I’m moving to Japan for my studies in a few weeks.
I’m playing on EU server and I still want to play on it with my roster to do raids.
I was wondering if it was possible to have decent ping to double weave (cuz most of the job I play double weave) by using a VPN from Japan.
Can we get ban if we use a VPN ? I read somewhere that they can’t ban you for that but I’m sure.
I’m also aware of XIValexander but I don’t want to use that.
Thanks for reading this post, and have a nice day everyone !
You can’t get banned for using a VPN. Also, a VPN will generally cause you to have a slower ping, because it’s an additionnal “wall” between you and the server.
Since it’s temporary, consider whether it wouldn’t be cheaper and easier to world transfer to Japan. Japan is about several hours ahead of Europe that’s going to mess with your schedule.
I live in Japan and play on Chaos. I have 300 ping, but with the right ‘help’ I got it around 170. I don’t think it can go lower than that, and it is not optimal, but after getting used to it I can play savage fights and even ultimates decently. A high speed connection helps. Double weaving is a pain. Don’t expect to be able to perform exactly the same as in Europe.
Good luck with your Japan experience!
Previous mid-hardcore EU raider here, now living in Japan. When living in EU, I raided on EU and NA servers, mostly as Ninja, and played non-raid content on JP.
A standard VPN, as most people here have said, will usually make your ping worse; what you need is a Ping Tunnel (e.g. ExitLag, NoPing, MudFish, etc.). I’m not aware of VPNs/Ping Tunnels being a ToS issue, but XIVAlexander is a game mod rather than an internet thing, so I’ve taken the same stance as you on it.
Playing on EU from EU, my base ping was usually ~45ms.
Playing EU->NA, my base ping was usually 100-200ms, and double weaving was impossible without clipping. Ninjutsu often would not trigger correctly. I used ExitLag and NoPing (separately) to get my ping to ~98ms, and while double-weaving was still messy, I was still able to get blue 50-parses on NA (as opposed to purple 90+ on EU). Still had to be extra-careful about timing my dodges for mechanics due to ping.
Playing EU->JP, my base ping was usually 200-300ms, and even single weaving was often unreliable. Ping tunnels got my ping to 150-200ms, but double-weaving was still not viable in terms of optimisation. This is the same situation now, when I connect JP->EU.
I ended up just levelling up a JP character for raiding here instead (<24ms ping is wonderful!). The other issue to consider is scheduling - assuming you’re 8 hours ahead of your team, is starting your raid night a 3/4am really something you’ll be okay with?
Why would connecting to a vpn 6000 miles away be any different than connecting to the server directly 6000 miles away? Your ping will be poor regardless.
A VPN just adds more stops to where your data has to travel through. Imagine adding more bus stops to a bus route. In general, that will just make it slower.
The only time it can be faster is if the new route is somehow shorter than the old route despite having more stops. It’s not impossible, but it CAN happen if the previous route was extremely unoptimized (going in circles or taking huge detours for no reason).
But no matter how you change the stops on a route, you still have to travel from start to destination, so your ping will be bad in any case simply because of the distance between you and the server.
There’s a custom ffxiv launcher that has plugins, and one of the plugins makes doubleweaving easier by changing the packet data, that will probably be the only meaningful difference you can achieve
Imagine downvoting truth lmao, looks like someone fell for the VPN marketing lies
Never played FFXIV with that much ping but it must not be ideal to do Savage on very high ping. One of my friends lived in Japan for a while and we played League of Legends together on the EU servers. He disconnected a lot and got hit by a lot of AoE attacks that he had already walked out of. We resorted to only playing aram with him on tanky champions without many skill shots.
The only time it can be faster is if the new route is somehow shorter than the old route despite having more stops. It’s not impossible, but it CAN happen if the previous route was extremely unoptimized (going in circles or taking huge detours for no reason).
To be honest, in my own testing this is all but standard practice for ISPs in my area to do with game-related traffic, especially during what might be termed “Normal office hours.” Time savings from VPNs are real.
…but generally small enough that unless your ISP’s being particularly bone-headed it shouldn’t be noticeable, either (about 3-5 ms). It gives technically smaller numbers, not anything human-perceptible.
And repeating the test on hotel and mobile networks in Japan proved they don’t engage in such shenanigans there - as one might expect, ping times from Japan to the west coast weren’t horribly worse than ping times from the us East coast to the US west coast.
VPNs help with ISPs prioritizing business traffic over games, they don’t break the laws of physics.
For me, US to Australia, it’s a difference between 230ms without VPN and 195-200ms on. It does feel slightly better when interacting with things but I still can’t double weave just with a VPN.
