So... we're still stuck with 13-year-old netcode?

[Umbrasin]

Now that the Japan Fanfest has concluded and we've heard all of the announcements, there's been a very glaring omission. The pace of fights in Dawntrail has increased dramatically. Having participated in Savage and Ultimate it's obvious that the game is bursting at the seams and not able to keep up with these faster paced fights. We've got job overhauls on the horizon and "PvP changes" in the works (no specifics), but this is still the only MMO in existence where gameplay feels like you're stuck in molasses and the animation lock penalizes you for your latency twice over (an obvious bug that still hasn't been fixed to this day). Many players install mods such as XIVAlexander and NoClippy just to make the gameplay bearable because SE refuses to acknowledge, much less address, the game's longstanding lack of responsiveness.

Reaction based skill expression is nearly impossible because of the terrible netcode. You can and will be killed by each fight's arbitrary snapshot timings. This is supposed to be a fun, intuitive game but for difficult fights it's devolved into rote memorization. I've played WoW, Guild Wars 2, and other MMOs. This is the only game where I feel like I'm fighting the netcode more often than my own mistakes. I can roll out of an AoE in GW2 and consistently not be hit. But in FFXIV it's which side of the server tick coin you land on that determines whether you win or lose.

As for the PvP changes announced, most play it due to the class kits being fun, not because the game is responsive (because it's not). Anyone that's tried PvP has seen first-hand how awful the gameplay is, being killed by ranged attacks 3+ seconds after you've hidden behind a wall. Being snapshot killed because the game cannot keep up with your "instant" Recuperate pushes. There was a networking change in PvP a few patches ago that somehow made latency and casting worse. I consistently get an "out of range" message on enemies that are literally in my face because the server can't track player positions properly. This is not fun, it's sad.

We've had a graphics overhaul, but where's the netcode overhaul? Yes, networking is a pain. But other studios such as Blizzard and ArenaNet know it's necessary to keep up with maintenance and constantly improve netcode where possible. But FFXIV has been sitting here for 13 years with barely any netcode improvements and it is painfully obvious in any fast paced fight. And here we are with Evercold around the corner, bringing even faster fights that the current netcode will absolutely not be able to handle. I'm not asking for everything to be fixed overnight, but it would be amazing to hear that these issues are at least acknowledged or being worked on. Wasn't the graphics overhaul part of the plan to keep FFXIV running for another decade? Shouldn't modernizing the netcode be part of that plan too?

[Canadane]

It's almost certainly going to work more like the Occult Crescent jobs and not some action RPG.
So while I won't say the netcode hasn't ever been a problem, you're more looking at 1 second buff timers to proc something, rather than direction action like a single player game has.

[Jeeqbit]

I've often played with 180 ping and not had issues running out of an AoE. Ever. If I fail to run out of an AoE, it is my fault, for not running out of it.

In fact, I do run out of AoE at the last second sometimes. Because there are AoEs that are telegraphed by the environment or where you are meant to do maths to figure out where it will land, and then the indicator appears only for a brief moment so that you know if you calculated it wrong. I sometimes just run out of that - successfully, because I can, even at 180 ping. Not all of these can be run out of that late, but there are a good number of them that can.

As anyone that understands snapshotting knows, it happens when the cast bar completes. So you typically have around 3 or more seconds to run out which is an eternity. Even in cases where there are a sequence of snapshots, there is typically about 2-3 seconds between each individual one going off. I remember this being an extremely useful thing to understand in P9S's rockbreaker mechanic, where you didn't have to calculate a miniature safe spot but rather just do each of 3 mechanics one at a time, if you understood the snapshot order.

That doesn't mean that the network code couldn't be improved. I mean, they entirely use TCP, even for packets that are safe to be lost because information becomes outdated quickly.

It's not just the netcode though. It's the staggered processing of the game overall. One example is that if you go into Sastasha, pull all of the enemies and then use your AoE on them, you see the server slowly iterate through them over 4 and a half seconds. Another example is when a lot of people fight Bone Crawler in The Peaks, it does a knockback and you watch the server slowly iterate through all of the players there. It's painfully slow. It can't be the hardware, because even a 16 year old personal computer would be faster than this. These are server machines that can do billions of iterations per second, per core (and they have lots of cores). I've considered that maybe this is just my game client and SE not batching up closely-related packets such as "knockback all players", but over the years, evidence is that it's actually this slow on the server's end because of it considering the positions I see on my screen.

Another issue is animation delay. An example is that Bard's Sidewinder snapshots instantly, whereas Bloodletter or Refulgent Arrow take ages, and it's an intentional snapshot delay to accomodate the lore of how the attack works. In reality they should all just snapshot the moment you press them and the animation be allowed to be overwritten by subsequent abilities. Gameplay is more important.

[Ath192]

As anyone that understands snapshotting knows, it happens when the cast bar completes.

Not always. Some are animation based. I do think netcode is so-so. But it's not bad enough to break the game. It's just not good.

[Jeeqbit]

Not always. Some are animation based.

Even in those cases, it's just that they hid the cast bar. You still see the "executes attack" in the battle log if enabled, which is essentially what you see when a cast bar completes. In fact there are fights where, even though there isn't a cast bar, it still says things like "readies" in the battle log anyways.

There are a few cases where things don't line up with the cast bar, so my guess is the cast is just a fake cast and then the real (non-castbar) attack follows it.

[Umbrasin]

I've often played with 180 ping and not had issues running out of an AoE. Ever. If I fail to run out of an AoE, it is my fault, for not running out of it.

In fact, I do run out of AoE at the last second sometimes... Not all of these can be run out of that late, but there are a good number of them that can.

Yes, the game does work well on slower fights with cast bars that specifically indicate when a mechanic resolves. You can play with the ground markers and step out at the last fraction of a second and that almost always works. My post is more focused on Savage and Ultimate fights because mechanics resolve faster and do not generally have cast bars.

For example, in phase 1 FRU on spreads my partner and I would still blow each other up even when we were nearly halfway across the arena from each other. We eventually settled on a "stutter step" approach, moving away from each other over a longer period of time through the AoE slices in order to keep that from happening since the game can't keep up. That's just one of many, many examples I've had to adapt to in Dawntrail.

Another issue is animation delay. An example is that Bard's Sidewinder snapshots instantly, whereas Bloodletter or Refulgent Arrow take ages, and it's an intentional snapshot delay to accomodate the lore of how the attack works. In reality they should all just snapshot the moment you press them and the animation be allowed to be overwritten by subsequent abilities. Gameplay is more important.

It's a combination of animation delay and travel time. Many skills, and even heals, have travel time. Unfortunately, when both are combined you can easily be waiting 2+ seconds (depending on the ability animation + travel time + latency) for an ability's damage to finally take effect. It feels like that was added as part of fight design to make the latency less apparent, but it frequently adds frustration of hitting your "instant" ability and the animation takes so long that the boss has already disappeared/gone invulnerable - zero damage. It definitely feels outdated, so adjustments would be welcome there (possible in Evolved mode).

AoE damage and healing do propagate unusually slowly which becomes is very noticeable when there are many enemies. I don't know if it's an intentional limitation or something that could be improved, but the staggered application is another area where the combat feels outdated.

[Mecia]

a better tickrate is more important to me than any graphical update but its not glamorous so it doesnt get attention

[Selsix]

The spaghetti code and ancient netcode of this game will never get updated. These aren't things that fixing would net significant applause from the community since they aren't overly apparent. The amount of time and investment they would take to correct are so high other aspects of the game would suffer and considering the game in general is already suffering? Not gonna happen.

[ZephyrMenodora]

I’ve had several experiences when fell over and 1 shot by a mechanic and my dead body is in no way inside the unsafe area. Literally dead in the same spot others are standing. No idea why that happens.

[Thurmnmurmn]

I’ve had several experiences when fell over and 1 shot by a mechanic and my dead body is in no way inside the unsafe area. Literally dead in the same spot others are standing. No idea why that happens.

Just means you got hit before getting to the spot. But the damage didn't register until after you got there. It is a pretty unintuitive system.