cannot connect to character lobby

[Jschrieber]

Hi everyone. I have a problem. I have had Final Fantasy 14 ARR since before launch and it ran fine. I then decided to have a PS3/PC account and still everything worked fine. I took about a week and a half off from the game and when I came back to login on myPS3 I had to patch the game. It looked like the patch was going to take a while so I switched over to my PC and at some point forgot I was logged in on PS3. It was only a few minutes before I realized that could be bad so I logged off windows. I went back to my PS3 and hit play on the launcher and the game started showing the beginning cut-scenes and then the start screen.... Start was greyed out and could not be pressed and obviously I was unable to get to the character select screen after about 30 seconds I got a blackscreen with the following error in it: "The Lobby Server Connection Has Encountered an error." I get this on PS3 and PC regardless of anything I do on my side. I've uninstalled games and then reinstalled I started running each system through network cables, I have contacted support 3 times in the last 3 weeks and they always send automated help like resert your router and yesterday I was told to use the technical support forums I will be sending them a reply based on my luck here but at this point I am not very hopeful. If anyone could help please do.

[Ed_N_Ants]

Did you delete the patched off the ps3 and then reinstall them...? They could be causing the hang up everything else I could suggest you have already done... Unistalling and reinstalling the game ect... But the patches are also game code and there may be a corrupt file in their so try to delete and redownload those...

[Jschrieber]

Thanks, I did in fact delete all game datahaving anything to do with FF14ARR on my PS3, and scrubbbed as muchas I could from my PC before installing.

[Raist]

Since it has become an issue with both the PS3 and the PC, you might want to look at what is going on with your network hardware. Try using the PC to ping a couple IP's known to be used by the client to see if they are reachable. If you know the IP the client normally uses, try that as well as these two:

199.91.189.31
124.150.157.158

If those ping OK, than you likely are getting out and back fine on standard ports--something may be hanging up when XIV is trying to use it's custom port assignments. Powering down your router (remove power cable) for a bit and then rebooting it might get it behaving again. Some routers just periodically have these little "brain farts" where certain features like DHCP and such just hang up and the "quick fix" is a hard reboot. Largely why you are frequently told to reboot all your network devices, from your modem forward to your PC as a first step... quick attempt at letting the devices recover from glitches on their own first. If you've made any changes to your router that may address NAT, Forwarding, firewall/security/etc., might want to undo them and test again.

If you were using static port forwarding before attempting to use the PS3, might want to try undoing that since you are running the client on two different machines now. Some routers can manage the traffic just fine without setting up specific forwarding rules. Could also try switching to UPnP port forwarding (note you will need to enable it on both the PC and PS3 game clients if you go that route).

[ZohnoReecho]

Try changing DNS. https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/

[Jschrieber]

Tried changing DnS as the above poster mentioned. No go. Raist, can you tell me how to ping IPs

[Raist]

It is a built in command that can be run from the Command Prompt. How you get to the command prompt can vary a little depending on your version of Windows. It will be nested in various places in your programs listing, but it is easy to get to using the Search or Run boxes. If you have the normal Start button (or running something like Classic Shell in Windows 8), click that and type the letters "cmd" in either the Run or Search box and press the <enter> key.

If you are using the Metro interface of Windows 8, there are two ways to search for it. Can switch to Desktop, mouse over as deep as you can into the lower left corner until a thumbnail of the metro desktop pops up, right click that and click Search or Run. If you want to stay in Metro, open the Charms menu on the right side of your screen. You can use the shortcut command (Windows key+C), or mouse over to the lower right corner of your screen to the [-] icon (a row of icons should break out) then mouse up to see the full charms panel with words and icons. Forget how it pops up on a touch screen--think its a 2 or 3 finger swipe from the right edge of the screen. Click "Search", type the letters "cmd" and press the <enter> key.

Sorry, haven't tinkered with Windows 8.1 yet, mostly because of all the problems being reported about it. But, it should at least follow the Charms method, or have at least a search box off the new start button similar to how it was in older Windows releases.

You should now see a small window with a black background and white text showing your windows version, and a folder path with a flashing cursor. Should look sort of like this:

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.2.9200]
(c) 2012 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Users\UserName>_

Type the command "ping" followed by the IP address or website name, then press the <enter> key . For example:

ping 199.91.189.31 <enter>
ping www.google.com <enter>

It should spit out text something like this for a successful ping:

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.2.9200]
(c) 2012 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Users\UserName>ping www.google.com

Pinging www.google.com [74.125.131.106] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 74.125.131.106: bytes=32 time=57ms TTL=46
Reply from 74.125.131.106: bytes=32 time=44ms TTL=46
Reply from 74.125.131.106: bytes=32 time=42ms TTL=46
Reply from 74.125.131.106: bytes=32 time=44ms TTL=46

Ping statistics for 74.125.131.106:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 42ms, Maximum = 57ms, Average = 46ms

C:\Users\UserName>

If you don't see it give a 4/4 send and received type of response, there are connectivity problems reaching that destination. Double check you entered the IP or web address properly, correct if necessary and run it again if needed.

Type the word "exit" and press <enter> to close the command prompt.

[Furlamseere]

It seems that there have not been any further posts about this concern being an ongoing issue. Because of this, we are considering it to be resolved. If this does continue to be a concern, please create another thread to further discuss resolutions or contact the Support Center at support.na.square-enix.com for assistance.