Framerate Issues When Launched Through Steam

[Armon]

I've been having issues with steam recently, my friends list would not open no matter how many times I clicked the button, I could not see any of my friends whether or not they told me over discord that they were online or in game, and my status was always set to "offline" even though I was clearly online and could access the internet EVEN THROUGH STEAM ITSELF. That's all fine and dandy, I just turned off the chat ui and such. Then around the same time, FFXIV decided that it wanted to drop the framerate and drastically increase load times on my computer whenever I ran it through steam.

What would end up happening was that I would unsuspectingly open the game through steam as usual and the game would boot up fine with the launcher and everything, but as soon as I'd actually select a character and load into my world, I'd be met with a loading screen for about 3 minutes, which is unusual seeing as usually I was able to run it at high settings at 60 fps with like 30 second load times. I tried to figure out what the issue was multiple times, but the internet was no help because it seemed no one had ever encountered my issue. I tested to see if it was caused by server population (spoiler; it wasn't), if it was my drivers, my antivirus, my computer just being a potato, DX11, EVEN MICROSOFT GAMING MODE, etc.

I found a reddit post talking about similar performance issues with FFXIV, none of the solutions listed worked, except for one. This was the only instance that I've ever seen anyone mention my issue, and it was as a solution. It said that steam sometimes causes performance issues and that I should launch it directly from the boot64 file. That worked, surprisingly, so I then went to search for the reason why steam was causing the issue. I turned off the overlay, my fps counter, everything that tethered my game to steam. Same issue. It seemed the only solution was to run it directly from the boot file. Great, at least I had a solution... until last night when the maintenance hit.

Just my luck, as Square Enix decided to fork me over one last time, with their latest update stating that I was going to be forced to use the steam launch option. Perfect timing, am I right? Optimistic, I hoped that maybe Square Enix would solve the issue with the update. They didn't. Flash forward to this morning and I am still having framerate and load time issues but now with no solution.

Now thanks for reading my little story, but for some background on my PC I have an Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700 HQ CPU @ 2.60 GHz, with a NVIDIA GTX 1060, and 12 GB of RAM. As you can see, I should be able to run this game decently at the settings I have set. I even made sure that I used what NVIDIA recommended, and just to double check I cranked it down to lowest settings at 720p with no framerate increase whatsoever. I'm mainly posting here to see if anyone else has had a similar issue, or, should Gaben allow it, someone has a solution that I may use. I have scoured the deepest parts of the internet to no avail, and even went to Square Enix support, where the agent literally just did the same google searches I did and told me to reinstall the game (tried that), turn off steam overlay (tried that), and to contact steam support (god no, like that would do anything).

TL;DR - I'm having framerate drops and increased load times from running the game through steam, I've tried nearly every solution I could find, and am certain that my computer is not the cause, if anyone out there has a similar issue or a solution, hmu.

and if you need me to list every single painstaking attempt to fix this problem, I'll provide a list if requested.

[Yuki]

The problem is actually quite simple, and it's the dumbest thing I've seen Steam or a developer do; the default version that launches when you run FFXIV through Steam is the 32-bit launcher, which means the game has limited access to your system resources (4 GB RAM, 4 GB VRAM, etc.) Sadly, there's no way to make Steam run the 64-bit FFXIV launcher, so running ffxivboot64.exe is the only way to circumvent this stupid decision (unless there's some fancy launch option one could use, idk.)
Try contacting Square Enix or Valve about this, maybe they can help us out in some way. Please do share it on here if you find a way to make Steam run the 64-bit version :3

[DangerNoodles]

Didn't they end the 32bit support with Shadowbringers? If Steam really starts the 32bit version by default that would be really weird.

[Armon]

I did notice that there were two boot executables in the folder, I can't see how they compare now thanks to the update, but it appeared that one was a 64 bit and the other was 32 bit.

[Armon]

I ran a quick test just a couple minutes ago to try to figure out if it indeed is using a different boot file than what I was using for the solution. I found the two executables and set the ffxivboot64 file to be run as an administrator and left the other one alone. Then I ran it through steam. It did not ask me for administrator permissions. To double check to make sure it would indeed activate, I turned off administrator mode for the clearly 64 bit file and swapped them. When I loaded it through steam my computer did ask me for admin privileges. So we have been able to discern that it is using the wrong boot file, good catch.

[DangerNoodles]

Oh, does it start the right one through steam properly now? For me it starts the 64bit one when I launch it through steam

[Armon]

For me it launches the file labelled simply "ffxivboot.exe" rather than the one that works properly "ffxivboot64.exe"

[Athmet]

But what about this then: https://steamcommunity.com/app/39210/discussions/0/1835685838075671118/

[Armon]

I managed to solve the problem on my end by swapping the names of the files (ffxivboot.exe to ffxivboot64.exe and vice versa), attempting to run the game, receiving an error message, reverting their names, and running it through steam again. I will test in a minute to see if this solution is repeatable. I'm not certain, but it may also help to force the file to run in administrator mode, because I left that setting on before launching the game through steam. will post an update.

[Athmet]

I still feel the option in the post i link is enough unless I am missing something ?

[Armon]

I already run the game in DirectX11, so that was one of the first things I had tried

[Armon]

I can also confirm that this solution is repeatable