Server Tick Rate Is Holding the Game Back

[MAJRIS]

it's probably because we're dealing with, despite many heroic attempts and improvements to the engine, a turn-based combat.

proof: you can walk into telegraphs and explosions and you take zero damage because the time to hit register already passed and what you're seeing is just staggered visual for fancy spectacle (no offense indented).

or: boss is going to attack half of the arena with left or right arm. boss cast bar appears, boss starts leaning backwards, the castbar finished. the animation goes on, boss hands stretches, a telegraph appears, YOU MOVE OUT OF TELEGRAPH, the telegraph disappears, the animation finishes , boss arm hits the arena and explosion appears. BOOM.
yet, despite timely escaping the danger zone before the visual help is over, you get hit BECAUSE YOU STOOD THERE WHEN TELEHRAPH APPEARED. you should already have been gone BEFORE the visual help appeared. this is why your players cheat, suare. they see telegraphs that are synced with cast bars.

one might rightfully argue that it's the design intent and players should learn the fights by the boss attacks and not by telegraphs, but then it opens the question for localizing or game guide that would explain the abilities.
because they call "tank purge" raidwide attack and "homing lasers" a tankbuster. or "Duty's Edge" and so on.


personally, I'm glad they tuned up the difficulty in Dawntrail that require focus and getting good. Dawntrail dungeons have been lot of fun and even dying has been fun because they have been fun challenge. usually 2-3 wipes and group learns and adjusts quickly. the challenge itself made me better player.
most of my deaths have not been caused because I didn't know what to do... but because I amongst other others play by telegraphs, not by pokemon ability nomenclature.

[Altina_Orion]

First I'd like to say that I totally agree that the server responsiveness in this game is beyond terrible, and if you play pvp you'll feel it even more than in pve.

But can I ask where you got the idea that the server tick rate runs on a 0.3s clock interval? I have a hard time believing it, else if you just look at how animation delays work in the game, cast times and effeect resolutions at the server side, they would all fall into 0.3s multiples, which they don't (server delays seem to be about 40ms iirc which is in line with your WoW example but I could be wrong on that).

The real problem is how the whole delays and resolution of everything is coded and processed rather than the server tick rate itself, which I think is fine.

IN GENERAL (but not always), a mechanic decides who it hits the moment the castbar ends or the moment the aoe marker disappears, offset by your ping divided by two in milliseconds. There are a few cases where this isn't true, but this is almost always the case. The big issue is people don't understand this. Spreads can be a bit goofy because It becomes something like (Your Ping / 2) + (Their Ping / 2) at the moment the mechanic resolves unless one of you is standing still in which case the standing still player is removed from the equation, which can really make it feel mismatches.

The animation of a mechanic is not when the game decides you got hit. Once you understand this, dodging most things becomes VERY predictable in most cases.

[theunhappypotato]

IN GENERAL (but not always), a mechanic decides who it hits the moment the castbar ends or the moment the aoe marker disappears, offset by your ping divided by two in milliseconds. There are a few cases where this isn't true, but this is almost always the case. The big issue is people don't understand this. Spreads can be a bit goofy because It becomes something like (Your Ping / 2) + (Their Ping / 2) at the moment the mechanic resolves unless one of you is standing still in which case the standing still player is removed from the equation, which can really make it feel mismatches.

The animation of a mechanic is not when the game decides you got hit. Once you understand this, dodging most things becomes VERY predictable in most cases.

its too hard for some people

[Umbrasin]

IN GENERAL (but not always), a mechanic decides who it hits the moment the castbar ends or the moment the aoe marker disappears, offset by your ping divided by two in milliseconds. There are a few cases where this isn't true, but this is almost always the case. The big issue is people don't understand this. Spreads can be a bit goofy because It becomes something like (Your Ping / 2) + (Their Ping / 2) at the moment the mechanic resolves unless one of you is standing still in which case the standing still player is removed from the equation, which can really make it feel mismatches.

The animation of a mechanic is not when the game decides you got hit. Once you understand this, dodging most things becomes VERY predictable in most cases.

The server tick issue isn't generally a problem in alliance raids and normal dungeons. Many of the mechanics killing you in Savage and beyond don't have a castbar or an orange AoE marker. And even so, it's not that simple. I'll use M7S as a recent example.

• I have died, and seen party members die, in the phase 1 triple proximity marker movement while positioned (while moving) in the middle of the party. Checking the log, I saw a party member take 10,000+ more damage than anyone else, despite having the same mitigation and buffs. The damage variance isn't that high. This person was in the middle of the group running with the party, and nobody else took anything close to fatal damage from the proximity. It's unexplainable.

• I've been petrified by the boss in phase 3 during the tethers and adds, even while standing as far in the corner as possible and behind the add the entire time. Our main tank was watching me the entire time to make sure his plant was in the right spot. The plant was positioned directly between me and the boss when it too was petrified. Neither the main tank nor the plant were moving when the petrify cast resolved. Again, unexplainable.

We just accept these wipes as the server being unable to keep up and continue on to get our clear. My point is that a higher tick rate would drastically reduce the inconsistency.

its too hard for some people

It's not about difficulty. Games are supposed to be intuitive and fun. Personally, I believe the fight designs and mechanics in Dawntrail are the best we’ve ever had, but they're also making the cracks in the infrastructure painfully obvious.

Savage fights and beyond, in particular, are supposed to feel like choreographed dances. I would describe the low server tick rate as having a dance floor painted black with random holes drilled into it. Sure, you could complete the dance without tripping if you're lucky, but would you rather rely on skill or luck?

[Rithy255]

I'd like to say I agree but I think theirs more then just the server tick rate holding back this game theirs honestly way too much for me that's holding back this game. Though the more they take away from job skill expression and put it into encounters it will display the tick rate issue tenfold. As this game has become glorified DDR but with really bad tick rate instead of a MMORPG.

[ThaneEndergeist]

Far to the contrary, the rest of the complaints is the icing on the cake on what is holding this game back as well as KILLING it. The real blame4 falls to yoshi and the devs talentless lack of thought process" forget strat or mob spases or even curese put more AOE and AOE back with another and make them stupid fast. This is the mark of novice game designers at best. You want imput on good strategic stuff look ath the rest of failed games insted of ADD AOE and MAKE AOE FASTER. I understand the need for difficulty but there should be a bigger buffer between extreme savalage and standard. this is not call of duty for fast reaction speed asnd if i wanted to play that garbage id play COD. This is the last time I ever buy an expac or feature untilkl this is rebalanced

[Valence]

IN GENERAL (but not always), a mechanic decides who it hits the moment the castbar ends or the moment the aoe marker disappears, offset by your ping divided by two in milliseconds. There are a few cases where this isn't true, but this is almost always the case. The big issue is people don't understand this. Spreads can be a bit goofy because It becomes something like (Your Ping / 2) + (Their Ping / 2) at the moment the mechanic resolves unless one of you is standing still in which case the standing still player is removed from the equation, which can really make it feel mismatches.

The animation of a mechanic is not when the game decides you got hit. Once you understand this, dodging most things becomes VERY predictable in most cases.

You're teaching me nothing, I know how snapshots work?

All my message was saying is that I don't think this is server tick related, but caused by how the processes and resolution of everything server side and back and forth to the client are programmed. I invite people to check out threads and documentation on how the server seems to deal with hardcoded animation delays and damage registration vs resolution and you'll see that this isn't a low tick rate. It's just all the hoops and bullshit that a single information goes through that takes ages to deliver and seems widely inconsistent for whatever reason. I'm not a programmer, and I don't have their source code to check, but it's not very hard to see that the clock runs faster than 0.3s with the response delays. I wouldn't be surprised for example that in the case of mass healing or AoE applications, the server probably goes through all of the process for one individually, then moves to the next and so on and that's why the effects seem to be so staggered into a long ripple across every target affected.

As for movement, if it follows the same long ass processes to check player positions vs server positions it's no surprise that it results in silly things like getting to the pot last when you're way ahead in pvp for example.

[Umbrasin]

But can I ask where you got the idea that the server tick rate runs on a 0.3s clock interval? I have a hard time believing it, else if you just look at how animation delays work in the game, cast times and effeect resolutions at the server side, they would all fall into 0.3s multiples, which they don't (server delays seem to be about 40ms iirc which is in line with your WoW example but I could be wrong on that).

The real problem is how the whole delays and resolution of everything is coded and processed rather than the server tick rate itself, which I think is fine.

Animation delay, cast times, and effect resolutions are unrelated to the tick rate, odd as that may sound. Tick rate refers to how often the server updates your position (x,y coordinates), which is not the same as what you see on your screen (where you see yourself). In practice, the server can be up to 0.3s “behind” when a mechanic resolves. That small window can easily determine whether you’re considered inside or outside of an AoE marker, or whether you succeed or fail a mechanic.

As for sources, both XIVAlexander and ACT interact directly with FFXIV's network data. ACT, for example, sniffs network packets to record exact damage, healing, timestamps, etc. This is why eight people in the same raid will all generate identical logs. Analysis from both tools shows that while the server tick interval can fluctuate slightly, it consistently averages around 0.3 seconds. Regardless of whether the tick rate is exactly ~0.3s or not, the point is that its current speed is incapable of keeping up with the faster encounters introduced in Dawntrail.

I'd like to say I agree but I think theirs more then just the server tick rate holding back this game theirs honestly way too much for me that's holding back this game. Though the more they take away from job skill expression and put it into encounters it will display the tick rate issue tenfold. As this game has become glorified DDR but with really bad tick rate instead of a MMORPG.

I agree with you, and there's definitely more on my own personal fix list*, but I wanted to keep this post laser-focused on one particular issue. Since SE has been encouraging players to give feedback (and while I’ve agreed with some changes and disagreed with others), I figured I’d give them the benefit of the doubt this time and see if they’re responsive to constructive suggestions.


*Add more freakin' glamour plates already, I'm dying.

[MuraBoy]

Finally someone talking about this!
I wholeheartedly agree with OP. This game feels so sluggish to play that PvP is hell

Not to mention some difficult PvE contents like Savage and Ultimate... 2 or more players gotta adjust in real time? Good luck with that xD

[MuraBoy]

This!

SE either needs to break off the money and upgrade the technical side of things if they want fast and frantic fights. Or they need to give up the "faster = better" design philosophy the battle content team seems to have now, and slow things down a bit, so the server side can keep up.

I'd rather have slower fights, where mechanics hit as indicated than this BS.

THIS ^
This upgrade alone would sell me 8.0 easily