Thread: .3 Second Positional Update Delay (Requesting Dev Response)

I'm secretly wishing (one can hope) that just before patch 2.1 which also adds PvP (presumably quite prone to lag issues, and the .3 behavior described here) they'll come out and say they've made X tweaks to the game.

Don't know what. Perhaps decrease the .300 to .150 or something. Heck, maybe put a client option where it will "attempt to communicate more often with the server - WARNING: This will use more bandwidth", so only players feeling affected by this will tick the option, and people who are fine will continue being fine, for whatever reason.

But since I live in South Europe, it'd better be fixed as an issue, since this, together with internet upstream circuits on the way to Canada being full at peak times, doesn't help things much, sadly.

Hoping for a response by Yoshi-P!

Anyone know if similar threads exist in the other language sections? I don't speak german/french/japanese so I can't check myself.

If not, then it would be great if someone could go ahead and create them so it gets more attention.

I believe I read something at some point where there was a similar thread in the JP section. That was a while ago (weeks) though. I don't read/speak Japanese, so I can't confirm.

I live in the very end of the planet, Chile, South America, At 900km from south pole.
My gaming experience has always been good, specially with games with lots of telegraphing, i have a mid-to-high latency, arround 190ms.
This is the first time i have so many problems avoiding AoE spells, its the first time i have shouted "But i was out of the fu**************** thing!"

If this is a problem for me, and it only happens in this game, then SE can do a few things to solve the issue it has on its servers or how their codes work, etc. This is the only MMO i have to stop my downloads to play without fear... and still... i got struck by random already avoided AoEs.

the french section has a thread on the server latency not exactly the same as this although they are suffering from multi second lag from that during peak hrs. the discussion was about 2 pages long. also the thread had no SE response to it.

Originally Posted by Spielman

That would simply band-aid the underlying root cause, which is that there is a built-in latency to every positional calculation in the game because of the way they have architected it. While I think SE would be reluctant to rearchitect how positioning is synced, it is really the only right way to handle it. Have the client only pass keystrokes, let the server figure out where you are. That same server also knows when the AOE will finish, so there should be zero lag between the two. This should also prevent the mass teleporting going on, as bots couldn't inject a new position into the position info being sent.

Band aid is better than just bleeding to death, though. Adding another 0.3s to all troublesome abilities would at least make this game appear to be like any other MMORPG in terms of consistency.

I definitely appreciate you bringing up this issue again. There are certain AoEs that seem almost impossible for me to move out of, like Magitek Reapers' "Magitek Cannon" in Castrum Meridianum.

I've also been having a lot of trouble recently with my combos on PLD. I will use Fast Blade, but the combo will have not registered, apparently because it was waiting on something from the server. Sometimes, I will use Fast Blade, and it will just... not even do anything. It won't have missed. It will just act like it never happened. Then I use Savage Blade, and it's out of combo, despite me having just used Fast Blade. So now I've got to start my combo over; meanwhile, the DPS are breathing down my neck and yanking hate away because I'm delayed.

If this were a free-to-play MMO, I would understand. However, I'm paying $10/mo (Legacy), so I expect SE to be able to handle the server load. You can't launch a subscription MMO that feels worse to play than some F2P Korean MMO. Otherwise, what's the point in me paying each month?

Originally Posted by Dano

thumbs up /10char
if the servers did have checks there wouldn't be teleporting bots in the game

Teleport is generally very hard to stop because the player has to be able to issue teleport commands (that's what Return is, for example) so all you need to do is issue similar commands. It's more productive to simply invest in better ways to catch teleporting guys and then ban the guys who do it, than trying to stop it.

The 0.3s check itself is not a problem. The problem is that the client in this game does no real work and has no authority. In any other game, what happens is server tells client "AE coming in 2.0s", and client knows when the AE ends, and it definitely knows the position of the player at that point, so it either tells servers "Player avoided AE!" or "Player got hit" depending on what it sees. It doesn't matter how much lag there is between the client and the server, because the client knows when the AE ends, and it definitely knows where the player is. The info can be incredibly delayed but it'll still match what you observe on your screen. In FF14, the 'Player got hit' decision is made by the server. All the client does is relay the player's position at certain times. Even though the client has a better picture of the player's position, it doesn't matter.

Originally Posted by Astarica

The 0.3s check itself is not a problem. The problem is that the client in this game does no real work and has no authority. In any other game, what happens is server tells client "AE coming in 2.0s", and client knows when the AE ends, and it definitely knows the position of the player at that point, so it either tells servers "Player avoided AE!" or "Player got hit" depending on what it sees. It doesn't matter how much lag there is between the client and the server, because the client knows when the AE ends, and it definitely knows where the player is. The info can be incredibly delayed but it'll still match what you observe on your screen. In FF14, the 'Player got hit' decision is made by the server. All the client does is relay the player's position at certain times. Even though the client has a better picture of the player's position, it doesn't matter.

Wouldn't that just let people make programs that tell the server a player avoided an AoE no matter where they are? There has to be some server-side validation.

It seems like this could certainly be a symptom of the 300ms delay, but it could also be due to SE's servers being so bogged down, they aren't processing the data in time. If that's the case, upping the update frequency would hurt them even more.