The constant disconnects

[Leivan]

OK, spoke to them via web-chat again after their pitiful excuse for troubleshooting / fobbing me off failed, surprisingly precisely no-one. This one is quite lengthy, but TL;DR is post on the Bug Report forum, because they apparently pay attention to that one!


System 12:34：You are now connected to SEE Agent Mark.

SEE Agent Mark 12:34：Hello, thank you for contacting the Square Enix Europe Support chat line. One moment please while I read your question. Thank you!

SEE Agent Mark 12:35：Ok, so it looks like you are having some connection issues and general network troubleshooting has not helped.

Customer 12:37：I'm having a very specific connection issue; one shared by dozens of other forums users, which are still being ignored. This issue is likely being caused by Square-Enix's efforts to stop DDoS attacks - my guess is that you are blanket blocking / restricting IP address ranges and we are the collateral damage caused by over-zealous restrictions. Can you confirm?

SEE Agent Mark 12:37：In this case, it is likely a mixture of the attacks on NA servers, the area of the game you are in being highly congested and where you are connecting from that are contributing factors in your connection issue.

When troubleshooting doesn't help in cases like this, we would ask that you create a bug report on the forums at https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...31-Bug-Reports so that we can look into your issue further.

SEE Agent Mark 12:38：I have not received any information that would suggest that our attempts to stop the ddos attacks would affect a specific region. It may be a contributing factor, but not one that we have created.

Customer 12:39：This isn't the attackers doing this: it's Square-Enix being too heavy on the blocks. Can you please confirm that you are blocking / restricting IP address ranges? I don't expect you to tell me which ones, but if you ARE, then I can attempt to restart my router and get a new IP from a different, unaffected range.

Customer 12:39：Living in the UK, we often get IP addresses that would indicate we're in the "Netherlands" or somewhere else in the EU.

SEE Agent Mark 12:39：If we were restricting IP ranges you wouldn't be able to log in, this is not the problem.

SEE Agent Mark 12:40：Please submit your details on the forums so that we can gather information and look into why this may be happening.

Customer 12:41：If the attackers were focusing on the login servers, then your explanation would make sense. But they're focusing on the content servers - the game itself. There's currently no reason to restrict IP addresses making legitimate login requests, which is why we can login, but get disconnected / are unable to move when in-game.

Customer 12:43：There is also the explanation that the login requests and game interaction requests are sent and received on different ports: Square-Enix could be allowing certain traffic and blocking others on certain IP address ranges.

Customer 12:44：If you won't confirm this (or genuinely don't know what's going on, I'm not sure which is worse), then how do you expect to resolve this for me? A bug report will do nothing, since the forum staff are clearly still hungover from their 4th of July celebrations. No-one is responding to anything and none of your team seem able or willing to contact them.

SEE Agent Mark 12:45：From the information I have, there is nothing to suggest that your problem isn't a symptom of congestion + ddos + long connection route amalgamating in general connection issues.

The bug report forum is what we are using to collect and collate data on the problem so that we can investigate possible resolutions.

SEE Agent Mark 12:45：I can escalate on our end, but it is literally the long way around as we would be handing the same information to the same team through a different route.

Customer 12:47：You're saying you can't pick up a phone or send an IM of some sort to someone in the Forums department and say "Hey, you guys want to pick any of the ten threads about this issue and maybe say we're looking into it?"

SEE Agent Mark 12:48：You could try DMing a forum moderator or GM if you wish, but they do not have a phone number to contact them on. There are likely many cases of this and I'm sure the threads that have not been answered will be answered in due time. As I said, I can escalate on my end if you wish?

Customer 12:48：I'm saying that you should have escalated this already. Maybe direct them to this 15 page thread: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...nt-disconnects

Customer 12:49：Or this 4 page: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...002-disconnect

Customer 12:49：Or this 2 page: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...haracter-stuck

Customer 12:49：Or any of the other threads, all with the same issue.

Customer 12:50：The onus should not be on me or any of these people to report the issue higher-up. We're contacting you through the forums and being ignored. I'm contacting you via here and being told to post to the forums. Can you see how you're failing to help?

SEE Agent Mark 12:53：If you wish for your details to be escalated, please write back with the following information to confirm and complete what we have:
- Square Enix ID: [REDACTED]
- E-mail address registered on your Square Enix ID:
- Date of Birth:
- Secret Question:
- Character, world and location (per affected character):
- ISP: [REDACTED]
- When the issue began: 2017/7/4 22:00
- Troubleshooting attempted:

I can then pass this along to the team who are looking into this for you.

SEE Agent Mark 12:53：I'm sorry that you feel we are not helping, the bug report forum is the primary and correct way for us to gather information on issues like this. I will happily pass this information along for you as you feel that the forum is not helping.

Customer 12:55：- Square Enix ID: [REDACTED]
- E-mail address registered on your Square Enix ID: [REDACTED]
- Date of Birth: [REDACTED]
- Secret Question: [REDACTED]
- Character, world and location (per affected character): Celesia Covenant, Excalibur (NA), South Shroud (Quarrymill)
- ISP: [REDACTED]
- When the issue began: 2017/7/4 22:00
- Troubleshooting attempted: You know everything I've tried.

SEE Agent Mark 12:56：I would also need a list of the troubleshooting attempted or the ticket number of your previous contacts with us as, unfortunately, I do not know what you have tried.

Customer 12:59：This is absolutely ridiculous. You can plainly see that this has nothing to do with me or my individual setup. It is happening to dozens and dozens of people with wildly different setups, in different countries, on different worlds. It doesn't matter what I've done or what my security question is: none of that is pertinent information.

Everything you need to know is contained within the threads I've linked and Square-Enix's own actions. If you are not capable of escalating this issue on its own merits, then don't bother. If you can't go to your supervisor or manager and go "Hey, look, about a hundred people are reporting the same thing happening to them, MAYBE we should speak to someone about this!", then I don't know what to say.

SEE Agent Mark 13:02：We are already investigating the issues that many players are experiencing and I am information gathering your particular details to help us with these investigations. This is a known issue and the escalation is to look at the issue from your specific perspective rather than the issue as a whole to see if it helps with the investigation on the whole.

The secret question is required to validate ownership of your account and is required for us to be sure that when we are discussing an account that we are discussing it with the account owner. Without this information we may be limited as to how we can help.

SEE Agent Mark 13:03：I can escalate your case with the incomplete information if you wish, but I am simply trying to gather as much information and evidence as I can to aid the investigation the best I can.

Customer 13:06：I am hoping that your responses are limited by what you are allowed to say and do not represent your actual knowledge of this issue.

Escalate my case or don't, I'm past caring at this point. Your approach to this issue (and Square-Enix's as a whole) is a complete waste of time. Individual cases and setups do not matter at all - this is a systemic problem and the resolution will not be found by asking us our secret bloody questions.

If you are unable or unwilling to help, then this is a waste of both our times.

SEE Agent Mark 13:07：Ok, I'm getting mixed signals here, do you wish me to escalate your case with the information you provided?

Customer 13:08：Go ahead, it won't make a shred of difference either way, but fire away.

SEE Agent Mark 13:08：Ok, I'll go ahead and do that for you. As soon as we have an update for you regarding your case we will e-mail you back.

SEE Agent Mark 13:08：Is there anything else I can assist you with today?

Customer 13:10：I would recommend looking up the definition of "assist" and ask yourself if you can honestly say you've done that for me today.

No, you clearly can't help. Apologies for my tone and rest assured it's no attack on you personally - I am simply thouroughly disappointed with Square-Enix and the service I've received.

SEE Agent Mark 13:10：Thank you for visiting the Square Enix Europe Support chat line. Take care and have a good day!

System 13:11：SEE Agent Mark has ended the chat session.


Complete waste of time. They have no understanding of where I'm coming from and do not care about us here in these forums. They expect us to escalate with unnecessary details, which is a tactic designed to discourage any reporting because of how inconvenient it is. Any respectable systems engineer / developer looking at these threads should be immediately aware that the issue is not with any individual or our setups, but with the system itself. Whatever actions Square-Enix are taking, it's clear that THEY are responsible and do not want to admit it.

Either that, or they really are as clueless as they claim, which is actually worse. Looks like I won't be playing FFXIV for the next week. Thanks, Square-Enix, for absolutely nothing.

[FinalTom]

I just tried using a VPN (WTFAST) and it worked, i can play now without getting 90K'ed, seems to be if you connect from the UK to the NA servers, my vpn is in Dallas and its working fine i can teleport, use abilities, everything without dc'ing

[Lleidileita]

Like Finaltom above I have resorted to using an american VPN before connecting to the server. So it's blatantly obvious that this is either some extremely bad routing on the way to the SE server, or SE is dropping our packets on purpose.

[Erudito]

It is now the 5th of July and the problems persist. Just when you think the connection is good, you start a disconnection session of over 20 minutes of going in and out.

Location this happened: Temple of the Fist
Time: 5th of July, around 7:45AM EST
Platform: PS4
What happened: Near the end of the dungeon, past second boss. Disconnections started to happen, errors 90002. Before the dungeon was finished (yes, we were able to finish it) I disconnected over 11 times. Sometimes I had to just plain turn off the FFXIV application because it was being stupid and not recognizing that connection has failed.

Stormblood is the best expansion by far but its servers and connection errors make it the worst gaming experience I have ever had to go through. May SE get hit real hard by this so they up the ante on the servers and their connection infrastructure.

[MrHoot]

same thing happened to me, although constant disconnects only like 30 seconds after I log in. I play from Switzerland on Mateus because that's where my friends all are. I'm using a VPN now and it works too but I hope this gets resolved soon

[RyuujinZERO]

I had this problem all yesterday until the late evening, whereupon it stopped and I was able to play at night. This morning, the same problem is happening again :|

[redstraws]

I've recorded somewhere in the neighborhood of 78 unique people posting in this thread alone. That may seem like a small number in the grand scheme of things but that is still nearing 100 people who are being denied consistent service, and that's just the vocal ones. That would be enough to tank a small business. This is thoroughly frustrating and disappointing, and I'm not sure what to believe or who to blame.

At least with early access MSQ nonsense I could ignore the clusterflub and do other stuff, but now where I thought it was just an issue with unavoidable clogging around Omega, it's a much more widespread issue that denies me even the certainty of having other content to be involved in. How can I subject other people to this level of inconsistency in a partied instance when dealing with consistent disconnects renders things unenjoyable for me? A large degree of my interest in this game stems from the fact that my friends are all on the NA servers, so it shouldn't be down to blaming the customers.

[albertopin]

You know, we could try to reach the press. Maybe ign or certain portal, im from south América and have the same problem. Its kind of obvious they messed up.

[TheCount]

Can confirm that a vpn makes you not crash

[Leivan]

The fact that people are able to connect while using a VPN all but confirms it: Square-Enix are to blame, via throttling / restricting access to FFXIV from certain IP address ranges.

If you are in the UK, or another country which allows for easy IP address renewal, try the following:

1. Find your IP address by clicking here: https://www.google.co.uk/#q=what+is+my+ip

2. Note it down, then power off your router for about 1 minute, then back on.

3. Check the link again. If your IP address range has changed (e.g. from 46.208.xxx.xxx to 87.103.xxx.xxx), then try FFXIV again. If not, reset your router again (perhaps for a little longer if your IP didn't change at all).

The idea behind this is that, being in the UK, we sometimes get assigned IP addresses that make it look like we're in different countries (e.g. the Netherlands). If Square-Enix is restricting via IP address range, then a change of IP to an "acceptable" range might resolve the issue.

Let me know if anyone tries these steps with any success.