They fixed the lag

Hootnannius · September 2015

I really like Crown's suggestion that you - or some designee of Zenimax - establish some channel or mechanism of communication on behalf of the major PVP guilds. You can't make everyone happy all of the time or fix every issue in the game for everyone. But Zenimax could do a better job of communicating and acknowledging concerns of the players/clients. I've noticed more people talking lately about leaving the game because of their frustrations.

Most people will be way more forgiving and understanding of performance and other issues if they feel that they have been listened to.

If Guild leader like Crown are offering to donate their time to help you make your game better or improve your relationship with your clients, you'd be foolish not to take him up on it.

Robbmrp · September 2015

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

The metrics we look at regarding server performance capture the overall message flow that servers have to handle per server frame per second. Prior to Imperial City releasing, we regularly saw these numbers spiking well beyond a desired amount but after Imperial City, they have settled down. There are still spikes causing issues you have noted and we're working on resolving those as well.

@ZOS_BrianWheeler that's great that you are continuing to review and make updates to server performance. The only question I have, is when you have these fixes ready, will be be put in the weekly maintenance patches or have to wait 3 months for another DLC?

Please, please, please tell me they will be in the weekly patches. These kinds of patches should be some of the highest priority fixes to go in sooner than later.

Thank you for your time.

FENGRUSH · September 2015

Crown wrote: »

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

So far the performance of server message rates has seen improvements with the introduction of Imperial City. As some of you have pointed out, the splitting of population into 3 pvp zones has helped significantly, however we also see your feedback about client performance and FPS concerns. There are some fixes going in today's patch, but we'll continue to monitor the client FPS concerns and please keep posting if you notice issues with your client FPS. We are still working on server message rates and seeing what we can do for optimizing this further as well.

Hi @ZOS_BrianWheeler

We had some truly epic battles two days ago in Trueflame (my Emperor group of 10 with what looked like a full 24 of HK & friends on AD vs GoS and friends on EP). During these battles, frame rates dropped to between 5 and 10 FPS (from the normal 50+ FPS) for most of the group, though skill lag didn't seem to get worse than about 1.5 seconds (vs the instant response to skills with no lag). These battles lasted a few minutes over the course of 4-5 hours, and while promising, are not yet enough for us to really see how things have changed.

With the introduction of IC, you don't have large groups fighting large groups, so whatever metrics you're using right now are flawed. You have groups of 30+ on one faction rolling over small groups on other factions often enough, but with no real benefits in IC for a zerg on zerg fight, the Telvar and trophy farmers just stay out of the battles so they are definitively one sided.

When people (hopefully) get back to Cyrodiil, or you implement something to help keep Cyrodiil healthy (and not just have a 24 person group take the entire map whenever they happen to be on whatever faction), we'll get to see if what you've done has actually helped. AP means nothing to most people right now, so they don't really care about the campaigns.

A lot of what's being said these days smells of propaganda to make things look better without empirical evidence of such. There are a good few long term players who would probably be thrilled to help you out in an open discussion about the game, mechanics, issues, challenges, etc. The guild meetings as they are tend to tread lightly so as not to offend or say anything that will make the respective guilds less prominent or *well liked* by your folks.

I strongly believe that you need a few people (for example a few of the leaders of PvP groups such as myself, Slaxis, WRX, Zavus, Zazeer, Bulba, AoE BBQ and a few otheers) to tell you straight what we think of certain things. Open it to anyone who has achieved 50% of the total AP needed for Grand Overlord (Legate grade 2) if you want more input and to ensure that people have been playing long enough to have formulated an intelligent and educated opinion. @Lightingale and I would even be happy to reach out to our opponents and attempt to organize a regular discussion (if you were to be involved), keep minutes, and publish them for the community afterwards.

I know you guys have your 8-10 hours of play together once in a while, and your responses are overwhelmingly positive while you play, though I still strongly feel as though you're not seeing the big picture - just your isolated little world of developer happiness.

If you were to give us an intelligent response to issues, we would be able to soothe ruffled (or is that rumpled?) feathers of the PvPers and feel as though you're actually paying attention to the issues we experience day to day. It is perfectly acceptable to not know an answer, or to respond that you've not considered something, or even that you'll escalate it to the team who manage statistics and the math behind your decisions on game balance (and I sincerely hop you have such a team), though with follow-ups scheduled and responses / updates to us. If you look at us as your *clients* and not *the players*, you'll get a lot more actual respect (rather than brown nosing) from the community.

I don't intend to come off condescending or for you to take offence (though many people seem to do so from my rather straightforward way of saying things). We (at least most of us) feel that someone needs to say these things and I've taken it upon myself to do so.

EDIT: Spelling

You didnt even include FENGRUSH in your list of group leaders. How do you expect ZOS to take this seriously?

In all seriousness though - lets be real: AOE caps. If anyone even tried to debate The Lord on this subject they would lose. AOE caps shouldnt be in the game and they are. All the group leaders named above roll over countless bodies in cyro and have done so behind the strongest advantage in cyro for many patches now: AOE caps. FENGRUSH has never outnumbered his opponents or utilized 50-75% damage mitigation in PVP to achieve His victories. The amount of uphill battles that have been fought cannot be stressed. And if you havent been there to a similar degree, you wouldnt know how ridiculous it is to face large groups in cyro where every single advantage is stacked in your favor.

There isnt a single greater change you can make to the full picture of cyro. And if this wont be changed, itd be great to know why, because many of the issues from gameplay style(largescale PVP) to performance to population losses all stem from this subject that is very relevant and very important. One day - the development team made a decision, likely knowing it carried great consequence. Is it a choice that cannot be revisited?

Has it been too long that there is too much fear to go back to what makes sense and what setting this game had at its highest population? Is it too radical to even consider? Dynamic ult gen has been done away with, this was one of the largest 'issues' that created this change. Not to mention the combat benefits you would see from this - but performance will likely be helped more than any other changes in netcode by making these long dragged out fights on flags of 50v50 where tons of calculations are being made but a majority of the people involved in that fight are taking less than half of the damage before you factor in their defenses, heals, and barriers that are rotating.

Dont let your dreams be dreams, remove AOE caps.

Docmandu · September 2015

@ZOS_BrianWheeler activate IC access gating to get some real numbers from Cyrodiil. Place is dead atm.

Slaxis · September 2015

I agree with alot crown and Fengrush said. I do run larger sized groups but since 1.6 came out we started running smaller grps. We were trying to eliminate lag in battles and alot of guild I believe did the same thing. Why are we changing our style of play to accommodate the mechanics of your game? This game is getting to ppint of no longer being fun. I hope ZOS does something soon. Whatever you changed from 1.5 to 1.6 and worse 1.7 change back.

ThyIronFist · September 2015

Yup they fixed the lag there is barely any players in Cyrodiil and the Imperial City feels like a Daedric version of Cracked Wood Cave with buffed NPCs and some quests.

tengri · September 2015

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

The metrics we look at regarding server performance capture the overall message flow that servers have to handle per server frame per second. Prior to Imperial City releasing, we regularly saw these numbers spiking well beyond a desired amount but after Imperial City, they have settled down. There are still spikes causing issues you have noted and we're working on resolving those as well.

Ofc they have settled down.
2/3 of your players are stuck doing nothing and only staring at their loading screens at any given time... indeed, a very creative solution to the problem, I have to give u guys that.

yodased · September 2015

I think you should get a bigger graph.

Stikato · September 2015

I love how this thread was created because pvp in Cyrodiil is dead, and now we have people taking victory laps because lag is reduced.

So the solution to reducing lag in Cyrodiil, was to kill Cyrodiil? Wow, this is revolutionary.

babanovac · September 2015

Stikato wrote: »

I love how this thread was created because pvp in Cyrodiil is dead, and now we have people taking victory laps because lag is reduced.

So the solution to reducing lag in Cyrodiil, was to kill Cyrodiil? Wow, this is revolutionary.

Agree with this. Performance in PvP has improved because massive PvP no longer exists, only small scale.

Knootewoot · September 2015

babanovac wrote: »

Stikato wrote: »

I love how this thread was created because pvp in Cyrodiil is dead, and now we have people taking victory laps because lag is reduced.

So the solution to reducing lag in Cyrodiil, was to kill Cyrodiil? Wow, this is revolutionary.

Agree with this. Performance in PvP has improved because massive PvP no longer exists, only small scale.

And it's no longer fun.

PvP'ed in cyrodil yesterday. Our group took 3 keeps. We encountered little resistance. Only the former red emperor (and a few others) defended their last keep, but it was not enough. Yellows had a nice setup ambush at Allesia but they where spotted by a random NB who wandered of the main group, and they also where to few. When blue had emperor they went into IC and later on an other alliance quickly had emperor again because no defenders anywhere.

I now log in, do IC (with an awesome group) to get my CP and around 1000 stones and then I go play another game (witcher 3 and the shower with dad simulator 2015).

xaraan · September 2015

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

So far the performance of server message rates has seen improvements with the introduction of Imperial City. As some of you have pointed out, the splitting of population into 3 pvp zones has helped significantly, however we also see your feedback about client performance and FPS concerns. There are some fixes going in today's patch, but we'll continue to monitor the client FPS concerns and please keep posting if you notice issues with your client FPS.

We are still working on server message rates and seeing what we can do for optimizing this further as well.

Since the patch today I've actually had more issues, not even in Cyro so maybe it's concerning something else with performance. Seems to be in any big fight (doing 4 man dungeons) once powers start flying around, my FPS drops to under 10.

P3ZZL3 · September 2015

Knootewoot wrote: »

(.....and the shower with dad simulator 2015).

I've read this soooo many times and yet it still sounds very very bad!!!!

BTW - If you're getting a group together, it would be worthwhile pulling in 5-6 of the groups in EU as well. Would be interesting to see if it's the same lag issues arising one both servers or whether it's different / different gameplay style / mentality / etc...

Kronuxx · September 2015

Jules wrote: »

@ZOS_BrianWheeler Please look at this picture that @Jules so kindly posted. This is EXACTLY what I received and yes this is after patch today for PC NA server. I was within the Mages Guild in Stonefalls. I have a more than capable computer to run this game. 16 gb ram, core i7 5930K, ati r9 390. To note that I had the same exact FPS drop to 1, and my Ping jumped from 90 (which is where I am usually) to well over 1300 as well.

Ishammael · September 2015

Kronuxx wrote: »

Jules wrote: »

@ZOS_BrianWheeler Please look at this picture that @Jules so kindly posted. This is EXACTLY what I received and yes this is after patch today for PC NA server. I was within the Mages Guild in Stonefalls. I have a more than capable computer to run this game. 16 gb ram, core i7 5930K, ati r9 390. To note that I had the same exact FPS drop to 1, and my Ping jumped from 90 (which is where I am usually) to well over 1300 as well.

I found that AUI or any add-on which contains a mini-map to be the culprit. I disabled them and fixed by fps drops. Hope that helps.

ZOS_BrianWheeler · September 2015

@Kronuxx If you're getting that ping in the mages guild, can you tell us if that occurs consistently in there? That's quite odd.

SturgeHammer · September 2015

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

So far the performance of server message rates has seen improvements with the introduction of Imperial City. As some of you have pointed out, the splitting of population into 3 pvp zones has helped significantly, however we also see your feedback about client performance and FPS concerns. There are some fixes going in today's patch, but we'll continue to monitor the client FPS concerns and please keep posting if you notice issues with your client FPS.

We are still working on server message rates and seeing what we can do for optimizing this further as well.

The benefits of splitting the population is great on the Vet Servers, but on the non-vet server most the battles are still happening outside of IC and the lag is the worst I have ever seen there. However, being the worst lag ever in BWB still isn't bad lag, but it went from having no lag to some lag.

frozywozy · September 2015

Ishammael wrote: »

Kronuxx wrote: »

Jules wrote: »

@ZOS_BrianWheeler Please look at this picture that @Jules so kindly posted. This is EXACTLY what I received and yes this is after patch today for PC NA server. I was within the Mages Guild in Stonefalls. I have a more than capable computer to run this game. 16 gb ram, core i7 5930K, ati r9 390. To note that I had the same exact FPS drop to 1, and my Ping jumped from 90 (which is where I am usually) to well over 1300 as well.

I found that AUI or any add-on which contains a mini-map to be the culprit. I disabled them and fixed by fps drops. Hope that helps.

What this guy said. The major cause of the fps drops since IC are addons related. ALOT of people in my guild had fps drops and as soon as they disabled the minimap addon, it fixed their issue.

So if you find yourself with performance problems after a patch, always disable all your addons and add them back one by one until you spot the one with a malfunction.

In the meantime, @ZOS_BrianWheeler - I would also suggest to either make people spawn back in Cyrodiil after dying in Imperial City / Imperial Sewers or add a respawn timer to stop people from zerging a district without any reasoning and lagging the Imperial City instances.

Slaxis · September 2015

So out of all that was said about lag on this post ZOS responds with questions regarding mage guild lag...lol

Merlin13KAGL · September 2015

While some parts seemed better, day after the patch I was two-manning with a friend and we both experienced massive hesitation and delay in skill fire/weapon swap when fighting even small groups (4 man or less).

This happened in both upper zones and in the sewers. It was bad enough we decided to hang it up for the night.

Yesterday seemed to be issue free.

I have not yet come across a large zerg in the sewers to see the result. (Pre-patch you could tell one was near simply by the decrease in game performance.)

Minno · September 2015

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

@Kronuxx If you're getting that ping in the mages guild, can you tell us if that occurs consistently in there? That's quite odd.

Also @ZOS_BrianWheeler , I've noticed screen lag and stutter in the arena district. Extact location and issue is as follows:

1) under the DC respawn point just a few steps towards EP spawn (out of agro range of the first stationary mobs)
2) issue occurs both when stationary and moving.
3) issue occurs when looking towards the portal boss/mob event spawn location (view also slightly blocked by environment objects and debris.)

The game stutters and mouse movements lag a bit. Very minor but enough to misjudge attacks.

Dreyloch · September 2015

Gonna agree here with many of the PvP "leaders" as it were.

Without the huge battles of old in Cyrodiil, there should not be anyone saying Lag is fixed. Unless IC access is locked or gated for random periods of time or we have to fight for it? It'll be awhile before we see any true battles as a measuring stick on the lag subject.

vortexman11 · September 2015

Dreyloch wrote: »

Gonna agree here with many of the PvP "leaders" as it were.

Without the huge battles of old in Cyrodiil, there should not be anyone saying Lag is fixed. Unless IC access is locked or gated for random periods of time or we have to fight for it? It'll be awhile before we see any true battles as a measuring stick on the lag subject.

I've experienced large battles in Cyrodiil, maybe not 100v100 like it used to be, but a 40v40 and theres was no lag other than FPS drops, maybe my ping jumped up to 300, but thats not terrible

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO · September 2015

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Indeed @Crown! While the fights in IC are fast and furious, it's not as concentrated in mass sustained numbers in one area as much as Cyrodiil.

We will be watching though and as always taking feedback because graphs aren't people...well..technically they're representations of people, but yep...we're not done with performance fixes yet.

Can you allude to any plans to tempt people back into the outer map? City is ok but not as player vs player as some would like. Also with the lag potentially lessened would you also consider increasing populations again so that more of us can play in less campaigns atm there are so many campaigns it's hard to find decent fights

Kronuxx · September 2015

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

@Kronuxx If you're getting that ping in the mages guild, can you tell us if that occurs consistently in there? That's quite odd.

Hey @ZOS_BrianWheeler , unfortunately it is not consistently within the mages guild, although I'll admit I've only been in there a handful of times thus far. I will say this though, I have noticed consistently, that when alt+tabbing between the game and chrome web browser, that without fail, after 30-45mins of alt+tabbing, the game will crash and lock up requiring a hard reboot of my system. It does not occur immediately, which is odd. I have also noticed, that when alt+tabbing the gpu load (using HWInfo) jumps to 100% even with no browser/antivirus running in the background.

Cinbri · September 2015

Jules wrote: »

The story of my game after IC realease same

ZOS_BrianWheeler · September 2015

We are planning on introducing a Campaign or two that have Gated Imperial City access and we are looking into other things to add into Cyrodiil for pulling people back into the warzone.

Turelus · September 2015

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

We are planning on introducing a Campaign or two that have Gated Imperial City access and we are looking into other things to add into Cyrodiil for pulling people back into the warzone.

Awesome, I can't wait to see what's coming.

Taonnor · September 2015

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

We are planning on introducing a Campaign or two that have Gated Imperial City access and we are looking into other things to add into Cyrodiil for pulling people back into the warzone.

Ehm... So you plan to have campaigns with gated access and campaigns without? Will this work?

I mean if we have these situation i will set my home campaign to gated access campaign and my guest campaign to open access. If i want to farm equip i go into the open access campaign. So why should i go into IC on a gated access campaign?

This feels strange. I think the best is all gated or nothing gated.

Docmandu · September 2015

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

We are planning on introducing a Campaign or two that have Gated Imperial City access and we are looking into other things to add into Cyrodiil for pulling people back into the warzone.

If you give people the choice, they well ofcourse pick the ungated one everytime imho. Path of least resistance.