How much of this is Squares fault due to their terrible backend?

[Nuttymiked]

So, I'm a fairly new player, I started in late 2019 and I'm currently still in Stormblood, playing the game on and off at a very casual pace. But I wonder how much of the current situation with the login ques are due to a poorly designed/archaic backend. I understand that there are record numbers of people trying to play and there are real shortages regarding servers but hear me out.

In late 2019 when I first tried playing this game, I nearly quit before I even got started. For some really weird reason I could not get the damn client to download the game files at a decent speed. The client would estimate that it was going to take days to fully download everything and well before that after some hours I would get an error, the client would crash, and I would have to restart the download from the beginning. I tried for a solid week and multiple attempts at troubleshooting before FINALLY coming up with a solution! I had to utilize a VPN just to finally get the client to download at a decent speed. I've never had to go through these lengths with any other game just to get it to work and any other game I played didn't have the ping and connection issues that FF14 did back in the day. Once I finally got everything to work I also realized that I couldn't get the game to work right without the aid of a paid VPN service. Anytime I booted the game up without the VPN I would notice immediately and apparently based on my previous attempts at troubleshooting the game I discovered that I wasn't the only one that couldn't play the game without the aid of a VPN service. I've moved since 2019 and since then I don't have those old issues with my connection, but I've often wondered how many people SE has lost before they even got started on FF14 due to some obvious issues with their backend services and I wonder how much of the current situation is due to long ignored issues now coming together to cause the headaches they now have.

[Puremallace]

I do not much mind the queues but blaming packet loss and then closing the client is just silly. Under this theory my client should crash every time I get a lag spike while playing the game. It doesn't make any actual sense.

[say0]

Probably most of it. I've played since heavensward and the game has always had these issues, according to older players since ARR at least.

[Aurikai]

None of it according to some people on here, 100% of it is your fault, your ISP, God, or Blizzard's fault for using bandwidth that should go to SE. In fact you're lucky SE even allows you pay them $15/m for something you can only play at 4AM.

[TheRealQuah]

So, I'm a fairly new player, I started in late 2019 and I'm currently still in Stormblood, playing the game on and off at a very casual pace. But I wonder how much of the current situation with the login ques are due to a poorly designed/archaic backend. I understand that there are record numbers of people trying to play and there are real shortages regarding servers but hear me out.

In late 2019 when I first tried playing this game, I nearly quit before I even got started. For some really weird reason I could not get the damn client to download the game files at a decent speed. The client would estimate that it was going to take days to fully download everything and well before that after some hours I would get an error, the client would crash, and I would have to restart the download from the beginning. I tried for a solid week and multiple attempts at troubleshooting before FINALLY coming up with a solution! I had to utilize a VPN just to finally get the client to download at a decent speed. I've never had to go through these lengths with any other game just to get it to work and any other game I played didn't have the ping and connection issues that FF14 did back in the day. Once I finally got everything to work I also realized that I couldn't get the game to work right without the aid of a paid VPN service. Anytime I booted the game up without the VPN I would notice immediately and apparently based on my previous attempts at troubleshooting the game I discovered that I wasn't the only one that couldn't play the game without the aid of a VPN service. I've moved since 2019 and since then I don't have those old issues with my connection, but I've often wondered how many people SE has lost before they even got started on FF14 due to some obvious issues with their backend services and I wonder how much of the current situation is due to long ignored issues now coming together to cause the headaches they now have.

So what you're saying is that you had many connection issues that were solved by using a VPN.
Then when you moved you didn't have any connection problems anymore.

And you think this is a problem with their backend?

[Nuttymiked]

I could be wrong, honestly, I'm not that experienced on the subject, so I'd appreciate input from anyone that is. Fact of the matter is if it weren't for some serious work and troubleshooting from me that was above and beyond the typical person, there's no way I would have gotten this far. So I feel there's definitely something they need to look at or fix in regard to the really terrible ping some people experience. I'm just wondering if the current situation with the ques is in some way related. I've played a lot of different MMO's over the years and have personally never seen connection/login ques this bad.

[Yahallo]

I do not much mind the queues but blaming packet loss and then closing the client is just silly. Under this theory my client should crash every time I get a lag spike while playing the game. It doesn't make any actual sense.

How things are handled by the game servers and login servers are almost certainly different. You really can't compare the two.

So what you're saying is that you had many connection issues that were solved by using a VPN.
Then when you moved you didn't have any connection problems anymore.

And you think this is a problem with their backend?

I could be wrong, honestly, I'm not that experienced on the subject, so I'd appreciate input from anyone that is. Fact of the matter is if it weren't for some serious work and troubleshooting from me that was above and beyond the typical person, there's no way I would have gotten this far. So I feel there's definitely something they need to look at or fix in regard to the really terrible ping some people experience. I'm just wondering if the current situation with the ques is in some way related. I've played a lot of different MMO's over the years and have personally never seen connection/login ques this bad.

I am personally using a VPN to gain some control over how my connection is routed. I find that it doesn't completely solve the issues but it does seem to greatly mitigate it. I still see 2002's while in queue, but more often than not I am able to keep my spot in queue because I can get back in quick enough. In the past, I noticed that my normal connection to the datacenter was incredibly suboptimal and it is probably my ISP doing that. If that is still the case, then it is more my ISP and fundamental network issues than something specific to FFXIV. I don't believe that this is a unique FFXIV problem, though it can be related to whomever handles their side of the routing like NTT. If you actually are able to get in, you actually will find that the game runs incredibly smooth.

It should be noted that I am using a VPN that is designed specifically to optimize your connection and it doesn't really have much in terms of encryption/anonymity like how most VPN's are set up for. If you use a more standard VPN, you are more likely to experience a worse connection.

[Nuttymiked]

So what you're saying is that you had many connection issues that were solved by using a VPN.
Then when you moved you didn't have any connection problems anymore.

And you think this is a problem with their backend?

No other game at the time gave me the ping issues that FF14 did. I've never had to go to the lengths of using a paid VPN service just to get the client to download the files. I'm not the only one that has had this unique experience with FF14, look it up.

[Nuttymiked]

I do not much mind the queues but blaming packet loss and then closing the client is just silly. Under this theory my client should crash every time I get a lag spike while playing the game. It doesn't make any actual sense.

You probably would mind the ques if you tried logging on in the middle of the day and even if you did get on you have to leave the game to get other things done throughout your day only to return to an impenetrable login que.

[DezereDawn]

Judging by the fact your issue was resolved by a vpn, likely neither your isp or SE's fault, and more likely an erronous node along your route that's dropping packets somewhere, i had this happen for a few days when connecting to JP Last year but it was fixed when the route was changed again