The Mac OS X Client's absymal performance is a joke.

[Tatsuo]

Well, I knew that the performance would be going to take a hit, but I didn't expect it to be that severe. I have a late 2013 Macbook Pro (GT750M model) and while FFXIV runs with about 50-60 FPS via Bootcamp/Windows on the preset "Laptop (normal)" on 1680x1050, it barely runs with 20 FPS in the same zones with the same presets via Mac OS X.

I'm sorry, but this is not acceptable. Unless there is a major bug/glitch/whatever makes it run that bad, I would like to have the license for Mac removed from my account for a refund.

From reddit:

The new Mac client is a catastrophe. Which, incidentally, also cost $60. Fundamentally, this stems from it being a fairly lazy wine port.

It is slow: at the lowest settings, I get 20-30fps with lots of stuttering. (At the highest it's actually not much worse — with the stuttering, it's annoying either way). Yes, I meet the requirements. No, this is not an intrinsic feature of mac gaming (slightly slower? sure. only barely playable? no.).

The patcher is awful. It hung completely once. It doesn't render the progress bar correctly; sometimes it just doesn't render anything at all and you just get a black rectangle. You can still click on the rectangle, though; it seems to be strictly a rendering error.

The quality of the in-game rendering is abysmal. For instance, the ground here is missing.
It's unstable. It's crashed multiple times without me even really trying to do anything. (The built-in crash reporter then also failed.)

Full-screen mode is broken. It successfully takes over all screens (in violation of Apple's recommendations, but I'll let that pass because it was at least listed as a known issue), but then the rendering is offset such that it only fills some portion of the screen. You can't see the missing parts, and you just have black on the other side.

The controls also don't work as I might like (I use one of those mice with a numpad on the side — modifier keys on the keyboard don't do anything if I use the buttons on the mouse). I'm willing to believe that's not SE's fault, though.

All in all, this is about the behaviour I'd expect if I just stuck the game in wine and crossed my fingers. It would be deeply questionable if this were a free addon, and is completely unacceptable for something that costs an extra $60. It's not just me — there are a few reports of this around.

[Nemna]

I'm having the exact same issue. Frankly, I think it's an embarrassing blemish -- not unlike the 1.0 debacle. They shouldn't have even bothered if it was going to be this bad. I've submitted a support ticket making a similar request (remove/refund my Mac client bundle; I'll stick to Boot Camp for now).

I'm seeing similar threads starting to appear on Reddit as well.

[troyster]

Oy, this isn't promising. I just purchased it this morning, but I can't even get it to patch. It keeps choking on an error. I was worried when I read that it wasn't a true Mac client. Perhaps I should save myself the trouble and just ask for a refund now.

I don't understand how anyone at SE thinks that this is acceptable. Some can't even get it to run and patch correctly, others such as yourselves are getting abysmal performance on hardware that otherwise plays it quite well under Windows. Why offer a crippled and debilitated Mac version if this is how it's going to perform?

So disappointing.

[zegota]

It's especially galling they made people buy a separate license for the Mac version if they didn't even bother developing a native Mac version.

[GaryREM]

It is ridiculous.

I can run 2560 x 1440 smooth as silk around 35fps in Bootcamp.
In OS X running 1920 x 1080 with everything turned off and can barely get a jerky 24fps. This in open terrain. Frightened to see what happens in a dungeon!

I knew not running DX11 would be a penalty, but this is crazy. Didn't anyone test this stuff?????

[GaryREM]

It is ridiculous.

I can run 2560 x 1440 smooth as silk around 35fps in Bootcamp.
In OS X running 1920 x 1080 with everything turned off and can barely get a jerky 24fps. This in open terrain. Frightened to see what happens in a dungeon!

I knew not running DX11 would be a penalty, but this is crazy. Didn't anyone test this stuff?????

Note the requirements:

21.5-inch iMac (Mid 2014) with Intel Iris Pro Graphics or higher
MacBook Pro 15 inch with Retina display or higher

In other words, you must have the newest Mac available to try and run this!!! Could they limit the audience any more????

Pretty limiting. And the OP does NOT meet these.

Still ridiculous.

[zerovisual79]

I have a MacBookPro 15 Retina and it runs HORRIBLY. They should pull this from the store and refund people. Also fire the company they hired to port this. I thought it would be a native release, hence the reason we waited so long. What a joke. A group of high school kids could have ported it and got this results.

[Tatsuo]

Note the requirements:

21.5-inch iMac (Mid 2014) with Intel Iris Pro Graphics or higher
MacBook Pro 15 inch with Retina display or higher

In other words, you must have the newest Mac available to try and run this!!! Could they limit the audience any more????

Pretty limiting. And the OP does NOT meet these.

Still ridiculous.

I more than meet the requirements.
For what it's worth, people on the Macrumors.com forum did try it on a $8000 Mac Pro with 12 cores and dual AMD FirePro D700 cards, it didn't go above 35 frames on the LOWEST settings. Wut?

[cybereal]

Well I'd take awful FPS over simply crashing on launch. However, I can't say I'm surprised by this at all. Square has a long history of terrible quality PC releases, why shouldn't that continue on Mac? I realize a Wine port is hardly ideal (embarrassing really since Square has developed their own engine, they couldn't manage to port it to a very standard OpenGL platform?) but it doesn't have to be this bad. EVE Online is perfectly fine on Mac, even if it's a little better on Windows, and it's a WINE port as well.

So, no excuses Square. This is really bad.

[Stuke00]

Thank you for saving me money! I will stick to my bootcamp version. Thank you.