VPN etc allowed?

[zaineal]

If you are complaining about people complaining about lag on this game when their connection's otherwise fine (and fixed by VPN), maybe you should rethink posting, and perhaps stop posting at all.

You have completely missed the point I'm trying to get across, there is nothing SE can do with how your data is transported between them and you (Sure they can ask ISP's nicely to sort it out HOWEVER once again it falls to the ISP's handling those nodes,which is out of their hands, yes it sucks that servers are located in the most weirdest of places.

I am hit pretty hard due to the location (Philippines -> playing on NA servers - at one point my data was hitting nodes god knows where) This is where VPN is needed most, can I complain sure, however my location is causing the physical latency issues and yes I am using a VPN (brought my latency from 380+ down to a great 230-300).

Now should SE pay for my VPN and magically force world wide ISP's to rebuild the infrastructure and improve latency around the world no, because SE have provided the service and you have been able to connect and play(Although the service provided could be massively improved, which most likely will over time(could be faster)).

I just want to reiterate what I am saying, should the responsibility how of how your data is being transported be on SE shoulders, no! Should SE for some strange reason provide you with a VPN that the cause is because of bad ISP's, no! Should SE implement european servers, YES!

They have even "address the delay" that some players are experiencing and upping the rate of the server snapshots, which means they are aware of the issues and are(I hope so?) trying to sort it out.

[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]

You have completely missed the point I'm trying to get across, there is nothing SE can do with how your data is transported between them and you (Sure they can ask ISP's nicely to sort it out HOWEVER once again it falls to the ISP's handling those nodes,which is out of their hands, yes it sucks that servers are located in the most weirdest of places.

I am hit pretty hard due to the location (Philippines -> playing on NA servers - at one point my data was hitting nodes god knows where) This is where VPN is needed most, can I complain sure, however my location is causing the physical latency issues and yes I am using a VPN (brought my latency from 380+ down to a great 230-300).

Now should SE pay for my VPN and magically force world wide ISP's to rebuild the infrastructure and improve latency around the world no, because SE have provided the service and you have been able to connect and play(Although the service provided could be massively improved, which most likely will over time(could be faster)).

I just want to reiterate what I am saying, should the responsibility how of how your data is being transported be on SE shoulders, no! Should SE for some strange reason provide you with a VPN that the cause is because of bad ISP's, no! Should SE implement european servers, YES!

They have even "address the delay" that some players are experiencing and upping the rate of the server snapshots, which means they are aware of the issues and are(I hope so?) trying to sort it out.

I'm not sure why you think 380ms ping is bad for an MMO? This is not a twitch based game. Every other AAA MMO in the world will feel very responsive in PVE at 300ms ping. Go ahead, I'll wait while you go test it....Done? See?

There is absolutely many things SE can do to fix their horrendous network setup. Their protocol is so very fragile and requires an ultra-low ping, along with ultra-low jitter and packet loss. If you have any of that, you are in trouble. Guess what? The internet is full of all of those things, so you're in trouble. It also appears that some backbone providers and routers are flagging the FFXIV protocol low for QoS. This means during prime time on those routers your game packets are getting dropped for normal internet traffic (which is mostly why a VPN fixes the issues for so many).

They could introduce closer regional servers. They could fix their network protocol and architecture to be more tolerant with jitter, packet loss, and high pings. They could change their protocol so that it stops getting flagged low on some routers QoS modal.

Are you sure you wanna stick with your statement?

By the way, the fix coming for 2.1 with upping the movement snapshots in some end game instances is not going to fully fix the issue. Sure, people will hopefully be able to dodge aoes better now. However, people are still going to rubberband without a VPN. Abilities are still going to fill slow as hell. Off GCD instant abilities are still going to sometimes fail and go on cool down. People are still going to stutter around on your screen, etc.

[zaineal]

I'm not sure why you think 380ms ping is bad for an MMO? This is not a twitch based game. Every other AAA MMO in the world will feel very responsive in PVE at 300ms ping. Go ahead, I'll wait while you go test it....Done? See?

There is absolutely many things SE can do to fix their horrendous network setup. Their protocol is so very fragile and requires an ultra-low ping, along with ultra-low jitter and packet loss. If you have any of that, you are in trouble. Guess what? The internet is full of all of those things, so you're in trouble. It also appears that some backbone providers and routers are flagging the FFXIV protocol low for QoS. This means during prime time on those routers your game packets are getting dropped for normal internet traffic (which is mostly why a VPN fixes the issues for so many).

They could introduce closer regional servers. They could fix their network protocol and architecture to be more tolerant with jitter, packet loss, and high pings. They could change their protocol so that it stops getting flagged low on some routers QoS modal.

Are you sure you wanna stick with your statement?

By the way, the fix coming for 2.1 with upping the movement snapshots in some end game instances is not going to fully fix the issue. Sure, people will hopefully be able to dodge aoes better now. However, people are still going to rubberband without a VPN. Abilities are still going to fill slow as hell. Off GCD instant abilities are still going to sometimes fail and go on cool down. People are still going to stutter around on your screen, etc.

If you look through my posts(other threads) I will have mentioned everything you have said infact my post is near enough the same as yours.

regarding the "380ms" is great for other MMO's I cannot agree with that, using WoW as an example, I've played 8ish years across 3 seperate countries (Australia(400+MS)/England(<200MS)/Philippines(380+MS) Anything above 200ms became silly playing PVP, PVE playing from aus/philippines with that latency you can clearly see how latency affects you, infact rubberbanding in Wow is in some cases worse than FFXIV(In a PVE standpoint) ( HOWEVER my opinion will and can change once we have all seen how PVP is affected by how there server architecture is).


Regarding the abilities firing I've raged many a time due to Hallowed ground not going off and promptly dieing. however because its a design decision and a bad one at that(Cast bars and animations are de-synced etc) and once again I'm not defending SE's poor choice of server back end, I'm defending them where the cards are not in their hands.

[harkinate]

I'm not sure why you think 380ms ping is bad for an MMO?

I'm going to go ahead and guess that you don't have 380ms. It's definitely bad for anything, even web browsing. Don't expect people with 380ms or higher to ever succeed in Titan HM and beyond without being seriously carried through the content.

[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.

[whilke]

I'm going to go ahead and guess that you don't have 380ms. It's definitely bad for anything, even web browsing. Don't expect people with 380ms or higher to ever succeed in Titan HM and beyond without being seriously carried through the content.

I'm going to go ahead and assume you have no idea what you are talking about if you think 300ms of ping is affecting your web browsing.

Hint: 300ms is fine for the HTTP protocol, and web browsing. You'll never see the different between 300ms and 30ms while just browsing the web.

Hint: 300ms is fine for nearly every AAA MMO, besides FFXIV, as long as it's a consistent connection. If you have constant spikes higher then 300ms then their compensation algorithms will start to falter. This is why AUS often will use a VPN (to smooth out that jitter they have in their backbone to EU/NA).

[Despite]

Hello all!
First post here even though I've played a couple months now.

I just want to say that I'm from Southern California and the lag is horrendous pretty much all the time. I never have any problems with any other game and I find it ridiculous that I might have to pay WTFast or something similar just to be able to dodge red areas on the ground in game. There are often times that I've clearly dodged the red circle and started casting my next spell only to get hit by the aoe I just dodged mid-cast. Not to mention watching other players teleport across the screen.

I hope they add more data centers or otherwise address this issue because myself and everyone I know who plays from Socal is thinking about quitting. We should not pay a sub and see lag like this.

[harkinate]

stuff

Yes, 300ms is fine for HTTP protocol, more specifically TCP, but when you start streaming videos during web browsing (which is extremely common these days) you'll start noticing pretty big differences.

I'm starting to wonder if you're confusing me for someone else in your posts. They suggest that I'm defending SE at every turn, when I never have - I've always thought that SE has been severely dropping the ball in terms of their server and netcode. If SE doesn't fix these issues (as they reportedly will in 2.1..I'll believe that when I see it), then when PvP is released it will be a horrendous experience.

[Allyra]

there is nothing SE can do with how your data is transported between them and you

split up the servers would change the routes...