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

[Alcyon_Densetsu]

Answers

Thank you for these answers.

(no more double-posts!)

I suspected something was off, but not at this magnitude. Much like Sunarie, I didn't know the technical side, though. At least now I can put words on it. That's a mild consolation, even if it somehow fails to offset my whole disappointment over this realisation, but… Oh well, at least I'm left with an interesting topic to further dig into in my spare time. I suppose we'll play nothing but server live-state games a decade or two from now!

Who said SE isn't focused on the future? Though, admittedly, perhaps a bit too much for their own sake…

______
EDIT

This doesn't make sense to me.

QA testing could easily be done by Square Enix Headquarters USA, which is located in California, and more than likely was. Granted, this is California to Japan up until the later Beta testing. However I wouldn't go so far as to presume that they did not test, at least in the mid stages, the connection quality of the netcode outside of region.

How their connections would be solid while others are having difficulties, I cannot know. Perhaps this issue did not articulate itself gravely until stress tests began, which at that point it would be too late. But this is all just speculation on my end.

These are fair questions, especially after Phil Rogers (SE's NA/EU CEO) stated that teams from all around the world worked on ARR's development.

Also, they involved players fairly early in the process (since alpha testing), and the issue was mentioned to SE repeatedly (I only arrived during beta 3 in june, I don't know first-hand about before though, but it was clearly a topic when I got hands-on the game). At the time they blamed "server-side checks that would be disabled come release"; yet very late during the beta process they did offset the whole red zone by several hundreds milliseconds (making it appear earlier than previously), as it used to be much more penalising in the beta, downright impossible to dodge. At the same time it somehow broke immersion though —the obvious "dodge the red zone rather than the actual spell animation", which somehow seems ridiculous that you have to dodge a UI indicator but still can dance in the subsequent fire without concerns…