Bad ping/latency/lag problems

[Suburp]

Hello there. After a quick search, I didn't find a topic relevant to what is, to me, the biggest hindrance in the game at the moment (except http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ore-responsive but I care more about combat than the UI).
I'm aware that some users are experiencing latency problems, but it looks like europeans have been placed at the bottom of the food chain (kinda reminds me of the good ol' 16-bit days when we got the games waaaay later than the rest of the world, but I digress).

I'll state a clear example. MOLES. I could like these, really. Ok, they don't look too cute, but they drop formic acid and all. But right now, I just plain hate them, because of that stupid "let's get into the ground and inflict massive damage upon exit" attack. That looks really easy to avoid really, just get out of range in time. Ok. But as things are now, playing from France, my character may look like he's out of the way, the thing is from the Japanese server's point of view, he hasn't even moved yet. So yeah, i take damage and bite the dust 8 out of 10 times (that's an estimate, and no, I wasn't casting a spell).

This is only one example, but it shows a major flaw in a game that seems to rely heavily on character positionning in its combat phases.

So I may be wrong, perhaps it's not only Euro players, perhaps it's only me (though I doubt it). That's why I'm asking for your feedback people. Please feel free to share your experience on that matter.

Now on another note, I really don't get why I never felt such discomfort in FFXI. I'd love an explanation regarding that ^^;

[Amiral_Benson]

What Suburp Asura forgot to tell you is that when we speak in TS, we can measure a lag of 3 sec in the game. For example, I tell him I will move my character, I do a countdown, and I told him exactly when I move it. He will see my character moving after 3 seconds !!!

Our TS3 server is really real time, only 30 ms, and I can do the exact same test on the phone, the fact is in Europe, even with my Optical Fiber 100 Mb/s Internet connexion, it is impossible to play seriously because of that latency.

Like Suburp Asura said, all attacks that can be prevented, are almost impossible to avoid in Europe, every strategy based on timing failed most of the time...

During the Alpha Test, we asked for international continental servers to avoid latency problems, yes we really love to play with the US and Japanese players, but if I had to choose between that and no latency, I will choose no latency and a group of servers based in Europe, this will still be international, and I will still always met players from other countries, because there are plenty of European countries who play FFXIV.

I really think that the dev and Yoshi-P should seriously try to play from Europe to realize this huge and critical problem.

[Ekko]

My wife plays FFXIV too, her computer is right next to me and there's a 3 seconds delay between what my character is doing on my screen and what it is doing on her screen. Strangely it only seems to concern moves, because when I craft there's is no delay.

[Sephr]

I never seem to have a problem with moles and their special move (though its a pretty annoying skill all round). That said, the lag of having all the server's in Japan is fairly annoying, I hope there are more ways they can fix it.

[InuraBera]

Player from Europe here as well *waves*

I have no issue with the combat latency - though I do admit it is definitely tougher here than it may be in Japan, I've seen fellow Botanists sweep areas in the time it takes me a couple of attempts. Saying that, I also do not use any voice chat during the game. Moles are a strange one to struggle with, I found that the moment they burrow if I just run away things will be fine. Generally I see their dot on the minimap appear about half a second before they come out, and they always come up where I was standing at that point in time though if I keep running I'm good to go.

Latency is (of course) longer than those in other areas, but compared to the European World of Warcraft servers it seems just a bit longer to respond (in general lag terms). My moves and such fire off without a hitch (Interesting tip, you don't need to wait for the animation to finish to fire off your next move, just hit it when you would expect it to finish had the animation started immediately). If France is anything like the UK it may be ISP throttling if you find it extreme - took our household forever to fix issues with many games as our ISP would clamp down on anything resembling actual use of the thing we paid for.

*Edit* If I recall, it was a massive crackdown on the ports and such used for torrent style downloads, I'd assume that the patch downloader would come under that and perhaps related programs would be targetted also. Hopefully it is something simple to bring your latency to decently playable levels.

In terms of seeing folk do things much later than they actually do, again, me and my brother used to play World of Warcraft together, and no matter what he did I would, if we started running at the same time, be a good twenty five foot ahead of him (probably around two seconds) and that was on the same connection in the same house! However, differences in hardware was pretty massive.

Just for information, my maximum (and average) connection speed is 7Mbps down, and around 761kbps up.

I wouldn't want segregated servers, just started DC Universe Online, and realised immediately with a sinking feeling that I had to choose between playing on EU servers (located in America no doubt, like previous SOE games) or be able to play with the USA. Not a choice I enjoy.

[Arma]

I know not so her come that from France, but lag is more and more heavy has supporter, with my best pc or my baby pc they find so much latency there (in battle and city)
Made some things please

[Nipa]

From times to times I noticed spikes of latency, up to few seconds (while my ping to the server was still less than 300ms). I'm from Europe and usually play on US MMO servers, servers on which I've never felt so much latency. I think there is a problem more important than server localization here.

[gifthorse]

There was a huge discussion about latency on the ffxivcore.com forums in alpha too. Many people insisted that latency would be detrimental to all players who aren't in Japan. Nobody seemed to take the issue very seriously though, and in the end decided that it was a sacrifice they were willing to make to keep the multicultural aspect of the game alive.

But, with the improvements they are adding to the combat system, I can see latency being a huge hurdle to these improvements. You cannot implement positioning or action-based combat without first accommodating it with appropriate networking, and at the present time FFXIV totally fails at that.

Have you ever asked a Japanese person to repair your gear? It takes them zero seconds to get on their knees and repair the item. Whenever I try to repair something, however, it takes me at least two seconds longer altogether.

Three seconds sounds quite extravagant, and I didn't know it could be that bad for europeans, so i really do agree that they should consider separating servers into regions. When you consider that many japanese players disliked the idea of multicultural servers when NA FFXI went live, and still to this day, resist playing with NA players, it seems like there is little reason to maintain the global servers other than for the convenience of having them right there at the developers disposal.

I think outsourcing servers in different regions isn't a difficult thing to do in this day and age, and SE would have little trouble doing that. So, compared to the other issues the game faces, this would be a minor adjustment from my point of view... and a necessary one.

[Zenaku]

There alway a 3 second delay matter if you play wow or if you playing FFXIV/FFXI. Open your ports for FFXIV and you feel less lag top of that download better.

[Afon]

I'm from the UK & everytime i do anything in game the delay gets me killed 9 out of 10 times... it's very annoying hitting the button & nothing happens! makes leveling up virtually impossible... I'm trying really hard to like playing this game and I should'nt have to... even synthing is a near impossible task. Dont see myself playing much longer unless things change.