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Gaol: Unplayable content because of lag
Server: Asura
Game: FFXI
Posts: 3185
By Asura.Geriond 2021-02-27 10:14:38
I'll reiterate that I've gotten MUCH, MUCH less lag since switching to a unity with far fewer people. I went from being 4-6 second lag 95% of the time to having 0-2 second lag 95% of the time. I've done dozens of runs before and about a dozen after, so I don't think it's just luck.
It's not a perfect situation, but it was quite helpful for me.
By SimonSes 2021-02-27 11:02:38
No the problem is they probably dont even know its such a large scale problem for western population and how big it actually is. They think several people has some lag and its probably our connection, since no JP players are experiencing this. I would like them to actually see gameplay of someone with 6 sec delay and understand it happens to a lot of western players.
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Server: Shiva
Game: FFXI
Posts: 291
By Shiva.Kasaioni 2021-02-27 11:35:33
Wish it was 5-6 seconds for me! I could probably play with 5-6 seconds of lag! :-D As a DD it's still doable, especially at vengeance 1, atonement 1. I can still get ws's out and abilities, but timing SA/TA in THF is iffy with that kind of lag.
But on WHM that kind of lag is a no-go. I had our party call out a WHM trust and I was basically useless the one boss I was playing WHM.
By RadialArcana 2021-02-27 11:43:31
No the problem is they probably dont even know its such a large scale problem for western population and how big it actually is. They think several people has some lag and its probably our connection, since no JP players are experiencing this. I would like them to actually see gameplay of someone with 6 sec delay and understand it happens to a lot of western players.
Someone posted a video on pg 5
YouTube Video Placeholder
Shiva.Thorny
Server: Shiva
Game: FFXI
Posts: 3144
By Shiva.Thorny 2021-02-27 12:27:43
Jeez, there are delays literally in excess of 10 seconds in there. How anyone thought this was latency is beyond me.
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Asura.Hya
Server: Asura
Game: FFXI
Posts: 329
By Asura.Hya 2021-02-27 12:53:30
No the problem is they probably dont even know its such a large scale problem for western population and how big it actually is. They think several people has some lag and its probably our connection, since no JP players are experiencing this. I would like them to actually see gameplay of someone with 6 sec delay and understand it happens to a lot of western players.
Someone posted a video on pg 5
YouTube Video Placeholder Note that he has two loading icons until 3:49 exactly the time he hits the Conflux. His first Protect 5 takes about 9 seconds(1:15-1:24) to get the buff, he cast while both loading icons were present. His second Protect 5 takes about 6 seconds(4:37-4:43), though he doesn't ever receive the 'begins casting' text. The other icon disappears at 4:55 after he exits Conflux menu. The only action he takes after that is Moglophone II which activates in about 05.-1sec (5:14-5:15).
We were lucky to see his Unity chat as well here, showing he is in Jakoh. Geriond swears by low population Unities, and I absolutely believe it works for him. I, however, tried 4 NM fights on Jakoh(about 30ish people in Unity) and saw no difference in lag from being in Apururu Unity.
I posted earlier about ExpressVPN being night and day for lag in my personal experience. I did some testing yesterday both on and off VPN, and actually haven't been able to reproduce the lag that I initially had. I cleared an entire NM battle with 5 Trusts while OFF the VPN and experienced some lag and gearswap mishaps, but nothing like the 5sec I used to see. I've also sat in the lobby room while OFF the VPN and had no lag.
Being unable to reproduce the lag really stumps me. For visibility here is a video of me testing lag while ON ExpressVPN connected to their Tokyo server. I will also include my ping and tracert results while ON and OFF VPN:
Connected to ExpressVPN Tokyo Server: Pinging 124.150.154.122 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 124.150.154.122: bytes=32 time=160ms TTL=55
Reply from 124.150.154.122: bytes=32 time=160ms TTL=55
Reply from 124.150.154.122: bytes=32 time=160ms TTL=55
Reply from 124.150.154.122: bytes=32 time=162ms TTL=55
Ping statistics for 124.150.154.122:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 160ms, Maximum = 162ms, Average = 160ms
1 * * * Request timed out.
2 158 ms 160 ms 160 ms 154.16.51.124
3 159 ms 161 ms 161 ms unassigned.cdn77.com [185.229.188.144]
4 160 ms 159 ms 160 ms arteria-tyo.cdn77.com [84.17.32.121]
5 160 ms 159 ms 164 ms 163.139.130.218
6 159 ms 159 ms 161 ms 210.131.255.34
7 159 ms 160 ms 160 ms 61.195.56.165
8 160 ms 160 ms 161 ms 219.117.144.78
9 162 ms 160 ms 162 ms 219.117.144.57
10 161 ms 161 ms 163 ms 219.117.146.141
11 162 ms 168 ms 164 ms 219.117.146.186
12 160 ms 160 ms 159 ms 124.150.154.122
Not connected to ExpressVPN Tokyo Server: Pinging 124.150.154.122 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 124.150.154.122: bytes=32 time=328ms TTL=48
Reply from 124.150.154.122: bytes=32 time=188ms TTL=48
Reply from 124.150.154.122: bytes=32 time=191ms TTL=48
Reply from 124.150.154.122: bytes=32 time=190ms TTL=48
Ping statistics for 124.150.154.122:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 188ms, Maximum = 328ms, Average = 224ms
1 1 ms 1 ms 2 ms HG6Box [192.168.1.1]
2 16 ms 12 ms 14 ms 142.254.150.161
3 103 ms 51 ms 25 ms 24.164.99.57
4 11 ms 147 ms 89 ms be23.pltsohae01r.midwest.rr.com [24.33.103.70]
5 19 ms 21 ms 21 ms be25.clmkohpe01r.midwest.rr.com [65.29.1.28]
6 26 ms 26 ms 27 ms bu-ether15.chctilwc00w-bcr00.tbone.rr.com [66.109.6.68]
7 76 ms 74 ms 72 ms 66.109.5.136
8 82 ms 78 ms 83 ms bu-ether11.snvacaid17w-bcr00.tbone.rr.com [66.109.6.14]
9 73 ms 74 ms 73 ms 0.ae0.pr0.sjc20.tbone.rr.com [66.109.6.139]
10 73 ms 77 ms 180 ms 107.14.16.114
11 75 ms 75 ms 78 ms 111.87.3.249
12 182 ms 181 ms 181 ms 106.187.13.25
13 178 ms 175 ms 177 ms 27.85.227.109
14 177 ms 193 ms 191 ms oteJIN301.int-gw.kddi.ne.jp [27.86.32.2]
15 180 ms 179 ms 184 ms 111.108.13.182
16 177 ms 177 ms 177 ms 163.139.130.222
17 188 ms 257 ms 207 ms 210.131.255.34
18 213 ms 189 ms 248 ms 61.195.56.165
19 270 ms 190 ms 189 ms 219.117.144.78
20 189 ms 191 ms 192 ms 219.117.144.49
21 194 ms 189 ms 233 ms 219.117.146.129
22 218 ms 193 ms 191 ms 219.117.146.182
23 189 ms 188 ms 194 ms 124.150.154.122
This morning's lobby lag test while connected to ExpressVPN Tokyo Server:
Shiva.Thorny
Server: Shiva
Game: FFXI
Posts: 3144
By Shiva.Thorny 2021-02-27 13:45:04
a 4 ping sample is not anything, please run it for longer before posting numbers(if you kick out the 328ms outliar, you're comparing 160ms to 189ms instead of 224ms.. you need more samples to see if the 328ms occurance is common or a one off)
also, still no possible explanation where the ping is the root cause, only several where it can be a contributing factor(either way, SE needs to fix their code)
Asura.Wotasu
Server: Asura
Game: FFXI
Posts: 346
By Asura.Wotasu 2021-02-27 13:47:05
I'll reiterate that I've gotten MUCH, MUCH less lag since switching to a unity with far fewer people. I went from being 4-6 second lag 95% of the time to having 0-2 second lag 95% of the time. I've done dozens of runs before and about a dozen after, so I don't think it's just luck.
It's not a perfect situation, but it was quite helpful for me. I did this just now, Swapped from Sylvie to Aldo which had lowest rank, Latency remained 5sec+
Asura.Sutebe
Server: Asura
Game: FFXI
Posts: 19
By Asura.Sutebe 2021-02-27 14:01:09
I'll reiterate that I've gotten MUCH, MUCH less lag since switching to a unity with far fewer people. I went from being 4-6 second lag 95% of the time to having 0-2 second lag 95% of the time. I've done dozens of runs before and about a dozen after, so I don't think it's just luck.
It's not a perfect situation, but it was quite helpful for me. I did this just now, Swapped from Sylvie to Aldo which had lowest rank, Latency remained 5sec+
I did the same with my alt, made no difference to lag what so ever.
By GlassyCraver 2021-02-27 14:26:15
I can confirm it is possible to enter and have inventory load instantly and have 0 input lag even if it normally takes 3-4mins and 8-10 second input lag. Just happened on one of my chars randomly (same unity as other 2) and it was glorious.
This char has a few less trusts and only a few 99 and Master jobs but doubt that was it, noone there had lag.
By RadialArcana 2021-02-27 14:32:30
You can enter this zone in different ways and have zero lag (lillith and a-b-c), then you go into this boss area and you get the lag.
The only difference is the trust and job lockout system in gaol, the trust lockout system sends data constantly since it's overlaying the limited list of trusts over the top of your real list and constantly checking it.
I would guess they are simply overloading the server connection limits with too much data (ffxi is capped at 56k right?), since some things seem to help the answer possibly is just to limit how much data you're sending/getting from the server.
So take off your linkshell, remove RoE quests, be on a small unity, put some more chat filters on etc. Try everything you can think of to limit how much data is being sent outside of what you need.
Lakshmi.Cesil
Server: Lakshmi
Game: FFXI
Posts: 562
By Lakshmi.Cesil 2021-02-27 17:23:29
I've been experiencing weird, random lag too. It's not my ISP, PC or anything like that.
Asura.Sechs
Server: Asura
Game: FFXI
Posts: 10350
By Asura.Sechs 2021-02-27 17:26:22
If it's really just that, can't they simply remove the stupid limitation for trusts not being resummonable and make so you can't summon trusts while you have enmity to compensate?
By RadialArcana 2021-02-27 17:27:40
Hopefully they do just that, we will see I guess.
Lakshmi.Buukki
Server: Lakshmi
Game: FFXI
By Lakshmi.Buukki 2021-02-27 17:28:27
Last night I did get one run where the Moglophone II escape item didn't load after several minutes, but my inventory bag did. I had to use Warp Ring to get out. It even caused a trade window to not appear on my screen, despite a party member telling me I had "cancelled the request"; the game just said "unable to process the trade" on my end. That was the worst lag I had experienced to date. Strangely enough, earlier in the same set of runs (like 30min earlier); I had zero lag on one of the staging areas/zones after warping down. I could do JAs and use items instantly. And as soon as the NM walked over, the 5+ second lag started. So yeah, it can be wildly random for no apparent reason.
Asura.Sechs
Server: Asura
Game: FFXI
Posts: 10350
By Asura.Sechs 2021-02-27 17:33:52
Last night I did get one run where the Moglophone II escape item didn't load
It NEVER loads for me lol
Wonder what is the additional variable that seems to be making this worse for me than it is for everybody else.
XD
Lakshmi.Buukki
Server: Lakshmi
Game: FFXI
By Lakshmi.Buukki 2021-02-27 17:37:30
That was the only run out of dozens that never loaded. Weekends are the worst.
Shiva.Flowen
Server: Shiva
Game: FFXI
Posts: 526
By Shiva.Flowen 2021-02-27 17:43:08
I’m away from home with crappy internet at the moment and have been getting pretty annoyed with 5-10 second delays in gaol. Today I went in with my alt whm and it was drastically improved, like 1 second or so. Same internet connection, computer etc. My main is pretty decked out but my alt doesn’t have a lot of augmented gear or trusts.. same unity for the record though.
Bahamut.Balduran
Server: Bahamut
Game: FFXI
Posts: 276
By Bahamut.Balduran 2021-03-01 08:05:51
Tried to replicate the issue in Gaol, so I connected to FF11 via UK based VPN connection. My latency rose 200ms~ above the usual I get from direct, and I felt absolutely no difference in areas outside Gaol.
Once I entered Gaol, the scenario changed completely, 5~10+ second delays with spells, gearswap was a mess, and it was just a horrible experience.
It seems now that latencies within or above a certain threshold trigger this server side anamoly. Definitely needs to be addressed to Square Enix, as this can also be correlated with poor coding in Divergence zones, except the lag there is not as severe as Gaol.
I posted a video with my findings. I personally don't have lag issues when connecting direct (UAE > Japan), but I decided to test and share this for more insight. YouTube Video Placeholder
At around 6:30 into the video, I exit to Rabao, at that point the lag is gone, and the spells cast without delay.
Ragnarok.Tylas
Server: Ragnarok
Game: FFXI
Posts: 59
By Ragnarok.Tylas 2021-03-01 08:45:01
I've looked at the UDP packets the game sends and receives in Wireshark. There is always one incoming packet followed by an outgoing one. These are regularly sent back and forth 2-3 times per second (this number is possibly dependent on my ping), even if nothing is happening in-game like sitting in the mog house.
The packets that windower addons see, which I analyzed before, are grouped into these UDP packets. So when you enter Ody, all you see in Wireshark is the UDP packet size increasing, not more individual packets received.
In a typical laggy Ody situation the maximum UDP packet size I observed was roughly 1200 bytes. The packet size itself might be capped, it is generally good practice to keep UDP packet sizes low in case they get lost. 2-3 packets at 1200 bytes size equals roughly the R3000 bytes received cap I'm seeing in-game.
So what does this all mean? What if the game's network protocol just sends a packet, waits for the answer and then sends the next. With lower ping, you would observe more UDP packets per second. If JP players get more updates per second, they basically have a higher bandwidth to the server and all the useless trust list updates are no problem for them.
Maybe someone with a way lower ping than my 250, maybe on the US west coast, can confirm that they are seeing an R cap above 3000ish inside Odyssey?
Of course all of this is an educated guess, as we cannot look at the server code.
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Shiva.Thorny
Server: Shiva
Game: FFXI
Posts: 3144
By Shiva.Thorny 2021-03-01 09:57:00
Packet size is definitely capped, but beyond that they also cap individual components of each packet. I did an experiment that supports this looking at inventory here:
https://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/55065/july-2020-version-update/10/#3529435
The basic takeaway is that each packet can only hold so many inventory updates, even though the actual packet could be much larger. Presumably, they do this so inventory updates don't choke out player updates and other things needed. Note that packets are encrypted with blowfish and compressed with zlib, so if you're looking at both wireshark and an ingame monitor, the ingame monitor can have as much as 3x more volume of data.
I would point out that while that is a very interesting theory, it doesn't quite explain why a VPN will cause such a noticable difference. While the packet is received by the VPN much faster, it still has to travel from the VPN to the client, and from the client back to the VPN, to trigger the next packet. Perhaps it is a backlog of packets getting queued up that ends up choking out other packets, and the small difference between VPN and not pushes that over a threshold such that you do not accumulate a backlog with VPN while you do without.
However, since it seems people experience this lag even immediately after zoning in when they are going to experience it(see the video of 8 second lag casting solo).. that still doesn't explain why latency is such a strong contributor. If the trust-related updates were taking up the majority of a packet's size, you'd see exponential growth in backlog once things start happening in the instance.
It's certainly an interesting problem to theorize about, but the bottom line is still the same, if you want real action you need to pressure SE and make it clear how bad things are. Even if we are able to identify why latency is such a strong component, it's clear the cause is related to the volume of traffic generated by the server, likely primarily due to the spell updates.
By RadialArcana 2021-03-01 10:26:26
Hopefully they just disable the trust lockout system with the next patch, it would be easy to do and wouldn't really impact difficulty much.
What difference does it really make to not be able to use healer 1 for the next 2 fights and instead have to use healer 2 and then 3. Needless farting about.
The job lockout system is already fine in terms of forcing players to change things up in the run.
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Ragnarok.Tylas
Server: Ragnarok
Game: FFXI
Posts: 59
By Ragnarok.Tylas 2021-03-01 11:05:19
Note that packets are encrypted with blowfish and compressed with zlib, so if you're looking at both wireshark and an ingame monitor, the ingame monitor can have as much as 3x more volume of data. Ah I wasn't aware of this. It makes the ingame R counter even more of a mystery because then it does not really display bytes/sec. But it only updates once per second...
If the trust-related updates were taking up the majority of a packet's size, you'd see exponential growth in backlog once things start happening in the instance. I expect they were smart enough to not let their outgoing queue grow endlessly and just drop data at some point. This would also explain why stuff is missing from the battle log, animations don't play, etc.
I would point out that while that is a very interesting theory, it doesn't quite explain why a VPN will cause such a noticable difference. Having tried VPN to Japan myself, I can tell you that it had absolutely no effect for me. My ping and route with and without VPN was about the same though.
It's certainly an interesting problem to theorize about, but the bottom line is still the same, if you want real action you need to pressure SE and make it clear how bad things are. Theorizing is the only way to cope while helplessly watching them do nothing for months. That's all this thread is about by now. xD
Asura.Eiryl
By Asura.Eiryl 2021-03-01 11:09:07
I mean, you could, ya know, not do the content.
Nothing says this is broken, quite like not putting up with it.
Batshit crazy idea, I know.
Server: Asura
Game: FFXI
Posts: 325
By Asura.Biglovin 2021-03-01 11:14:34
I mean, you could, ya know, not do the content.
Nothing says this is broken, quite like not putting up with it.
Batshit crazy idea, I know.
I've cleared the NMs once and just farm segments now and wait until they fix it since you can spam it nonstop afterwards as long as you have segments to buy the mooglephone2s.... I wouldn't bother with V5+ for augmenting this ***until it's playable.
Lakshmi.Buukki
Server: Lakshmi
Game: FFXI
By Lakshmi.Buukki 2021-03-01 11:26:10
The lag is bad but the queue on Asura is even worse at times. Dumping 100k segments here is like is Lilith V 2.0 lol
By RadialArcana 2021-03-01 14:09:07
If you do /jump it fires off instantly, if you type /wave it has the long delay.
So gameplay lag has become a big issue for most of the players in my circle, and it seems to be somehow just accepted and not challenged much. Whether this is because in Japan the effects are not as bad or even noticeable we don't know.
Lag can be caused by a lot of things, but I think it's important here to separate a few major types.
1. Lag caused by your gaming setup, poor performance PC or internet connection.
2. Lag caused by congestion at the SE end, exacerbated by your distance from the servers.
Ever since D-Dyna introduced the ranking system where you had the on-screen counter for your rank items, it seems SE have reached a server side limit where lag is unavoidable even on the fastest internet and PC.
You can just about live with it in d-dyna but it kills the fun of being able to react and play well like we've learned to do in older content areas (stunning a TP moves, re-casting utsusemi, curing someone about to die etc).
Then Odyssey came out and right from the get-go similar lag exists in the Sheol A, B and C areas. A good test of lag is to do an emote to another player and see how long it takes to show in the log. D-Dyna and Sheol seem to be 1-2s extra lag than normal, but sometimes even worse for certain players.
Now we have Gaol and the lag has gone off the charts. We enter with 6 players and some like myself can get lucky and see a 1-2s lag only in the waiting area, while others see 6s lag for any action, and inventory doesn't load fully even after 3 minutes of waiting.
I was most surprised to see it can even be drastically different for 2 chars in the same household. I run my main on an AMD 5950 processor and AMD 6800XT GPU (yes I paid through the teeth for that). My 2nd char is on a 1950x threadripper and Titan X maxwell GPU (no slouch) and yet this char consistently gets the 6s lag in Gaol. Both chars on the same 350Mb fibre internet (Virgin in the UK).
A few in our LS have pretty much done everything we want to do in this game, beaten the master trials, got all the REMAs we need and R15d them, and we've been pinning our hopes on new content to keep our favourite pastime going.
Gaol seems really interesting and challenging, exactly what we need right now, but we can't play it. We go in and attempt to guess when to chuck out a cure or erase, people jump about all over the place due to update lag, it's just not possible to do anything but put your best gear on and luck your way through a win.
I read today the accepted bug report listed here:
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/57736-Abnormal-connection-behavior-within-Odyssey-battle-content-Sheol-Gaol
Which brings up the capped network bandwidth size which is getting trounced inside Goal areas. I hadn't even considered SE might be trying to push more data than their own cap allows since I would have expected that to affect JP players the same way, but maybe it doesn't somehow.
Anyway, if SE do not address this and soon (including fixing the extra lag in d-dyna and sheol) then I think it will force me to finally retire from the game, as it has now become a key skill to predict actions ahead of lag (anyone ever run into a d-dyna statue cos it hadn't loaded yet?).
I don't see a lot of talk about this issue outside of the game so wanted to just dump all my moans here about it now and see what others think. Also other than bombard the official forums with new bug reports (since you can't reply to existing ones to support them, only up-vote), how can we get SE to wake up to it?
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