Unable to connect to Data Center

[JustcallmeSoul]

re-downloaded and patched, once again, and no effect, still have the eternal loading screen. i dont understand what in the world is causing it.

[Nekodar]

Traceroute can help you see if there is a choking point where traffic is no longer forwarded. Like at the point where it's going from your ISP's network to whichever network comes next before it hits SE's servers.

Or just try with WTFast and see if it works that way. They have a free trial so you can test and see if it works at all.

Other than that, with some anti-malware and other security software it's not enough to turn them off, but have to be uninstalled completely to get rid of any interference.

If you still have problems and want help from other players, list more information, such as which ISP you're on, what anti-malware and other security software you have installed, other information about your computer...
Or try your luck with SE support.

[JustcallmeSoul]

alright scratch that. after pinging squeenix's closest data center 50 times (i wanted to be completely sure... dont judge me) my average ping is 84ms, removing a few outliers, which tells me that i am indeed connecting to their servers just fine. right?

[JustcallmeSoul]

well... thats something... when i pull up the resource monitor i dont see a .exe for final fantasy, even with the game open and minimized on the play screen. unless of course what im actually looking for is Steam.exe, since im running through steam.

[Nekodar]

well... thats something... when i pull up the resource monitor i dont see a .exe for final fantasy, even with the game open and minimized on the play screen. unless of course what im actually looking for is Steam.exe, since im running through steam.

The exe you're looking for should be ffxiv.exe or something like that. But, I don't run through Steam, so not sure how that works.

Just to be sure... You start the game, get a window where you have to input username, password and possibly OTP... press play there, then get into the main screen where you have to select datacenter?
Or do you get from steam directly to the main screen?

When you install the game through steam, have you tried to start the game through the start "menu" instead of through steam?

[JustcallmeSoul]

ok within the resource manager, when i launch FFXIV i see ffxivboot.exe and ffxivlauncher.exe come up and start sending/receiving packets, after i login and launch the game via the play button on the launcher ffxivboot.exe and ffxivlauncher.exe stop sending packets and fall off the list. nothing containing ffxiv in the name replaces them. so it seems that we have found out something is wrong... welcome to three days ago.

[Nekodar]

I'm not at home right now so can't direct you to which executable to run, but steam should not be necessary at all.
See if you can find the Final Fantasy entry on the start screen somewhere, or search for where the ffxiv.exe file is. Not sure which file exactly needs to be run, but if you find it you can try from there.
Based on your latest post, find ffxivlauncher.exe and run that from outside steam. Can also try right-click and "run as administrator", just in case...

Did you uninstall all anti-malware and other such programs or only disabled?

Won't be able to suggest anything more until later today.

[JustcallmeSoul]

found a resolution and fixed the problem turns out on very rare occasions on select AMD cards there is a problem with the opening movie, by changing CutsceneMovieOpening in the ffxiv.cfg file from 0 to 1 i was able to load the game perfectly fine. took me 3 days to find a 12 second fix.

[JustcallmeSoul]

steam>client>login details>play button>intro and title screen (with options play, data center, configuration, etc)>?????????? ive never been past that screen. when i select data center it says "connecting to data center" for a few seconds, then appears to connect and sends me to the limbo screen i described earlier. is there a way (if i installed through steam) to run the content independently from steam?

[JustcallmeSoul]

completely uninstalled all anti-malware programs that i had installed, but thats not it. i really, honestly do not think it is a communication error, the ports are open and i can ping to their servers with no issues at all. squeenix support is increasingly not helpful, but a friend of mine pointed out something that confuses me, my directory for the game (c:/programfiles(x86)/steam/steamapps/common/FINAL FANTASY XIV - A Realm Reborn does not contain a .cfg file.