Game Freeze

[Anida]

@Anida: If FFXIV crashes and you have to completly shutdown your entire PC, then something heavily is wrong with your hardware, e.g. overheating or unstable RAM. FFXIV just shows these errors, maybe others games dont. (battlefield for example is known to be a good ram test)

No, it's not my PC. The game ran fine prior to the release of Dawntrail. Even the first couple of days after Dawntrail, it ran fine. Then it didn't. And it doesn't lock up my PC every time. It's the same as everyone else has been describing.

[Anida]

This doesn't occur with any specific frequency. The game is simply running fine, then it just stops. Frozen. No warning symptoms. The only solution is closing it out and relaunching it, unless it also froze my PC, then a forced system shutdown is required. There has been an error message only once and it was a list of FFXIV drivers. I didn't write them down. The rest of the times it's froze, there were no error messages.

Today, however, was an entirely different issue. Latency! In 24 man raid (specifically, Puppets Bunker - I don't know about others) the time it took for skills to visually go off after hitting the macro was ungodly. Most all party members were experiencing this. Character movement would freeze until the skills visuals went off. Talking to NPC's, the NPC would just freeze during the conversation. All I could do, barring closing the game, was wait until it started responding again as my character was locked in.

I want to emphasize, the game ran fine when Dawntrail early access first released. The only issue, and it was expected, was loading times. Performance has just gone downhill since the first couple of days.

Update:

Regarding my reply to the moderator, after having crippling latency in all 24 man raids, continued stuttering, and freeze, I decided to do a restore on my game last night via the cog icon on the launcher. After the game redownloaded the patch(es), 93+ gigs worth, with only one disconnect error about halfway though, I logged back in.

The game ran much better. Not perfectly, as I did the Lost City of Rabanastre and there was still some minimal latency in skill animations going off, but nothing crippling (just annoying). There was no stuttering or freeze during the time I was on (it was late). I also did the first dungeon of DT (taking my alt through the story, as I have completed it on my main). The dungeon went smooth.

Since the game ran fine for the first couple of days or so after DT, then had performance degradation over the next several, we'll see if it happens again. I'll stay in touch here and I hope this helps someone else with like issues. I know others have tried restoration, and even reinstallation, to no avail.

Note, I made minor changes to my graphics settings as well. Specifically, I turned off all skill animations for all players except myself (it was already set to limited) and I toggled "hide players around quest npc's" to on. That's all I did. Character models were set from maximum to normal before I did the restore and it made no difference at that point.

[Anida]

Update:

Regarding my reply to the moderator, after having crippling latency in all 24 man raids, continued stuttering, and freeze, I decided to do a restore on my game last night via the cog icon on the launcher. After the game redownloaded the patch(es), 93+ gigs worth, with only one disconnect error about halfway though, I logged back in.

The game ran much better. Not perfectly, as I did the Lost City of Rabanastre and there was still some minimal latency in skill animations going off, but nothing crippling (just annoying). There was no stuttering or freeze during the time I was on (it was late). I also did the first dungeon of DT (taking my alt through the story, as I have completed it on my main). The dungeon went smooth.

Since the game ran fine for the first couple of days or so after DT, then had performance degradation over the next several, we'll see if it happens again. I'll stay in touch here and I hope this helps someone else with like issues. I know others have tried restoration, and even reinstallation, to no avail.

Note, I made minor changes to my graphics settings as well. Specifically, I turned off all skill animations for all players except myself (it was already set to limited) and I toggled "hide players around quest npc's" to on. That's all I did. Character models were set from maximum to normal before I did the restore and it made no difference at that point.

After running well last night after restore and for a few hours today, the stuttering gradually came back and got worse over time, until... you guessed it... the game froze. Relaunched the game and it started off fine, but the stuttering, again, gradually came back after about 45 minutes - an hour. Logged out before it got bad again.

[Votraftur]

Good morning! Thank you for posting in the Final Fantasy XIV Technical Support Forums.

Please try the following:
- Update and reinstall the drivers for your graphics card and sound drivers (if applicable).
- Please try adjusting/lowering the resolution.
- Please try running the game as an administrator.
- Perform a clean boot by opening the task manager and select the 'Start up' Tab. Disable everything.
- Please be sure that Final Fantasy XIV is installed to the C: Drive. (If Steam version, make sure both the game and Steam are installed on same drive)
- Please be sure to disable or remove any overlays (Discord, Steam, NVIDIA etc.) as they may interfere with startup.
- Make sure that the Windows OS is fully updated.
- Verify installation files (Steam)
- Reinstall game (If steam version, try uninstalling and reinstalling both the game and Steam)

Thank you once again for visiting the Final Fantasy XIV Technical Support Forums!

[Archie824]

Hey I just want to pitch in that there's a ton of people on Reddit that's having this exact same issue including myself that's occurring just after Dawntrail pre-release.
Reinstalled all drivers and everything. I have a 4070Ti with 7800x3D and easily get 120 fps+ on 4k max resolution. Even after scaling down to 1440p and capping my 200+ fps to just 60 it's still freezing. Probably not much help because I'm not posting my log, but you should know you're not alone in receiving this issue.

[Lefthy]

Good morning! Thank you for posting in the Final Fantasy XIV Technical Support Forums.

Please try the following:
- Update and reinstall the drivers for your graphics card and sound drivers (if applicable).
- Please try adjusting/lowering the resolution.
- Please try running the game as an administrator.
- Perform a clean boot by opening the task manager and select the 'Start up' Tab. Disable everything.
- Please be sure that Final Fantasy XIV is installed to the C: Drive. (If Steam version, make sure both the game and Steam are installed on same drive)
- Please be sure to disable or remove any overlays (Discord, Steam, NVIDIA etc.) as they may interfere with startup.
- Make sure that the Windows OS is fully updated.
- Verify installation files (Steam)
- Reinstall game (If steam version, try uninstalling and reinstalling both the game and Steam)

Thank you once again for visiting the Final Fantasy XIV Technical Support Forums!

None of this works. I have now tried everything. It is no coincidence that I have played for years without such an issue. It only started immediately after the Dawntrail release. No other game have issues.

[roycevanle]

Wanted to comment on this thread and echo that this is happening to me. It recently started happening to me within the last 1-2 days.

[Dolfo]

I'm joining this thread as well.

I've been experiencing these issues since the release of Dawntrail, and I'm still amazed that there has been no communication from Square Enix about this problem.

I've noticed many threads discussing similar issues, so it's definitely a known problem by now.

The most repeatable issue I encounter is during dungeons or raids, where everything suddenly stops. My character can still move, although they remain in a static pose, and I can use abilities, but no animations trigger. Additionally, I can't see any enemies, though I still take damage and can see the targeting arrows of other party members.

Sometimes, waiting for a minute or two allows everything to "catch up," and I'm back to playing as if nothing happened. Other times, I'm forced to use Task Manager to end the game, which causes my computer to slow down significantly. Attempting to restart the computer often results in it getting stuck on the "Restarting..." Windows screen, forcing me to perform a hard reboot, which isn't healthy for the system.

[Anida]

I'm joining this thread as well.

I've been experiencing these issues since the release of Dawntrail, and I'm still amazed that there has been no communication from Square Enix about this problem.

I've noticed many threads discussing similar issues, so it's definitely a known problem by now.

The most repeatable issue I encounter is during dungeons or raids, where everything suddenly stops. My character can still move, although they remain in a static pose, and I can use abilities, but no animations trigger. Additionally, I can't see any enemies, though I still take damage and can see the targeting arrows of other party members.

Sometimes, waiting for a minute or two allows everything to "catch up," and I'm back to playing as if nothing happened. Other times, I'm forced to use Task Manager to end the game, which causes my computer to slow down significantly. Attempting to restart the computer often results in it getting stuck on the "Restarting..." Windows screen, forcing me to perform a hard reboot, which isn't healthy for the system.

Sounds just like what happens for me. I get it primarily in alliance raids and sometimes dungeons. It's annoying and often crippling. Especially when it's affecting the graphics of mechanics the bosses use, delaying them and such. It stopped last week, but has gradually started again. My own skills don't visually go off when I hit my macros for several seconds. My character just freezes and will just glide around if I move her until the skill graphics go off. Bosses skills go off several seconds before the graphics do. It's really bad in Aglaia, but affects most raids.

[Archie824]

Man I was really hoping this latest release fixes it, but nope immediately after logging in.