[Feedback] Please fix/improve the delay in the game

[Insertusernamehere]

So I ran a quick test between my PC and my wife's PC - same network, wired. Ability usage seems to match my ping of 80-100ms. Whether this be using abilities on a dummy or crafting abilities - I see the animations and messages at a nearly indiscernible time difference. Drawing a weapon is also as quick as other abilities.

Movement though is delayed by more than abilities. It is as if displaying movement to another client is a lower priority than other actions. It seems like they smooth movement a bit. If I strafe back and forth quickly, ultimately not changing my position by much, the other client just sees the "walking animation" but the turning is mostly negated and it can look like I'm moonwalking.

In my opinion, movement being a lower priority makes good sense. Another player's exaction position shouldn't really matter much to the client. The server figures out if a player is "in range" for abilities or stepping in the red telegraphs. If someone ONLY looks at movement, like the jump by the OP, I could see someone thinking the delay is longer than it should be. However, I think movement is a special case. Many other actions taken in game seem to be very quick.

This is exactly what I notice in FFXIV character movement not priority..

[Karan_Vess]

Right, it shows each hop and back. The idea is that all of these delays, aside from maybe the last one (SE's server) are outside of SE's control. The point I'm trying to show you is that the distance (and path) that your data travels between you and SE is the big culprit. Tracert was to demonstrate that if you look at the difference in ping times between hops, you'll see the the delay is between nodes transmitting your data to the DC. If I look at mine, my pings are about 20ms to get from my area to someplace in Atlanta. And then 60ms to get from ATL to CA. SE doesn't control those servers. So my ping of 100ms is mostly due to one leg between ATL and CA and has nothing to do with SE at all.

My ping to the server is 18ms. My tracert to the server adds up to 190ms.
Tracert does not show how quickly a packet gets to the server and back. That's what ping does. Tracert is a good troubleshooting tool to locate a problem but it's not what you should be using here.

[Tux2665]

For me I can just say that the way it is designed, castbar starts -> telegraph appears -> castbar ends - damage gets evaluated now -> telegraph fades out + attack animation starts is very poor concept. It is unintuitive, because people do not understand taking damage they seemingly escaped (the animation is the most visible part of the workflow to the player) and it creates perception of lag even when there is none. The server tick being very poor also adds to that perception most likely, but changing the synchronization of cast, telegraph, animation and damage evaluation can do a great deal to defeat the perception of lag/delay without any backend improvements whatsoever. That's something they should definitely look into. The intuitive thing is to get damaged when the animation ends and you can literally see yourself taking the damage, simple as that.

[sodade21]

The problem is obvious and really simple. its all because of very few server ticks. ofc individual latency can worsen things but the thing is even if you can literally can get 5ms server will be too later to register what you are doing. And the reason for that is 1 and really simple as well. older console compatibility. I bet ps5 can and will work fine with alot ticks but no way ps3 could keep up. that was the reason of keep it low tick and as well to be compatible with lower spec pc's as well. I'm not sure if PS4 is strong enough to keep up with the more ticks but i bet it can do better from what we got now.I think since they dont support ps3 anymore they can do it but they have not bothered yet... Maybe now that ps3 and even windows 32bit is not more supported means that they are about to make some real tuning to their servers. I hope so cause everything else that is bad is really berable but the clunkiness of the ticks is driving me crazy and its really a deal breaker for the long run to invest to this game. I only Hope PS4 is not what is bottleneck it cause it gonna really sad to see the game go down because of ps4 or sad to see ps4 players go away or forced to go to ps5 or pc since the ps5 is really hard to get and really expensive... but at some point they gonna let ps4 support to go away cause its really too old already ands a bummer to keep the whole game down

[Brandter]

The problem is obvious and really simple. its all because of very few server ticks. ofc individual latency can worsen things but the thing is even if you can literally can get 5ms server will be too later to register what you are doing. And the reason for that is 1 and really simple as well. older console compatibility. I bet ps5 can and will work fine with alot ticks but no way ps3 could keep up. that was the reason of keep it low tick and as well to be compatible with lower spec pc's as well. I'm not sure if PS4 is strong enough to keep up with the more ticks but i bet it can do better from what we got now.I think since they dont support ps3 anymore they can do it but they have not bothered yet... Maybe now that ps3 and even windows 32bit is not more supported means that they are about to make some real tuning to their servers. I hope so cause everything else that is bad is really berable but the clunkiness of the ticks is driving me crazy and its really a deal breaker for the long run to invest to this game. I only Hope PS4 is not what is bottleneck it cause it gonna really sad to see the game go down because of ps4 or sad to see ps4 players go away or forced to go to ps5 or pc since the ps5 is really hard to get and really expensive... but at some point they gonna let ps4 support to go away cause its really too old already ands a bummer to keep the whole game down

Simple, well yes for a normal game I would say that this problem wouldn't occur, but FF14 and the developer team behind the code are, well to be nice, not that skilled in modern net codes. SE:s net codes in a lot of their games are just straight up bad in comparison with other companies.
I think this is part of an issue that we still have since 1.0, I mean just look at their login servers, Wow has always had one system that handles the logins, after the login process you can then choose your server. If the login is handled by the specific server (or rather the login server is tied to the server you are wanting to connect to), that's just ass backward design, which gives you issues where you don't receive a ticket and can skip past the queue if you are disconnected or your game crashes. If you rebuilt the system from the ground up I think this would be very easy to make it work a lot better, but to rebuild the current system when their entire game is built around the server ticks, snapshotting, and so forth is NOT as simple. And yes, I've always thought that the game feels slow and stiff compared to other MMO:s, when you get used to it's not a big problem but for someone who used to play wow back in the days (back in 2010) and Rift, yeah FF14 is very, VERY stiff with awful net code. I don't know why they did it, it could be because of consoles, it could be because of incompetence or maybe it was a conscious design decision to make combat "feel" a certain way, more of a strange almost turn-based combat, not fluid.

[kpxmanifesto]

I don't know why they did it, it could be because of consoles, it could be because of incompetence or maybe it was a conscious design decision to make combat "feel" a certain way, more of a strange almost turn-based combat, not fluid.

My guess is that it was made this way to accommodate the PS3 crowd which doesn't exist anymore. I really wish they would fix it because PVPers suffer from the delay.

[Elissar]

Fix delay and bring us 1.0 animations

FFXIV would easily be a 10/10 MMORPG.

[Esmoire]

I know the delay is a huge turnoff for people coming into FFXIV from other online games. I think it's the kind of thing you get used to playing at a high level (at least in PvE; frustrating as all hell in PvP), but like, that's like learning how to tiptoe around nails on the floor. I would classify general game feel as the most important component, and I can't grade FFXIV very well unless they address the underlying issues.

[Jagick]

Fix delay and bring us 1.0 animations

FFXIV would easily be a 10/10 MMORPG.

I saw a few 1.0 cutscenes recently and I have to wonder how the game went from all those custom animations to virtually every interaction involving static characters reusing short emotes that players have.

[PeaTearGriffin]

Yes please, the lag/delay in this game makes pvp really annoying sometimes.