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

[Sadebreth]

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.

A better explanation of this would be if you are running through an environment but you notice nothing else on the screen is moving. Your character is moving just fine and then you are dropped out of the game with a disconnect message. When you log back in you are way back from where you got dropped at because the server was not receiving new location information from your client. You were disconnected from the game but you did not know it until your client finally timed out. The same would happen if you jumped to the point you were talking about. If you are not sending information back to the server, you could jump to that point and see yourself in that point on your screen but when you disconnected and log back in you will be back on the ground because that was the last point your client sent new location information and was received successfully by the server. I have had this happen quite a few times. This raises the question however about why on some peoples machines the character completely stops for a few seconds and then shoots forward to a new position once the connection catches back up. You would think that if this is what was really happening then you wouldn't see this kind of stuff on the client side.

[Astarica]

The cost of hardware is a rounding error compared to the expected gain/loss from a high profile game like this. WoW says they spend $50 million an year on its maintenance, and while that sounds like a lot, WoW easily pulls more than $1 billion a year or revenue (and often more). It makes absolutely no sense to skimp out on hardware, which is cheap, when you're talking about this amount of money. At any rate, it's not a proximity issue. It takes the speed of light 0.01s to go from west coast to east coast, so there's no reason to query sooner than every 0.01s in any MMORPG (speed of light isn't fast enough), so we'd expect WoW or any other MMORPG to exhibit the same problem with 3% the frequency compared to FF14.

However, this ignores the fact that in any game with PvP your 'don't die' ability better work 100% or people will definitely notice it. If an ability like Ice Block fails with 3% the frequency compared to how often you fail to dodge a WotL in PvP, you'd have people demanding heads roll. The fact that you don't hear about these issues implies this is clearly not a problem in any other game.

[Allyra]

. At any rate, it's not a proximity issue. It takes the speed of light 0.01s to go from west coast to east coast, so there's no reason to query sooner than every 0.01s in any MMORPG (speed of light isn't fast enough), so we'd expect WoW or any other MMORPG to exhibit the same problem with 3% the frequency compared to FF14.

Blizz doesn't put all their data centers in one spot.

And it IS partially a proximity issue, because of the amount of hops taken. The other half being these ISPs getting overloaded (imagine one major highway from CA to east coast Canada picking up everyone along the way), and these ISP companies not caring (why should they? we don't pay them).

[Astarica]

Blizz doesn't put all their data centers in one spot.

And it IS partially a proximity issue, because of the amount of hops taken. The other half being these ISPs getting overloaded (imagine one major highway from CA to east coast Canada picking up everyone along the way), and these ISP companies not caring (why should they? we don't pay them).

If it's a proximity issue then all MMORPG would exhibit the same problem as FF14 at least 3% of the time, because speed of light travels 3000 km in 0.01s, which is less than the distance from west coast to east coast, which is a perfectly playable distance for NA players. If PvP in any MMORPG exhibits the same kind of behavior as FF14 does in general, there would be a riot in the forums. The fact there are no such riots means it cannot be a proximity issue.

[Astarica]

The underyling issue is actually pretty simple.

1. No MMORPG exhibits the same kind of negative impact due to lag as FF14.
2. FF14 exhibits no positive benefit compared to other MMORPG as a result of its netcode.

Therefore the only conclusion is that FF14 is wrong. There's no justification for it beyond whoever picked this method is dumb. It'd be like you trying to build a car out of square wheels and trying to tell people how it's really hard to get a car working with square wheels. No one cares because it's your own stupidity to use square wheels over round ones.

[Sadebreth]

If it's a proximity issue then all MMORPG would exhibit the same problem as FF14 at least 3% of the time, because speed of light travels 3000 km in 0.01s, which is less than the distance from west coast to east coast, which is a perfectly playable distance for NA players. If PvP in any MMORPG exhibits the same kind of behavior as FF14 does in general, there would be a riot in the forums. The fact there are no such riots means it cannot be a proximity issue.

Ummm... there aren't any riots about pvp because this game doesn't have pvp. Are you just trolling now?

[ispano]

If it's a proximity issue then all MMORPG would exhibit the same problem as FF14 at least 3% of the time, because speed of light travels 3000 km in 0.01s, which is less than the distance from west coast to east coast, which is a perfectly playable distance for NA players. If PvP in any MMORPG exhibits the same kind of behavior as FF14 does in general, there would be a riot in the forums. The fact there are no such riots means it cannot be a proximity issue.

Light may be able to go that fast, electrons on a wire with many routers and other devices in between, cannot.

[Astarica]

Apparently comprehension is hard for some people. Let's assume that FF14's underyling architecture is totally sound and the only reason for lag is due to server proximity and/or the interval of pooling. In FF14 we know they pool every 0.3s. This creates some really nasty lag.

The speed of light travels 3000 km in 0.01 seconds, less than the distance from west coast to east coast. Therefore, assuming your game expect people playing across the coast, there would be no reason to pool data faster than once every 0.01s, because since it takes the speed of light 0.01s to even reach you, pooling the data any more frequent does not improve the lag factor. So we can treat all other MMORPG as pooling every 0.01s in an ideal case. If the distance/polling interval is the only factor, this means other MMORPG should exhibit the same behavior 3% of the time compaerd to FF14.

However, this overlooks the fact that if you're a PvP environment you will most definitely notice if an ability like Ice Block is failing the same way you failed to dodge a WotL. Even at a 3% frequency, factoring in the size of the MMORPGs and the time they've been around, and that PvP creates the 'failed to dodge WotL' situations with a very high frequency (except here it'd be your CDs failed to fire), the conclusion is that every MMORPG should've its PvP forum swamped with the same complaints about firing immunity abilities only to fail to work. Yet, this is not what people complain about in PvP games, suggesting that this issue doesn't exist in other MMORPGs. So, distance/polling interval cannot be the reason why FF14 lags especially bad, because even at 3% failure rate compared to FF14, no one would consider that acceptable for PvP.

[DarkB]

It would help if they didnt base the whole game on dancing and avoiding stuff on the ground. Even tho the issue would still persist on another design scenario with less avoid avoid spam, i still think they took the wrong decision.

[Rochetm]

Living on east coast I get around 70ms ping to everywhere on the eastern half of the US and between 100 and 140ms everywhere else in the country. So how is my location an issue with this game and only this game?