Game responsiveness/“server tick”

[Sebazy]

I’ve been loving FFXIV and really enjoying the PvP. I just wish the game was a bit more…responsive? I’ve seen this discussed around the internet, FFXIV combat has some sort of input delay or server ticks that make the combat feel just slightly slow. Can this ever be addressed? It’s noticeable in pve but extremely noticeable in pvp. The obvious comparison is WoW but also almost any other online PvP game. Skills/actions usually feel immediate. I’m FFXIV it always feels like there’s a slight delay?

Player to player interactions are just extremely sloppy in this game, it's also pretty evident in PvE when trying to land clutch heals on people who are about to die for whatever reason, you land your heal, you hear the effect go off, then they die anyway because the heal wasn't registered in time or the damage came sooner than your client thought.

My best guess is that there's simply a ton of processing delay between the server processing my actions and then the result of that being sent to the other player's client. There's also just about zero inter client prediction which is kind of odd given how much client trust this game has.

It's not as simple as just 'your ping's bad at all'. I used to PvP religiously on NA servers from the UK back in WoW and the only time it became an issue was in Arena with the extra latency making it harder for me to pillar LoS to break combat and drink.

Meanwhile, even with that extra cross Atlantic latency, when I slowed, stunned or rooted people, it took effect almost instantly with the effects clearly being visible on my screen. In FFXIV it feels like you root someone and they still get a second or so of movement before it's properly registered. Far more than ping alone accounts for.

IMHO Unless SE decide to take PvP seriously and up the rate at which combat is processed, I don't think it'll ever not feel 'sloppy'. Of course, this goes against SE's historical dislike for investing in high performance infrastructure to cope with such a change.

[Jeeqbit]

Player to player interactions are just extremely sloppy in this game, it's also pretty evident in PvE when trying to land clutch heals on people who are about to die for whatever reason, you land your heal, you hear the effect go off, then they die anyway because the heal wasn't registered in time or the damage came sooner than your client thought.

Yes, the actual process of applying it is very slow. It cycles through the party list or the enemy list and applies buffs or effects.

It's most visible in hunts or big fate bosses when 100 people are there. It cycles through a certain amount of people up to a maximum and if you are far enough away, the mechanic affects you last after watching all the others get hit in sequence for 10 seconds or it just doesn't affect you at all. You can stand in a donut aoe but if you are at the back of that 100 people you are safe because the game is too slow to process an attack on that many people and doesn't try.