Why do menus in the game start lagging if my roommate is downloading a game?

[Kirutsuki]

What kind of ridiculous coding is this!? I can barely play the game when the game pauses for like 5-10seconds either after a teleport or if I move items or do anything with the retainers

I knew it was bad, but holy shit. 7000hours in and I've just now experiencing how horrible it actually is.

Why the heck is inventory and UI stuff tied to connection?

[Jeeqbit]

It's because it's an online game. In order to obtain information about what is in your inventory, it must send a request to the server and wait for it to return a list of items. If there is a lot of traffic on your connection, it could affect the flow of traffic into FFXIV, although this is less likely if your connection is really good.

As time has gone on, more and more objects in the house use the internet. This includes phones and iPads for each family member, computers for each family member, let's throw in a digital watch, television devices to watch Amazon and Netflix with, and sometimes objects connect to the internet as well such as security alarm systems, or even fridges and washing machines if you're in the minority that bothered buying ones that connect to the internet. All these devices download updates (Windows, iOS, Android, app autoupdates).

I've personally found that this has been grinding on my internet capacity as time has gone on. It reached a point where there was an opportunity to upgrade my internet speed, and it was perfectly the right time for it: my connection was getting crushed by how many items were connected to the internet. But now I'm at a point where I've upgraded far beyond what I will ever need and can probably download FFXIV in moments - the entire thing.

It's further affected by the distance to the server. So if you are not close to the server (ie. in the US or OCE regions), your ping could be really high. Personally I don't notice this much, but I do a bit. What cut down retainer loading speed more for me was actually increasing my FPS cap (it was a night and day difference).

Another factor that can affect loading is whether or not you have an SSD. This is strongly recommended now, because your game is constantly loading/unloading assets, especially from the players wandering around and being rendered/unrendered, and that takes ages for traditional hard drives.

Beside all these factors that can contribute it, nobody really believes that SE has optimized their network and server processing code effectively and it's not appeared to change much in 10 years despite advances in technology, so that likely shows up more when a roommate is hogging your connection. It could help for now if they try to set a speed limit somehow, such as in the Quality of Service (QoS) or Bandwidth Control pages of the router, or on the device itself.

[Kirutsuki]

It's because it's an online game....

I kind of know all of this. But, I play other online videogames and menus, item management etc. work perfectly fine even with poor connection.
The ONLY reason it works this way with 14 seems to be that nothing is stored locally in any capacity. So all the items in your inventory is stored in a server somewhere.

I understand the reason why you wouldn't want a local data stored on the players PC in an MMO, and I undestand all these ways of which the connection could be improved, but fundamentally there's some really archaic code underneath where UI's and item handling is network dependant.

[Jeeqbit]

The ONLY reason it works this way with 14 seems to be that nothing is stored locally in any capacity.

It is. Check Documents/My Games/FFXIV, check char folder.

[Raraka]

The game is just terrible when handling this kind of information

Its the same reason as to why the friend list takes one business week to load

If my internet connection is good and it works for every game except for FFXIV, even when others are watching netflix or downloading something, its not a connection issue, its a FFXIV issue

[DPZ2]

Why the heck is inventory and UI stuff tied to connection?

It prevents gear duplication hacks, among other things. This is more of an MMORPG problem than a video game problem in general.

That pause after you teleport is the game loading the environment and other players, since you are now in a new instance. It's why you can occasionally teleport someplace with a lot of other players and find a number of them running around in underclothes ... at least until the game manages to load their gear player by player. Limsa Lominsa is notorious for this on a busy Saturday evening.

[Kirutsuki]

It prevents gear duplication hacks, among other things. This is more of an MMORPG problem than a video game problem in general.

That pause after you teleport is the game loading the environment and other players, since you are now in a new instance. It's why you can occasionally teleport someplace with a lot of other players and find a number of them running around in underclothes ... at least until the game manages to load their gear player by player. Limsa Lominsa is notorious for this on a busy Saturday evening.

I have never seen this sort of issue happen in other MMO's tho. I'm sure there's a reason, duplication being one among them, it just feels archaic. I'm sure they've probably mentioned that the item handling code is from like pre ARR era or something.

[DPZ2]

I have never seen this sort of issue happen in other MMO's tho. I'm sure there's a reason, duplication being one among them, it just feels archaic. I'm sure they've probably mentioned that the item handling code is from like pre ARR era or something.

Try this search term to learn more "gear duplication hack in mmorpg". For specifics using one game, use this term "gear duplication diablo 3 guide". That last one results in some pretty damning YouTube video links.

As for in-game code, here's a pretty complete takedown, complete with words from the Producer in a linked YouTube video. The thread here is 4 years old. https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...ding_the_devs/

So, not pre-ARR, but code debt is from the 2 year total rewrite for ARR. The discussion about code debt in the Reddit post is pretty interesting itself.

Could they rewrite again? Maybe. But given that the game is built for cross-platform (XBox, PS4/5, PC players in the same environment), this may be one of those things you'll just have to live with.