Australian Latency at Endgame

[Kasern]

We Aussies, along with the rest of our Oceanic brothers and sisters, have long had to suck it up and deal with what much of the rest of the world would consider to be horrendous and unplayable latency to our favourite game servers. On older games, such as World of Warcraft for example, this latency could often be adapted to as the game was quite well executed and designed for a well wide range of hardware and connections, and Oceanics managed to thrive.

However, with many new MMOs the trend is towards real-time, action-based combat and movement, requiring reflexes and reactions previously reserved for console platfomers or local region FPS games. This is very much the case for Final Fantasy. From levels 1 through 50, I had my share of the familiar "Aussie lag" but passed it off as the usual price of my preferred hobby, but now that I have reach the current endgame content of our new game I find myself at something of a brickwall.

I attempted to do Chimera tonight, a fight that many, many people have beaten without issue, yet found myself completely incapable of avoiding the damage I was taking despite my screen showing my character escaping the clearly marked red zones. Annoyed and frustrated, I left and queued up for Ifirit - yet, no surprise, same deal.

A quick Google search found the NA and JP datacenter IPs and I ran a ping test. From Sydney, Australia to the NA data center I have an average of 250ms (my norm for World of Warcraft and never an issue) while I have 113ms to the JP data center. A guild mate of mine, living in Brisbane, pings the NA datacenter for 321ms. That is nuts.

Obviously the simplest solution would be to move to the Japanese servers. But my guild and I discussed this before launch and came to the decision that an NA server provided the better long term option, as a Japanese server (even Tonberry, the server dubbed the Unofficial Oceanic server) would likely see a massive decrease in English speaking players once the initial free period is over and players decide they don't like the game. Finding ourselves alone, or surrounded by other, much larger Oceanic guilds and no pool of new players from which to recruit, is not a particularly appealing prospect.

Yet, clearly this game has been designed around the concept of Japan: a small island nation where the majority of players are no more than a few hours drive from the data centers - not in another hemisphere.

So what are we to do? There is no hope of an Oceanic server (either located in Australia or Singapore) ever being created, even Blizzard merely labels servers in North America as Oceanic rather than creating true Oceanic servers. We could move, either through the promised transfers or by rerolling. Or we could simply give up, accept the fact that this game is one we will not be able to experience to the fullest.

For now, I will be riding out the rest of this week to see what comes of server transfers: how much they will cost and if it is possible to transfer from the NA servers to the JP servers. Though asking your guild members, many of whom have only been members since Final Fantasy launched, to pay money to continue being part of your community or forcing them to reroll is never a good way to keep your guild alive and strong.

If you have managed to get to the end of this wall of text, perhaps you have some thoughts to share on the matter.

[Kyroc]

Going by personal experience, there are more English than Japanese speaking players on Tonberry. And not just us Aussies. Kiwi's and many in south east asia as well as Americans living in Japan. If latency is that big an issue, which in ARR I think it would be endgame, sounds like your guild made a wrong decision

[Kasern]

Going by personal experience, there are more English than Japanese speaking players on Tonberry. And not just us Aussies. Kiwi's and many in south east asia as well as Americans living in Japan. If latency is that big an issue, which in ARR I think it would be endgame, sounds like your guild made a wrong decision

We might have, but as a counterpoint, there is very large Oceanic community on Behemoth, the NA server we are on and I have never seen anyone speak anything but English (well, maybe a little Singlish). The decision may be taken out of our hands anyway as I have just checked and Tonberry is closed to new characters anyway.

[Azadross]

This is the reason I checked the ping to each of the server groups before deciding on one. There was a server list going around suggesting four different ones for Oceanic guilds, two in JP and two in NA but it failed to mention the ping variation for them from what I saw.

You will have to wait to see what SE allows when they finally open the servers up for transfers. Unfortunately your currently stuck unless you want to start over as it is possible to start fresh characters on Tonberry as I created one there in the past eight hours by refreshing the server list in character creation until it was available.

[Kasern]

This is the reason I checked the ping to each of the server groups before deciding on one. There was a server list going around suggesting four different ones for Oceanic guilds, two in JP and two in NA but it failed to mention the ping variation for them from what I saw.

You will have to wait to see what SE allows when they finally open the servers up for transfers. Unfortunately your currently stuck unless you want to start over as it is possible to start fresh characters on Tonberry as I created one there in the past eight hours by refreshing the server list in character creation until it was available.

We did initially ping the servers during the Early Access, so we knew the general latency to expect, but as I said, 250ms is something a lot of us are used to and is often the price of playing. It's just that so much of this game seems to rely on you having a much lower ping than some other MMOs I could name. It's not unique to Final Fantasy of course, and I am expecting the same thing from future MMOs too (I'm looking at you ESO and WildStar). Just frustrating and very disappointing.

[Llededje]

We have a large community of english speakers on Masamune (Aussies, Europeans, probably many others). During peak JP times it's probably about 50/50 shouts in english and japanese. People use the auto translate feature to shout for parties. Getting pugged into a JP team is usually pretty awesome, they're very efficient and polite. I much prefer this community to the NA servers I've been forced to join in other MMOs. Much less douchebaggery, and I have a chance to brush up on my japanese　：D (よろしくおねがいします！）

That said, I haven't gotten to end game yet. I did have a couple of issues earlier with getting out of Titan's way before his knockback attack. An oceanic server would be nice, but I doubt we have a high enough population of players to justify the cost.

[Rekujen]

Hey mate, I've been using PingZapper and have found that my ping dropped from 350+ to 150ish, this is making dodging red circles MUCH EASIER, I highly recommend you give it a test, they have a 1 hour trial available and 4 dollars a month if you really want to use their services.

It's nothing bannable, all it does is route your connection to the server in a cleaner and more suitable pathway.

https://pingzapper.com/ref/rekuja

use me as the referer and you'll get 60 days added to your account, refer other people and you'll get 30+ each time. I have paid 4 dollars so far and because I've referred so many people, my time doesn't run out until July next year lol... the cool thing is, not only do you get +30 days for each person you refer, but the person who used you also gets +30 days.

So for example, if you refer people in your guild, you'll probably end up with 4 dollars paid and 6-7+ months added to your account.. that's less than a coffee for almost an entire year of low ping

It's a win/win situation. I wouldn't bother begging Square, you won't get anywhere.. try the PingZapper and you won't regret it.

[Ryuko]

Masamune is the 'unofficial' English-speaking Japanese server (mostly for Oceanic players). Some west coast NA players also choose to play here because the lag to the JP servers is not bad enough to force them to play on the NA servers. I'm sorry you are dealing with this -- and I hope one day they add more regional datacenters (hopefully at least in the Oceanic region and somewhere in the dead center of Europe). As this game becomes more popular, I foresee this happening. I live on the East Coast of the US and my lag to the JP datacenter was horrible (200+ ms). It made endgame almost unplayable (especially since my ISP is not great). I'm sorry but I really think you'll need to jump to a Japanese server if you want the game to be playable... for now. They will offer transfers soon, but it will in all likelihood be a 'paid' service. I do think they should have designated an official server as an Oceanic server... but they didn't and that's why the players decided on Masamune.

[Llededje]

Masamune is the 'unofficial' English-speaking Japanese server (mostly for Oceanic players)...[snip]...I do think they should have designated an official server as an Oceanic server... but they didn't and that's why the players decided on Masamune.

Masamune is for legacy players, a bunch of new players decided on Tonberry. So there are a couple to choose from.

[Kasern]

Hey mate, I've been using PingZapper and have found that my ping dropped from 350+ to 150ish, this is making dodging red circles MUCH EASIER, I highly recommend you give it a test, they have a 1 hour trial available and 4 dollars a month if you really want to use their services.

It's nothing bannable, all it does is route your connection to the server in a cleaner and more suitable pathway.

https://pingzapper.com/ref/rekuja

use me as the referer and you'll get 60 days added to your account, refer other people and you'll get 30+ each time. I have paid 4 dollars so far and because I've referred so many people, my time doesn't run out until July next year lol... the cool thing is, not only do you get +30 days for each person you refer, but the person who used you also gets +30 days.

So for example, if you refer people in your guild, you'll probably end up with 4 dollars paid and 6-7+ months added to your account.. that's less than a coffee for almost an entire year of low ping

It's a win/win situation. I wouldn't bother begging Square, you won't get anywhere.. try the PingZapper and you won't regret it.

I might have to try that. I'd rather not have to leave our current server if we can help it.

Masamune is for legacy players, a bunch of new players decided on Tonberry. So there are a couple to choose from.

Yeah, Masamune was ruled out before launch for us. Don't want to play on a Legacy server.