Final Fantasy 14’s Fall Guys event kicks up netcode frustrations that have been lingering over the MMO for the past 10 years

A Final Fantasy 14 player runs around a Fall Guys-inspired stage — (Image credit: Square Enix)

Final Fantasy 14’s adorably quirky crossover with bean ‘em up Fall Guys is here, though it’s causing more frustration than delight for the MMO community at the moment.

Added in a recent Final Fantasy 14 patch, the Fall Guys crossover adds a series of mini-games not unlike those seen in the party game to the Golden Saucer. Looking at Twitter and Reddit, though, there is no shortage of clips of players butting heads with the server latency as they narrowly fall short of a victory that they thought was theirs or simply get bonked by a grandiose cartoon mallet that they thought they got past.

Skill issue I guess from r/ffxiv

Oh. Okay... from r/ffxiv

"Netcode in this game has always been a bit jank, but this event feels really bad to me," one player says. "I'm having more success just blindly running forward than actually trying to avoid things most of the time."

Another fan says that Final Fantasy 14 isn't "built for this," lamenting the 100 wins you need for a title by saying they'd rather do something else that I can't mention on this family-friendly site.

Other fans of the periphery have been sympathetic, if only slightly.

"Final Fantasy 14 players discovering en masse the kind of vile netcode latency AoE bulls**t that raiders have been crying and throwing up over for years," another fan says, before later adding, "Fall Guys event harder than Ultimate raids."

As the community sentiment attests to, server latency bugbears have loomed over Final Fantasy 14 throughout the past 10 years. It can be a pain in trials, dungeons, and raids as you need to position yourself to avoid telegraphed attacks that end up hitting you regardless due to what feels like lag.

You can usually play around it with a tighter understanding of encounter mechanics, and it's typically only a more notable pain anyway if you tackle higher-end raids – having a wired connection on PC has helped me at times, too. The new Fall Guys event is, however, drawing more eyes back to an age-old issue.

Final Fantasy’s creator adores Final Fantasy 14, and that’s why he “absolutely” does not want to work on the MMO.

I joined GamesRadar+ in May 2022 following stints at PCGamesN and PocketGamer.Biz, with some freelance for Kotaku UK, RockPaperShotgun, and VG24/7 thrown in for good measure. When I'm not running the news team on the games side, you'll find me putting News Editor duties to one side to play the hottest JRPG of 20 years ago or pillaging the depths of Final Fantasy 14 for a swanky new cloak – the more colourful, the better.