Packet Loss/Lag Issue, Worse Since Last Update

Hi Guys,

Hoping someone might be able to make some suggestions on what I can do to improve my packet loss/lag issues.

Since the last update I've been having quite severe packet loss & lag issues primarily in Dynamis and Odyssey. I live in the UK so like most EU players my connection has to go across the pond, then all the way across the US, and then to the JP server with several toilet breaks in between - so used to some level of lag but it has definitely got worse.

Here's some of the things that have been happening particularly since the update(these don't happen 100% of the time, but quite regularly):

- Spells start casting and I don't see if they land or not (for example; I will cast Distract and won't see whether it lands. Instead the magic animation will stay until I cast another spell or do another move. I will then cast Distract again and it may say No Effect due to the first landing, but I had no idea.
- I hit a macro to cast a spell and I don't know if it went off until after it's landed
- Various items missing from log, such as weapon skills (I will see Readies WS but won't see the damage)[/li]


These 2 above things started happening only since the last update.

Other stuff:

Some of these I know are quite common and I'm sure people will say there's not much that can be done but worth mentioning.


- Spells interrupted with 115% SIRD set (10% from merits) either due to gear not equipping soon enough or changing back to idle too quickly)
- Huge delays in changing battle targets - up to 6 seconds.
- Wandering around engaged to a target but don't know which; sometimes targeting the whm who just cured or buffed me, sometimes targeting a mob but can't lock on.
the usual lag issues like players/mobs teleporting instead of running from one place to another[/li]

my setup:

My live in a 1gb fibre area, but play FFXI in my office which is in a separate building to my house - connected to the internet via powerline adaptors. Speed test tells me I can get just under 100mbps in there. Connected via ethernet to the powerline.

I've tested ping to my main router to see if there are issues there due to powerline and there was no packet loss letting it run for several minutes.

My ping to the server is very high:

Tracert: There are a 2 time outs - hop 3 & 7.

I've tried a VPN to send me through Russia instead of through the US and this does improve latency, but the unreliable connection that way means I D/C quite regularly.

Other than that I've been trying to find ways of improving my connection to the FFXI server without much luck.

Thanks for reading! Any suggestions welcome.

This has basically been my experience playing the game for a long time.

It's the worst in Dynamis D and Sheol C, Gaol tends to be a lot better.
I made a report over a year ago that it was a big issue in sheol C, which they accepted but nothing has ever improved.

Edit: I should add I am also european and my network/computer are all top tier.

Has anything you’ve done helped the situation?

This isn't isolated to EU players. I live in the US, have relatively good internet connection, and also experience a lot of the same issues, especially in the noted areas.

Can confirm, I live in the US, have a really good internet connection and have similar issues. Yesterday in Dynamis, people didn't even load.

Khai gets DC regularly for no reason. It's really strange.

Known issue, nothing will help besides lowering your ping. The server has a limit to how large a single outgoing UDP packet can be, and will discard lower priority instructions when the UDP packet is full. Since the server waits for a round trip between each communication, a higher ping means a larger volume of actions will occur in between UDP packets, and more of them will be discarded. Because your own response is needed, artifically lowering ping with a VPN near SE is not likely to help much, unless it lowers your round trip time. Some 'gaming vpns' claim to be able to reduce communication time, though they are pretty inconsistant and some are downright scam-tier.

For some arbitrary reason, your own spell completions are prioritized comparatively low. The priority scheme may be simply an order of events rather than an intended priority ranking, since it's frankly pretty illogical. Note that these issues can be compounded in dynamis, as they also have to update your progress bars for su5/necks/mask constantly.

Tldr; pray SE suddenly decides to care about an issue that's been here for half a decade, unfortunate but that's how it is

Edit: One further clarification, the idea of 'packet loss' is not actually packets failing to arrive. The things windower/addons/etc refer to as packets are actually just single instructions within a larger UDP packet. The UDP packet is likely arriving, but because so much data is occuring between each packet, SE is discarding some of it. The stuff you're losing was never sent in the first place, and the only way to make it start getting sent is reducing your latency.

getting pretty anoyed myself here also. I have allot of disconnect troubles lately. Play the game and all of a sudden im back in the char screen. Also allot of r0 issues and the occasional crash. It seems these troubles started when my laptop updated to windows 11. I dont know waht the problem is but its getting pretty dmn frustrating.

No valuable information to input but the switch from windows 10 to 11 is bound to cause headaches. The forced switch from 8 to 10 wrecked havoc on XI for me for a solid year.

Thanks for the responses - all good to know. And Thorny I just learned some stuff xD thanks!

I actually haven’t upgraded to windows 11 yet, but it does seem strange that it’s got worse since the last update.

I did the iron giant ambu the day of the update, maybe a few hours after servers were back up and noticed it straight away then.

Edit: Is there actually any legitimate ways of improving latency?

I'm a little worried about a certain person that is in charge of XI and XIV stating in a fairly recent interview:

"we have been exploring ways to run servers at a lower cost, for example partially using cloud servers"

I don't know if this is happening and causing some problems or not, but it was said.

Cloud servers shouldn't cause any issues and could actually improve things since once a packet enters the cloud network routing is completely under their control rather than at the whims of ISPs.

Hop timeouts in the middle of a traceroute are irrelevant. It just means that this particular hop refuses to send a TTL expired packet in response to your ICMP packet. Hops can be configured like that to simply stay hidden.

It gets more interesting if these particular hops sometimes answer and sometimes do not. There's special tracerouting software like Visual Route that probe hops multiple times to find issues like this.

However, what you're experiencing is the lag and fail that everyone experiences, especially in Dynamis and Odyssey. I've always had this problem, I don't know Dynamis without it.

Thanks for the info regarding trace routing. Those hops do always time out on the same hops.

I've always had the usual lag in Dynamis & Odyssey - but since the November update it got worse.

It was only since the November update my spells would get stuck in animation and I wouldn't see whether they landed or not - or in worse lag I wouldn't see the spell start or finish casting, and would only find out it was cast when I check on recast, or sometimes they spell will refuse to cast at all.

I was hoping there might be something I can do to improve this.