Latency issues

[Raist]

I'm sorry, and I'm sure you know your stuff, but you don't understand 2 simple things:


1) I have no idea what you are talking about, I am not knowledgeable in the technical stuff, and I don't want to be either.
2) This is very important. I was online playing FFXIV non stop for almost a week before Wedneday, outside of sleeping (off work due to broken leg). I had zero problems. Have also been playing FFXIV since August 2013 with zero problems. On Wednesday, I am online playing FFXIV, and maintenance happens as I was online. I log in immediately as the servers are back up, and I have this problem immediately from that time since now. It is Square-Enix's fault.

I've actually been trying to explain it to you without getting too technical. The internet is highly unstable and a route can simply go down at the drop of a hat for a long list of reasons. If it was SE's fault as you keep saying, then everyone would be suffering at the same time--which is clearly not the case. People would not be staying in-game for hours upon hours with absolutely no issues if that were the case (I just spent over 6 hours farting around myself in fact, even with my latency spikes around Charlotte).

Every online game suffers from these symptoms at one time or another for players from different regions at different times. You can google popular online games and phrases like "high latency" or "high packet loss" and get hits on stories about people experiencing the very things you guys are dealing with here. It's nothing new... been fighting it myself since 1996. Granted, there have been times where we did indeed find issues client or server side, but the vast majority of times it was problems with a segment between the two--which was always resolved through my ISP, and not the company at the other end of the connection.

Traffic on the internet ebbs and flows just like traffic on the highway. And just like the way a major accident or big construction project on the interstate can completely knacker up people's commute through an area, the same thing happens with the internet. Look at the outage map thumbnail pic and the downdetector status page for Comcast I linked to earlier. The more current map at that status page shows an even more focused view of specific areas for Comcast that are having problems. If you are getting routed through there--you may very well be getting caught up in one of those traffic jam scenarios and suffering from delayed packets, or even worse: dropped packets. Either of those problems can cause dropped connections if it is bad enough.

It is a known problem with the infrastructure across North America...it's a dirty little secret the industry has been trying to hide for quite some time now. They grossly oversold local markets without upgrading their upstream bandwidth to properly support all the ramped up bandwidth they've been selling us. In 20 years, the norm has gone from 1.5mb/s up to 20mb/s, but the upstream bandwidth has not increased proportionally and we now have massive choking points at the major exchanges across the continent.

It is a problem that our ISP's have collectively created through negligence over the years, and it is up to them to remedy it. You pay them for their service, and they are simply dropping the ball. Need to hold them accountable for it.

Edit: Just pasting in something for a better visual of what I'm talking about. These are outage maps for various services tracked at downdetector. Notice how they can show problems in roughly the same regions. Traffic jams may be in full effect, possibly impacting everyone coming through those areas until the ISP's route people around the congestion.

XBL - https://downdetector.com/status/xbox-live


PSN - https://downdetector.com/status/playstation-network


Call of Duty - https://downdetector.com/status/call-of-duty


Time Warner Cable - https://downdetector.com/status/time-warner-cable


Comcast - https://downdetector.com/status/comcast-xfinity


AT&T - https://downdetector.com/status/att

[Raist]

Looks like you have double trouble now... PSN started going down again last night. Check the link I posted earlier for that service. They have a long history of problems. On top of that, Lizard Squad may still be after them from last week. Not uncommon for them to harass them for weeks at a time.

Sony routinely has problems. Which is another point you seem to be overlooking as well. SE has no control over issues with Sony's authentication. If that extra layer of security that Sony has pushed onto the game has problems, then Sony needs to address it...not SE.

[aerolol]

Same here, started a few days before the patch, got much worse after the patch.

Hardly ever had a lag spikes or latency issues before, now it happens every 2-3 hours for like 30min+ then gets back to normal.

Goblin server, in south america

[NocX7]

They don't seem to care.Not 1 response on this issue and all you see are either players suffering from this error or ppl defending SE and blaming your ISP.

While I understand that in some cases it might be the client's ISP,if the problem not related to SE servers at all why did the problem start for many players the second they introduced a patch?

If the players ISP is to blame then we wouldn't see so many cases where players had zero errors right until we got a game patch.Coincidence? With that many players? I think not.

Fix your servers Square Enix.

[Raist]

There is a limited set of paths into Montreal. It's not uncommon for there to be issues along the routes during times of high traffic. It's not isolated to just this game. It happens all the time all over the place.

The last mile ISP's keep selling higher bandwidth at the endpoints, but their upstream bandwidth is still the same as it was when we were offered half the bandwidth (or less). Effectively, they've just stuck bigger funnels onto the same sized hose, feeding into the same sized bucket. Eventually, the funnel overfills and starts sloshing crap all over the place. When you call them, they look at your local connection and see everything is fine on your end and wash their hands of it all. What they don't do is look at what happens at their exchanges with their routing partners or beyond, which is where the choking is occuring.

In all fairness to the guys that answer the phones though, they aren't typically empowered to look further into things than your local segments. What you need is a higher tier of support--the industry term for that layer is Tier3, but some locals may refer to them as Engineering or simply their Admins. In some cases, you have to push to speak to a supervisor before you get someone who understands what you are asking...unfortunately. Again... those helpdesk guys on the phones often have their hands tied on these matters. You may need to push for someone higher up the chain. I've found I fair better when I use the online options to contact Time Warner. Might be worth checking out your ISP's support portal for an online contact option.

[Riku_HWD]

same here. Behemoth server

[ignacioricci]

Last 3 weeks have been a disaster.
Today we had to call our raid off because it was literally impossible to play.

[Samezuka]

Having the same terrible latency issues. Tried running ex-roulette, and my game kept freezing sporadically only to try and catch up. Other characters were rubberbanding around, and I kept dying to simple mechanics I used to avoid really well. I've become a horrible liability and feel bad going into dungeons with FC-mates. I've been avoiding going anywhere near coil or ex-primals because of it and have just been trying to hobble my way through my crafting and ex-roulette, which has been nightmarish for the past three weeks. The sad part is that all my friends and fc-mates are playing just perfectly, so I don't know what it is about my ps4/internet connection that's not working anymore. Please help!

Jenova/Using AT&T U-verse from Miami.

[Rofel]

I'm having the same problem in the last two, three weaks. I can play only a couple of hours / day and some nights (mostly of them) I can't even do the daily duty roulette. Playing on PS3, so WTFast is not an option.

Server: Sargatanas.

[Spiroth]

Last 3 weeks have been a disaster.
Today we had to call our raid off because it was literally impossible to play.

After alot of time not getting into Coil, I decide to try it seriously 2 weeks ago, because I want to experience the story, and had time cause broken leg.
I found a static to go on from Turn 6 that I had stopped since a year ago, but can't play. 1st I was a liability, then I told them I couldn't come cause lag, and they replaced me of course.....