Server lag/delay for EU players?

[Viena]

Well, my experience has basically been the following: in the vast majority of situations, when I've been targeted by an AOE, if I'm not outside of it like well over a second before the circle is gone I would inevitably get hit. I kind of ended assuming that's the way it worked for everyone, as in most cases you can still avoid the AOEs by positioning yourself correctly and reacting quickly. Then there has been some particular situations where I've been unable to consistently dodge things that I usually can, all these seemed to happen around midnight (CET), closing into NA prime time, I guess.

And then I fought Titan and realized that evading plumes was nearly impossible for me, as their narrow reaction window wouldn't allow me to get out of them well in advance. So I would consistently get hit even if my character was outside by the time they went off.

That's when I installed Leatrix, and it made quite a noticeable difference. Now, in the majority of cases where I get out an AOE right before it goes off I don't get hit, which is quite a change from what I've been experiencing until now, and I guess that's how the trouble free players get to experience the game. But Leatrix is definitely not perfect. When approaching midnight I would start to occasionally get hit by AOEs that I could avoid NP during the rest of the day. I'm guessing that my reaction windows are still narrower than the ones not experiencing this issue have.

This issue is getting extremely annoying, basically because there's no word for a fix in the foreseeable future and the fact that the game relies on these mechanics for virtually every single thing, which can make some endgame content a nightmare. What sickens me even more, though, is the people that will say things similar to: "There's no lag, you are just slow and full of shit".

[Neviskio]

Well, my experience has basically been the following: in the vast majority of situations, when I've been targeted by an AOE, if I'm not outside of it like well over a second before the circle is gone I would inevitably get hit. I kind of ended assuming that's the way it worked for everyone, as in most cases you can still avoid the AOEs by positioning yourself correctly and reacting quickly. Then there has been some particular situations where I've been unable to consistently dodge things that I usually can, all these seemed to happen around midnight (CET), closing into NA prime time, I guess.

And then I fought Titan and realized that evading plumes was nearly impossible for me, as their narrow reaction window wouldn't allow me to get out of them well in advance. So I would consistently get hit even if my character was outside by the time they went off.

That's when I installed Leatrix, and it made quite a noticeable difference. Now, in the majority of cases where I get out an AOE right before it goes off I don't get hit, which is quite a change from what I've been experiencing until now, and I guess that's how the trouble free players get to experience the game. But Leatrix is definitely not perfect. When approaching midnight I would start to occasionally get hit by AOEs that I could avoid NP during the rest of the day. I'm guessing that my reaction windows are still narrower than the ones not experiencing this issue have.

This issue is getting extremely annoying, basically because there's no word for a fix in the foreseeable future and that the game relies on this mechanics for virtually every single thing and can make some endgame content a nightmare. What also sickens me, though, is the people that will say things similar to: "There's no lag, you are just slow and full of shit".

I didn't try the old fixes ala wow, because I remember these not doing shit for me in the past. I just subbed for my 1 month trial "let's see if square fixes shit" and I still have people running-full stop for a second-speed up and run again, even at the most random offhours. I didn't play during prime time today but I guess I'll get my loved 5 sec lag soon...

I'm in the same boat as you, and I sure as hell never get hit by aoe in any other game, also my ping is right now in game 110. It just isn't ping, because with 110 even considering a 0.3 server delay of character checking I'd be hit only if I moved 0.5sec before cast ends. I just did a few tries on some random mobs, I kept running as a retard in circles to avoid their aoes, and still got hit when I was behind them and they were channeling a cone in front, and I was out even before the animation and cast bar came out, so it is definitely an issue on square side.

Also logged just for fun wow to see my ping: 28...

I hope before my month ends they fix it or probably I happily wasted my 12€ =P

[Argantes]

"There's no lag, you are just slow and full of shit".

Oh man, That's the most annoying thing.
It's why I don't even bother with Garuda or Titan HMs. I know I'll have to do something that SE makes damn near impossible for me to do well and I'm gonna get blamed for it.

[Viena]

And from the technical side of things, there's a relatively easy fix which should improve things (even if it won't make them perfect). They stated that the server reads your position every 0.3s, but that's an inaccurate way of describing how it's actually working. The server will read everything the client sends (it's a TCP stream after all), but the client just sends position information caused by player movement every 0.3s.

When you trigger an action your position is also sent along with the action command, so the server can check if you were in range for that action and such. People have had some success using this as a trick to forcedly update their position on the server once they get outside of an AOE.

The fix could consist in the client automatically mimicking that behavior, by sending a position update to the server as soon as you get out of the AOE, so you don't have to rely on triggering an action yourself (which is inconvenient, requires the action to be ready and adds additional delay).

But this would be a workaround more than anything, as it doesn't really resolve resolve the root cause of the disparate response times for people that have similar and reasonable pings to SE's servers.

[Cesaria]

I've been getting crippled with the red circle thing - could move as soon as I see the move readied (going on the mob action bar not the ground circles) and be in another blooming postcode by the time it goes off and still get hit - to the extent I'd stopped progressing through the storyline until I could get it sorted as I wasn't going to screw over other players with it.

Someone in one of my LSes suggested one of the latency fixes that were going around for WoW when it was having problems and it's really helped - to an extent where now if I get hit with shit it's cos of my own ineptitude only (or getting stuck on a lalafell... I'm thinking laying a trail with pies to a high cliff and punting them all overboard might help on that oen)

[Argantes]

I found that taking one or two extra steps to avoid something works for me.

Also, after all the maints they've had, things are a lot more responsive for me now.
Not saying it's perfect, but they seem to be improving things.

[Neviskio]

It has been a bit better for me, but still on the "unplayable" scale for anything serious. For example I still can never hit a moving target while running behind it, always get spammed by target not in range, I have to be basically in front of the target if it's moving. delay is now 1 second and a bit instead of 2-6 seconds, so something they did, not enough still but better...

I can actually avoid most of the aoes that have more than 1.5 sec cast, which is kinda nice...Though my ping is 260 now instead of 90-140 so meh that might be it too. I did a few tests, if I start casting something long like teleport, it takes exactly 1.2-1.4 seconds to stop the cast once I move/smash esc, also if a mob dies and I'm smash-casting a spell I can actually complete the cast of anything around 1.5sec before the game realizes my target has died, so yeah...

Still having people warp around me though in any place of the game at any hour <.<

edit: not sure if this changes anything, still haven't tried the difference but someone posted on the lolOF forums this, maybe it helps?

"
Documents\My Games\FINAL FANTASY XIV - A Realm Reborn
open FFXIV.cfg with notepad
find
<Network Settings>
UPnP 1<=change it to 0

relog
"

I tried since I got nothing to lose even if it feels useless, I'm almost resorting to shamanism and voodoo since square isn't exactly talkative on this issue...

[Taruina]

I'm not an EU and I'm having this same issue. I probably don't even live too far from the servers. But you bet your life it takes an average of 15 seconds for mobs to appear on the instance server for me. Letting my non-legacy account lapse until they make it moderately playable.