MMORPGs moving to 1-10 MS server side polling

[Tiggy]

It's not the fault of the players. It's ISPs. Stop trying to act like everyone is blaming the players. We are blaming ISPs and backbone providers. Keep up.

Secondly, the game updates 10 times a second despite the OP pushing false 300ms information. It updates at 100ms a second. 10 times a second is plenty and it made a noticeable difference immediately. This was updated months ago. Keep up.

Lastly, you're cherry picking one game in one scenario largely ignoring many games who didn't have things go so smoothly. Also, It doesn't prove anything since it's a badly picked example. For you're reading comprehension here is a google search showing you all the level3 related lag problems people are talking about in WoW. https://www.google.com/search?q=leve...m=122&ie=UTF-8

Funny how this "other company still managed to fix things" yet still has issues with the SAME EXACT backbone provider that square does. Wow that's some nice poorly picked data you got there. It took me literally less than 5 seconds to google search this and see it was a problem in WoW as well. Doing research is hard because reasons.

[Fornix]

If the route is bad then why not change the route and open up different data centers that have better routing for different players in different regions, i.e. why put all western servers even European servers in Canada in the first place?

Canada offers a much colder climate than east coast and west coast locations. For this reason more and more data centers are opening up there. It allows lower operation costs due to reduced cooling requirements. Temperatures can be more easily maintained at a lower level which allows for hardware better hardware longevity. And lastly heating produced by data centers can be recycled into city heating. This makes hosting in data centers in e.g. canada a much more environmentally sound choice. And are just a selection of the reasons why more and more companies do so. In Europe the Scandinavian countries likewise are getting an increased preference. Iceland is starting to build up more and more data centers as well. And there are even suggestions going around for setting up data centers in Greenland.

Fact is, data centers in the future are going to be moving further and further away from the once all too popular east/west coast locations and European cities such as Paris, London or Frankfurt. Local deals in the colder countries may very easily play in on those decisions as well. For export of heating local governments may pay data centers. Reducing costs even further, and creating a scenario of benefit for both parties involved.

Regardless of the financial aspect of it, the beneficial climate for data centers in these colder environments is luring in rather big names. Facebook not too long ago opened up a new data center in Lulea, Sweden. Google invested over 1 billion dollars in the creation of one of their biggest data centers in Hamina, Finland. And there's many, many others following suit.

[reality_check]

Secondly, the game updates 10 times a second despite the OP pushing false 300ms information. It updates at 100ms a second. 10 times a second is plenty and it made a noticeable difference immediately. This was updated months ago. Keep up.

FFXIV updates at 100 MS intervals in PVP and only in specific instances (coil & certain extreme.)

Everywhere else in the world updates at 300 MS intervals. This information comes directly from what the developers have told us.

[Tiggy]

FFXIV updates at 100 MS intervals in PVP and only in specific instances (coil & certain extreme.)

Everywhere else in the world updates at 300 MS intervals. This information comes directly from what the developers have told us.

Direct from patch 2.2 patch notes.
"Improvements made to the frequency with which player positioning is updated in patch 2.1 will now apply to all instances."

So yes it's not the whole game, but it's in every scenario where content actually would actually require it. Nothing in the open world requires that extra update rate at all. Most complaints stem from problems in dungeons, raids, or trials since that's where progress is actually hindered by lag.

The only time the servers actually have genuine trouble is when too many people congregate in one place. Specifically Odin/Behemoth/A and S rank hunts. That's not even a lag problem. That's the servers crapping themselves since they can't handle the sheer volume of people that showed up. Some games solve this problem with a person per zone limit, and others such as Eve solve it by doing time dilation. Every game is going to suffer when too many people are in once place. Square has surprisingly loose restrictions on people per zone considering how bad it can get at overcrowded S ranks. Thankfully this is one of those things that tends to get better as the game ages. All those tiny performance tweaks really add up over time as well as improved hardware.

Let's say we lived in a world where the servers were as close to ideal perfection as possible. The servers handled even more objects than today with even more concurrent people, and it did so with even less server power than today. I mean why not if this is a fantasy right so let's even say they have a way of certifiably proving the servers could be no better than that so we know without a shadow of a doubt that the servers are simply fantastic. If we were still using the same internet we have right now, even given the super awesomeness of those servers, we would still see most of these threads complaining about lag. People would still be dying and people would still be blaming square.

[Gextiv]

Come on guys, I can understand the deep affection and love towards SE; after all, they do provide us with the Final Fantasy franchise we all love and adore. But let us not be disillusioned that S.E shares no responsibility, fault , or control over the "lag" that a portion of the player base experiences.

I propose a solution, however! Complimentary VPN service to all players affected by the "lag", since VPNS seem an effective tool to combat the "lag".

@Fornix
In other words, they cut corners at the expense of the player base.


P.S PS3 limitations

[Teryaani]

Come on guys, I can understand the deep affection and love towards SE; after all, they do provide us with the Final Fantasy franchise we all love and adore. But let us not be disillusioned that S.E shares no responsibility, fault , or control over the "lag" that a portion of the player base experiences.

I can only speak for me, and I know I'm not going absolve them of their share in this.

I think your point here:

In other words, they cut corners at the expense of the player base.

Is completely right. The premise of this thread though (server polling rate ist uber alles!) isn't the right answer to the problem.

[Alukah]

The only time the servers actually have genuine trouble is when too many people congregate in one place. Specifically Odin/Behemoth/A and S rank hunts. That's not even a lag problem. That's the servers crapping themselves since they can't handle the sheer volume of people that showed up. Some games solve this problem with a person per zone limit, and others such as Eve solve it by doing time dilation. Every game is going to suffer when too many people are in once place. Square has surprisingly loose restrictions on people per zone considering how bad it can get at overcrowded S ranks. Thankfully this is one of those things that tends to get better as the game ages. All those tiny performance tweaks really add up over time as well as improved hardware.

I don't know if you are familiar with GW2's "overflow" system (before they implemented the mega server system) but in the live letter previous to TGS they talked about implementing a system like that here in order to deal with congestion issues, and perhaps open a path for open world dungeons.

1:30:04
Q: Do you have plans to implement open-world dungeons like there were in 1.0?

A: Kasuga: If Yoshida would like to do this then we'll think about it. However, after patch 2.35 North Shroud has been congested, and there are concerns that the same conditions would occur in other areas as well if we implemented open-world dungeons.

Yoshida: Right now, due to the fact that North Shroud serves as the entrance point for the Second Coil of Bahamut as well as the location of the Ixali base it's extremely crowded. When it comes to field areas, we need to consider congestion when creating content. It wouldn't be impossible to design such a dungeon, but the really difficult part is reward balancing. Also, it would very likely be content you couldn't complete with a small amount of people, and conversely, it would be completed quite easily if more than the necessary amount of people were to attempt it. If we were to implement this, just one wouldn't be enough and we would have to implement multiple dungeons at the same time. This kind of content would turn into a massive raid with even more participants than the Crystal Tower, and, similar to the 80-player raids of first generation MMORPGs, it would be easy to find people when it's implemented, but after a while it would be really tough to get the right amount of people together.

When we started developing FFXIV: ARR, there was the question of whether or not we would make dungeons using open-world areas, but we decided to consider it at a later date since that kind of content wouldn't last two seconds if we implemented it without balanced rewards and participation.

Additionally, the congestion in North Shroud is quite rough, so we're currently looking into whether we should implement a system that has been adopted by other MMORPGs for making multiple instances of the same open-world area. The preparations have already been made and we've implemented this into the Chinese version of the game, so we do have some operative results. We'll be testing things up until the last minute to be sure that the concept of multiple open-world instances is clear for players who aren't used to this kind of system.

[Amberion]

Additionally, the congestion in North Shroud is quite rough, so we're currently looking into whether we should implement a system that has been adopted by other MMORPGs for making multiple instances of the same open-world area. The preparations have already been made and we've implemented this into the Chinese version of the game, so we do have some operative results. We'll be testing things up until the last minute to be sure that the concept of multiple open-world instances is clear for players who aren't used to this kind of system.

Translation: We plan to remove open world completely, and instead make everything instanced.

[Dwill]

Translation: We plan to remove open world completely, and instead make everything instanced.

Swing and a miss.

What this means is that they are trying to create a system where in case that a zone is being overcrowded (North Shroud as an example) and it starts affecting the whole server with performance issues, the server will instead create a second copy of North Shroud to redirect players to said copy so that the server doesn't take a performance hit. Another way this is done is by having the server create multiple copies of the same zones and let player switch between these copies. The former is the more likely option (in my opinion).

Next time, read what you quote and try to understand it.

[Amberion]

Swing and a miss.

What this means is that they are trying to create a system where in case that a zone is being overcrowded (North Shroud as an example) and it starts affecting the whole server with performance issues, the server will instead create a second copy of North Shroud to redirect players to said copy so that the server doesn't take a performance hit. Another way this is done is by having the server create multiple copies of the same zones and let player switch between these copies. The former is the more likely option (in my opinion).

Next time, read what you quote and try to understand it.

That is instancing and not open world. Just because they want to go cheap on hardware doesn't remove that fact.

You have to remember that the only reason instancing in exists in the first place, is to not have to spend as much on server cost. And with how much they proclaim this game to be a huge success, they should not have to go that route.

Or making the game in a way that spreads people around and not clumping them together.