Yoshi's post about client server and cheating

[Coldfire]

That's a rather ironic statement, since you're the one being obnoxious.

Did you even read the discussion or just the last page? It's nice of you to take someones side but it's still totally out of place and you didn't even try to point out that what he said isn't ignorant. Instead you're trying to directly insult me... thanks?

[Wolfie]

"Between client and server" can be both directions. If he was only talking about one-way communication, he would say "FROM client TO server, not BETWEEN client AND server."

Let me reply to this since you edited it in.

"From a player in Japan" was not a reference at all to whether I was commenting on the trip being one way or round trip. It was a reference that both the client and the server were in both in the same region.

Whether the 0.3 second trip was one way or round trip is also irrelevant, because it's too damn high. Round trip average for a game client and a dedicated, local server should not exceed 150 ms, or 0.15 seconds. Anything above that is considered slow in the gaming industry nowadays.

[Colino]

From a client in Japan to a server in Japan? That's totally unreasonable ping.

It is, but on average for an mmo 300 ping is not that bad.

Mind you it's totally unacceptable for anything like a fighting game, fps or even an rts, but for a game like FFXIV it's not that bad. However I just find it hard to believe that is anywhere close to my in-game ping because the delay is most definitely much much larger than 0.3 seconds.

[Coldfire]

It is, but on average for an mmo 300 ping is not that bad.

Just to clarify: Yoshi said 0.3 seconds for transfering a packet and a packet is one-way. Now a ping is something different though as it means a round-trip(maybe he mistook it or just didn't clarify it enough). The ping would be ~0.6 seconds but this is not really the latency of the game. The latency is the whole delay before an input from the client is returned from the server as "applied".

[Wolfie]

0.3 to 0.6 s ping on an MMO is debatable. For MMOs like WOW, Aion and RIFT that depend on quick reflexes for interrupting spells and the like, it's inacceptable. Pings that high will get your group killed. For FFXI it was fine, because the combat was slow enough that it did not kill you most of the time. FFXIV is just on that threshold of needing good ping to be able to play it.

By the way, here's a ping and tracert that I just did from Cambridge to Shanghai. This is round trip, and is considered unacceptably high by a company that does not provide services that become poor quality with higher latency.

--- *** ping statistics ---
7 packets transmitted, 7 received, 0% packet loss, time 6003ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 282.348/282.773/283.595/0.755 ms

# *** (***) 282.609 ms 282.369 ms 282.426 ms

So I'm guessing the 0.3 seconds that Yoshi tossed out was from people playing outside of Japan. That's normal and understandable.

If it was from people playing in Japan, then it's completely ridiculous and they need to put some serious effort into getting that fixed.

[viion]

@Alhanelem you can hack the crap out of XIV, all their anti cheating nonsense doesnt work.

We dont expect everything to be client side, take idk, a common mmo, SWTOR, you cant hack Damage, but your also not limited by all the stupid server issues. You can sell everything in matter of seconds, do anything in seconds. Its insanely fast.

Also you can hack you way into any blocked of area easily and it takes the game like 10 seconds before it realises, same if you overclock the processor (temp speed hack) lol can make day/night cycles go instant.

Trying to prevent hacking is just stupid, there is always a way around it, blizzard know this.. XD

[tachi]

And all these anti-hack policies and design choices are what got them into trouble in the first place, all I want is a responsive client and quick transactions. It is unacceptable to wait for the servers to "validate" the trade process multiple times on every action.

What happens now:
Open trade (validate proximity with server)
Send response to client Y/N
Open trade window 4 slot limit(because of both poor database design/TCPIP choices/and RMT countermeasures)
Pick a slot (sends request to server Open inventory)
Pick item (revalidate if item is tradable send another server check)
Choose # of items to trade (revalidate if amount is acceptable)
Add item to trade window
etc etc
Finalize trade (validate transaction)

A trade most likely sends and waits for server responses anywhere from 6~20 timers, this is why trading with others and retainers is slow as dirt.

What could happen:
Client side the transaction and send the server request when the trade is being completed, let the server validate the entire trade process in 1 single check when all items are selected. This causes no lag, instant menu response, no headache.

The point of the thread is just some confirmation that 2.0 plans to client side portions of the game. Or at the very least reduce the amount of validations on every action taken. Most likely this will never get a response as this has been blanketed into the 2.0 redesign as "all lag will be addressed with the new engine" And I'm fine with that I just hope this helps keep the developers aware that what they have now is not anywhere near acceptable and they need to greatly improve that interface for 2.0

[Jinko]

0.3 to 0.6 s ping on an MMO is debatable. For MMOs like WOW, Aion and RIFT that depend on quick reflexes for interrupting spells and the like, it's inacceptable. Pings that high will get your group killed. For FFXI it was fine, because the combat was slow enough that it did not kill you most of the time. FFXIV is just on that threshold of needing good ping to be able to play it.

By the way, here's a ping and tracert that I just did from Cambridge to Shanghai. This is round trip, and is considered unacceptably high by a company that does not provide services that become poor quality with higher latency.

--- *** ping statistics ---
7 packets transmitted, 7 received, 0% packet loss, time 6003ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 282.348/282.773/283.595/0.755 ms

# *** (***) 282.609 ms 282.369 ms 282.426 ms

So I'm guessing the 0.3 seconds that Yoshi tossed out was from people playing outside of Japan. That's normal and understandable.

If it was from people playing in Japan, then it's completely ridiculous and they need to put some serious effort into getting that fixed.

Pings from Japan are something like 16-40 ms.
Pings from America are normally 120-200 ms
Pings from Europe are 240-400 ms

You can tracert SE's server with this. tracert -h 50 traceip.ffxiv.com

There is more info about it in the Technical support sub-forum

[Alhanelem]

Whether the 0.3 second trip was one way or round trip is also irrelevant, because it's too damn high. Round trip average for a game client and a dedicated, local server should not exceed 150 ms, or 0.15 seconds.

MMORPGs have a lower standard for ping quality. And you're not getting 150ms ping to japan no matter how hard you try unless you move to Asia.

Honestly the only time where this really bothers me is in the menu response, especially when storing/retrieving items. During gameplay, I don't have a lot of issue with it. Not that it couldn't be better, but it's completely playable as it is now.

A roundtrip ping of 300ms (And remember, Yoshida was just giving an arbitrary number, not intending it to be an exact measurement) is not unacceptable in MMORPGS. It's high, but it's within tolerance.

@Alhanelem you can hack the crap out of XIV, all their anti cheating nonsense doesnt work.

It's not nonsense- You can't prevent all hacking and cheating, not by a longshot. However, that doesn't mean you just throw open the door and tell everyone, "Hey, go ahead and cheat, because we're not going to bother to do anything to secure our game."

Part of making your game more secure is not trusting the client with too much information. Most of those other "common" MMOs speed up the interface by only processing the transactions between client and server every so often, or only after a process has been completed fully (e.g. you're selling vendor trash and after you're finished and leave the NPC THEN the approval process takes place, such that you don't notice it the way you do in XIV). There are lots of things they can do to improve network performance, but they can't completely ignore client security either.

[Tibian]

I don't care what they do in 2.0. There are simply two rules/stipulations that they need to achieve for me to be happy.

1) Make the client/server movement/trade/actions/functions/updates on a 1:1 ratio like World of Warcraft, Everquest 2, Rift, and any other modern MMO that seems to not have this huge "latency/delay" issue.

2) Remove any and all animation locking problems during combat. I've seen some posts saying that "animation lock is gone" in the casting thread. It isn't. It still exists and remains a massive problem.

If fixing those two issues means that there are going to be a few more loop holes that hackers can get into... then that is the result. Clearly other modern MMOs can deal with the issues appropriately, so can SE.