Game unresponsive/crashing without error report when launching.

[Meirnon]

When submitting a bug report, please use the below template and thoroughly fill out the necessary information.

Date & Time: 10/11/2022 to current
Frequency: Every time I press the "Play" button in the launcher
Steps:
1. Open the launcher
2. Log in
3. Press 'Play'
4. Suffer


Connection Specs
- Type of internet connection/provider: AT&T Fiber, works fine on other PC's on the connection
- Modem maker/model number: Again, it's not the router

■ PC Specs

AMD Ryzen 7 2700
32GB DDR4 RAM
GTX 1660

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

I've been having a back-and-forth with the Support team and at this point they told me they're washing their hands of this problem and that I need to post my issue here to get it resolved.

I'll start from the top and explain the steps that I've gone through to solve this already.

I took a break for a few months. Last time I played was shortly after patch 6.18. I re-upped my sub on the 11th and decided to try playing the game on my new Steamdeck - this detail is largely irrelevant, except to say that the game launches just fine on Steamdeck and that I'm able to get in game on the Steamdeck, I just don't want to play purely on Steamdeck and I need to configure the controls on Steamdeck to make the game playable there. Since support seems to have gotten stuck on this detail when I mentioned it, I will clarify here: my problem is not involved with trying to play the game on a Steamdeck. The game works fine on the Steamdeck. The problem is when I try playing it on PC - the same PC where I've logged ~2.5k hours into the game so far on without issue.

When I try logging in on PC, I get to the Launcher, can log into the Launcher just fine, but when I press the 'Play' button, the game launches and then immediately hitches and stops responding. It would then immediately crash without an error report. Completely stop.

To repeat, for clarity, because the support team needed this clarity, the problem is on the PC I've used to play the game for thousands of hours already. I have never had this problem on this PC before until I tried to start playing again.

Here's the steps I have taken so far to attempt to fix this. There has been no change in the outcome of pressing Play despite all steps taken.
1. Switch to DX9
2. Repair tool via Steam
3. Repair tool via Launcher
4. Uninstall and Reinstall
5. Change startup programs to clean boot
6. Unplug peripherals
7. Made sure I have my latest PC updates installed
8. Made sure I have the latest graphics drivers installed
9. Restarted my PC (multiple times, obviously)
10. Manually deleted my locally saved data and reinstalled the game (this one did produce one change - the game window is now windowed instead of full screen and no longer immediately crashes after it stops responding, it instead simply immediately stops responding like before and can't even crash now! I don't count this as progress btw. This was the one thing that the support team suggested that I hadn't already done.)

Here's a list of things support suggested which can't be done.
1. Disable AV software: I don't use 3rd-party active AV.
2. Uninstall mods: I don't have any mods installed.
3. Install the game on a different drive: My C drive is boot, my D drive is storage, and it's worked fine on D drive for over 2.5k hours regardless. The game cannot go onto my C drive.

So now I'm stuck with a subscription timer slowly ticking away with the game unplayable.

[Jeeqbit]

You may not use AV software, but windows has it built in now so you could check if the standard windows one is enabled.

You are now required to fully connect your Steam account to your SE account https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...8c16837c5faaba

As it says, you must also launch it through Steam. Did you launch the game through Steam or did you try to run it externally?

[Meirnon]

You may not use AV software, but windows has it built in now so you could check if the standard windows one is enabled.

You are now required to fully connect your Steam account to your SE account https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...8c16837c5faaba

As it says, you must also launch it through Steam. Did you launch the game through Steam or did you try to run it externally?

I'm aware of Windows Defender. Turning off Real-time Protection does not affect the crash outcome.

And yes, of course I'm running it through Steam.

[Meirnon]

I should also note that, regarding the lack of error messages after each crash, I also tried to look through the event viewer logs to see if I could find anything of note.

I took a note on the time of each crash, then tried to check for any events with the same timestamp. It turned up nothing at those timestamps. So no crash logs, no event viewer events. Just ends up closing.

I also should note that I can't attempt to do this anymore as the game doesn't even crash after Support asked me to manually delete the local save data - instead the game sits unresponsive until it's manually ended now. For reference, this is what it looks like when I press Play now.

[Meirnon]

Support got back to me and had me turn Discord off. No dice.

I tried launching the game with only Google Chrome with a single tab open (for my email conversation with support), Steam (needed to launch the game), a notepad document (to record system information), and my password manager (needed to log in) as the active programs.



It failed to work.

Curious, I exited Chrome and launched the game again.

Voila, I could log in for the first time in months.

I opened Chrome back up, and everything seemed fine. I then tried to quit the game, and the game stopped responding when I tried to close it. I needed to open the task manager and terminate the program to get the game to stop.

I cannot have a web browser open if I want to play the game. In 2022.

Fix this, Square. Or refund me my sub. Or both!

[Meirnon]

Support got back to me again. They insisted this time however that the problem was that I had the game installed on a drive other than C:.

They completely skipped over the whole "game works just fine as long as I have manually terminated every running instance of Chrome on my PC".

Instead, they suggested that the game is fundamentally incompatible with running on any drive designation other than C:, and I quote:

Unfortunately, FINAL FANTASY XIV is not optimized to play on a different hard drive than "C". We understand this can really be frustrating, but even if you have played more than 2,500 hours on the selected hard drive, eventually there were going to be issues since the hard drive "D" is not compatible. Although the option to play using the hard drive "D" is not available, we will take this information and forward it as feedback to the appropriate department. While we cannot guarantee implementation, we would like to assure you that it will be reviewed by the appropriate party.

I refuse to believe that this is the case that the game is completely unable to run on a drive other than C:. This isn't the early aughts. No one makes programs deliberately to only run when installed on C: anymore - or accidentally overlooks basic data conservation practices of putting boot on one drive and data on another and makes it oops-not-compatible with innumerable consumer's setups. Not in a high production value consumer product they don't. So obviously this is complete nonsense. Absolute gibberish. Baloney. Hogwash. Gobbledygook.

Still would like either a refund or at least prorated game time for the last week and a half they've been running me around the ringer like this.

[CaffeinePanda]

Horrible service - very shocking. You (and many others including myself) deserve multiple months of free game time.

We are still fighting the good fight here: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ching-the-game

[Meirnon]

I should clarify that I have no animosity towards the support staff themselves - but rather towards the procedures and guidelines under which they are made to work that lead to this dismal series of non-responses, recursive troubleshooting, and inability to compensate customers for technical problems arising from defective production. Each staff member is operating essentially with their hands tied behind their backs by a script and procedure that's fundamentally designed in a manner that makes it difficult for novel problems to actually be solved.

[Meirnon]

6.3 has started this issue all over again, still no fix.