Since March 2nd, 2023 I have been unable to play my main character (Abbie Cantrell on Aether-Siren) on my PS5, where I have played mostly without issue since around July of 2021. I say mostly because in the month or so leading up to this, I had been experiencing some lag every once in a while (usually while crafting and tending garden) where the game would hang for a few seconds and the disconnect icon would appear briefly near my character's head. It never stayed for long and I never got forcefully disconnected, though.
Since March 2nd (after doing the Little Ladies' Day event and logging out without issue the day before), however, I am able to log in every time, but after a few minutes of interaction with the game world (checking retainers, tending to garden in private home, etc.) I begin getting disconnection icons near my character's head that stay longer and longer until I eventually get booted to character select with a 90002 error. It doesn't seem to matter when I try to play or what I try to do. Going to a less congested place like my housing instance rather than the middle of Gridania seems to let me stay logged in a little longer, but it still happens eventually (sooner if I try to interact with the garden or enter my house).
Things I have tried since to resolve or figure out what was going on:
- Resetting router/modem (didn't work)
- Trying another router (didn't work)
- Deleting and reinstalling game on PS5 and deleting local saved data (didn't work)
- Waiting for the all worlds maintenance on the 6th (didn't work)
- Moving the affected character to another data center via data center travel (seemed to work when I selected Dynamis-Seraph. I was able to run around and interact with NPCs without ever getting a disconnect icon or being forcefully logged out.)
- Playing another character (Summer Cantrell-Behemoth) on a different data center (Primal) - (worked/no issues)
- Playing a new character (Sierra Lockhart-Jenova) on the same data center as the affected character (seemed to work with no issues for the few hours played after skipping the tutorial)
I am completely stumped on what might be causing the problem. I suspected it might be a bad node or something ISP-related with my connection to the Aether data center, but wouldn't my new character on Jenova be affected if that were the case? If it were something related to my character like bad data or something, the reinstall should have cleared that out if it was on my end, right?
Though I could technically keep playing my main character using data center travel, not being able to use my retainers, play with my house, or do things with my FC (something I had hoped to do more of once I completed the MSQ) is a real bummer and moving my character somewhere else permanently (besides costing money) would cause me to lose the house I finally won after entering so many lotteries.
I love the game, though, and am hoping someone can help or that the issue resolves itself in a reasonable amount of time.