Latency issue in this game...

[Billie21]

Optimal connection means living inside the border of the country the server is. You can have a 100mbs connection but get 500ms while someone with a 10mbs connection gets 20ms simply because the server is in his country.

If that is so, then we actually were tricked into buying this game given false/incomplete technical requirement. Actually, any sale outside of Japan and Canada is a scam.

Anything below 300ms is very good ping. Anyone who argues otherwise has probably never played an MMO outside his country border before.

Tell that to Yoshida


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There are many factors that come into play as far as the game's general unresponsiveness goes:
- The netcode and server-side decisions
- The 0.3s positions updates (now reduced to 0.1 in primal instances)
- The game's difficulty being mostly based on twitch reactions and dodging one-shot-attacks
- The animations locks

Each of those factors might have been delt with by everyone separately. All of them together means that the game is extremely lag-sensitive.
Each of those design choices is amplifying the effects of the smallest lag/latency/packet loss/whatever can cause your game to react slowly.

If you add to this the fact that there is only one datacenter in the whole world.
(I'm going to ignore JP datacenter because I believe the japanese-speaking population out of Japan playing this game is small enough, and we are on the English-speaking forums)
And the fact that some have put in question the quality/placement of this datacenter. (some claiming that the network problems was occurring on SE's end). I have no opinion on this since my knowledge in IT/networks is extremely limited


Considering all of the above, this:

Yoshida: What I can official say from my end is that if you’re really going to fully go into the contents please have the best environment. But this is really hard, there are those that will say “You are the one creating the Online Game, you prepare that type of environment”, or look over it and make adjustments so you can dodge those.

GW: That’s impossible.

Yoshida: It is, if we do that we can’t make difficult contents.

GW: If you’re able to dodge with 3 digit Ping then it’s not fun as a game

Yoshida: We would need to extend the time players have to dodge. But doing that will make the content super easy, so it’s impossible.

...is shamefull and insulting.

[Edellis]

Exactly what latency am I describing? Please do tell me.
On the other end, you do admit to suffering from delay.

And I don't accuse SE of conspiracy, I accuse them of double speak, and taking their customers for fools (they wouldn't be the frsts).

I admit to suffering from delay, but not nearly enough to warrant a complaint, and certainly not anything i haven't experienced in a lifetime of MMOs, Action MMOs, Fighting Games and MOBAS.

It's not doublespeak. The game is programmed a certain type of way, and this issue is a consequence of that. Were it programmed a different type of way then it would change something else. You can compare this game's AoE issues to other games that play similarly, but it'd be moot because combat isn't the only source of server stress in an MMO, which instantly renders your observation completely useless. Most importantly, I don't even think you could point out other MMOs, because every MMO i've played has this issue in one way or another.


Either you do the checks client-side and risk tons of exploitable holes and desync, or you do it server-side where the server's calculations may make some real-time errors but are nonetheless absolute by its own rights. Most games do these sorts of things server-side now, and i recall the last game i played that was action-oriented (TERA) occasionally had me hit by things i know i visually dodged in realtime.

Either you rage about it in the moment, or you try to adjust. But when Yoshida says "Just get better internet", that's really all he can logically say because that's ultimately the only thing that's going to help you...

[Billie21]

I admit to suffering from delay, but not nearly enough to warrant a complaint, and certainly not anything i haven't experienced in a lifetime of MMOs, Action MMOs, Fighting Games and MOBAS.

It's not doublespeak. The game is programmed a certain type of way, and this issue is a consequence of that. Were it programmed a different type of way then it would change something else. You can compare this game's AoE issues to other games that play similarly, but it'd be moot because combat isn't the only source of server stress in an MMO, which instantly renders your observation completely useless. Most importantly, I don't even think you could point out other MMOs, because every MMO i've played has this issue in one way or another.


Either you do the checks client-side and risk tons of exploitable holes and desync, or you do it server-side where the server's calculations may make some real-time errors but are nonetheless absolute by its own rights. Most games do these sorts of things server-side now, and i recall the last game i played that was action-oriented (TERA) occasionally had me hit by things i know i visually dodged in realtime.

Either you rage about it in the moment, or you try to adjust. But when Yoshida says "Just get better internet", that's really all he can logically say because that's ultimately the only thing that's going to help you...

I believe you're right in saying that's the only thing he can say. Which I call double speak. He is clearly playing dumb to avoid admiting there *is* a problem. He cannot say anything else because they won't/can't fix it, and therefore, cannot admitting that it exists only to say "we won't do anything about it".

If I am wrong, if he is serious, then this whole game is a scam. Because it wasn't written in the game requirement that you needed optic fiber and/or to live in Japan to be able to play this game normally. They knowingly sold a game they knew wouldn't work properly to people living halfway across the globe from their server.

The fact that some people say they are playing normally while having less than optimal conditions leads me to believe that I am right, and the speech in the interview is BS.

[EvokerKeii]

As content becomes more challenging, we're only going to experience the effects of this in greater quantity. Soon we're going to be fighting this delay more than the actual boss.
I think subscriptions are going to suffer as a result.

[Will01]

Any combat system that requires you to ignore common sense and pre-allocate time to make up for its shortcomings is BROKEN. Period. It's bad enough that we have to deal with SE's atrociously bad netcode; it's even worse when people try to white knight and give them a free pass on it.

This issue needs to be pounded until SE pulls their head out of their collective rears and does something about it.


Disclaimer: I have a 60-100ms ping and I still this to be a problem at times.

I don't see how learned what is about to happen and moving in advance is such a big issue for some?

Any time I see anyone tell someone to learn the rotation, everyone shout's, it's broken. I don't think it is, I think it's by design.

[Billie21]

I don't see how learned what is about to happen and moving in advance is such a big issue for some?

Any time I see anyone tell someone to learn the rotation, everyone shout's, it's broken. I don't think it is, I think it's by design.

The problem may be that some people consider it no fun to have entirely choregraphed fights, they prefer reacting to the unpredictable.
The problem may also be that people don't like the fact that they *have to* do it because of the game's shortcomings (not that they wouldn't learn eventually).

I cannot understand how one can consider it an intended design that the game is so sluggish and latency-sensitive. Interesting, maybe (matter of taste, I guess). But intended design? I don't think so.
I won't even go there, because if I were to consider it an intended design, then it would mean considering SE has reached an impressive level of incompetence. Which I doubt (though they sometimes seem like they are trying very hard to make us believe it, considering Yoshi said they were unable to make difficult content that is playable with 3 digit latency).
Honestly? Going into a fight you cannot win, because you cannot dodge, that you have to do again and again in order to learn by heart and then to be able to win, only it became so predictable (that's the whole point) that you're just doing exactly the same thing over and over? No really? Intended design?
I know this community is found of repeating grinding in order to feel like they "worked" to "earn" a reward... but honestly even in the combat system?

I believe the choregraphed part is intended bad design. But the delay? No way.

[Ri_ri]

I don't see how learned what is about to happen and moving in advance is such a big issue for some?

Any time I see anyone tell someone to learn the rotation, everyone shout's, it's broken. I don't think it is, I think it's by design.

WoW has much more complex mechanics and interesting fights yet I don't bother memorizing every single thing it does. I go with the flow... just need to know the phases.

Titan HM? Have to memorize his whole rotation to dodge AoE because the game is so sluggish. Seriously, this is beyond pathetic. A sensible director would plan his game around what's possible for most players. Not our mister Yoshida.
He could at least learn what WoW does to it's AoE mechanics, since no one seems to complain there. But no... if you're not dropping dead the instant it happens, it's not cool enough.

[jmdatcs]

Yoshida: What I can official say from my end is that if you’re really going to fully go into the contents please have the best environment. But this is really hard, there are those that will say “You are the one creating the Online Game, you prepare that type of environment”, or look over it and make adjustments so you can dodge those.

GW: That’s impossible.

Yoshida: It is, if we do that we can’t make difficult contents.

GW: If you’re able to dodge with 3 digit Ping then it’s not fun as a game

Yoshida: We would need to extend the time players have to dodge. But doing that will make the content super easy, so it’s impossible.

For the record, I had trouble when the game came out, I solved it with WTFast. But, I'm a little pissed at having to pay for WTFast to be able to play the game because of SE's choices and may not continue to do so.

This response from Yoshi is bullshit and lazy. Either he hasn't though about it, or he has but just wants us all to shut up and go away.

The only reason triple-digit+ pings are a problem is SE decided to go with a server-based, instead of client-based, determination of whether or not you were hit. And that's fine, if that's the way they want to go, but they need to design their mechanics around that. Instead they seemed to have picked mechanics that butt heads with that system way too often. I'm talking about aoe. Almost every single fight seems to have the most difficult mechanics aoe based, sometimes the only difficult mechanics are aoes. There are plenty of other mechanics they could be using. Think of other games you've played and think of the hard mechanics in each fight. Is the list aoe, aoe, aoe...? The last MMO I spent a lot of time in wasn't server-based, but it could have been and I would have been fine with a ping well into triple-digits. Why? Because, although the game had problems, interesting mechanics for the hard content wasn't one of them and I can't think of a single one that was dodge aoe, dodge aoe, dodge aoe. Se knows this is a problem, they should get off their lazy asses and try designing a hard encounter that isn't almost entirely aoe based.

TL;DR There is more than one way to make a fight hard. After SE decided on a server-based system, they should have decided to go with aoe as a main mechanic rarely, if at all.

[Squa]

never had lag issues with any other MMO or online game.

[Tashigi]

To put it bluntly, since a lot of people think that by getting a better path to the servers will instantly solve your problem; don't believe the hype.
Regardless of what ping you manage to obtain through third party services, you will always have a permanent 300 ms tagged on your character, as the server checks occur every 0.3 seconds.
The developers stated this would improve with 2.1 but quite honestly, I don't notice much, if any difference.

I use Leatrix Latency Fix and my ping averages to around 50-60 ms constantly.
Even so, you have that extra 300 ms to account in.
So in reality my ping is 350-360 ms.

I can dodge Titan's abilities, sure. I can even do coil with no game breaking issues.
But should we put up with this bull? I don't think so.
The fact that the developers have their heads in a hole and refuse to come out should be reason enough for yall to keep the pressure on. This is unacceptable; whether it affects you in a game breaking manner or in a minor inconvenience manner.

Bottom line, this shouldn't be happening.