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

[ArcyEvil]

Without "proper vpn help" that game is unplayable for me. The question is why the hell I must pay for this game and for vpn to play normaly ?
Fix it devs, silence doesnt solve that problem and u know that Yoshi-P.

[Astarica]

Having most (if not all) important decision done on server-side is a flawed model. There is NO possible way to fix it fundamentally. By definition the server can never have the most up-to-date information regarding a player's status, so some of the time it has to be wrong. For the server to always have the correct information you'd need the ability to teleport data. The only workable band-aid is to increase the time it takes certain abilities to fire to compensate. This is why virtually every MMORPG has the client making most of the important decisions, not the server. The server doesn't try to 'predict' or 'compensate' information it doesn't have in other MMORPGs. All it does is let the client answer these questions. This makes the game slightly more vulnerable for hacking, but as can be observed by empirical evidence, there's no reason to believe FF14 is hacked less than any other MMORPG, so it's obviously not that big of a deal either.

[Babydoll]

Decrease time between location checks, and reduce the size of "you" from a circle roughly your size to a miniscule dot in the very center of your character.

Yeah so he should do that to get rid of it entirely >.< It really saddens me that they are ignoring this for so long On my server, Mor Dhona is getting less and less populated...

[amnie]

That is simply incorrect.

Latency is directly proportional to distance. European servers would vastly improve the situation for Europeans.

latency can have different issues. distance is one of them, yes. however, the ping to Montreal for me are better than they are to the european (!) servers for SW:TOR for example. I play on a US server (ping ~180 to 200 usually), and I never ever have any issues with dodging (and timewise it's often a lot shorter in that game). I play tsw on a server located in NA, too. lots of aoe to dodge, no problems except 'derp'.
I play PS2 relatively competative on a US server. I know my legitimate server distance lag.

ARR?
not a chance. a ping of 120-140 does NOT cause this latency. people with a ping of 20 (!!!) have the same issues that I have.

european servers would not 'vastly' improve the issues, but be a waste of money SE should spend on actually changing the system. they need any penny/cent for it.

[Alcyon_Densetsu]

I think we should keep in mind that:

• The nub of the issue is the server live-state model SE chose for this game (see: OP), and that this model only performs well in a low-latency scenario, and is unplayable (game-breaking) otherwise.
• Latency from most countries is simply too high, or packet loss is too important to get a good result (apparently more from/to the Canadian DataCenter here, compared to the JP DC). Consider that people living in Montreal still have issues dodging AoE's and can cast while running —with a ping of 20!
• Placing more datacenters (EU, South Am., South-East Asia…) would make the issue less apparent but no less real for a number of players.

Also choosing TCP over UDP is a bad choice for games since TCP is used for non-time critical applications, whereas UDP is used for games and applications that require fast transmission of data (its stateless nature is useful for servers that receive large amount of small queries, which is exactly what MMORPG's are).

Therefore the only definitive solution would be to change the netcode architecture from server live-state to client live-state, and probably move to UDP, as 99% other MMO's (and fast-paced online games in general) do out there. The quality and reliability of internet connections in most countries is simply not up to the task of sustaining a server live-state model in 2013. Add to that the fact that many ISP's are confronted to global internet traffic saturation and resort to throttling bandwidth and request delay (TCP only? I'd suppose, but don't know), which further compounds the issue (which is probably why using VPN's may help some people, should their ISP be a lousy, but doesn't entirely solve the issue).

[Garnatian]

latency can have different issues. distance is one of them, yes. however, the ping to Montreal for me are better than they are to the european (!) servers for SW:TOR for example. I play on a US server (ping ~180 to 200 usually), and I never ever have any issues with dodging (and timewise it's often a lot shorter in that game). I play tsw on a server located in NA, too. lots of aoe to dodge, no problems except 'derp'.
I play PS2 relatively competative on a US server. I know my legitimate server distance lag.

ARR?
not a chance. a ping of 120-140 does NOT cause this latency. people with a ping of 20 (!!!) have the same issues that I have.

european servers would not 'vastly' improve the issues, but be a waste of money SE should spend on actually changing the system. they need any penny/cent for it.

Where are these people with 20ms ping complaining about the issues?

As for your comparisons to SWTOR, I call bull.

[Alcyon_Densetsu]

Where are these people with 20ms ping complaining about the issues?

Meet Gravehill:

I live 2 - 3 hours drive from the city that the server is in, I get 20 ping with no packet loss and i have 1+ second delay on every movement. Casts are fine, but stuff like jumping and moving has a huge delay. All of my friends who are on different ISPs have the same problem. I can mount while running.

His post is just above.

[Garnatian]

Meet Gravehill:

His post is just above.

I call bull.

There is no way he has that issue. Unless he posts a video with him mounting whilst running and his ping alongside, that is just not happening.

[Alcyon_Densetsu]

I call bull.

There is no way he has that issue. Unless he posts a video with him mounting whilst running and his ping alongside, that is just not happening.

We really don't know. However,

TCP-based game + server live-state + Canada ISP's being flagged for throttling
*may* equal: Bad experience in FF XIV.

As far as SE is concerned: Either going for client live-state or UDP (preferably both) could solve the issue.
As far as Gravehill (and others like him) is concerned: using a VPN might help, or changing ISP.

However overall it's really bad that you'd have to use a VPN to play a game operated a few miles away from you. Really. Doesn't happen with any other game properly network-coded (client live-state + UDP)

[Althea]

Hey Sinth. Great thread. I feel like posts like this are step in the right direction. I'm all about educating people on core engine mechanics.

Another thing to note, also, is that technically the system we use now could actually be kept (for the most part). A lot of big MMOs also use time stamping on all their network I/O. This allows the server and client both to do a little calculation and prediction. I believe this is what make's blizzard's network code so ridiculously good.

Red AOE circle appears underneath your feet. As we know there's a constant 0.3 second update on your position.



In this example, you can see why people are getting hit with the AOE even though they got out of it, because the 3rd positional check didn't get sent to the server BEFORE the explosion went off. You actually can't really do much about this.

However, if every positional check is sent to the server with a time stamp, AND a specialized "I just got out the AOE" message, the server can actually do a little bit of math to determine whether you actually could have gotten out of that AOE (to prevent cheating).



The server has to analyze each positional check and time stamp and make some quick decisions. "Given the amount of time between these position updates, and the distance they moved, would it be possible for them to have moved between these two positions realistically?" (This would break teleport bots, also). A specialized "left AOE circle" is sent instantly after you left the circle on your screen, also with a timestamp.

With this system you can also let the client do some predictions and make your gameplay a LOT snappier. For example, your client knew you left the circle. So there's no need to show any damage taken, UNLESS the server directly tells the client to.

I apologize if the post was strangely written. Way too tired to be talking game/network programming. haha