Red Ring of Death!

[Sunarie]

For example, the other day I told someone they should do a route and ping trace, they replied with results from speedtest.net, which is nothing near what I was talking about.

Tell me, what is a route and ping trace going to actually accomplish? Say you go "oh, my ping is shooting up precisely at this point."... well now what? Your aren't going to be able to get a different route, short of paying for a VPN service.. which people shouldn't have to do. So doing that is essentially useless. Yeah it gives you information, but players don't have the ability to do anything with said information, and SE hasn't been responding when that information is being provided. On the other hand, if you fix the actual issue instead of trying to bandage it (cause that's what messing with latency is, a bandaid), then suddenly all that VPN, trace route stuff isn't needed.

The whole fixing your own latency (which, the people I've seen post the trace route do have what would be acceptable in other games, but isn't here) is focusing on a bandage rather than the problem.. and takes attention away from the problem itself. It's giving the illusion that the problem is fixable by players when the root cause definitely is not. Many of us want the cause fixed, not the just the symptoms. That's why you're getting the responses that you are.

[Sephirah]

Tell me, what is a route and ping trace going to actually accomplish?

Believe it or not your ISPs support will work with you to get a better route when connecting to specific things if you can show them where the problem is. SE's technical support too, if they can identify where the data is being lost they might be able to help. Things get a lot simpler when you can see where the delay is, whether or not its between your router and PC, or you're getting bounced between 20 different servers before connecting to SE. I know talking with tech support and the support for ISPs can be frustrating as hell, but they CAN work with you to improve the situation.

[Blarp]

Believe it or not your ISPs support will work

It's not the easiest thing to convince ISP tier 1 tech support that your routing for a single application needs changed. You end up having to "prove" that you know what you're talking about, but before you do, you'll get passed off for a few hours/days trying to get someone from the NOC to look at your problem. When's the last time you contacted SE about anything lol? Their customer support is horrendous.

[whilke]

Believe it or not your ISPs support will work with you to get a better route when connecting to specific things if you can show them where the problem is.

First, almost no major ISP is going to change their BGP routing tables just because one person has a ping delay through a backbone router. Even assuming you can actually get to someone that even understands what that is and has the power to change it.

Second, there is no guarantee that doing that will give you a better route.

Third, This shouldn't even be needed. This is the internet, jumping up 50ms between two routes is not bad. Having 2% packetloss over a link is not horrible. It's horrible when playing FFXIV because they have not figured out how to implement a standard real time gaming protocol like every other AAA MMO.

And lastly, no one is going to go through all that trouble with their ISP to fix a game they are paying $15ish a month for. They are just going to stop paying and move onto a game that does work for them.

[carlos777uk]

What Whilke said.

[Marenwynn]

It is most definitely the result of people connections. However, the reason games like WoW play so smoothly despite this is because they delay their movement checks per player by the latency between server and client. There's a limit to the delay to avoid abuse and/or complete desynchronization between players, but enough room for most people around the world.

[SchalaZeal]

It is most definitely the result of people connections.

It's not, its the result of your server-side position updating when using a skill, which can be a pain to re-update outside the aoe for casters (need to use instant, need to have a valid target for it, need to use before aoe resolves).

[Meklore]

It's not the red lines disappearing that determines whether or not you get hit.
If you are inside the red lines at the end of the spell cast you are going to get hit !!!!!!

Yes there are times that lag or whatever occurs that affect this, which isn't SE's fault.

And yes they could have coded it better so the red lines disappear at the end of the spell cast, which is SE's fault.

But it is what it is, move out of the red before the cast bar reaches 100% and you'll get hit less often.

[Sunarie]

Yes there are times that lag or whatever occurs that affect this, which isn't SE's fault.

If lag causes people to get hit by AOEs when they are out, then why is that not an issue in any other MMO that's come out in the past decade? Lag contributes to it, but does not cause it. I wish people would quit confusing the two :/

[Meklore]

Sorry, should have been more specific, the mobs spell cast not the players.