r/ffxivdiscussion: What can Square Enix do to help fix the terrible netcode of FFXIV?

[Semirhage]

For the people saying that it's all ping and there's not much Squeenix can do about latency, that's only true in the most technical, trivial sense. Yeah, we're limited by distance, the speed of electrons in a wire, and bottlenecks as packets jump between nodes. That aside, many modern games with an online component have developed tricks for masking that latency which XIV could use, but frequently doesn't.

The way the client handles the reply to a request to use an oGCD and the {redacted non-TOS respecting things} that have been developed just to make FFXIV behave like an MMO aware that its clients aren't on Japan's giant LAN does. The cause behind and the fix for that specific issue is well-documented. Square hasn't implemented it.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

For the people saying that it's all ping and there's not much Squeenix can do about latency, that's only true in the most technical, trivial sense. Yeah, we're limited by distance, the speed of electrons in a wire, and bottlenecks as packets jump between nodes. That aside, many modern games with an online component have developed tricks for masking that latency which XIV could use, but frequently doesn't.

The way the client handles the reply to a request to use an oGCD and the {redacted non-TOS respecting things} that have been developed just to make FFXIV behave like an MMO aware that its clients aren't on Japan's giant LAN does. The cause behind and the fix for that specific issue is well-documented. Square hasn't implemented it.

Part of it is XIV (mostly) doesn't trust the client. The way the implented it is weird though, because it doesn't immediately disconnect anyone not in a standard area of play (bots).

[Semirhage]

Part of it is XIV (mostly) doesn't trust the client. The way the implented it is weird though, because it doesn't immediately disconnect anyone not in a standard area of play (bots).

XIV doesn't even need to trust the client for that specific issue. It's why those TOS-breakers work; it's all a client-side fix. When your client asks the server for permission to use an ability, XIV's client (stupidly) behaves the same way for both an affirmative and a negative response. This creates latency where it doesn't need to exist. Many modern online games have clients that take action only on a negative response. The only change that needs to be made to fix it is updating the client's behavior to ignore a positive response instead of rolling back your animation lock in both cases.

[R041]

XIV doesn't even need to trust the client for that specific issue. It's why those TOS-breakers work; it's all a client-side fix. When your client asks the server for permission to use an ability, XIV's client (stupidly) behaves the same way for both an affirmative and a negative response. This creates latency where it doesn't need to exist. Many modern online games have clients that take action only on a negative response. The only change that needs to be made to fix it is updating the client's behavior to ignore a positive response instead of rolling back your animation lock in both cases.

I'm pretty sure server also doesn't have position prediction. So the movement ticks are stepped locations and not assumed path, which is so archaic in online games alone. Client has linear position interpolation, but that's different obv. They don't even need to relay the prediction, just act as server side position interpolation for damage authority so we aren't literally getting exploded for something that happened between packet + tick alignment. It just feels bad, especially for a game that relies so heavily on a low tickrate architecture.

Also considering the amount of.. Issues.. (PvP speed, Bots) We see with movement, we know the server doesn't have true authority on player movement and it likely just does OOB valid checks (like most MMOs). The player's movement wouldn't be as client snappy if it was 100% server authority. You'd either feel like you're in molasses, or jittery the higher latency you have. But you don't. Ex: https://youtu.be/2PTdjwlO5nU

XIV's server barely cares what time you did the thing, it unravels the ball of spaghetti in it's wide packet and tick intervals and just kinda hopes for the best apparently. Do we even know if it uses timestamps in the payload, or is it just setting things as high/low priority? :/

Counterstrike 2 is implementing 'sub-tick' prediction. CS2 not only uses server side prediction, but also larger packets to help unravel the spaghetti and assist with those extremely fast predictions.