Why the netcode issue exists, and why it cannot be fixed.

[whilke]

Thank you for this well put post, however, I don't completely agree with this:



As others mentioned, they don't need to change the live-states in this scenario, they need to split up the data servers.

As someone else mentioned SE US headquarters are in LA. And Euro headquarters are in the UK AT MINIMUM, they could add some servers to each, to help split up the congestion/distance issue with having so many countries going to the same spot.

If you are going to do server live-sate, you have to split up those servers.

I know you want that to happen, but it's not going to happen. The investment to deploy to one or more data centers on top of the current NA one is just too high for a game coming off a troubled first launch. Maybe if they can stabilize subs at over 1M they can consider it. But with just 600K subs, they have some time to go before they even get back in black.

[Allyra]

FFXI kept this whole company afloat with about 300k subs. I think you might be exaggerating just how many subs they need. Once a game is running, it's fairly cheap to keep it going.

[edit] not to mention the loss of subs they are having because of people unable to play their content could potentially make them lose more money.

[Skies]

FFXI kept this whole company afloat with about 300k subs. I think you might be exaggerating just how many subs they need. Once a game is running, it's fairly cheap to keep it going.

[edit] not to mention the loss of subs they are having because of people unable to play their content

XI kept the whole company afloat with about 300k subs and servers exclusively on japan.

[Hanabira]

i dont think it is quite this simple. If client live games were the norm. they received the action from the client, sent it to the server, and sent back a response and they were still pretty snappy. the original 1.0 UI did this, and it was unbearably slow, taking 3-5 seconds just to open up a menu. Theoretically, making the game run server side should speed things up because now the transmission doesnt need a response. i think they just built the game on a shoddy framework, completely changed and revamped the game from the ground up, and never addressed the exact same problem we had in 1.0. If i recall, fixing that very deep rooted issue was one of the reasons we got a completely new game

[Allyra]

XI kept the whole company afloat with about 300k subs and servers exclusively on japan.

XI wasn't as dodge intensive as this game.

You could play XI with ease with a 200 ping, because the majority of fights require you to stand at the feet and cure through hits. I see more and more people quitting this game out of sheer frustration for liking it, but not being able to play it correctly.

Others, like myself, have had to pay extra in order to play it the way it's meant to be played.

[Sinth]

i dont think it is quite this simple. If client live games were the norm. they received the action from the client, sent it to the server, and sent back a response and they were still pretty snappy. the original 1.0 UI did this, and it was unbearably slow, taking 3-5 seconds just to open up a menu. Theoretically, making the game run server side should speed things up because now the transmission doesnt need a response. i think they just built the game on a shoddy framework, completely changed and revamped the game from the ground up, and never addressed the exact same problem we had in 1.0. If i recall, fixing that very deep rooted issue was one of the reasons we got a completely new game

Both models require the client and server to send the same amount of acknowledgements/responses to eachother. The difference is who is driving and who is waiting for commands. Also, the UI issues from 1.0 are completely unrelated to the current netcode issue (from my 1st hand experience digging through packets back in 1.0 to try and fix my connectivity issues). However, the old UI did interface on the network layer, and that was the primary problem with it; hence the redesign from ground-up.

[Astarica]

No. Your character jumps on your screen, but does not immediately jump on the server. Whereas, in the client live-state you hit the space bar, and when the command resolves with the server, you then jump on your screen.

Basically speaking, everything you see on your screen is a lie. None of it is real-time on your screen (except for maybe turning your camera angle, which is not negotiated by the server).

Um no, because if there's a delay between your jump gets processed by the server, you'd not be able to reliably jump up across elevation, because there's a chance the server isn't aware you're 'jumping' yet and then you'd get bounced back because the server will decide you're not really jumping and thus not having enough altitude to clear the elevation. Even as laggy as this game is, I've never had a case where I tried to jump up elevation in a valid location and get bounced back by magic.

[Sinth]

I'm not going to debate what you believe vs. what I have been taught and have first hand professional experience with. Feel free to believe what you want.

Also, the fact that teleport bots exist should sway you to reconsider your hypothesis about location reporting. I could write a program today to teleport me anywhere I want in FFXIV. It is extremely simple, mainly because location reporting is not restricted.

[dejavutwo]

I think people understand that there will be lag to a certain extent, and don't expect absolute perfection and 100% synchronization between the server and client. As an online game, desynchronization is unavoidable and something that must either be compensated for (through things like movement prediction) or avoided. The problem with FF is that its lag compensation (if any) is not good enough to cope with the movement requirements of the encounter design and leads to a game the feels laggy and sluggish. Almost every encounter is about dodging AoE attacks, which in some cases means being out of them before they appear, which leads to a very frustrating and unfair experience. The real problem is not that the game lags, but that the encounter design highlights the desynchronization instead of hiding it.


There are a lot of difficult fights that did not rely on 1-shot mechanics in other MMOs, and this is the direction FF should take if they are not going to fix their lag compensation. Lady Vashj from WoW:BC was a very difficult fight with some cool mechanics that did not rely much on quick position changes (Playing pass with tainted cores, slowly increasing number of enemies spawning in waves to overwhelm players).


A great example of a game that hid lag incredibly well in pve was Tera. You can not tell how much lag compensation that game has until you try pvp where the compensation fails horribly. Everything about the pve in that game felt smooth and responsive, from timing dodges, to timing blocks, to avoiding AoEs. However, pvp was a complete mess as you could be blocking a player 5 feet in front of you on your screen while they are hitting you in the back on their screen. As a melee character, I had to run in front of people to hit them with my attacks at times.

TLDR: If Tera can take that much lag, and make it almost un-noticeable FF should be able to get a reasonable level of responsiveness out of their game. If they don't want to do that they should focus on fights that are difficult without relying on 1-shot AoEs.

[Suellen]

While I agree that the netcode is terrible and there is no quick fix to deal with this. The problem can be alleviated if the NA data server fixed their ****. The routing for certain regions from the NA data center is terrible. For me in California, I'm constantly hit with a "high for todays standards" amount of packet loss. This games shitty netcode can't handle packet loss AT ALL due to the reasons you described. But here's an image to explain my issue of what needs to be fixed sooner rather than later.



The top image is my connection to the NA data center for this past monday. The bottom is my connection to the JP data center. I have a MUCH better/more consistent connection to the JP data center than the NA one. The physical distance for me with the two is roughly the same which you can see via the latency of the two being relatively the same at about 120ms.

The difference is packet loss. NA is all blue all day meaning there is a constant amount of packet loss happening all the time which is why when I'm on the NA servers I see rubberbanding and lag spikes all the time making the game virtually unplayable. But on the JP servers it's far more stable and far more playable. If I didn't have friends on the NA server I was on I'd simply move to a JP one.

Long rant sorry but the point I'm trying to labor is that while this netcode is rather shitty it would be tolerable if the data center knew how to set up routes to places farther than 500 miles from them. (utterly arbitrary number I ***pulled)