VPN etc allowed?

[Vianne]

You cannot compare a FPS game to a MMO you just cannot. How your data is routed to SE server is not there concern at all, its up to your ISP to make sure your data is handled correctly. If you are complaining about the costs associated with gaming then maybe you need to rethink your finances and or stop gaming all together.

But you can compare MMOs that have latency issues and the ones that don't. You can compare MMOs where said latency issues don't have much of an impact on gameplay vs the ones where they do. You can compare MMOs run by companies that care about providing a smooth experience to their costumers through regional servers with the ones run by companies that don't. You can compare MMOs where their PR teams will actively attempt to gather information from their players to address an issue instead of ignoring them. You can compare communities that will try to help each other to overcome issues instead of insisting that such issues don't exist or the player is at fault no matter how much evidence there is of the contrary.

Routing is not an ISP issue, as most of it happens out the ISP's scope, and that's besides that fact that is something that goes both ways. The fact that such tunneling services make a difference without a change of ISP should hint you that much. Guess who would be in a much better position than the player is to diagnose and provide the technical details of the issues to the parties involved in such routing. Guess which MMO companies have done so in the past and which one apparently prefers to ignore the issue?

[Shaone]

(snip)

Spot on.

My ISP has been amazing through this and done everything they can, they've altered traffic signatures for the game, and worked as far along the routing chain with the transit providers they have contracts with (in the last month they have reduced my ping to from 150 to 90ms, and 22 hops to 14). They are trying very hard, doing everything they can and communicating with the XIV players using their service through their public support forum.

Yet despite this, I get (fairly infrequent) patches of packet loss or the odd rubberband where the other players freeze for a moment and snap at high speed to their real position. This would be "good enough" for most people, but I don't like wiping parties from avoidable stuff, like if that packet telling my client that twin just dropped a blue marker on my character gets lost and has to be retransmitted.

But SE do some things right, and I am very glad that SE confirmed that VPN is OK, because if it wasn't for Battleping, I would not be able to go to coil.

[whilke]

The cards are 100% in their hands. To say otherwise is just ill-informed.

For your WoW example you are confusing ping and packet loss (rubber banding). 300ms ping in WoW is very playable in PVE (Which is what I mentioned, PVP is another competitive game). WoW also handles a normal amount of packet loss just fine. It's when your packet loss climbs to a level that no game can compensate for that you'll start to have rubber banding issues in WoW.

FFXIV will start to rubber band at a low percentage of packetloss, because their entire networking architecture is designed for optimal connections only. The internet just does not work that way.

What about once your packet leaves your ISP and is routing through various backbones that do their own QoS and packet dropping? Is that up to us to fix, and not SE?

Really unsure why you are defending SE on this issue when it's clearly been shown to be in their camp to resolve through several other forum threads. You are the last of a dying breed on this specific issue, so carry that torch high.

[Johnist]

A Dev has already commented on this damned topic here:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ill-get-banned

The type of software you are describing in this thread doesn't appear to directly control anything for the FFXIV client, and as such isn't breaking any of the rules. Similar to other programs, 3rd party software is used at your own risk, and we recommend you employ your best judgement when running software not mentioned in the user agreement.

There, Your answer is VPNs are allowed, but its up to you to use it at your own expense and risk.

[Snitchie]

And yes I have talked to BOTH my ISP's. As I stated in my thread, I have 2 conections one Fiber 50/50 and one VDSL (copper connection). And same result on BOTH! As many others said in this thread it is not up to my ISP's when I leave Norway, for QoS and such. But they have tweaked all they can and VPN WTFast is my bandaid for now. In my head a reduced cost for EU players is just what u do, to keep your players happy. Not just because of server locations, but also regarding money rates. We already PAY more. A reduced monthly cost is just a signal from SE that we care about our customer. Let us know that they feel our pain. (thats just how I would do it, and ive worked as manager in many customer support posititons so Iknow a thing or two about this. (not my current work , now its sales in oil and gas, again my finaces are just fine... i do not need more money, its a principal!!