Random Question Thread (FFXI Related)

Well the server itself being laggy, yeah that's a problem.
But please understand that Ping will always be a problem and almost always the most impactful.
If you have a 500ms (Half a second) ping to the Laggy Zone that makes for a Laggy zone AND only being able to see things that happening in the laggy mess a full 500ms AFTER everything happens.

If the run's going south thats a lot of people dying and not knowing they were killed because they couldn't see what was going on until very long after the killing blow was already dealt.

It takes the dumpster fire and throws gasoline on it for Dyna-D. I agree with you though, it wont fix the zone, but it should help mitigate a fair deal.

You don't really understand how anything works. Ping is going to be 200ms~ and the built in delay is anywhere from 0 to 350ms (the game only sends out your actions every ~350ms regardless of when you hit them).

So, someone with a 20ms ping will see times from 40-390ms for receiving the move, waiting for client to send action, and waiting for server to receive action. Someone halfway across the world will see times from 400-750ms. Someone on satellite probably sees ~1200-1550ms. You're talking about a difference of less than half a second, even with extreme ping.

Things that can be stunned without react give over 3 seconds. It doesn't matter if you're next to the server or not; even the meeble thing can be done on satellite if you have the reaction time of a serious gamer. This isn't a matter of an unfair advantage based on server location.

The problem is that FFXI players are not used to needing any sort of reflex. When most of the game can be played with a 2-3 second reaction time, suddenly needing a 500ms reaction time seems impossible. Anyone who actively plays moba, fps, or even more difficult console games will see this as easy.

It's not a real problem 'requiring' react, it's an excuse to cheat because you were suddenly being challenged with something you couldn't execute reliably while 3boxing with the reflexes of a senior citizen.

You don't have a 500ms ping unless you're on satellite. I bet you don't even have over a 250ms ping. Ping is not an issue in ffxi.

The server's poorly optimized outgoing packet flow results in 2-3 second delays for seeing things because there is more data than they allow to be sent at once and it gets bottlenecked. This results in things lower in their priority being seconds late or entirely omitted. This still happens for someone with a 20ms ping, because it is a software problem not a network problem.

It won't mitigate anything. Reducing your 250ms ping to 50ms does nothing when your actions are showing up 2-3 seconds late due to poor server optimization.

Please stop talking like you know anything about the game's infrastructure, you quite clearly have no clue.

I dont know how it works in details Thorny, but:
a) I have around 300 ping
b) I dont know anyone from NA or JP who has so major lags in Dynamis in 18/18 alliance. Sure everyone get lags then, but I see guy living in JP from our LS who just moves and WSs like he has 0 issues and when asked he say he barely have an lag (at every single Dynamis) while I wait 4 sec for my character to engage, I see tons of mobs that are not dead on my screen, but actually are dead, my gearswap dont change equip, I can click melee WS and dodge stun on wave 1 boss, because I can run outside of AoE range, before WS actually fires off. Its kinda hilarious. People from NA seems to also have lags, but also not as big. When I tribox dynamis I usually have 0 issues. So not sure how being in EU and having higher ping is related with having more lags during 18/18 ally events, but practice shows it is related.
c) I played a lot of moba and fps. My reaction time is around 160-190ms at this site that messures it (some pro players from Fntatic LoL team had worse score) and I still have like 30% success rate in activating Perfect Dodge before I get stunned by mimic and I wasnt able to cast bar spells on time for that ambu at all (tho I guess with bar spells there is additinal step needed to process in your brain which bar spell you need) unless I literally guessed which one it is and had finger ready at right key.

I've done the Meeble ambu without react; it's quick, but completely doable.

Woah, that was unnecessarily hostile.
I actually understand networking and latency very well. FFXI is and always has been little more than a passtime for me, the games I always play are online shooters. And in any/all Online Shooter's understanding and mitigating latency (Ping) is paramount. So I will remind you that you don't know what you're talking about outside of this old game. Check that attitude at the door because you just stepped into some serious ***here, sir (or madam?).

This is a little old something known as a Tic Rate. Might wanna look that up before you try to down-talk the guy that practically lives by ping.

This was clearly just a number thrown out only to highlight a point. But its more common than you might think depending on how routing is managed. If you connect to Japan from say Iceland you could very easily hit 500~ or more in ping if it routes from the US direction. I'm at 200-300+ in the rare event that I'm connected to EU players from Maryland (US) on Global Servers vs FFXI which would be Japan.

And that confirms my point. 500ms = 0.5 seconds or one half second. 1200ms would be 1.2 seconds, 1550ms would be 1.55 seconds. "A Difference of Less than half a second" Sir do you know how any of this works??? Also, being a whole 1.55 seconds behind anything would be pretty bad actually. The game operates regardless if you can see what's going on or not so tell me what happens in the case of Bomb Toss?
Goblin readies Bomb Toss. This is server side, and does not care what you see. Bomb Toss is what? something like 4 seconds? so for the normal player with 200-300 ms delay, you have tons of time to spot it and react and stun or whatever you want. 0.2 seconds before you see it, 0.3 seconds on average for you to react to it (Average Human Reaction Time is 300ms) and assuming you already had your finger on the Stun macro that's one last 0.2-0.3 seconds before the action makes it's way back to the server to stop the attack. 0.7-0.9 total seconds for the whole action and the bomb is easily stopped. But lets look at the person on Satellite that's WAY THE *** OUT THERE at the 1.5 (1500ms range).

Goblin readies Bomb Toss. Server's timer for the attack has started. 1.5 seconds pass and you see it, 0.3 seconds on your reaction time, 1.5 seconds to get it back to the server to stop the attack. That puts you at 3.3 seconds... Assuming the Charge time for Bomb Toss is 4 seconds, if you did not already have your finger on the macro, you only have 0.7 seconds to stop the attack and it very likely would have hit. And that's bomb toss, there are many attacks that are faster.

And here's the part you clearly do not understand. This is Ping. This is latency. This is the physical limitation of distance in which your signals travel and communicate. There is nothing you can do to stop the influences of ping. It's far more evident now that you are not a serious gamer or you would never allow yourself to say such things as "Ping Doesn't matter". Yes, the game has bottlenecks, ALL GAMES DO some are worse off than others in their programming and streamlining of their code but regardless of how good or bad they may be, the longer the signal takes to reach you the worse off your experience will be for dealing with it.

The Meeble's Ambuscade is a classic for this lesson because it's piss-poor design. The set timer for the Breadwinner's attacks appear to be 3 seconds? 3.5? So for the normal player in the 0.3 second range, they'd see it and then have 0.3 seconds to react to it and another 0.3 seconds to get back to server leaving a window of 2.1 seconds to stop it. BUT WAIT!! IT'S NOT THAT SIMPLE!! You must See it, Read what's coming and then Select one of 6 Barspells to appropriately counter the attack. This is FAR MORE COMPLEX than just a simple stun and with such a narrow window (2.1 seconds is doable but holy ***that's way too tight for that) it was completely unrealistic for anyone that was not very closely aligned with the Server or with a near-perfect route to it (IPv6 Helps tons, look that one up too for your homework).

For the Satellite Man out in the Boonies, stunning that attack would be virtually impossible. React might not even have been able to help that individual. And it's no one's fault, just really shitty design on SE's part. They goofed that one, there is no debate to be had.

And back again to Dynamis Divergence. It's a ***sandwich. Ancient Game on Ancient Engine and there's way too much going on in the run for the game to handle it properly. Having a poor ping is going to do nothing but take the ***Sandwich and throw Kerosene on it.. And if it's super bad latency, it's going to take that ***Sandwich with Kerosene and light it on fire.. Yum...

I will admit that I do not know all of the nooks and crannies of this game but don't you dare try to sit here and throw complete *** about entry level latency and it's effects on this or any other online game. I'll give you some free links so you can educate yourself if you ever wanna try to get into FPS Gaming cuz right now you sound like that idiot that's on Wifi wondering why he keeps getting slapped on Call of Duty.

Tick rate is the rate at which the server updates things, not the rate at which the client sends data out. In any real game, this is likely going to happen 30, 60, or 120 times per second.

The 350ms intervals are FFXI's outgoing data intervals, and for most games these intervals are only tied to your game's framerate. A modern game running at 60 fps will have a 16.6ms interval. At 150 fps,that drops to 6.6 milliseconds.

So, take overwatch at 60 FPS. If you have a round trip ping of 50ms, the time it takes to react to something is:
25ms for the server to tell you it happened
up to 16.6ms for the client to show the next frame
your reaction time
16.6ms for the client to process your keystroke
25ms for the packet to reach server

That 50ms ping results in an effective overhead of 83.2ms.

Now, if you do the same example for a 200ms ping, you end up with an effective overhead of 233.2ms. Increasing the ping from 50ms to 200ms almost tripled your overhead.


If you do the same example for XI in a bottlenecked instance:
2000ms for server to get through buffer and queue appropriate packet
25ms for packet to reach your client
your reaction time
up to 350ms for client to send out your reaction
25ms for packet to reach server

Your 50ms ping results in an effective overhead of 2400ms.

If you increase ping to 200ms, your effective overhead goes to 2550ms. This is only a gain of 6%, as opposed to the almost 300% overwatch experiences with the same jump in ping.

If you look at it outside of instanced areas, you get to skip the server buffer, but you still keep the 350ms interval. This means you're going from 400ms to 550ms. So, about 37.5% more overhead.

Ping will always make a difference, but in XI it is not the driving factor behind your issues. Going from 50ms to 200ms ping in a FPS can triple the delay your action experiences(+200%). Going from 50ms to 200ms ping on ffxi adds ~6% in instances and ~37.5% outside them.

You wrote an entire essay to explain a simple concept anyone can grasp, while missing the reasons why that concept isn't anywhere near as relevant here.

I know you havent responded to me Thorny, but I understand what you mean, but in practice I just dont see it. I see people in NA having much less issues than me in 18man dynamis and JP people almost having no issues at all. Maybe its not about ping, but simply how many servers are used on the way? My routing to JP goes through USA. I cant check it now, but I think it hits like 5 or 6 places before it reaches FFXI server in Japan.

Everyone has problems with data being received in 18/18 alliance. SE's packet buffering code is so bad that they send most action packets 2-3x because the client has yet to acknowledge receiving them. You can easily verify this with any packet logger; double packets are uncommon in non-instanced areas and all-but-guaranteed if you enter an instance with a full alliance. It isn't exclusively dynamis, the same happens in delve and omen, but we don't see those with 18 very often any more. You can go back a couple years on XIAH or any major forum and find all the NA complaining about TP not showing up in delve1.

This is lost data, not related to ping. You're using anecdotal data here, NA certainly experience this just as much. I have 180ms ping from east coast USA traveling through pacific to reach SE and I frequently see these things in dynamis.

Again, anecdotes. Something that would never hold water for you in a damage calculation is somehow more relevant in a situation that can be explained by well-known information?

Actually, this just verifies what I'm telling you. When the server isn't experiencing buffer issues, you don't get the added delay from server running through buffer trying to catch up. Your added ping may make you feel like it's worse, but the reality is that when the server is struggling with more data than it's allowed to send out, everyone's gameplay suffers regardless of ping.

I can't comment on this, not sure what mimic you mean nor have I tried to PD for a mimic. Sheol I guess, but don't know the time limit. It's still an instance that's likely oversaturated.

The ping is a small disadvantage there, but in the end you still have 1.5-2s to choose and cast barspell. If you know your macros from muscle memory to the extent a moba gamer does, it's not that bad. I've done it personally, Geriond has, the measured time is only bad when instance is crowded.


My main point here is that while the costs of a NA or EU datacenter make it impossible to begin with; it wouldn't solve most of the 'lag' people experience with XI. Spending the same money to improve the client and server code so that these buffer issues don't happen would make every part of FFXI as smooth as a lowman group in a dead zone.

It's pointless to complain you have 300ms ping to a japanese player's 50 ping, if everyone is also experiencing a 1500ms-2500ms delay because of their shitty code. Fix that, and that 300ms will feel blazing fast.

I was working on it. I firmly believe your issues are primarily due to perception and inability to seperate anecdote from real data. Keep in mind that if you're running a 'ping' command from command prompt to the server(you should if you haven't verified your actual ping), that is a round trip time. The time it takes for your outgoing packets to reach server or vice versa would be roughly half of that.

There is no reason that traveling through more nodes would change anything, you can use a tracert to verify your ping to each node on the route though.

See the *** up part here is that you asked the question:
And I responded with this:

I gave you a quick, clean and very accurate answer as to why Ping isn't usually an issue except certain situations and then you tried and failed to berate me so what the *** are you even on about? If that's how you're gonna be when people try to help your dumbass just delete your account and hop off or something.

I wrote 2 comments that you can interpret as berating:

These were inside a post explaining how it actually works and why the ping is not very relevant. You wrote an entire condescending post with no less than 15 instances of talking down. You say things like 'entry level latency' and 'IPv6' to try to convince people you know more than you actually do. Not to mention, you spent 5 paragraphs failing to explain what ping is.

It's perfectly fine to not know things. Nobody cares if you aren't an expert on FFXI's internals. But, I do happen to be one of the most active third party developers and I do understand how these things work. My first post was intended to be rhetorical, I wasn't asking for help.

And this was direct cause of you throwing those two lines out when I said nothing wrong at all in the first place. Nothing condescending at all in any shape or form towards you and then you threw two in my direction.. for what? How on earth did I slight you in my first response? You lashed out at me for no reason so of course my retaliation would be thorough.

Well you sure as hell didn't either but because you tried to say I don't know anything I just assumed you brushed up on cliffnotes or something. And even in this post here, you yourself still have not placed a definition so it's odd to play the role of the pedant without going all the way.

Ping is term used to describe latency. Partial quote: "The ping time, measured in milliseconds, is the round trip time for the packet to reach the host and for the response to return to the sender."

Ohhh but I do know these things and have been working with them for years. But there's no need to go into my networking backgrounds.

Other than the parts regarding networking, sure :) I'll give you.. whatever browny points come with making Third Party Tools? If its any of the ones I use a lot, thank you for your service! Have cookie!
BUT that still does not change the fact that you started this whole mess by being a *** to me for no reason at all and expecting me to just take it lol.
Then next time just say that or at the very least don't lash out at people when they respond. Was completely uncalled for.

You made one reference to anything even approaching technical, and got it entirely wrong. I don't know if you're just fronting because you feel defensive, or you consider an hourly job installing coax for your local ISP 'networking experience', but here you go:

https://blog.sucuri.net/2016/11/ipv4-vs-ipv6-performance-comparison-part-2.html

You can't just *** your way to credentials, nothing you've said has any substance.

Wait, did you actually read that article? That was a one-sourced Data comparison to see how effective IPV6 was vs IPV4.

For anyone curious, Internet Protocol Version's 4 and 6. The one most dominantly being used today is v4 and has been around for a long time. v6 is Somewhat newer and slowly making it's way into the mainstream but still depends what region you are in for if you'll have it readily available.

What do they do? Internet Protocol controls your routing path. Usually Routing isn't a problem but depending on your ISP and Security checks this can cause issues. Lets say you wanted to skype someone from California to New York, your signal might route to Arizona > Texas > Tennessee > Iowa > Ohio > New York. Or in some cases if you run a tracing program you might see your connection to a Call of Duty or PUBG server bounce out to Australia for some unknown reason before making it's way to the actual server. IPv6 is built and designed to fix that and choose routing paths that are more direct. Skipping the unnecessary Iowa stop in the first example and Australia in the next.

At the bottom of your article there it's showing IPv4 as being very slightly more effective for their isolated tests but they only checked Search Engines and Social Media sites. And they openly admitted that some of the sites test results were likely skewed by security checks (Facebook has been accused of stealing information, of course their securities will be tight)But these have nothing to do with Gaming which has been rather infamous for taking absurd routing to reach their servers or Person to Person connections. So if you find an article to suggest that IPv4 is more effective than IPv6 for gaming, I'd be interested in reading it.

Does anyone remember Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare in Europe? They had tremendous issues with Ping and routing due to Internet Protocols and Securities imposed by the individual nation's borders, it was very bad when Online gaming was first getting off of the ground.

But we're not here for an online lesson or to prove my credentials to anyone and no, I don't work for an ISP and you certainly don't have to know these things. 9 times out of 10, the ISP you pay for won't even have a technician to help walk you through port forwarding so... why even mention or bother with that point? FFXI is your domain, Networking is mine.

At this point I'm still waiting for you to apologize for lashing out at me in that first post. After that, I'll reciprocate and we can let this whole thing go. (Although I'm sure more than a few of you are entertained by this)

It wasn't a 'one-sourced comparison', they tested 6 sources against 22 destinations, 2 directions, 1000 samples each. 264,000 data points.

IPv6 was not designed for speed, the only way in which it can gain speed is removing NAT. It was designed because IPv4 is only 4 bytes and as such only has 2^32 possible endpoints(~4.3bil). With the amount of devices and connections in use, they were all saturated.

IPv6 was created to ensure there were enough endpoints for the foreseeable future, and expands it to 2^128 possible endpoints.
Nobody who works in networking would ever claim IPv6 was created for speed. It is solely a matter of available addressing space, it does nothing to change the routes.

You are owed no apology, and the level of your delusion is absolutely insane.

Installing coax for an ISP is not networking experience, it was an insult. The fact you think it was something relevant further illustrates how truly out of your depth you are.

Simplified, More Efficient Routing.

You gonna keep going? I'll take on whatever you have.

Just admit you were wrong, man. It's not that hard. FFXI is the only game you've ever known and you stepped out into the deep end, it's okay.

Routing is simpler because your internal network does not need to have a subnet. With 2^128 addresses, every person in the world could have 1000 children and every one of those children could have 1000 devices, and they would still have a unique IP address in IPv6.

As a result, you no longer need seperate subnet IP address and open net IP address as you did in v4. This means routing is simpler, as only one set of addresses has to be managed. Under IPv4, your router addressed internal devices by subnet IPv4 address and external devices by open world IPv4 address. With IPv6, your IPv6 address is the same for both in most applications. This does not change the route of nodes you'll follow when connecting to anything else, nor the speed your data will travel. It just makes it less ambiguous to future engineers because you will only have to deal with 1 address instead of several.

You literally just googled an article and picked a bullet point you don't understand to try to use as evidence. Is it really that hard to admit you're fronting..?

And when you click the link that's one of the very first listed benefits:
"No more NAT (Network Address Translation)"

There's no "Fronting" here, sir. My responsiveness should be a clear sign that I'm up and ready to go on this topic front. You'd be delusional to think I don't know what I'm talking about here lol. Just give me my apology.

You've given no detail on any of this, nor any indication you understand any of this. Real world data does not indicate IPv6 offers any additional speed. You keep linking things you don't understand, and talking about how 'ready to go' you are, but you have 0 actual content.

As a network engineer, surely you understand that NAT is the process of converting external IPv4 to subnet IPv4, as I outlined in my last post, right? It happens at your router and takes less than a CPU cycle. It has 0 impact on the route your data takes to reach it's goal, nor does it have any measurable change in speed(a decent router can process millions of NATs in a single nanosecond).


Let me guess, you voted for Trump?

Not to trigger a P+R Violation from Rooks but *** no, I hate that ***. He took away my rights to itemize for work expenses unless I spend ludicrous amounts of money on work clothes boots and tools each year. In short, *** that guy.

And back to your point you still have no proof that you understand any of this much less enough to discredit me lol. If at this point you still refuse, *** it. We'll just agree to disagree I guess. Still an amateur at Networking though :P

I've written a dozen detailed posts about how all of these technologies work on this page alone. You've cried about how I insulted you and made numerous mistakes while offering no indication you have any technical understanding and giving no meaningful information in your own words.

I don't agree to disagree, I think I've done a perfectly capable job of showing that you don't know what you're talking about.

'Agree to disagree', but still have to assert your authority? Come on dude, this is pathetic.

Does anyone know what the new mount music file is? The BGW file.

Shhhh! I'm enjoying the nerd drama!

IDK, just by my perception, sometimes it seems like different process consumes unequal amount of "internet". For example, if i have many tabs opened in my browser, and one of it get stucked waiting to receive some information (like a refresh action), all browser just wait this one tab to resume their communication.

Sometimes i see some similar behaviour with my chars. Suddenly all of them starts R0-ing, but as soon as the first one lose connection due R0, all the other chars get back to normal.

What makes a single process to block all the others to receive internet data, idk.

Or just some crash what can happen by using addons with some error.

We are looking at farming volte pieces and I wanted to double check something on the bodies. According to the wiki, the bodies in jeuno/bastok/windy only drop from their respective wave 2 bosses, but the sandy body says it drops from wave 2 nms as well.

So effectively, if we are farming volte in sandy it would seem we don't really need to kill Halphas. Is that correct, or is the wiki page wrong?

https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Volte_Doublet

Thanks!

Wiki page is wrong.

Cool, that was my suspicion. Appreciated!

Fixed it.

I really doubt this issue is based on continent. If that's the case we'd hear more EU people complaining. I can see people in JP suffer less lags, but outside of JP it's probably based on service provider.