Rivenroad (Hard) Discussion and Strategies Thread

[ShadowCadja]

Latency's a bitch.

Like latency is an issue in this fight...

[Penguin]

Like latency is an issue in this fight...

Latency makes a difference in every aspect of this game, even just having less delay on using abilities can make any fight easier because its easier to get a good damage rotation which allows you to hit higher dps numbers, which make fights shorter, which make them easier etc etc.

Just watch a video of a JP dragoon and a NA/EU dragoon side by side and you will see what i am talking about.

Not to take anything away from the JP linkshells because scorpion clearly went above and beyond in this patch.

[ShadowCadja]

Latency makes a difference in every aspect of this game, even just having less delay on using abilities can make any fight easier because its easier to get a good damage rotation which allows you to hit higher dps numbers, which make fights shorter, which make them easier etc etc.

Just watch a video of a JP dragoon and a NA/EU dragoon side by side and you will see what i am talking about.

Not to take anything away from the JP linkshells because scorpion clearly went above and beyond in this patch.

Never said it doesn't make a difference of course it does but saying latency is an issue whatsoever in this fight to be able to beat it before everyone else is being pretty ignorant.

[fusional]

well, the fight isn't as heavily movement-based as ifrit extreme, but backline still needs to stay between ~13-14 yalms away from van darnus at all times (but never as far as 15). being less than 13 yalms away and getting hit by chariot isn't nearly as much of a problem as being 15+ yalms away and getting hit by dynamo. it hits you hard, drains your mp and heals darnus to boot. latency certainly is a factor in staying just the perfect range from darnus at all times, considering animation lock and the like, and every time people get hit by dynamo he heals quite a lot.

the more he heals, the longer the fight gets. the longer the fight gets, the more likely you are to time out and fail. and even with perfect dps and not getting hit by any dynamos, he'll still take most groups at least 24-25 minutes to kill.

is latency the biggest factor? not at all. but it makes a difference in a pretty vital area of the fight, and as a result i think just as we're seeing with ifrit extreme (though obviously to a lesser degree)- more JP LSs will beat darnus faster than their NA counterparts. and perhaps i'm terribly wrong about this, but i tend to assume the skill levels of the JP and NA LSs on average are about equal. so for there to be such a huge disparity in the number of JP/NA LSs clearing content, and the speed with which they do so...

well, i can't really see much of any reason for that outside of latency. /shrug

do JP players deal with latency as well? yes, absolutely. is it as bad as NA latency? no, and while NA latency is only "~300 ms" worse, keep in mind the effects are cumulative- every single action, every movement... tack on another 300ms delay vs. JP. does the latency make it impossible? absolutely not. many NA LSs have proven that.

unfortunately, it's difficult to judge when this broken client version is all we have to go by. but i predict with the 2.0 client and the abolition of latency issues across all regions, we're going to see the overall gap in JP vs. NA progression close considerably. it should be pretty even then.

though, again, as peng said- we can't take anything away from Scorpion at all. they played out of their minds and deserve major congratulations.

[Zdenka]

Latency in this game right now is terrible for non-japan.

For example in Ifrit Extreme during nails, he can pop a plume on a LS member you are near. You start outside the plume range, but accidentally hit left, facing your character left for a split second before running forward. You then get hit by the plume that you never entered the entire time, but hitting left for that split second the server actually considers you running full speed left for the next 2-3 seconds, and thus under the plume.

This is also silimar in the Raven. Lets say you are at ~16 yards and want to move to ~14, so you tap forward a few times, but then get hit by Chariot while you are still behind everyone. The server is still considering you as running for 2-3 seconds until latency corrects itself to your right position. This makes it very difficult to micro manage your position due to how the server handle's the latency.

Also, effects, mobs, etc appear 1.5-2.5s later on screen for NA players but the only real concern about that in Raven is the meteor's. Having them spawn 2s earlier (and slightly higher) on JP screens might not be a real advantage but it still exists. This also takes away time in Ifrit X because our nails appear 2-3s later. This latency is easily seen by watching Ifrit Extreme video's and timing how long effects take to detonate compared to NA. I also tested this in Good King Moogle Mog Phase1, our average kill time of all moogles was 1.7s quicker than a JP video but they reached Astral Flow a good 30 seconds before us. Its because our mobs took 3 additional seconds to appear, and 3 more seconds to register the killing blow to signal the next one.

And as Peng stated, JP can fire off abilities much quicker than us... you can see this in Gathering/Crafting fairly easy or time your rotation vs theirs on a video. This allows for much quicker responses, and higher DPS, threat, HPS etc

Are these game breaking? No, not really. Theres nothing latency does that cannot be overcome. Does it give NA/EU a disadvantage? Yes, a slight one in most cases (a rather large one in Ifrit X, but really that's the only fight). Does it mean current fights are unwinable? No not by any means, we just have to play smart and around the lag but saying it doesn't make a difference in any fight? Well that's just an untrue statement.

-edit-
The 1.5-3s is from observing JP videos in comparison to personal runs. Its also easy to tell its the cutting point due to combo's often not triggering when they have 0, 1, or 2s left on their timer because the server has already fully counted it down, but your client is 1.5-3.0s behind.

[carraway]

Latency's a bitch.

It is for reasons gone into by other posters above, but it's definitely not the reason why Scorpion beat us to the punch. I'm sure they worked harder than us and/or analyzed more rigorously.

[ShadowCadja]

Latency in this game right now is terrible for non-japan.

For example in Ifrit Extreme during nails, he can pop a plume on a LS member you are near. You start outside the plume range, but accidentally hit left, facing your character left for a split second before running forward. You then get hit by the plume that you never entered the entire time, but hitting left for that split second the server actually considers you running full speed left for the next 2-3 seconds, and thus under the plume.

This is also silimar in the Raven. Lets say you are at ~16 yards and want to move to ~14, so you tap forward a few times, but then get hit by Chariot while you are still behind everyone. The server is still considering you as running for 2-3 seconds until latency corrects itself to your right position. This makes it very difficult to micro manage your position due to how the server handle's the latency.

Also, effects, mobs, etc appear 1.5-2.5s later on screen for NA players but the only real concern about that in Raven is the meteor's. Having them spawn 2s earlier (and slightly higher) on JP screens might not be a real advantage but it still exists. This also takes away time in Ifrit X because our nails appear 2-3s later. This latency is easily seen by watching Ifrit Extreme video's and timing how long effects take to detonate compared to NA. I also tested this in Good King Moogle Mog Phase1, our average kill time of all moogles was 1.7s quicker than a JP video but they reached Astral Flow a good 30 seconds before us. Its because our mobs took 3 additional seconds to appear, and 3 more seconds to register the killing blow to signal the next one.

And as Peng stated, JP can fire off abilities much quicker than us... you can see this in Gathering/Crafting fairly easy or time your rotation vs theirs on a video. This allows for much quicker responses, and higher DPS, threat, HPS etc

Are these game breaking? No, not really. Theres nothing latency does that cannot be overcome. Does it give NA/EU a disadvantage? Yes, a slight one in most cases (a rather large one in Ifrit X, but really that's the only fight). Does it mean current fights are unwinable? No not by any means, we just have to play smart and around the lag but saying it doesn't make a difference in any fight? Well that's just an untrue statement.

I'm EU so I think I know how much latency affects gameplay and these fights, and while everything you said is true, I just don't see it making any difference at all in this fight if people know where to go, when to move, etc when Darnus does X or Y, everytime someone gets hit by something is like always because they didn't repositioned themself when Darnus moved or something and very, very rarely because there was latency of like 1s or 2. But I guess you probably gonna disagree and claim other stuff everyone already knows about the latency issues, so I will leave it at that. ^^

[Zdenka]

I'm EU so I think I know how much latency affects gameplay and these fights, and while everything you said is true, I just don't see it making any difference at all in this fight if people know where to go, when to move, etc when Darnus does X or Y, everytime someone gets hit by something is like always because they didn't repositioned themself when Darnus moved or something and very, very rarely because there was latency of like 1s or 2. But I guess you probably gonna disagree and claim other stuff everyone already knows about the latency issues, so I will leave it at that. ^^

Sorry, I may have gone overboard with the examples but my point was just that latency has an effect on current gameplay, in some cases ways we wouldn't normally think about, and that this is true for every fight in the game even if its effect is minimal and that the only way we can reduce its effects is to adapt certain stratagem's that JP players would never have to employ or to be aware that even though something doesn't make sense (not being in a plume at all and getting hit by it, for example) that we was NA/EU players know what caused that so we can make sure to avoid it in the future.

[Deceptistar]

Never said it doesn't make a difference of course it does but saying latency is an issue whatsoever in this fight to be able to beat it before everyone else is being pretty ignorant.

thats why here you work hard in putting as much third party programs (that arent related to botting) you can get away with.

[Timo]

Congrats BG!