the silly phone -.- and dunno how to re edit posts on phone haha

Adding additional servers as you recommend is likely the only way to try fix the ping issues, but I don’t rly know if they’d implement this sorta direction anytime soon.

I don’t know if it’s a cost problem or if there’s more barring them from doing it, but I know oceanic is still also lacking servers so to play the game as a Aussie becomes ridiculously hard to a point their going onto Japanese servers to try fix it as much as they can.

I don’t rly know how they could fix the issue is it isn’t other reasons why they haven’t had more servers built, I dunno what things could rly interfere with that.

[Taranok]

There's another way. Trust the client more. Verify everything server-side, as per normal, but allow the client to act on its own without needing the server verifying anything before it fires abilities. Then, if possible, add the feature to compare time stamps of when an ability fired, the latency, and then retroactively apply effects. So run the server up to 200-500ms in the past and insert abilities into it as they are used for the server simulation, only running damage calculations in realtime.

This does 2 things. The first is that, with the client free of needing the server to ping back before anything happens, you instantly cancel spells from movement (no stutter stepping, sorry), but the second you do anything, it happens instantly. Cancel a spell? Gone. Use an oGCD? Instantly registers. The client times out the abilities, the server verifies that what happened is able to happen.

The second half is what's known as "server state rewind." And what it does is it means that if you, as a client, cast Hallowed Ground, but died before the effect went off, you would instead live because whatever killed you would not have hit you as far as the server is concerned until after the ability goes off. Gone would be the days of Bene being eaten but not doing anything.

There are 2 major problems with this approach, however. The first is that, you implicitly trust the client but explicitly distrust it, which means the server has to have some wiggle room to allow for the client to have ping fluctuations on ability timings, but still attempt to flag overly suspicious behavior (E.G. someone constantly firing off abilities 100ms faster than its cooldown should allow). This is just the tip of the iceberg, but it's reasonable to say there will be cheaters, but that the majority of innocent players will see a massive improvement no matter where they are, so it's worth the risk.

The second problem is even bigger though, as it would require a fundamental rewrite of how the servers are coded. Which, let's be honest, it needs to happen for the simulation end for other serious issues, such as the nature of Snapshotting existing, which is a problem from a design and balance perspective and needs to be addressed at some point. But if you're fundamentally gutting the server code, you can fix these tiny back-end issues that cause major problems. However, I don't even need to say anything for everyone to know that this is a massive, major change and is not to be taken lightly. But if it is done, and done well, then you can make it so abilities happen when the client says it happens, not when the server does. You just need to carefully check to make sure what the client's commanding is happening at a time that makes sense, since you can cheat the server if you add too much wiggle room for ping fluctuations and someone just throttles stuff constantly.

But the overwhelming majority of ping issues come because the client is explicitly untrusted, everything is first verified on the server side, then the client is allowed to act only after the server gives the go-ahead.

If you just loosen up the security while still keeping the server-side ends of it, and trust the client more, then at the very least everything will feel a lot snappier and ping won't be nearly as dramatic on largely stable connections.

[RoyalBeef]

The fundamental flaw is that MMOs in their core were never meant to be played like realtime multiplayer shooters. It's basically still a D&D game,dividing things into combat rounds etc. Reaction times and the ability to rapidly press buttons will always cause issues within that system. Imagine if the D&D dungeonmaster was sitting there with a stopwatch being like "well, you had .5 seconds to react to the NPCs action, you were too slow, you're dead." lol

[lulunami]

The fundamental flaw is that MMOs in their core were never meant to be played like realtime multiplayer shooters.

The most responsive shooter I have played was 128 tick CS:GO servers. Higher tick servers means more updates per second and more responsiveness. They use a hybrid client-server side net-code model. Other competing shooter games like Overwatch used 20 tick servers for awhile, and they were a bit laggy. Games like Call of Duty use peer to peer servers so they are a lot more laggy and inconsistent to play. If you are trying to be an amateur or enthusiast, the net code is very important because you do not want to feel like the game is predominant based on luck but skill and commitment.

In MMOs, it is a problem of using more expensive servers for so many players. Higher APM jobs like BRD typically have 45-46 APM at the high end of play. Slowing down every job down to 30 APM like WHM may not be good for players that like faster GCDs.

[DrWho2010]

also there are issues of isp-isp packet losses along the route your isp takes to the game servers. there's nothing you can usually do about those. unless you really try to make a big stink about it with your isp and get ppl on your side?

[Roda]

What I wouldn't give for a server placed in the middle of my continent instead of on the complete opposite side. T^T

[Laur1x]

I'll never understand why they moved the NA datacenter to California.

Look at what Riot did for League of Legends. The best course of action for majority of players was to have a server in either Chicago or Dallas, so practically no one within the US is playing at 100+ ping.

I remember playing FFXIV from the East Coast when they used to be in Montreal and everything felt buttery smooth. Now everything feels terrible. I know this wasn't fair to West Coasters, which is why I'm saying they should have been moved somewhere in the middle. Going from like ~30ms to ~120 really does make me question why I play every time I resub.

[Kurando]

I'll never understand why they moved the NA datacenter to California.

The best course of action for majority of players was to have a server in either Chicago or Dallas, so practically no one within the US is playing at 100+ ping..

Because NA players are not the only one that use the datacentre. People from all over the world connect to them (North/South America, Asia, Oceania, EU) that it's necessary for SE to look at the greater picture.