"Game Performance in Cyrodiil" OFFICIAL POST

Talcyndl · November 2014

Sallington wrote: »

If a client-side addon is causing a server rollback, ZOS is doing something very, very wrong.

$:\$

Once again, they never said they were. Client ≠ Server

Lfehova · November 2014

LonePirate wrote: »

Lfehova wrote: »

I think tonight's thornblade play was some of the best in awhile. There was some pretty bad lag at one point, when EP/AD were balling up at alessia, and DC was balling up at roebeck vs AD. So we made an effort to hit chalman and split up some of the zergballs. The lag was alleviated when we managed to pull some EP away.

I was part of the EP crew battling AD at the back flag in Alessia during last night's lag event. It looked like there were at least 15-20 players from both factions crowded into a circle with a radius of no more than a few feet. I could only see black shadows representing my EP comrades and yellow outlines highlighting the AD players within the sea of black.

Particle effects were largely non-existent but people were constantly firing skills judging by the non-stop synergy prompts I kept receiving. Enemy health bars were largely static as was my own. My Magicka and Stamina bars seldom dropped more than 25% despite excessive use.

This standoff lasted a good 5-10 minutes, maybe longer as I didn't watch a clock during the battle. Then a kill for my sorc bounty quest appeared on screen. Then another one and another. The lag started to dissipate and several more bounty kills flashed on my screen. A few seconds later it was over. Most of my EP allies survived but the AD bodies littering the floor quickly disappeared as they re spawned elsewhere.

I honestly have no idea what turned the stalemate into an EP victory. I'm guessing EP wiped the AD around the other parts of Alessia and repaired the walls which stranded the AD crew at the back flag, allowing them to be picked off by bows and melee attacks.

I am really surprised the server did not crash during that event given how long it played out with no progress for either faction. Also, the entire fight was simultaneously fun and frustrating which I cannot explain or understand why.

I've been in fights like that, and it is in no way fun to run flag to flag spamming skills with nothing happening or registering, and then all of a sudden the server rolls the dice and someone wins. While you may find it fun, keep in mind, then entire server lagged like that when that was going on. Which is why we attacked EP territory to pull some of you away from AD.

Despite how much it may benefit DC from a double team on AD to get our scroll back, it's not worth the epic amounts of lag we would have to endure to make that happened. We'd rather lose the campaign than lose the fun due to lag, because if the lag becomes more pervasive, we'll lose a lot more than the campaign. We'll lose a lot of players.

Agrippa_Invisus · November 2014

Lfehova wrote: »

LonePirate wrote: »

Lfehova wrote: »

I think tonight's thornblade play was some of the best in awhile. There was some pretty bad lag at one point, when EP/AD were balling up at alessia, and DC was balling up at roebeck vs AD. So we made an effort to hit chalman and split up some of the zergballs. The lag was alleviated when we managed to pull some EP away.

I was part of the EP crew battling AD at the back flag in Alessia during last night's lag event. It looked like there were at least 15-20 players from both factions crowded into a circle with a radius of no more than a few feet. I could only see black shadows representing my EP comrades and yellow outlines highlighting the AD players within the sea of black.

Particle effects were largely non-existent but people were constantly firing skills judging by the non-stop synergy prompts I kept receiving. Enemy health bars were largely static as was my own. My Magicka and Stamina bars seldom dropped more than 25% despite excessive use.

This standoff lasted a good 5-10 minutes, maybe longer as I didn't watch a clock during the battle. Then a kill for my sorc bounty quest appeared on screen. Then another one and another. The lag started to dissipate and several more bounty kills flashed on my screen. A few seconds later it was over. Most of my EP allies survived but the AD bodies littering the floor quickly disappeared as they re spawned elsewhere.

I honestly have no idea what turned the stalemate into an EP victory. I'm guessing EP wiped the AD around the other parts of Alessia and repaired the walls which stranded the AD crew at the back flag, allowing them to be picked off by bows and melee attacks.

I am really surprised the server did not crash during that event given how long it played out with no progress for either faction. Also, the entire fight was simultaneously fun and frustrating which I cannot explain or understand why.

I've been in fights like that, and it is in no way fun to run flag to flag spamming skills with nothing happening or registering, and then all of a sudden the server rolls the dice and someone wins. While you may find it fun, keep in mind, then entire server lagged like that when that was going on. Which is why we attacked EP territory to pull some of you away from AD.

Despite how much it may benefit DC from a double team on AD to get our scroll back, it's not worth the epic amounts of lag we would have to endure to make that happened. We'd rather lose the campaign than lose the fun due to lag, because if the lag becomes more pervasive, we'll lose a lot more than the campaign. We'll lose a lot of players.

Don't pat yourself too hard, Hova.

Unfortunately, the Chalman attack did nothing to lessen the lag. Attacking the defender of whomever's keep is causing the lag isn't going to pull anyone away. The defense is already stuck there.

Attacking the offensive team is what pulls away. It's always easier to break off an attack then give up a defense (both in game and psychologically). Hitting Roe or Fare would have caused the stream of AD respawns to stop heading into Alessia.

As it was, what ended the lag was the defenders closing the walls, as it usually is.

What I think you're looking for is Push/Defense alternating. For example:

EP pushes Aleswell, but defends the Sejanus corridor.
DC defends Aleswell, but pushes the Nikel corridor.
AD defends Roe, but pushes the Sejanus corridor.

A circular pattern of defense and invasion, winnowing down the zergballs to something less.... godawful.

Cody · November 2014

out of date add ons..... right:/

Valymer · November 2014

Just crashed in Cyrodiil, nowhere near a fight. Guess 1.5.5 didn't fix anything for me.

Tintinabula · November 2014

theres an addon now that manages all addons not updated so they will be updated soo...yea..

Mauz · November 2014

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

We put in a PFX slider to help with game performance in heavy combat situations where there is a high amount of PFX simultaneously firing off. Dropping this down to the minimum setting can help with lag in crowded areas. (Reducing graphics settings in general can provide better performance when in Cyrodiil, too.)

The removal of Forward Camps has cut down on some of the player-character pile-up, which has helped game performance in Cyrodiil.

The game was running fine with at least about 30 fps in Cyro, since 1.5 its sometimes below 20 fps with the same settings.

When my character becomes unresponsive I've between 30-60 fps and 100-300ms ping, I can walk around smoothly and cast abilities but until I get feedback on my opponent it takes 30 seconds. I see my mates doing the same with same waiting time. It happens as soon as a large bunch of peoples appear and start spaming AoE abilities.

Removal of FCs made it even worse. Superior numbers are much more important than before. Technically it became even worse. My fps dropped in general about 30% in Cyrodiil. I didnt change the settings. Dont tell me my PC cant handle it.

I gave 2h a try after 1.5 and it is still after the 3rd patch after 1.5 not working properly. Simple math isnt working correctly after the 4th try and weeks on the PTS. The problem is sitting in front of your PCs, it's the crap they produce over and over again.

What is so difficult to get about it?

Mauz · November 2014

Ah, I forgot to mention...

In the past I used to sneak to the next castle to gank ppl as soon as it started to lag. The lag disappeared after about 3/4 of the distance to the next castle. So it is even there if there are 0 particles on the screen and the lagproducers are far from being visible behind serveral big mountains. The lag disappears than within a couple of meters.

But now even that isnt possible anymore cause everyone is sitting inbetween two castles and the lag appears there. Going somewhere else makes no sense because everybody is invisible. The game degraded to a single gank. All action is concentrated. Its worse than ever.

Turelus · November 2014

If they could at the very least fix siege weapons that would be nice.
Once again tonight a good siege on a keep failed because we couldn't place or use siege weapons, letting the keep go out of siege and be repaired while we were all still alive.

Lfehova · November 2014

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

Lfehova wrote: »

LonePirate wrote: »

Lfehova wrote: »

I think tonight's thornblade play was some of the best in awhile. There was some pretty bad lag at one point, when EP/AD were balling up at alessia, and DC was balling up at roebeck vs AD. So we made an effort to hit chalman and split up some of the zergballs. The lag was alleviated when we managed to pull some EP away.

I was part of the EP crew battling AD at the back flag in Alessia during last night's lag event. It looked like there were at least 15-20 players from both factions crowded into a circle with a radius of no more than a few feet. I could only see black shadows representing my EP comrades and yellow outlines highlighting the AD players within the sea of black.

Particle effects were largely non-existent but people were constantly firing skills judging by the non-stop synergy prompts I kept receiving. Enemy health bars were largely static as was my own. My Magicka and Stamina bars seldom dropped more than 25% despite excessive use.

This standoff lasted a good 5-10 minutes, maybe longer as I didn't watch a clock during the battle. Then a kill for my sorc bounty quest appeared on screen. Then another one and another. The lag started to dissipate and several more bounty kills flashed on my screen. A few seconds later it was over. Most of my EP allies survived but the AD bodies littering the floor quickly disappeared as they re spawned elsewhere.

I honestly have no idea what turned the stalemate into an EP victory. I'm guessing EP wiped the AD around the other parts of Alessia and repaired the walls which stranded the AD crew at the back flag, allowing them to be picked off by bows and melee attacks.

I am really surprised the server did not crash during that event given how long it played out with no progress for either faction. Also, the entire fight was simultaneously fun and frustrating which I cannot explain or understand why.

I've been in fights like that, and it is in no way fun to run flag to flag spamming skills with nothing happening or registering, and then all of a sudden the server rolls the dice and someone wins. While you may find it fun, keep in mind, then entire server lagged like that when that was going on. Which is why we attacked EP territory to pull some of you away from AD.

Despite how much it may benefit DC from a double team on AD to get our scroll back, it's not worth the epic amounts of lag we would have to endure to make that happened. We'd rather lose the campaign than lose the fun due to lag, because if the lag becomes more pervasive, we'll lose a lot more than the campaign. We'll lose a lot of players.

Don't pat yourself too hard, Hova.

Unfortunately, the Chalman attack did nothing to lessen the lag. Attacking the defender of whomever's keep is causing the lag isn't going to pull anyone away. The defense is already stuck there.

Attacking the offensive team is what pulls away. It's always easier to break off an attack then give up a defense (both in game and psychologically). Hitting Roe or Fare would have caused the stream of AD respawns to stop heading into Alessia.

As it was, what ended the lag was the defenders closing the walls, as it usually is.

What I think you're looking for is Push/Defense alternating. For example:

EP pushes Aleswell, but defends the Sejanus corridor.
DC defends Aleswell, but pushes the Nikel corridor.
AD defends Roe, but pushes the Sejanus corridor.

A circular pattern of defense and invasion, winnowing down the zergballs to something less.... godawful.

I respectfully disagree.

Attackers have the same mentality of sunk cost and want to succeed in taking it so they'll keep running back there with the same vigor as defenders are running back there. Unless of course both or one side is dropping camps.

Attacking the attackers or defenders home keeps achieves the same thing. The only reason we chose EP that night, was because those were literally the only swords on the map for EP while ad and dc were engaged in their own fight at roe already.

babanovac · November 2014

It seems they simply don't get it.

Yes, there is client side lag, and yes we do get low FPS in big fights. But for this there is always the option to decrease graphical settings, which improves the situation to "some" extent.

This is NOT what people are complaining about. People are complaining about the server side lag. We're talking about situations where even though we have decent FPS (so the client doesn't show major problems) skills simply have no effect (people you are hitting take no damage), or you get stuck in animations (invasion or take flight anyone?) or the position of the people around you simply doesn't get updated.
THAT is the lag we are talking about, and it doesn't have anything to do with client performance.

From what @ZOS_JessicaFolsom said it seems that ZOS are simply not aware of these problems, and they still think that it's the client that needs to be fixed.

Thechemicals · November 2014

We arent the problem here. Zeni can easily create a program that would prevent out-of-date addons in cyrodiil. Besides, its been verified that addons do not cause lag....which is what most of os experience more than crashing.

Poxheart · November 2014

Earlier this week I watched a certain group of NA AD (approx 12-15 players) clump up & spam AOEs to lag the game out. The latency meter jumped up and attacks stopped working. If ZOS wants to get to the root of the problem I suggest having a GM shadow that group of players & watch what they do.

ZOS_JessicaFolsom · November 2014

Hi folks, just wanted to make sure you saw our follow-up post about this issue that we posted a few days ago:

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Thank you all very much for the replies and detailed information. It's helped immensely, and we're getting closer to pinpointing the cause of the lag and unresponsiveness in Cyrodiil that many of you have reported.

After further investigation, and as some of you surmised, we now believe this is an issue with client-to-server communication responsiveness during high volume combat situations. We would love more feedback on what specific abilities/actions stop working when this happens, and which continue working. For example, does chat still work? Mounting? Weapon swapping? Projectiles? Self-target abilities? Any details you can provide will help us better track down this specific issue and make improvements.

Junipus · November 2014

If this is relevant in this thread:

- Chat still works during server lag. Although there is sometimes a delay with sent text being updated on screen
- Mounting I personally haven't tried as this always happens in large combat areas where being stuck in combat prevents mounting.
- Weapon swapping is delayed, but is apparently prioritised over abilities.
- Light attacks are the only weapon based abilities that work
- Self-target abilities are the only class abilities that work. This is evident with bow users using light attacks on DKs using reflect.
- Synergy abilities display the synergy ability which can be activated. This has apparent priority over other server calculations meaning the group that spams the most synergy abilities is normally the winner based on initial damage done being prioritised by the server.
- Use of world objects does not work. Doors and siege equipment becomes unusable with siege not deploying despite the animation playing in full.
- Occasionally, vampire feeding works. This is sometimes the only way to CC an enemy while others use light attacks to cause enough damage to kill.

elausche_ESO · November 2014

- Lethal Arrow does not work during this lag. It leaves a pretty awesome green poison graphic surrounding my character until the lag goes away 5-10 minutes later.

This only began in 1.5, so you should look into what changes were made since then and you will probably find your culprit.

TheBull · November 2014

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Hi folks, just wanted to make sure you saw our follow-up post about this issue that we posted a few days ago:

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Thank you all very much for the replies and detailed information. It's helped immensely, and we're getting closer to pinpointing the cause of the lag and unresponsiveness in Cyrodiil that many of you have reported.

After further investigation, and as some of you surmised, we now believe this is an issue with client-to-server communication responsiveness during high volume combat situations. We would love more feedback on what specific abilities/actions stop working when this happens, and which continue working. For example, does chat still work? Mounting? Weapon swapping? Projectiles? Self-target abilities? Any details you can provide will help us better track down this specific issue and make improvements.

Now that's what I'm talking about. Thanks for the post Jessica!

Columba · November 2014

Chat works, although slightly delayed. Light attacks and instant cast spells work. Snipe, heavy attack, Mage runes don't work while lagged. Movement usually works, although we often see rubber banding. Keep repairs and potions work. Stealth works, cloak doesn't.

WebBull · November 2014

Not to be rude but, how about the team that is working on this fix log on tonight, join a PUG, and experience the laggy fun and goodness for themselves......

Darklord_Tiberius · November 2014

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

There are a few key things we need everyone to know. When a large number of players clumps together and spams PFX-heavy abilities, it will cause slow-down. We've put in a number of fixes and tools to help reduce this, but the reality is there will always be some slow-down when this happens.

I call BS on this. We have been in battles with large amounts of players and have not experienced lag. At other times we have been in battles with significantly smaller forces and experienced INSANE amounts of lag. So your statement saying slow-down will always happen is misguided. For the past week, Phoenix Rising and other guilds have been going hard at the Dominion. Many battles we hardly experience lag; however, when a certain AD guild enters the battlefield or in the vicinity of the fighting, things lag to the point damage is not being done to anyone, skills and abilities do not work, weapon swapping, opening doors, trying to place and use siege and other various things do not work.

As paying customers, we feel you as a service provider need to put much more effort into figuring out why the lag seems to only happen when certain players are in the mix. I am not accusing anyone of doing anything wrong, but there have been skills in the past to cause massive memory leak issues and force people to crash or experience so much "slow-down" as you put it, they crash anyway after 10-15 minutes.

Please do not insult our intelligence when you give a blanket statement saying, "it is your add-ons". What most players are talking about is the amount of lag going on in cyrodiil not the crashing, lets stick to the correct issue and not something else.

You also state that the removal of Forward camps have help with the lag? That is also wrong. We PvP every night and have been since the start of this game, lag is worse than it ever use to be no matter the size of the group.

Our suggestion to you, ZOS, is to look at the skills being used and find the root of the problem, because saying it is our addons/ISP is really getting old.

pmn100b16_ESO · November 2014

Why are the reps even asking us what we're experiencing with the lag? Doesn't ZOS have its own systems in place to identify these things? At the very least just play the game in prime time and its all there, you can analysis whats happening in realtime. Its almost like its the reps job to ask questions so they can send the info to the devs, and the devs just say, yeah we know. Complete waste of our time. The devs MUST know what is happening with their game, surely.