European servers

[Shioban]

It's been proven that people can play the game without issue as far as Autralia.

Adding in a European Datacentre would NOT fix the issues you're describing.


Square Enix cannot compensate for the route your ISP and particular connection will take from You > Server > You > Server (etc).

Each 'hop' has the potential to cause issues for you.



The vast majority of the times where people have issues they find the issue lies with their connection, their area or the particular route it's taking to travel to and from the data centre.





Adding in another hundred-thousand dollar(s) facility is not something they're currently willing to do as it's a huge financial investment.

It was only once I lagged my way through a couple trials that a few FC members told me that the servers are actually halfway across the world. To this day I am unable to do EX trials because they are simply too laggy and I keep dying due to it as I can't dodge the attacks in time.

You'd be surprised, that the majority of the time this comes up, simply boils down to people not knowing the fight, watching the graphics as opposed to the cast-bar (cast-bar ending time is the TRUE hit, not the in-game graphic).

And in some cases people genuinely do lag, and it's almost always their connection. As someone who's played in Ireland & England and plays frequently with players from the Middle East, Asia and Australia who have with complete easy beaten all the content the game has to offer, it's safe to say it's not a "I live in [X]" issue.

Not everyone has a great connection, not everyone's internet traffic is going to get routed along the fastest route. The area you live in may suffer from internet traffic congestion at particular times of the day, or is it limtied by your ISP for certain types of traffic.




Basically, slapping in a new EU datacentre wouldn't fix the big issues, if they did this they'd have to add in at least 2-3 more localized datacentres to "Be Fair" for various wordly regions, but the cost would justify the small number of people that actually suffer from this.








TL;DR

It's most likely YOUR connection between You > Server.

Servers are Expensive, they won't be opening a new data centre anytime soon.

Unless EVERYONE/Vast Majoity is having the issue, it's not a big problem. (Which currently is a tiny minority)

[Edli]

Square Enix cannot compensate for the route your ISP and particular connection will take from You > Server > You > Server (etc).

Yes they can, by making the route much shorter. As in not having to go through a freaking ocean.

Is costly for them? Shouldn't we expect a much better service from a subscription MMO?

[Alberel]

Yes they can, by making the route much shorter. As in not having to go through a freaking ocean.

Is costly for them? Shouldn't we expect a much better service from a subscription MMO?

Thing is the majority of EU players have no problem... which makes it VERY likely that all those currently having problems would STILL have problems if SE moved the datacentre. The reality is those with problems need to change something on their end because it is not the location of the datacentre that is causing the issue.

[Edli]

Thing is the majority of EU players have no problem... which makes it VERY likely that all those currently having problems would STILL have problems if SE moved the datacentre.

Why do you say that? You have absolutely no idea how many EU players are affected or not. The only data you have is some comments here and there on how it is fine for them. For all we know the majority may have problems but decided to deal with it or leave.

The initial cost and the maintenance of a data-centre of the same quality as the one you're currently using in Canada is extremley expensive to set-up, prepare and also maintain.

You wrote a long reply to defend SE but you still ignore the fact that a lot of other MMOs, some even f2p or no sub like GW2 have data centers on EU. Why did they do that? For fun, to waste money?

Then your suggestion to fix it is for me to deal now with my ISP and I don't have the nerve for that mainly because I know they'll do nothing. Another suggestion is for me to pay monthly to wtfast. Yeah no. I pay monthly to SE and I expect for them to do something about it.

[Shioban]

You wrote a long reply to defend SE but you still ignore the fact that a lot of other MMOs, some even f2p or no sub like GW2 have data centers on EU. Why did they do that? For fun, to waste money?


Then your suggestion to fix it is for me to deal now with my ISP and I don't have the nerve for that mainly because I know they'll do nothing. Another suggestion is for me to pay monthly to wtfast. Yeah no. I pay monthly to SE and I expect for them to do something about it.

Well, it comes across as a defence for Square Enix, but it's really a defence for MMO developers in general.

First you have to understand is that those MMOs have investors.

Investors are people outside of the company who put forward money as capital towards a new release to try and make it "The next big things", this money can be used for;

> Development
> Servers
> Wages
> Marketing

You name it, whatever is needed. The big issue with that is the investors want their money back ASAP. Hence why you see F2P/P2P/P2W games coming up all over the place, they want their money back as soon as possible so the developer resorts to adding in cash-cow mechanics.

Square Enix does NOT have investors, after the original failure of FFXIV any money put into FFXIVs development was done so frugaly and with great care.
All of the money spent is from Square Enix own pocket as a risk and wager in the hope that ARR would be more popular.

This game relies almost entirely on its subscribers to fund it's future developmen, maintenance and even profit for the company to develop/produce other content comes from FFXIV.
Thinking for even a second that all of your subscription goes back into FFXIV's development is just foolish, it's thrown into to pot and then split.

So vice-versa, other content produced by Square Enix that turns a profit goes back into FFXIV also.



Why does this matter?

Investing in servers where they weren't needed was one unnecessary cost they decided to avoid.

All unnessecary risks, dangers and costs were avoided from start to finish, which is why FFXIV is one of the most accessible and 'safest' MMOs on the market currently to play.

Then your suggestion to fix it is for me to deal now with my ISP and I don't have the nerve for that mainly because I know they'll do nothing. Another suggestion is for me to pay monthly to wtfast. Yeah no. I pay monthly to SE and I expect for them to do something about it.

That's my suggestion yes, not as a "SE are supreme, you're a scrub!" menatality, but a genuine effort to help.

Square Enix or any company for that matter cannot and will not guarantee that your connection to their game will be flawless, there are just too many factors that they cannot influence or change to guarantee that, which is why it falls on you to do your best to either bully your ISP into trying to fix it, or finding a work around.

That's all that can be done really, Square Enix dumping an EU datacentre somewhere in Germany will not fix a terrible connection and I can guarantee even then that people will still have issues if not the exact same ones.



THAT BEING SAID. There are some people who would genuinely benefit from an EU datacentre, but the cost is still a bigger factor to Square Enix which is why you've never heard them even mention an EU based EU datacentre.

[Saccharin]

Square Enix cannot compensate for the route your ISP and particular connection will take from You > Server > You > Server (etc).

Each 'hop' has the potential to cause issues for you.

While you are correct it can be an issue between the player and SE it is up to SE to 'compensate' for this. 'The internet' wasn't designed for real time anything just that you get your data eventually. It's no surprise that other MMOs have this issue too but what they did is use code to compensate for the 'lag'. SE decided to make this a dodge game and while that's fine and seems to be what other MMOs are doing now it does mean that you have to set the game up to cope with poorer connections and SE have not done this and some of their 'net code' is ill-fitting considering how this game operates. After a few datacentre tweaks I'm 100-150ms and don't have an issue but not everyone is that lucky.

[Granyala]

It's most likely YOUR connection between You > Server.

I can't hear this crap anymore.

In WoW I have 20-30ms latency TOPS. I live in Germany, WoWs servers are located in Paris, if I'm not mistaken.

In FF-XIV I have latency that fluctuates between 1000 and 3000.
When there is an S mob out there in can go up to 30000 yes 30 SECONDS OF LATECY.
I try to rez people that are long since alive again yet I cannot see it lol.

The problem is NOT on my or my ISPs end. If they were I'd have problems with other online games too.

I can dodge 85% of all stuff, but sometimes I get hit despite being out of the yellow circle well before it disappears.

[ruskie]

In FF-XIV I have latency that fluctuates between 1000 and 3000.

Wow that is really bad.

The problem is NOT on my or my ISPs end. If they were I'd have problems with other online games too.

It can be between you and your ISP or specifically HOW your ISP(and their peers onward) routes your traffic towards SE servers(which are in Canada).

Here's an example:
At one point I was playing some game on a server in Frankfurt... I had latency ~30ms then something changed in the routing and I had latency of 100ms+. It appears one of the peers decided to route this connection through most of Europe(one of the points was in the Netherlands) to get there instead of just 2 countries away(I'm from Slovenia).

So yes ISP and the routing between them and onward can be the issue and it can be different for EACH and EVERY game unless they are in the same data center and using the same endpoints in the datacenter.

Do a traceroute towards cerberus(I believe this is the IP 199.91.189.26). When I check my own it get's routed by my ISP through Serbia and then to France... so going farther away than needed instead of going the shortest path.
It shoulh also show you were the latency increases.. for me it's at one point in France(goes from 40ms to 150ms).



Also try sorting that out here... maybe they can help you(you should hide your own ip address if posting that).
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...P2P-throttling

[Granyala]

Do a traceroute towards cerberus(I believe this is the IP 199.91.189.26).

Heheh.. yeah... um.. about that

Looks okay until it hits Hamburg city... after that .. ugh.

[ruskie]

Heheh.. yeah... um.. about that

Looks okay until it hits Hamburg city... after that .. ugh.

Yeah sadly that is the thing that can cause issues to everyone. You can try contacting your ISP to see if they can change anything or if you have an option try it on a diff ISP(friend that isn't using the same one).