Severe slowdown issue in certain zones... how to fix?

[Fynlar]

I've got a THF friend in FFXI that was psyched to finally get his Sky access, but every time he tries to enter Ru'Aun Gardens, the game apparently just blacks out for him and eventually crashes, and he's stuck there in limbo unable to log back in. He had to log onto a mule and give me his account information to get him out, which I've done for him a few times already. At first he was very upset about this to the point of quitting, but thanks to my CoP static we've managed to get him through Promyvions so he could at least use Lufaise Meadows as an endgame EXP camp (and now there's ToAU to play with too so it's not as bad).

However, since the release of ToAU, we've encountered another area where he has a similar problem - Arrapago Reef. It's not as bad in there, he's still capable of getting inside and moving around; but his framerate drops to hell and every few paces he takes on my screen, he stops, gets the Red Circle of Doom for a moment, then moves again. It's only specific to these two zones; everywhere else his game runs fine.

I've tried telling him to disable his sound/music before entering these zones, because I'd heard from others that it helps. It helps marginally, it allowed him to actually enter Sky, but the slowdown he was experiencing was even worse than in the Reef and he had to run right back into Hall of the Gods. Needless to say, Sky is still unplayable for him.


Anyway, I'm making this topic because as I said, he's a part of my CoP static and I am concerned that we might reach an area where he encounters this same problem yet again and is unable to advance (I'm thinking this won't happen until maybe the airship battle, or until Sea; we're up to Riverne B and he hasn't had any problems yet). If there's anyone else out there that encounters this similar slowdown when inside these two zones (Ru'Aun Gardens, Arrapago Reef) and has any clue on what to do about it, please advise. ; ;

Thanks in advance.

[neighbortaru]

Re: Severe slowdown issue in certain zones... how to fix?

first obvious question would be what are the specs of his PC?

[Icemage]

Re: Severe slowdown issue in certain zones... how to fix?

It'd be useful to have some information on what his system specs are:

(1) What version of FFXI is he playing? (PC, Xbox, PS2, Xbox360)?

(2) If PC, what sort of hardware does he have for the following:
- Processor (Intel/AMD + speed)
- Graphics card (Brand and model, or on-board if that's the case ... can't imagine FFXI running with on-board video, but who knows...)
- Memory (RAM, need total size)
- Sound card (Brand and model, or on-board if he doesn't have a dedicated sound card)

At a rough guess I'm assuming he's playing on PC with a low-end graphics card and/or on-board sound card. A few quick things to set:

Turn off Footstep effects, Weather effects, all Special Effects in the Effects menu, set maximum displayed character models to minimum, and set clipping distance to the lowest setting.

It will degrade the quality of his game but might solve his problem in Arrapago Reef and Ru'aun Gardens.


Icemage

[Fynlar]

Re: Severe slowdown issue in certain zones... how to fix?

That I don't know. The best educated guess I could give would be "good enough". He just bought this computer in late 2005 I think and it was designed for gaming in particular, so I don't think it's a matter of being out of date. Like I said, his game runs fine everywhere besides those two zones.

I'm thinking it's a hardware/driver conflict or something, but I know I've heard of others with this same problem and I wanted to see if they ever found what the problem was or a way to get it resolved.

Double Post Edited:
Yeah, it's PC.

I'll try to get basic specs, but I don't think even he knows what they are; he's not much of a techie person and we all know how much fun it can be to try to play tech support for someone who might have no clue what they're doing

I'll try having him mess with all that stuff before taking another trip to Sky. Can all those config settings be changed in game? I play on PS2 so I don't know what toys the PC users get. (I do know they can disable weather effects and we can't, which makes me very very angry.)

[Macht]

Re: Severe slowdown issue in certain zones... how to fix?

Well never know without the specs and if it's a built one from a place like Dell or something they could very well of messed up in designing it too.

That aside if you can't give specs the best you can do is a basic run through to make sure there isn't something causing the problem. In particular make sure the computer has a thorough Virus Scan check, make sure there is now Adware/Spyware/Malware on the sytem, do a Registry clean of the system, defrag system, scandisk the system(or if it is capable of a drive status check then run that to make sure the HD is healthy).

If all that is fine and still a problem then time to start knocking out the drivers, check for drivers for the devices on the system make sure they are updated and avoid beta versions. The one you want to be especially careful with is the video driver, you'll want to know what type of video card you have to check to see if you'll need a specific driver for it to work with the game (FFXI website will give you those special cases).

If you've done that and it's still a problem, the only things left I can think to check is the Hardware itself. Check their network speed make sure it is in par to what it should be, check the video card make sure it isn't burning out, etc...

Without specifics to the system or more tests to catch what really is causing it there isn't a specific answer we can give to help.

[Seijurohiko]

Re: Severe slowdown issue in certain zones... how to fix?

I recall having a very similar issue with the Ru'Aun Gardens zone on my older PC. Even with 0 people in the zone, my frame rates would drop dramaticly upon entry, making it near impossible to do much of anything (7 fps and below according to the FRAPS counter). But my PC would run just fine in all other zones.

I noticed something kinda odd however, as when I would engage a mob in combat (the battle music would come on) the frame rate would instantly return to normal. Of course, after disengaging the lag would return. I tested this further by turning off the sound in FFXI config. and logging back on. With sound disabled, the frame rate was normal again.

Of course, I wanted to be able to play with the sound enabled, so I did some internet browsing and discovered that some people experiencing the same problem determined it to be somehow related to their virus protection software. At the time I was using some free version of "eTrust EZ Antivirus." I wasn't quite sure how this could help, but figured I had nothing to loose either. So I temporarily disabled my virus software, and to my surprise, my lag issue in Sky cleared up completely. Even with sound enabled.

Kind of an odd solution, but try either disabling or switching to a different virus protection software.

[Fynlar]

Re: Severe slowdown issue in certain zones... how to fix?

Hmm, good stuff. I'll have him try that, thanks!

[Chewurface]

Re: Severe slowdown issue in certain zones... how to fix?

Please look at my topic on this subject, it's located only a few topics under this one.

Here is a link:

http://www.ffxionline.com/forums/gam...pago.reef.html

I'm going to have to try the Antivirus solution, it just seems odd that an AV program would only have an issue with 2 files out of the 20,000+ that make up FFXI.

Oh, and /wave Icemage....it's been a long time....don't know if you even remember me.

[Fynlar]

Re: Severe slowdown issue in certain zones... how to fix?

I don't think it has to do with the new file encryption on the new music files in ToAU, because this same problem is happening to him in Ru'Aun Gardens, and that's a RoZ zone. It does seem like the music has something to do with the problem though. My friend did mention that when we engaged Merrows in Arrapago Reef, the slowdown temporarily stopped.

We couldn't try that out in Sky because, obviously, there was no nearby mob to engage.

[fastcart]

Re: Severe slowdown issue in certain zones... how to fix?

Try turning Aliasing and Filtering to "Application Controlled" or "Off." Turn off Bump mapping via the FFXI Config.

[klvino]

Re: Severe slowdown issue in certain zones... how to fix?

The problems for those zones are the bgw files. Do a search for files "music150.bgw" and "music174.bgw". Rename "music150.bgw" to something else, and make a copy of "music174.bgw" and rename that copy to "music150.bgw". And Arrapago Reef will be fixed for you.

As for sky, someone else will have to answer that question. Zilart didn't offer anything so I never bother to do it.

[Macht]

Re: Severe slowdown issue in certain zones... how to fix?

I'm going to have to try the Antivirus solution, it just seems odd that an AV program would only have an issue with 2 files out of the 20,000+ that make up FFXI.

Actually AV programs have had quite a few occassions of causing unwanted problems on the game in the past. AV programs have interferred with it nearly since it's NA release (Oct. 29, 2003). Being that it's specific sound files you may want to report that to the development team, they'll likely release a new .bgw file for the area that won't have this issue.

[klvino]

Re: Severe slowdown issue in certain zones... how to fix?

Actually AV programs have had quite a few occassions of causing unwanted problems on the game in the past. AV programs have interferred with it nearly since it's NA release (Oct. 29, 2003). Being that it's specific sound files you may want to report that to the development team, they'll likely release a new .bgw file for the area that won't have this issue.

The problem with the Arrapago bgw was already reported to S-E, they responded that the user should turn sound off when playing FFXI to solve the lag issue. Eventually, yeah, they may be able to fix the bgw and they may already be testing solutions. Until that time, simply replace the bgw file.

[Chewurface]

Re: Severe slowdown issue in certain zones... how to fix?

Shutting off my A/V program (Zone Alarm) fixed my issue. Check the link I posted above to my other topic on this for more detail.