Response from Support regarding the audio stutter

[Nommers]

Hi folks, I posted this in the ongoing thread but thought a new thread might boost visibility. I've sent a few emails to Support asking for a refund for the three remaining months on my sub considering the game is currently unplayable for me. After some back and forth, I received this (most interesting points in bold):

We do apologize for the inconvenience you have been experiencing. With regards to the current audio issue, as your report provided has indicated that you have exhausted our current available troubleshooting suggestions as well as other suggestions provided by other players on the forums and none of the suggestions have provided a fix for the issue at this time, we are unable to provide any other suggestions at this time. We would like to confirm that it is still a known issue and is still being investigated further by the appropriate teams. Unfortunately, we do not have an ETA on when a definite fix will be made but it is being worked on.

With regards to the refund request: We are unable to refund subscription fees under any circumstances. Once the subscription charge has processed, we are unable to reverse it, as stated in the User Agreement (http://support.na.square-enix.com/rule.php?id=5382&la=1).

If you do not wish to be billed again in the future, we recommend canceling the subscription ahead of the billing date. To cancel the subscription, log into the Mog Station (sqex.to/Msp) and choose “Your Account”. Once there, scroll to the bottom of the page to find the button to cancel the subscription. Please note that after canceling the subscription, you will still be able to play the remaining game time on the account.

I'm taken aback at how quickly they changed their tune here given the general tone of "it's your hardware" most people seem to have been getting over the last month. I'm hoping the return of the EN Community Team from their holiday break has helped raise awareness inside Squeenix of the severity of the issue.

Until we receive more communication, do NOT let up. We still need to see official acknowledgment on the Lodestone, and personally I really think the ideal solution until they can fix it is an option to roll back to 5.55's audio engine. Keep submitting bug reports, posting on the Japanese forums, tweet, post on reddit, whatever you feel you can do to raise awareness and demand a fix.

Please see this thread for some simple things you can do to help get Square's attention: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...answer-from-SE

And read this post and the links contained within to understand the cause of the issue: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...70#post5788370

[Kazemon15]

I agree. There needs to be an official announcement of this issue and an apology. They did so for the queue problems, yet were silent for the longest time on this issue. Unacceptable.

Keep posting and bringing it up until they officially acknowledge and apologize. And promise to fix the issue. We know it will take time and that they need to investigate. We just want acknowledgement right now while they do that.

[Freki42]

Hi folks, I posted this in the ongoing thread but thought a new thread might boost visibility. I've sent a few emails to Support asking for a refund for the three remaining months on my sub considering the game is currently unplayable for me. After some back and forth, I received this (most interesting points in bold):



I'm taken aback at how quickly they changed their tune here given the general tone of "it's your hardware" most people seem to have been getting over the last month. I'm hoping the return of the EN Community Team from their holiday break has helped raise awareness inside Squeenix of the severity of the issue.

Until we receive more communication, do NOT let up. We still need to see official acknowledgment on the Lodestone, and personally I really think the ideal solution until they can fix it is an option to roll back to 5.55's audio engine. Keep submitting bug reports, posting on the Japanese forums, tweet, post on reddit, whatever you feel you can do to raise awareness and demand a fix.

Please see this thread for some simple things you can do to help get Square's attention: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...answer-from-SE

And read this post and the links contained within to understand the cause of the issue: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...70#post5788370

I never saw them say to anyone that it's their hardware. however i have seen people who won't post the information they need to research things say exactly that they blamed hardware. ANY tech support is going to pick something in order to verify it is that aspect or not and then take a STEP from there, instead of like everyone believes they either ignore or think their things are perfect. No it's because they want to rule your equipment and setups out before looking elsewhere. why? because they can then compare to other reports and info to compile information for the team. This is a normal way to troubleshoot, and if you think that means they are blaming your hardware then you are the one not thinking from a technical way. in this case they have probably discovered something that indicates a deeper problem from all the actual reports. I'm glad to hear they have told you as much, but some won't share the info they ask and just fight back about it.

I agree. There needs to be an official announcement of this issue and an apology. They did so for the queue problems, yet were silent for the longest time on this issue. Unacceptable.

Keep posting and bringing it up until they officially acknowledge and apologize. And promise to fix the issue. We know it will take time and that they need to investigate. We just want acknowledgement right now while they do that.

they won't post anything till they know what they are going to do. they are doing their due diligence in troubleshooting. they have already acknowledged the issue and have already said they are looking into it and a solution.

[Nommers]

They've acknowledged the issue - with very rare posts in a massive thread on the forums, in emails to individual people (just me, as far as I know) and buried in the sound director's personal twitter account. All but one of those happened weeks ago. This does not make up for the 6.01 patch notes saying the issue was fixed when it was in fact made worse - in fact they've been silent about that specific incident. There was no excuse to not at least include "Audio stutter may occur in some circumstances - we are working on fixing this" under the Known Issues section of the 6.05 patch notes. The fact that it was omitted entirely is frankly insulting.

I'm seeing a lot of folks trying to make the people experiencing the bug feel guilty about being upset that the game they were sold has been unplayable for a month with next to zero official communication from a development team who are world famous for their great communication. Are you trying to tell us to stop asking for a fix? That we should just shut up and accept this? Because no, I won't, and I'm not sorry. You're just going to have to deal with seeing these threads until it's fixed.

[megamino]

I might want to add a little bit, my rig is just an Intel Integrated Graphics which is a bummer because everybody will say "well your's is not gonna be valid because of your system requirement", but then what i want to say is, if this audio stutter issue comes from when i do the FT, why the hell i wanna pay for the expansions and also the subscription? I never experience this issue before EW release... but with what i said before, i just have to "tolerate" and "deal with it" since i think the devs also not helping me much and just say "your computer is not match our system requirement". But, I am glad that this is not happened to me alone, and i hope that it can be fixed soon. It's really sad that the music in EW is really good but destroyed by stuttering

[Freki42]

I might want to add a little bit, my rig is just an Intel Integrated Graphics which is a bummer because everybody will say "well your's is not gonna be valid because of your system requirement", but then what i want to say is, if this audio stutter issue comes from when i do the FT, why the hell i wanna pay for the expansions and also the subscription? I never experience this issue before EW release... but with what i said before, i just have to "tolerate" and "deal with it" since i think the devs also not helping me much and just say "your computer is not match our system requirement". But, I am glad that this is not happened to me alone, and i hope that it can be fixed soon. It's really sad that the music in EW is really good but destroyed by stuttering

I do hope it gets cleared up to you, and I understand about issues and how offputing it may be when your system is not up to spec, but they only know certain equipment and how it runs on that equipment. that is why they have a minimum spec, because they have not tested it on anything less for that equipment. it's like if you called a honda dealership to know why your hyundai is displaying a check engine light over the phone. you'd have to bring it in so they can read the code and only if they have the ability to look up the codes for the hyundai (some car makers do not let the general public know what the codes mean). again I understand that can be frustrating and i hope it gets resolved for you.

They've acknowledged the issue - with very rare posts in a massive thread on the forums, in emails to individual people (just me, as far as I know) and buried in the sound director's personal twitter account. All but one of those happened weeks ago. This does not make up for the 6.01 patch notes saying the issue was fixed when it was in fact made worse - in fact they've been silent about that specific incident. There was no excuse to not at least include "Audio stutter may occur in some circumstances - we are working on fixing this" under the Known Issues section of the 6.05 patch notes. The fact that it was omitted entirely is frankly insulting.

I'm seeing a lot of folks trying to make the people experiencing the bug feel guilty about being upset that the game they were sold has been unplayable for a month with next to zero official communication from a development team who are world famous for their great communication. Are you trying to tell us to stop asking for a fix? That we should just shut up and accept this? Because no, I won't, and I'm not sorry. You're just going to have to deal with seeing these threads until it's fixed.

they won't make major comments on patch notes if they have not 100% determined what is going on and actually have a plan to fix it. the reason is they expect someone to see Problem A, known but no fix yet is a disappointment. and especially if there are several problems going on they don't want some things to have a fix known till they know it will be going in. also it can set a false expectation. I never said to not post information, but this post is not a technical post what so ever, it is a complaint and belongs else where. a technical post would have found this bug, it is still happening, here is my specs as I know you will request them and so on. it clogs the technical forums and makes it hard for them to know what is or isn't a post to help them figure things out. I would never suggest someone not post even if they are upset, but post it in the right place and as this does not speak to a problem WITH system information and circumstances it is not a technical post. MY statements were directed to what was said "I'm taken aback at how quickly they changed their tune here given the general tone of "it's your hardware" ", and that was never said that i can ever tell. I want the posts to be relevant to the forum that it is on. That in and of itself would be a GREAT help to the devs since they wouldn't have to wade through the upset posts. Positive things in the post though were the two links to the other threads. why not just post in those threads and bring them to the top if you're just rehashing it? that'd make a better way to have done this. People should always hold companies to task but do it properly and not try to make others fall in line with them (not present in this post, talking generally). Believe it or not most devs do not like to know there is an issue still out there and they want it fixed probably more than any one single person wants it, especially if it was their work.

[Nommers]

If a moderator feels that this thread about a technical support issue does not belong in the technical support forum, then they would be well within their rights to move it. That said, the only other place to move it that I could see is General Discussion, which is VERY busy (not to mention very toxic), and if this thread were moved there it would be instantly drowned out by another million threads on why people think 6.05 sucks because x class didn't get balanced right or whatever. Even if it survived, it's likely to attract a lot of attention from the kinds of people who go "works on my machine, how dare you have a problem, stop complaining." I think this thread is capable of doing the most good here, alongside the other threads on the same issue.

As for the patch notes, I was told in an email it was a known issue. If it's a known issue, then why isn't it listed in the patch notes as a Known Issue? Do the capital letters make that much of a difference? Why is there a discrepancy between the official and more personal lines of communication here?

Several posters in the Big Thread mentioned that they felt like their hardware was blamed when they interacted with Support (I am not digging through there to find citations). The initial response from a community manager was even that old CPUs were the cause of the issue, although that was walked back in the only other post by that community manager. The point is that both the quantity and the quality of Squeenix's public response to this issue has been demonstrably poor. You're certainly welcome to criticize how I've expressed that point, and if you disagree with it altogether, I'm all ears as to why.

[Grimno]

Honestly I hope they do add an option that allows folks to roll back to the audio used for 5.55
As far as I've seen, no one has really praised the new audio. I've only seen a bit of disappointment. First you had Combo sound effects being dampened and throwing people off, then there was the bug where the class change sound effect basically vanished, the new spatial audio pack makes things sound underwater because, well, our systems are not designed for that audio because we wear headphones. We have two locations for sound to come out of. Left ear, right ear. If we had, I don't know, a full 360 VR Headset kind of thing maybe it'd sound better, but right now it does not.

There is a small part of me that is weirdly worried though that, what if hypothetically they do convert back... and we're still having issues

[megamino]

I do hope it gets cleared up to you, and I understand about issues and how offputing it may be when your system is not up to spec, but they only know certain equipment and how it runs on that equipment. that is why they have a minimum spec, because they have not tested it on anything less for that equipment. it's like if you called a honda dealership to know why your hyundai is displaying a check engine light over the phone. you'd have to bring it in so they can read the code and only if they have the ability to look up the codes for the hyundai (some car makers do not let the general public know what the codes mean). again I understand that can be frustrating and i hope it gets resolved for you.

Thank you for the kind words... yeah hopefully it can be resolved but for now i decided to not play the game, it's been weeks for me and i can't tolerate it anymore... I just need to keep read the patch notes or the forum here to keep me posted... if by the end of billing cycle, this still happened, might wanna stop the subs, that's the only way i wanna say my voice other than "report bugs"