Lag, loading, clipping, errors, and more fun

[Elun]

*Times given are in US Central time, because that's my time zone.

At any time during normal day hours I lag a LOT while playing. One major problem i'm having is an issue of my character clipping and falling through objects. This has happened to me near Highbridge, in Limsa, and in New Gridania a total of at least six times now within the last few days. Sometimes my only option to get out of an area i've clipped into is to return / teleport out of it which is very frustrating.

Some of the other effects of the lag include:
- Takes anywhere from 15 seconds to 3 minutes for NPCs and enemies to load
- Unable to target NPCs or enemies through clicking, tab targeting, or game controller until they have appeared
- 15-60 seconds for each menu to come up, and then another wait for item icons or menu text to load on top of that
- Menu sounds, action sounds, combat sounds, etc play several seconds after whatever has already happened
- The music will often pause, skip, or flat out stop
- Reach invisible "brick walls" while running and have to wait for them to go away
- Sprinting or moving on mount worsens pretty much everything (load times, clipping through ground, errors, lag, yeah pretty much everything)

I will also on occasion receive "R6025 pure virtual function call" errors that will crash the game however i'm not certain if those are tied to one and the same problem or not.

Side notes:
- The little networky icon dealything in the upper right corner usually shows, for sending: anywhere between 0 (standing still) and 500 (moving fast on mount) and for receiving anywhere between about 500 (out in the middle of nowhere by myself) and maybe 4500ish (big city, lots of people and things going on)
- Despite all the above listed problems, chat never lags, I never experience rubber banding, and very rarely if ever any "catch-up"
- Though it has happened once or twice, I almost never fully disconnect
- Almost all problems seem to worsen during daytime / prime time hours, and the game becomes much more playable after about midnight, best performance around maybe 2 AM - 6 AM
- My friends on my server say they don't have any problems even close to what I am experiencing
- Almost all my graphical settings are turned down to lowest or near lowest
- When I rolled a character on Zeromus JP server, I was able to play with 0 issues with all graphical settings near max (tested approx. 2 hoursish or so, midday)
- Other games (D3, WoW, Rift, Tera, Neverwinter, Fiesta, and others) do not suffer from these problems on my system, nor does loading web pages, email, youtube, speedtest shows everything's fine etc. that is to say my net looks good

Steps I have taken to attempt to resolve the issue:
- Ensured no other processes are running other than: Windows processes, nvidia processes, a few tools (skdaemon, hd audio control panel, etc) avast antivirus, and Final Fantasy
- Restart game client, computer, router, modem, connect direct to modem
- Set graphics settings to absolute lowest, disabled second monitor temporarily
- Ensured graphic driver is current, windows update is current
- Reinstall game client
- Scandisk, Defrag, virus scan
- Contact ISP (Charter)

My computer:
- Asus
- Windows 7 64 bit
- Pentium dual core cpu E5400 @ 2.7GHz
- 6 GB ram
- 923 GB hard disk
- Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT
- Two monitors, USB mouse, usb keyboard, xbox controller, USB mic-cam, USB wireless adapter, speakers

Please let me know if there's anything obvious i'm missing or what I should do ... i'm at a complete loss as to what is happening but it basically turns my time in game into waiting on NPCs to load and running into invisible walls waiting to be able to move again. If everyone were experiencing the problem i'd think it were a server issue but my friends are not having the issues I am. On the other hand, everything else works perfectly fine on my net, and I was able to play it on highest graphic settings on the other server.

I don't know what to think anymore. Halp plz.

- Elu Nya

[Ashtard]

It is server sided, it happens to me too on ragnarok, I even had freezes then a Bluescreen after being Teleported by a party member. the music stops, i can move but my animations are stuck on what i was doing before the sound stopped (running, for example). The menus on npcs for menders etc won't show up, I won't do any attacks, anything. after a while they work again for a few seconds, then it happens again.

[Elun]

If it's server side though wouldn't everyone be having these problems? My friends on server say they aren't having these issues ...

[Ashtard]

I've read that some ISPs read FF XIV as a p2p, or something like that, so maybe is just that, I don't know about my isp I will call tomorrow. You should do the same, as p2p connections get capped normally.

[Elun]

That was actually part of what I listed above, I contacted my ISP (Charter Communications) and wanted to make sure there was no throttling or capping or anything going on, specifically mentioned P2P, online gaming, and Final Fantasy 14, which Charter said they are not doing anything to my connection. I believe this because everything else seems to work fine on my connection as well.

[Raist]

That was actually part of what I listed above, I contacted my ISP (Charter Communications) and wanted to make sure there was no throttling or capping or anything going on, specifically mentioned P2P, online gaming, and Final Fantasy 14, which Charter said they are not doing anything to my connection. I believe this because everything else seems to work fine on my connection as well.

Charter may not be, but it still may be getting throttled elsewhere in route--for instance you may be hitting a Cogentco , Verizon, AT&T, etc. segment after you leave the Charter's hardware. Really need a trace to the SE servers from your location to see who all is involved, perhaps capture a problem along the way.

[Will01]

Just thought i'd add that I get the same issue, exactly as described here. Very frustrating.

[Raist]

yeah.. you get the same thing I do when hopping across the pond---just before it gets to pac-net, response time shoots up briefly, then settles back down. Been seeing it do that for ages. What's probably more important is the route to the Canadian servers. Seems to be where more people are running into issues, the last hops before it gets to Ormuco's segments.

could run a netstat while you are in XIV. Look for IP's in the subnet 199.91.18x.xxx for the Canadian servers (should get hits for Ormuco if you lookup the IP) and 124.150.15x.xxx for SE. Should be one of each with the same IP consistently opened or in wait state when in game. Try traces to them to see if you spot anything wonky there. Throttling shouldn't show up with a simple trace or ping--but if you see one give *'s before the final hops, then there may well be something going on that you'll need your ISP to look into for you. Even so, forward the results of the trace if they've been putting forth an effort to resolve this for you. If you are able to provide them the correct IP as well as the route you are taking , they might be willing to look into it further for the throttling and such--just need to give them the right places to look.

Oh, in case you didn't know, while in the DOS box, you can get at an Edit menu by clicking the black/white C:\ icon in the upper-left corner to select all the text and copy it to clipboard for putting it in an email and such. You can drag and highlight text and just hit <Enter> too, but I find I sometimes miss stuff because of the way the text wraps and all... so usually just select all text from the menu and then edit out what I don't need.

Here's a sample to kind of show why I bring up the third party segments (I hit cogentco, and it goes to crap):

C:\Windows\System32>tracert 199.91.189.74

Tracing route to 199.91.189.74 over a maximum of 30 hops

<initial hops from local segment removed>

4 32 ms 25 ms 32 ms xe-7-0-0.chrlncpop-rtr1.southeast.rr.com [24.93.
64.42]
5 31 ms 34 ms 30 ms bu-ether14.atlngamq46w-bcr00.tbone.rr.com [66.10
9.6.82]
6 37 ms 30 ms 46 ms ae-0-0.pr0.atl20.tbone.rr.com [66.109.6.171]
7 79 ms 79 ms 91 ms te0-0-0-10.ccr21.atl02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.5
4.12.109]
8 79 ms 80 ms 81 ms be2052.mpd21.atl01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.40
.249]
9 89 ms 91 ms 90 ms te0-5-0-7.mpd21.dca01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54
.25.253]
10 96 ms 97 ms 114 ms te0-7-0-14.mpd21.jfk02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.5
4.41.22]
11 111 ms 114 ms 112 ms be2108.ccr21.ymq02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.3.
134]
12 49 ms 49 ms 49 ms 38.122.42.34
13 52 ms 53 ms 53 ms 10.2.2.1
14 52 ms 49 ms 95 ms 192.34.76.2
15 61 ms 51 ms 52 ms 199.91.189.234
16 62 ms 52 ms 59 ms 199.91.189.74

Trace complete.

Granted, my response times are still "good" in general... it's just frustrating to see how crappy it gets in that section after I leave Atlanta (compared to the rest--even the ones at the end up in Canada respond better).

[Elun]

Alright, i'm going to work here in a few minutes but i'll run a netstat and some traces when I get back home tonight, see what comes up and post the results. Thank you for pointing me in the right direction here.

[Will01]

I do have to wonder though, if my aging PC has anything to do with it?

While I do see people with state of the art machines reporting lag issues, never to the extent we seem to be experiencing it.

I get anything from 20fps in towns/fates or starting zones to 40-60 fps when the area is quieter.