PC Controller goes crazy

[Dzian]

I had it happen to me for the first time in a few years yesterday. and i'm curious. in the system settings under game pad there is an option "keep gamepad enabled when client is inactive" I usually have this on all the time because it means I can put media player in a corner of my screen and watch Netflix or something while I craft / gather. however yesterday I turned it off so I could play an emulator while waiting for a duty queue. forgot to turn it back on and the gamepad froze up on me randomly twice during the duty. turned the option back on and has never happened since.

so i'm wondering if it's possibly a bug where some process or other makes the game register as an inactive process for a moment and thus stops accepting game pad commands..

unrelated but I know other games had similar issues years ago where controls would freeze if you got a skype / msn popup or something because it registered that popup as the foreground process. doesn't happen much these days as most things have a silent mode that blocks popups when something runs full screen. but I wonder if something somewhere is dropping xiv to a background process even for just a second.

Can you describe what you mean by the "controller goes crazy?"!

Generally at entirely random intervals sometimes just for a second the controller either stops responding or freezes on the last input you made. the problem is that with it literally only being a second sometimes it's incredibly hard to catch diagnose or even demonstrate. it might happen twice in 5minutes or once in an hour.

it might for example only happen for 1 second in 30 minutes of playing. but if that one second is in a fight when your running out of a telegraph on kefka or something there's a pretty good chance your going to keep moving in the same direction and go off the edge of the arena because the controls have frozen for a second and not realised you've let go of the left stick and thus your now dead.

[Dualgunner]

I had a similar issue about a week ago where I watched my poor lala go careening off the edge of 8s while pulling back hard on the movement stick trying to get her to stop. Hasn't happened since, however, and it required no fix from me.
The things that make my controller go bonkers are when my pc is accessing too many devices at once. For instance if I have multiple bluetooth devices active, my controllers input gets laggy. I would check to make sure that no other bluetooth devices are connected, and unplug any capture cards not currently in use.

[StouterTaru]

I had it happen to me for the first time in a few years yesterday. and i'm curious. in the system settings under game pad there is an option "keep gamepad enabled when client is inactive"

This was an issue for me when I went to a Windows 10 PC in borderless windowed. Some background program steals focus, and it was often a scan. You can also set active hours in windows update settings, to prevent Windows 10 from doing an update and prompting a restart in the middle of your playing time.

[Squintina]

Try looking at your background processes.

I had this happen on a x360 controller (wireless adapter), and also on a Nintendo Switch controller (bluetooth). In both cases, reducing background processes helped. I had an android emulator for a mobile game I was playing. I closed that. I had a network bandwidth usage scanner software, which I no longer needed, so I uninstalled that. I closed unnecessary programs that showed up on the windows network page. It all helped reduce the frequency of it all, but it would still happen occasionally.

Then I found it. My online backup software, which turns itself on, was always active during times when it went nuts. I turned that off and now the only time it happens is when I reboot my computer and forget to turn it off when I play .

I do think there's something wrong with FF14 and/or DirectX (which is how xinput is applied) as 1) no other game I play has this issue and 2) when I had the switch controller on d-input, it didn't have that issue (but I had to switch it to xinput because the default driver came without any deadzones on the camera analog and it was annoying me)

[Ariellendera]

Hello

Thank you all for the suggestions and input on this thread.

Thank you for playing Final Fantasy XIV! Hope to see you online.

[crc0427]

Sorry I have been away. The issue is exactly what Dzian described and it’s literally only FFXIV that it happens with.

I’ll try disabling my backup software to see if that stops the problem but considering it only happens in XIV and not other games, on 4 different computers I’ve had.. I feel like it’s a programming issue SE should be looking into.

It’s quite aggravating.

[PockyStyx]

having the same issues too, analog sticks sticking, and buttons not reacting to inputs or just acting like I pressed them over and over again.

just started up about a week ago and cannot get the controllers I have to work (XBONE one and a WiiU Pro Controller).

no problems using KB+M, but I would prefer not using those, as I have become pretty accustomed to my controller layout!

[Einmimiria]

Sorry I have been away. The issue is exactly what Dzian described and it’s literally only FFXIV that it happens with.

I’ll try disabling my backup software to see if that stops the problem but considering it only happens in XIV and not other games, on 4 different computers I’ve had.. I feel like it’s a programming issue SE should be looking into.

It’s quite aggravating.

Thank you for the update crc0427.

If the clean boot does not solve the issue, can you provide a dxdiag?

We hope we can be of assistance in helping you enjoy the exciting world of Final Fantasy XIV!