Yoshida-san - GLOBAL Servers and Balancing Tweaks Instead of Regional Servers

[Colino]

FFXIV is going to have a greater need for low latency than a game like EVE, as described in the post above this one.

I'll take the word of the guy that has been playing EVE for years and not yours, thank you very much. I'm also fairly certain you haven't played ARR yet, so your consideration of it absolutely requiring the lowest latency possible is simple conjecture.

You're perfectly ok with using completely different games and genres to make your point yet when someone else does so you call them out on the games being different (even when EVE is much closer to FFXIV than TF2 is).

Make up your mind already!

And why is everyone pushing this on the whole JP ONRY thing? This has absolutely nothing to do with JP ONRY, I don't give a rat's ass about the whole JP ONRY and I don't care if my server will have 1 or 1 million JP players on it, what I care about is playing with both my EU and NA friends and OPs proposal to label certain servers as Global would work just fine, WHY are you arguing against it when it doesn't affect you in any way?

[Onizuka]

Weak minded? I wouldn't have this problem if this game had regional servers.

Please tell me what's so special about "playing" with japanese.

Hello, kitty! What a nice open-minded post I've to read this afternoon!

I might stay here and list you all the reasons, one by one, and talking about the Great Japanese Community on Excalibur, how they're united and also have multiple characters to do cross-World events (check Lucky Bancho's blog of Durandal to know what I'm talking about), how they've always been nice and accept to group me as a Monk when most (not all, of course, i know several good adventurers from the US and Europe as well) of the english-speaking adventurers go on with the same static Jobs even for Ifrit, let's not speak about Garuda.

I could talk about this and many other examples of all the beautiful adventurers I had with the japanese community, but I'll just let this pic explain from the last one (Lalafell Summit, from Lalafell Shelldy's journal):



I'm the Super Subliman in the middle.

To know more, you should also check my journal, where I mostly speak about my own adventurers, but also about the ones with the japanese community, starting from last year's Firefall Faire. Hells, I'll post them all:

- Firefall Faire Grand Finale

- Craziness during All Saints' Wake

- /wave!

- Petyr Winsome Xmas Surprise in Limsa Lominsa

- Starlight Celebration and new Shposhae Adventure

- Battle against the cult of the Lambs of Dalamud

- First Adventure in the Dzemael Darkhold

- Subligar Day – サブリガデイ

- The Journey so far – Part 1 – Crafting & Gathering

- The Journey so far – Part 2 – Battle & Exploration

- Memories of Bodhum – ボーダムの想い出 (Video)

- Excalibur's Adventurous Dawn

- Fifth Moon Adventures

- Back to the Origins

- Summer Adventures


Open your mind, adventurers, and don't let a few bad experiences tar everyone with the same brush.


P.S.: Needless to say, I agree with Kiara's post: regional servers would just segregate the community and we should all be moved together to the new servers.

[Seiver]

Which confirms latency is an issue. It doesn't matter if the complaint isn't about the geographical location; the complaint is lag and most are not technical enough to figure out what the cause of it is. The largest contributing factor to lag is your physical distance from the server. The most effective way to reduce this latency is by having it closer to the client communicating with it. Optimizing server performance and increasing its response time grants additional latency reduction; this usually is the second largest contributing factor. There's a reason why regional servers have become the standard.

i lol at what you think you know about eve. the lag in eve comes from some of the most powerful servers in gaming not being able to keep up with 3-4k people in one place each doing 10 things at one time. it has nothing to do with the servers being in UK. i have been playing eve for 9+ years so i safely say that location has vary little to do with the laf and more to do with the coding and the servers that the game runs on.

[Aenarion]

Which was exactly my point; I consider PVE to be regular gameplay; PVP is competitive gameplay. So we agree on this.

Nope, actually this just goes to show how you know nothing about Eve. EVERYTHING in Eve involves PvP, the only difference is the degree - There's no such thing as non-competitive gameplay in Eve.

Which confirms latency is an issue. It doesn't matter if the complaint isn't about the geographical location; the complaint is lag and most are not technical enough to figure out what the cause of it is.

Maybe not on this forum, as you guys are clearly demonstrating, lol

ping and server-side lag are VERY different beasts that acts VERY differently that also requires completely different methods to mitigate.

The largest contributing factor to lag is your physical distance from the server.

False for FF14 AND Eve. The largest contributing factor to lag to FF14 is it's ridiculously bad and laughable server architecture, and the largest contributing factor for Eve is server stress when a node gets overwhelmed by unexpectedly high number of users, but even there, CCP have managed to create a system to virtually eliminate the worst of the impacts and makes it very playable.

Neither of these would be alleviated in the slightest even if you lived right next door to their servers.

The most effective way to reduce this latency is by having it closer to the client communicating with it. Optimizing server performance and increasing its response time grants additional latency reduction; this usually is the second largest contributing factor. There's a reason why regional servers have become the standard.

/facepalm

There's no one-size-fits-all when it comes to servers and what works and what don't when it comes to designing servers for online gaming, each case is different depending on the needs from game style, mechanics, size etc. In FF14's case, optimizing server performance is the single most important factor in improving FF14's performance. Latency by comparison is minor at best. Of course, since no one's played ARR, it's hard to say how important latency will be, but somehow I doubt ARR is gonna turn into a FPS

I'm simply answering why particular server architectures (as well as server compensation techniques) aren't as great as they appear to be and pale in comparison to a regional server setup.

But you're skipping over the most important issue of all - how it affects FF14 specifically, and like I just said, server architecture is by far and away the sole cause of the vast majority of "lag" in FF14, which regional server will do absolutely nothing to fix.

[Alhanelem]

I'll take the word of the guy that has been playing EVE for years and not yours, thank you very much. I'm also fairly certain you haven't played ARR yet, so your consideration of it absolutely requiring the lowest latency possible is simple conjecture.

You're perfectly ok with using completely different games and genres to make your point yet when someone else does so you call them out on the games being different (even when EVE is much closer to FFXIV than TF2 is).

Make up your mind already!

And why is everyone pushing this on the whole JP ONRY thing? This has absolutely nothing to do with JP ONRY, I don't give a rat's ass about the whole JP ONRY and I don't care if my server will have 1 or 1 million JP players on it, what I care about is playing with both my EU and NA friends and OPs proposal to label certain servers as Global would work just fine, WHY are you arguing against it when it doesn't affect you in any way?

1) My mind was made up long before you made these comments. Different games do have different requirements, and I was only naming other games to illustrate that fact- NOT to say "FFXIV is going to be just like TF2/EVE!"
2) That being said, based on information being given in the live letter and other recent events, it is quite clear that FFXIV is going to be a faster-moving game than it is now. Not holy shiat adrenaline junkie twitch hyper gameplay, but faster than current. As the pace of a game increases, its latency requirements become tighter. So, unless Yoshi P is lying to us, what I said isn't far off base.
3) PVP generally needs the lowest latency possible, regardless of game speed. Difference in ping is always an advantage for the lower pinger, and some people don't seem to realize that ping can impact your gameplay by more than just making it so you have to react 0.1 seconds faster.
4)finally, I don't even know why I should have to justify this. Better performance is always better. If you don't feel like you "need" it, then by all means stay on a server that's far away from you. The rest of us that want the most optimal experience possible will take whatever steps possible to optimize it, even if that means shaving 50 milliseconds off our pings.

[WHS]

Too many threads aside, I don't think asking for servers labeled for players who want to play with players from multiple regions is asking for much. Just plunk a couple extra servers in the Japan data center, and call 'em Global.

Putting a global label on the server won't guarantee that it will be filled with jp and en people 24/7. It is just a lablel and won't help at all. If you want to be on a server with en and jp people then make the game a prison and lock everyone into the same server with no choices in life.

[Aenarion]

1) My mind was made up long before you made these comments. Different games do have different requirements, and I was only naming other games to illustrate that fact- NOT to say "FFXIV is going to be just like TF2/EVE!"

Actually, you brought up TF2 to say how important latency is, despite it being a FPS, which has completely different requirements than MMOs. If that was supposed to show how different games have different requirements, you've certainly went the opposite direction when making your arguments.

2) That being said, based on information being given in the live letter and other recent events, it is quite clear that FFXIV is going to be a faster-moving game than it is now. Not holy shiat adrenaline junkie twitch hyper gameplay, but faster than current. As the pace of a game increases, its latency requirements become tighter. So, unless Yoshi P is lying to us, what I said isn't far off base.

Nobody is saying it's not going to be a faster paced game, but you guys are the one making the insinuation/acting as if it's going to be some twitch game where every last bit of ping will mean the difference between life and death. Which is ironic considering server architecture should be the top thing everyone who wants better performance from FF14 needs to worry about.

3) PVP generally needs the lowest latency possible, regardless of game speed. Difference in ping is always an advantage for the lower pinger, and some people don't seem to realize that ping can impact your gameplay by more than just making it so you have to react 0.1 seconds faster.

Yes, but the degree to which it matters is also largely dependent on how the game mechanics function, which we know nothing about yet.

4)finally, I don't even know why I should have to justify this. Better performance is always better. If you don't feel like you "need" it, then by all means stay on a server that's far away from you. The rest of us that want the most optimal experience possible will take whatever steps possible to optimize it, even if that means shaving 50 milliseconds off our pings.

Because it's not as clear cut as you're trying to make it out to be. By your logic, Eve would also be better served if CCP created multiple servers for each region, as that would certainly further reduce latency. Yet if they do this, it would completely destroy Eve overnight, and that's not an exaggeration. Of course, in this regard Eve's design as a single-shard game has much to do with it, but this is just to counter your argument that "Better performance is always better", because it isn't, especially once you factoring in the cost.

Whether you like it or not, FF14, much like Eve, has a functioning global community. While you and others may not give two **** about it, there are others that do. You're certainly entitled to want to have better ping at any and all cost, but realize that there are many would consider to the cost to be too great.

[Bigpurpleharness]

I seriously can't believe people are complaining about no longer being penalized with latency by not being located in Japan.


Here's a thought, if you want to play with JPs as an NA, pick a JP server, and do that. Your latency will be the same as before. NA >> Japan.


I really don't understand people.

[Alhanelem]

To an extent i understand people's grievances. But I still feel that it will be better in the long run.

[Zyph]

I'm pretty late to this thread, but OP thinks people have no idea how servers work. Really, in this day and age, are people really going to go "Hey that server's a GLOBAL SERVER, it must be inside the CENTER OF THE EARTH."

I have little faith in people, but I know that disguising JP servers as Global isn't going to fool many people.