Campaign Performance

RobboEU · April 2016

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ZOS_BrianWheeler · April 2016

We have been making incrimental changes to how the server handles abilities and items in combat as well as adjusting some back end work regarding how abilities prioritize their targets. The bulk of these changes will be coming in the next major update.

AbraXuSeXile · April 2016

Heard this one before

mike.eso · April 2016

This is all you've been saying for months and months....and months.

actosh · April 2016

U will keep hearin this more ^^.

They are not able to put updates out without a weneedmoneydlc attached to it.

Sallington · April 2016

What changes have been made that require waiting until a new DLC is released?

Please please please go a little more in depth into the changes you guys are making. The vagueness of "we're working on some back end ability changes" is something that instills no confidence in anyone.

Mysteri0n · April 2016

April and early part of May of 2014 you could have 100 vs 100 battles of no lag, just take away all the stuff you added since then that caused the lag

AbraXuSeXile · April 2016

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irbdQQjVX3o&

r.jan_emailb16_ESO · April 2016

Lol alright then.

_Chaos · April 2016

- 1/18/2016

- 4/5/2016

Thought I heard that "waiting until the next major patch" BS before...

Seriously, in the 2 years I've been playing this game, never have I seen my raid go from 24 to <15 within seconds because of the lag, until last night. People that logged in for 4-5 hours a day are now coming on *maybe* once a week. I'm a die hard ESO player, but even I haven't been playing nearly as much. I just can't shake this anymore it's beyond incompetent.

To say that you're holding off on performance improvements until the next major patch(again) is straight up bullsnip.

Edit: Formatting OCD

Wollust · April 2016

Can't you just do something big and meaningful? Instead of small ability changes that have not helped, like ever?
No need to put it on PTS, risk it on live. It can hardly get worse than the current performance.

Lettigall · April 2016

Same promises after each update...

sirinsidiator · April 2016

I hope you have something more up your sleeve than just performance improvements, because at this point even if the game starts to run smoothly, the gameplay won't suddenly become any better. Over the last few major updates pvp has devolved into this incredibly frustrating zerg fest where all everyone seems to care about is AP. Unless you reeducate the players into playing differently, pvp is not going to become fun again (at least for me).
I attribute this mostly to there being no indication where random players should go. Most of the time there are one or two battles marked on the map and everyone just gravitates there.

My suggestions:

Remove or modify def ticks
- They are simply cancer to the game. Nobody wants to miss them and they keep people from doing useful stuff like actually playing
Show map markers for groups of 12+ players of one color
- This would help with promoting small scale gameplay as large group would become a visible target on the map.
- It would also open some interesting tactical choices. Should the group run around and lure players in? Should they split up and travel via separate routes to a target?
- It will also give more targets on the map where players can go to
Improve the mission board quests so they have some practical use
- They are just useless right now. They should at least have some simple form of AI behind them that reacts to the situation on the map and hands out appropriate missions.

Ghost-Shot · April 2016

@ZOS_BrianWheeler

Brian we appreciate you taking the time to drop in and fill us in but these changes can't wait till the next major update, performance right now is the worst its been since 1.6. I know how the development process works and you want to really test things before they go live but honestly it can't get much worse so we really need you to push these to live sooner rather than later. If they don't work roll them back and try something new but changes need to be made now not in 2 months.

Sotha_Sil · April 2016

Don't take it wrong but.. Is this a joke ? You say that every three months and when we log in it's the same and you expect us to believe you afterwards. We are not expecting you to fix lag from one day to the other but just tell us something else than "wait for new DLC, we have great improvements coming" ?? *

You are in a situation where you think it is "ok" for us to play the game with its issues. But no, it's not and we should have at least a weekly update informing us of your whereabouts and what's going on... 2 years like this, 2 YEARS and again, you find it acceptable to say "wait next DLC ??"

Just create a campaign where skills are not allowed at least we would have fun...

forzajuve212 · April 2016

@ZOS_BrianWheeler

Thank you for responding Brian.

The problem that many of us have in the PVP community is that we've been getting the same copy-paste type messages revolved around "incremental change" since late 2014. I'm sure many people will agree with me when I say the time for incremental changes/waiting for each major DLC to change up mechanics is over.

The message we are a receiving from your end, which I hope that you will see is very justified from our perspective as the consumer and avid PvPers, is that Zenimax just doesn't seem to care about the PVP aspect of their game. This is evident based on two different categories. These two categories are lag/performance issues and gameplay changes.

1) Lag and Performance

This section should speak for itself. We as a PVP community have been dealing with awful ping spikes, extremely low frame rates, as well as buggy skills since launch, but in particular there has been a continuation dating back to late 2014, which by now you are clearly aware of. After almost 2 years since there have been reports of this terrible frame rates and high latency, almost nothing has changed with the state of cyrodiil. Doesn't matter how many deer you remove or how many incremental changes you make, there has been no noticeable change in server performance. This leads the PvP community to come to the conclusion that the issue is either unfixable or that Zenimax as a company doesn't care about this aspect of their game.

2) Gameplay Changes

Instead of having a stable way of communicating with the community on the direction of PvP mechanics, it seems that you guys decide to close your ears after you release every major dlc patch and then do whatever you please with the game. Every patch, you just decide to add tons of pages of gameplay changes without testing them before hand and without asking the community/competitive PVP guilds for feedback. That is why we see a nightblade with proxy able to kill 20 people in one burst or seeing unlimited roots and snares. Patch after patch, all we see is unbalanced gameplay that just screams "they didn't think this through".

I know the PvP community is such a small fraction of the game, but the sad state of affairs right now in the PvP community is really easy to notice. Competitive guilds on AD, for example, have been decreasing and dwindling for quite some time now, not to even mention other factions guilds.

Where these players once saw great potential in a game they were willing to invest 2 years into, while dealing with horrible performance and bugs, they now only see a company from the bottom up that is unwilling or unable to fix their broken game or make changes that allow for fun, competitive and unique PvP.

As a player who formed groups in zone chat in Cyrodiil during beta, I've invested a ton of time into this game and it is very depressing to see the opinion of this game shoot down the drain. This PvP community, especially the competitive guild PVP, is dangerously close to becoming completely dead.

I just hope that the development team, including yourself, realize the state of near disrepair this PvP community is. I still see something special in ESO because it is my first major MMO and really is one of my favorite games of all time, but for many others, they've just given up hope that you can do anything to make this game work.

If you can't provide them a stable gameplay experience without high latency, without low fps, and with gameplay mechanics that encourage a healthy and balanced game instead of dropping a major patch without warning anyone, then one by one everyone in this PvP community will leave to other games that give them the experience they are looking for.

I know that the community has devolved into immaturity and un constructive feedback, but I hope you understand my position and really see it from this perspective.

Niaver · April 2016

Hi, @ZOS_BrianWheeler
Don't you think you need to give up on system "we release patch every 3-4 months". Do you guys really think it is acceptable to have some bugs for a quarter? Same with changes to PvP performance.

Ahanu2 · April 2016

You guys are going about this all wrong.

What you do see, is you message various game journalism sites about this big PvP debacle we're in with a lot of words and a lot of flair, make it sound like a crisis for the game, they love that kind of stuff. If one of the bigger ones bite, the rest will follow, because they all want a piece of that story pie. Next thing you know, bing bang bongo! All eyes look to PvP performance. Some forum corner whining becomes more public uproar, and things move a little faster.

It's a marketing game, fellas. If your piece isn't changing the game, maybe setting other pieces in motion will.

Lava_Croft · April 2016

These random, meaningless statements aren't really cutting it any longer, @ZOS_BrianWheeler.

Septimus_Magna · April 2016

I did notice a small increase in performance when the TG update went live.

We're often fighting 40-50 enemies in a single keep and, even though the latency goes up, dmg is still registered (to some extend) which makes it able to kill enemy players.

The thing thats most annoying is the random crashing when fighting in large battles. This happens to several guild members each and every night. Often you cant log back in (message: make sure you have a valid internet connection) so you have to restart your PC in order to log back in.

Zaldan · April 2016

is it me or is there an echo in here?

_Chaos · April 2016

Show's over guys.

BWheels pops in once every quarter to tell us to wait until the next DLC, so we can expect him to return around August.
Unless you're asking stupid questions in random threads, those seem to get attention for some reason

Enodoc · April 2016

You guys ask for updates and then complain when you get one. There is never going to be a magic fix to performance, all we can hope for is exactly what they're doing - chipping away at it step by step, hoping that each step improves performance a bit.

I do agree though that it would be preferable if each step, once ready, could be dropped in an incremental, rather than getting a whole staircase with each update.

_Chaos · April 2016

Some folks still ask for updates, I know better. I want results and will voice my opinion after being spoon-fed the same cow dung over and over. It's been two years, clearly the ones like myself that have been around since beta don't expect a magical fix(hence waiting two whole f&^king years), but we're going backwards when it comes to progress.

To say they're chipping away step by step is laughable. Unless step by step now means one step forward, two steps back.

It's quite obvious that they don't have sufficient resources dedicated to this task, and we shouldn't be patting them on the back for these quarterly "improvements incoming next DLC" comments.

Zheg · April 2016

Are you making incremental changes to the poorly envisioned balance and mechanic changes you and wrobel are responsible for that drove a meta encouraging everyone to fight at a single location? Are either of you going to address what a miserable sh3t show pvp has become, even outside of all of the performance issues? Performance is hard and you aren't able to solve it, we all get that by now. For the meta and balance you guys don't get to use that excuse; you made a ton of changes and gave us the worst meta yet (impressive btw), and haven't said a word about it in a month. Not even a "sorry you guys have to play in a terrible meta AND put up with terrible performance while we continue our on-the-job training for running an mmo".

This is the first and only post from either of you in about 3 weeks I believe. In what world is it a sound business decision to completely drop off the radar like that when pvp is in the state that it currently is in? None of us have any idea what your or wrobel's thoughts are on the state of balance and combat, nor on what's coming in DB. Have you really not learned your lesson yet? We need to know what wrobel is doing BEFORE it's finalized in a PTS patch so we can tell you how bad it is with enough time for it to actually be fixed/removed rather than waiting for the next quarterly patch.

Sallington · April 2016

So should I check back in 2019 when the small incremental changes to some abilities might have some noticeable affect on performance?

The very least they could do is go into specific details about what skills they think are problems, what changes they are making, what kind of performance improvements they expect to gain, etc, etc. The vagueness of these kinds of statements is insulting.

ZOS_BrianWheeler · April 2016

Abilities work on several stages when fired off whether hitting several players in an area, or checking an area to hit just 1 or 2 players. For explaining how this functions in real world terms, let's use Honor the Dead as our example because its a single target ability that has an Area (Radius) of 28 meters.

1 - Upon casting Honor the Dead, the server checks the radius around the Templar (area) as defined by the ability...in this case 28m Radius (an Area of 2463 meters) and gets a list of ALL players in that area (friend or foe).

2 - The server then checks any requirements Honor the Dead has, and begins sorting that list to find the legitimate target to apply the ability to. In this case, the ability needs to find the closest friendly target in that 2463m Area, that is not full health, and apply a heal to that target. This is accomplished by having a unique requirement made specifically for Honor the Dead. The list generated by the server on the Ability cast can be 2 people or 100 people ...it just depends on how many players are in that Area as noted by the ability before it sorts out who to apply the ability effects to.

3 - The server then fires the heal after picking the legitimate target from step number 2 after sorting the list of players according to the ability requirement to apply that heal.

Step number 2 is what we're in the process of changing to be less intensive on the server. Currently each requirement for abilities like Honor the Dead have unique hand crafted requirement lists. The same goes for many other abilities in the game. This includes checking things like lowest health, highest health, distance from target (nearest or furthest), etc. What we are changing is making these requirement not be individually unique, but remaking them as universal server rules which are far less intensive on the server.

As you can imagine, this is no small task to double check abilities in both PVE, PVP both generated from monsters and players. We are working to get all scenarios tested and confirmed that functionality of abilities are not effected and working as fast as we can to get this out to you all and appreciate your patience.

DjSolJAH · April 2016

I'm glad to see a mod being constructive on the forums today however I don't think the word patience holds much water anymore. Another 5 months for a fix is a little much after a year of steady performance loss

Weberda · April 2016

A detailed explanation.......we don't get a lot of those. And it is much appreciated. I suspect if you did that more often the rancor would be much less.

Lettigall · April 2016

Is AOE cap removal also should be on to do list? By not calculating who gets full damage, who 50% and who 25% wouldn't it take away a lot of stress from server?