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Gaol: Unplayable content because of lag
Bismarck.Indigla
Server: Bismarck
Game: FFXI
Posts: 345
By Bismarck.Indigla 2021-02-11 13:07:48
Just curious, has anyone tried using a VPN to see if it alleviated the lag?
Bismarck.Indigla
Server: Bismarck
Game: FFXI
Posts: 345
By Bismarck.Indigla 2021-02-11 13:56:27
It's just so weird, I see some people have little to no lag. Mine is very bad around 5s or worse. If routing isn't the reason I wonder if something as dumb as having too many items in your bags could be why, takes forever for mine to load.
Server: Asura
Game: FFXI
Posts: 3185
By Asura.Geriond 2021-02-11 14:43:22
It's just so weird, I see some people have little to no lag. Mine is very bad around 5s or worse. If routing isn't the reason I wonder if something as dumb as having too many items in your bags could be why, takes forever for mine to load. It can often vary for the same person on different runs. Usually I have like 3 second delay in Gaol, sometimes no delay, sometimes as much as 8 second delay, all exactly the same situation on my side, and does not correlate with how many people are in the /sea zone.
Shiva.Thorny
Server: Shiva
Game: FFXI
Posts: 3144
By Shiva.Thorny 2021-02-11 15:02:34
I haven't done Sheol-Gaol, because I don't play really. But, a simple way to analyze whether this is client lag is to simply check your FPS. If you're getting 60 FPS(or really anything above 10, provided the 3-5 second accounts aren't exaggerated), your client is fine.
Dynamis, and other instances in the past, 'lag' due to server either failing to send out action/update packets as quickly as they are required, or omitting the packets entirely. This is not the travel time from the server to client(it doesn't matter how far you are from japan). See:
https://wondernetwork.com/pings/Tokyo
The furthest pings in the world are ~400ms to japan. 4/10 a second is not a huge difference, we have a 350ms~ variance between outgoing packets to begin with and you barely notice that in functional zones. The real problem comes from whatever poor server code is resulting in lost and delayed packets in these specific instances.
This is something entirely out of the players' control, and it's unlikely anything you do will fix it. If Gaol suffers from the same issues, keep in mind the only way it will get better is if you pressure SE into making it better.
Phoenix.Amarok
Server: Phoenix
Game: FFXI
Posts: 63
By Phoenix.Amarok 2021-02-11 15:11:13
This is something entirely out of the players' control, and it's unlikely anything you do will fix it. If Gaol suffers from the same issues, keep in mind the only way it will get better is if you pressure SE into making it better.
This is pretty much how our LS feels atm, and we'll be trying to post about it on the official forums as well, but confidence is low it'll get fixed.
Bismarck.Indigla
Server: Bismarck
Game: FFXI
Posts: 345
By Bismarck.Indigla 2021-02-11 15:31:22
Isn't it worth the effort though to track down, issues like this affect the lifeblood of the game I feel. Having players waiting for something new to do, then it turns out the new thing is unplayable is just not healthy. And for me it has been everytime, I can cope on a DD job since it's just mashing WS usually, but as support it makes me feel utterly useless.
By Sylph.Brahmsz 2021-02-11 15:32:34
I hate to say it but... has anyone considered the amount of data being sent via GS? Not saying GS is directly responsible, but the amount of data being sent could very easily be compounding the issue.
Lakshmi.Buukki
Server: Lakshmi
Game: FFXI
By Lakshmi.Buukki 2021-02-11 15:40:15
I am not using GS and I get the lag. It was weird last night. Before I went to pull a boss, I got absolutely zero lag. Abilities fired off immediately while buffing. As soon as I pulled it down, it started becoming a mess. On other occasions, I get lag from the moment I enter Gaol, taking sometimes 2 full minutes to load my inventory. Sometimes the boss doesn't even load when running in until 5 seconds later. Originally thought it was because of the weekend lag, but tried it midweek and it was just as bad.
By Sylph.Brahmsz 2021-02-11 15:50:35
It's not GS, we tried vanilla with same results.
Long as confirmed.
I am not using GS and I get the lag. It was weird last night. Before I went to pull a boss, I got absolutely zero lag. Abilities fired off immediately while buffing. As soon as I pulled it down, it started becoming a mess. On other occasions, I get lag from the moment I enter Gaol, taking sometimes 2 full minutes to load my inventory. Sometimes the boss doesn't even load when running in until 5 seconds later. Originally thought it was because of the weekend lag, but tried it midweek and it was just as bad.
I can definitely confirm that the lag for me doesn't start until engaging/pulling the boss. At the entrance, all my buffs went off as normal despite having a Receiving signal of 2,500+ (and I main RUN, so were talking 6+ self buffs before giving my ready flag).
The genuine lag/delay/latency started the minute I agroed and flashed the boss.
By SimonSes 2021-02-11 15:57:10
Dynamis, and other instances in the past, 'lag' due to server either failing to send out action/update packets as quickly as they are required, or omitting the packets entirely. This is not the travel time from the server to client(it doesn't matter how far you are from japan). See:
https://wondernetwork.com/pings/Tokyo
The furthest pings in the world are ~400ms to japan. 4/10 a second is not a huge difference, we have a 350ms~ variance between outgoing packets to begin with and you barely notice that in functional zones. The real problem comes from whatever poor server code is resulting in lost and delayed packets in these specific instances.
I can understand that, but wouldnt number of nodes that my signal goes through (From Poland it goes to USA and hit like 3-4 different cities there, then go to Japan I think) also make it easier to lose packets, or loosing packets is only a problem in SE servers/game code?
By SimonSes 2021-02-11 16:03:25
I can definitely confirm that the lag for me doesn't start until engaging/pulling the boss. At the entrance, all my buffs went off as normal despite having a Receiving signal of 2,500+ (and I main RUN, so were talking 6+ self buffs before giving my ready flag).
The genuine lag/delay/latency started the minute I agroed and flashed the boss.
For me (I was there 2 times), both were 5-8 sec delay lags from the start. I also couldnt notice animation for my spells (I could only notice icons of buffs showing up) and often couldnt notice WSs. Oh and my inventory havent loaded even after 3 minutes in lobby area. I also only could see people teleporting from place to place.
Such lag I only experienced few times in Dynamis D with 18 ppl and during Mireu with half server being there.
Phoenix.Amarok
Server: Phoenix
Game: FFXI
Posts: 63
By Phoenix.Amarok 2021-02-11 16:16:24
Ok had a chance to do some testing tonight.
Took my primary char in on my primary computer as usual, and our party fought 3 NMs lvl +0 in 3 separate runs. As usual my char was about 1-2s lag for macro and /wave responses on all runs.
Then 3 of us entered the lobby, this time me on my 2nd char on my 2nd computer. I tried a wave soon after the other 2 party members loaded and it was 4s delay in log. Then did it again it was 5s, and again 6s. It stayed between 5-6s lag, and I also noticed 2 out of 3 wave attempts didn't even show up in the log at all.
We logged out each char one at a time until only mine was left in the lobby, and there was no difference (waving to nobody this time!).
I logged out my char while in the lobby and logged back in with virgin POL. The other 2 party members were there by then and still the same 5-6s lag.
So I waited until I timed out of the lobby since I couldn't get to the escape item, it wouldn't load in inv in the 5m or so I had left.
I then logged this 2nd char in on my primary computer, virgin POL again, and I entered Gaol just by myself. 4s wave delay at first before moogle had loaded, but then 6s constant after that, with same 1/3 wave attempts even showing in the log at all.
So the long lag seemed to follow my char instead of being affected by my computer setup. I then wondered if job selection had an impact (she was WHM), so I changed job to RUN which my main char usually is, and it didn't change anything.
So hopefully I've answered some of the questions around GS, and other 3rd party stuff being a possible cause. Same machine, 2 different characters, virgin POL and I get 1-2s lag on main and 6s lag on 2nd account char.
*edit* oh and both chars have all the wardrobes and pretty much full inv in them all.
Lakshmi.Buukki
Server: Lakshmi
Game: FFXI
By Lakshmi.Buukki 2021-02-11 16:18:11
I did lion last night and loaded scoreboard. Was ranger and had a Corsair in group. By the end of the battle, I parsed about 60k damage and the Corsair's damage showed 200k+. I also was not able to see any of my WS go off. There's no way the lion only had 300k~ health, and Corsair shouldn't be pulling ahead that far in front of ranger, so my guess is scoreboard couldn't track damage properly because it wasn't showing in log? It was really weird
By RadialArcana 2021-02-11 16:24:13
I wondered for a while if it could be linked to /statusparty, but i guess not.
Server: Asura
Game: FFXI
Posts: 325
By Asura.Biglovin 2021-02-11 16:28:55
it's working as intended. we can already kill all the new Nm with this lag so just image how laughably easy this would be with no lag!
Lakshmi.Buukki
Server: Lakshmi
Game: FFXI
By Lakshmi.Buukki 2021-02-11 16:45:23
it's working as intended. we can already kill all the new Nm with this lag so just image how laughably easy this would be with no lag!
Do it on Veng+15 and let me know how that works out for you.
Server: Asura
Game: FFXI
Posts: 3185
By Asura.Geriond 2021-02-11 17:24:30
I did lion last night and loaded scoreboard. Was ranger and had a Corsair in group. By the end of the battle, I parsed about 60k damage and the Corsair's damage showed 200k+. I also was not able to see any of my WS go off. There's no way the lion only had 300k~ health, and Corsair shouldn't be pulling ahead that far in front of ranger, so my guess is scoreboard couldn't track damage properly because it wasn't showing in log? It was really weird Actually, 300k-ish sounds right. My initial 60k WS on the Tojil Clone did like 20-25%.
By SimonSes 2021-02-11 18:01:02
I did lion last night and loaded scoreboard. Was ranger and had a Corsair in group. By the end of the battle, I parsed about 60k damage and the Corsair's damage showed 200k+. I also was not able to see any of my WS go off. There's no way the lion only had 300k~ health, and Corsair shouldn't be pulling ahead that far in front of ranger, so my guess is scoreboard couldn't track damage properly because it wasn't showing in log? It was really weird Actually, 300k-ish sounds right. My initial 60k WS on the Tojil Clone did like 20-25%.
w/e it being right or not, scoreboard definitely can miss damage in such a lag. I constantly have problems with my WSs showing animation and damage in chat log during Dynamis D runs and my parse results often shows like 100WS done by me, while someone else who havent got the lag has me at like 250WSs.
Server: Ragnarok
Game: FFXI
Posts: 26
By Ragnarok.Hulkamania 2021-02-11 18:14:53
Just curious, has anyone tried using a VPN to see if it alleviated the lag?
The one time I connected to IPVanish's Tokyo server, no lag at all and it played normally. Every other time was unplayable.
By SimonSes 2021-02-11 18:28:03
Ragnarok.Hulkamania said: »Just curious, has anyone tried using a VPN to see if it alleviated the lag?
The one time I connected to IPVanish's Tokyo server, no lag at all and it played normally. Every other time was unplayable.
Interesting.
Could it be some kind of problem that data meant to travel outside of Japan has some added part and thats what creates overcap on sending limit?
Asura.Eiryl
By Asura.Eiryl 2021-02-11 18:34:38
You know the actual scandal that would be
Lakshmi.Darkdoom
Server: Lakshmi
Game: FFXI
Posts: 158
By Lakshmi.Darkdoom 2021-02-11 18:43:44
Just to toss my own experience out there, I've had Odyssey A/B/C runs where it took 5+m for my inventory to load and I couldn't see any of my chars moving or mobs spawning/moving/fighting that I've basically had to just moglophone out of, and farming Gaol up to getting a Schere earring was more or less select the boss, wait up to 60 seconds for everyone to actually get warped to the boss, pray that all my buffs actually went off (because I don't see half of them getting cast), engage the mob and basically hope I don't die because there's absolutely nothing that I can now do to effect the outcome because the lag on actions is so massive.
I run Omen/Dyna-D with the same setup and amount of chars, and while there's the occasional dropped packet or char warping around it's nothing like this. Odyssey seems particularly poorly handled.
Shiva.Thorny
Server: Shiva
Game: FFXI
Posts: 3144
By Shiva.Thorny 2021-02-11 19:25:46
I can understand that, but wouldnt number of nodes that my signal goes through (From Poland it goes to USA and hit like 3-4 different cities there, then go to Japan I think) also make it easier to lose packets, or loosing packets is only a problem in SE servers/game code?
If you think the intermediate nodes are losing packets, you could run a ping to SE server. Download process monitor or process explorer, check the IP your pol.exe is connected to while lagging. Pull open a command prompt, type:
ping -t 202.67.54.119 (replace this with the IP you're having trouble with, that's where i'm currently connected but it's on leviathan and not an instance)
Let it run for a few minutes, hit ctrl-c to stop. Try a tracert to the same address. Every time I've done this, I had 0-1% packet loss and reasonably balanced pings(sometimes an outliar, but not over 300ms). This establishes that the intermediary nodes, nor the distance, are responsible for the problem. It is an easy and free experiment that anyone can do and share.
Further, instances are still going to be hosted at the same datacenters in tokyo, so normal content is following the same route anyway once it leaves SE's subnet. I think we can all agree that these problems don't occur in normal content, despite normal content still having to travel to the same location and back.
Could it be some kind of problem that data meant to travel outside of Japan has some added part and thats what creates overcap on sending limit? 'overcap on sending limit' isn't a thing. The packet is the same size regardless of how far it has to travel. The most likely explanation for a delay is that the server took longer to send it out, which could happen for a variety of reasons, almost all of which come back to poor code. It's not impossible that something about their code causes more problems for players not in Japan, but there's no logical reason to assume that it would be different. If it is different, I can picture very few ways for that to happen without intentionally implementing a priority for japanese players(which as Eiryl said, would be an interesting scandal).
Ragnarok.Hulkamania said: »The one time I connected to IPVanish's Tokyo server, no lag at all and it played normally. Every other time was unplayable. Interesting anecdote, but it's just an anecdote. If this is reproducable, people who experience the same should run a controlled test. Having to play on a VPN isn't ideal, but I'm sure a lot of people would be willing to do so to make the game playable.
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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