Raiding 100-300 Latency - Feedback from Players

[Emirly]

So I'm from Australia and wanted to get a few opinions from others who have higher latency like me. What's it like to try and achieve raiding from normal>extreme, how enjoyable is it, is it possible and is there anything I can do to help the situation.

I'm really in love with how polished this game is but a little wary on what it may be like when I finally reach this game play.

I had an idea that maybe FFXIV could implement a system where when you are put into a raid/trial/dungeon etc that the system looks at the individuals latency and for gives those particular individuals extra time according to their latency to move before the damage registers to their health bars. This would negate the need for servers in the Oceanic region and also make game play a lot fairer. I'm not suggesting this to be an unfair advantage to others but simply allow more time for peoples keyboard actions to be registered with the server.

Thank you!

[Gamer3427]

Depends, is your lag stable, or is it like lag in Call of Duty games where you just have random jumps constantly?

I play with satellite internet, so I have a persistent ~700ms ping. However, it's stable, so it's at that all the time and as such I'm consistently .7 of a second behind. Because of this, I have about a second less to dodge AoEs from when they appear than other players do. This does make it difficult to dodge attacks consistently unless I'm paying close attention and ready to move, particularly on new runs. But if I'm familiar with content or the attack pattern has longer cast times, I can dodge it easily, and having less of a dodge window normally means my reaction time for dodging has grown to be faster than the average player's. Because it's stable I have no trouble with my latency if I'm paying attention and attempting to compensate for it unless it's a new run I'm unfamiliar with, and this includes all the endgame content that I have attempted to participate in.....

That being said, I'm also beginning to wonder if latency issues aren't worse for PC players than PS4 players for some reason, as I've noticed that most of the players I've seen who consider it "game breaking" are playing on PC. It could be a processing issue of some sort where the game doesn't register quite as quickly, or it could simply be a control issue that prevents PC users from moving as quickly out of AoEs, or of course, it could be a pure coincidence.....

In regards to your suggestion, I could see it being helpful, but I could also see it being used to game the system unless the game is making constant adjustments based on your latency. If it isn't, then players will attempt to find ways to manually modify their latency somehow during the times when it "checks" so that when it isn't checking they have an extended dodge window. It would of course require an outside program of some sort, I'm sure, which is against the ToS, but that would be a program that would be hard for the system to detect. There's also the case of how hard it would be on the system to constantly manage the latency compensation for every single player in the game. I can't even begin to imagine what that would do to the servers if it's not client based, and I can only begin to imagine how easily it would be abused if it was client based......

[xXRaineXx]

When I first started playing I was in New Zealand (right under ya buddy). I was playing on Gilgamesh too, where latency and lag was insane. I'm back in Japan now and only about 2 weeks ago I transferred to Chocobo (not entirely because of lag, but to find a better raiding community).

My answer to your question, I don't think it's really necessary to implement such a feature at this point. Even with latency, raiding IS possible. Just means that, the moment you see a aoe form, it's already been a second or two since it actually started casting and you gotta start moving. People with lag just have less room to breath and squeeze out extra dps. I personally think that this is a good thing in a way, you learn mechanics faster, since you gotta move early, start preemptively moving.

[Niqote]

100-300 is completely playable at endgame in my experience.
Even before Titan Ex was fixed I could clear it with 300 ping (Nightmare as it was).

It's the spikes that you have to watch out for o_o ... I use WTFast to help, but I feel like I could do without it because the Devs are more aware of world latency these days.

Course we have terrible internet here... nothing SE can do about Aus Internet.

[Iz_Lemon]

Well I'm on Tonberry in Aus too, done a fair bit of raiding in my day (not so much right now, just because of life stuff...) and it's completely fine. I generally ping Tonberry around 120. Lag isn't noticable, I'm very rarely getting hit by AOE circles I'm out of on my screen, etc.

Only problem I ever had was when I switched to Ninja, mudras were a bit of a battle, but that's pretty well fixed now.

[Emirly]

Awesome, thanks for your feedback everyone! It gives me a bit of hope that the game will still be enjoyable in time to come. It just makes me nervous playing games like this where the latency I have was not intended for optimal game play. I really loved playing Tera and still wish I could but the latency in that game was especially game breaking. Whilst still being manageable it was significantly less enjoyable because aspects like PvP were impossible 1v1. I definitely still want to experience the higher end content and still enjoy myself.

I can't remember how to check my latency from where I am to the server tower, if anyone has any insights on how I might do this, it would be much appreciated. Does WTFaster really help, is it worth the investment to purchase?

Thank you xoxo

[Gamer3427]

I can't remember how to check my latency from where I am to the server tower, if anyone has any insights on how I might do this, it would be much appreciated. Does WTFaster really help, is it worth the investment to purchase?

Thank you xoxo

Go here and find your server in the list, then select the "IP Address" on the left hand side, to figure out what the IP address of your server is. Then go to your start menu on your computer and type "cmd" in the search box and hit enter. A black box should pop up, with an indicator to type type "PING" followed by a space and your server's IP address. For example since you're listed as a Tonberry player, you'll type "PING 124.150.157.30", but without the quotation marks......

[Nocte]

Does WTFaster really help, is it worth the investment to purchase?

It's definitely worth the investment if you're planning on raiding.

[Yellow]

I use WTFast (Free version) and I play on a US server. My ping is down to about 200 - 250 which is great considering it used to be 350+

I wonder what the connection is like for Japanese servers? I would consider moving there if I could get better connection.

[AskaRay]

I use the free WTFast too, now after the EU servers have ACTUALLY moved to the EU my ping is about a steady 160ms (from about 60ms). WTFast really helps with the sudden spikes I seem to get all the time, which is really nice.