Campaign Performance

frozywozy

When I play in Cyrodiil, my FPS are most of the time at 60 with v-sync on (120 if v-sync would be off). During large battles, my FPS never drop under 30 FPS. It used to drop to 25 sometimes before the 64bits client got released on PC. Here is a list of the addons I use while pvping and also the hardwares I use on top of my graphic settings ingame. Hope that helps.

ADDONS

• Wykkyd Toolbar + Outfitter
• Autoinvite
• Combat Cloud
• Combat Log Statistic
• FCO StarveStop
• Foundry Tactical Combat
• GuildSalesAssistant
• Kill Counter
• Master Merchant
• MultiCraft
• PansyLabs Combat Indicator
• pChat
• Quick Compass
• S'rendarr

HARDWARES

• Operating System : Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
• CPU : Intel Core i7 3770K @ 3.50GHz
• RAM : 16.0GB G.Skill DDR3 @ 1600MHz
• Motherboard : ASUSTeK Z87-PRO
• Graphics : EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Superclocked
• Display : Asus PB287Q 28" 4k (3840x2160@60Hz)
• Storage : 250GB Samsung SSD 840 EVO
• Audio : Steelseries H-Wireless Headset
• Keyboard : Logitech g910+
• Mouse : Razer Deathadder Chroma black edition

GRAPHIC SETTINGS

Rasimir

Last evening was exceptionally bad on Trueflame EU.

The current problems started with the patch two weeks ago. Several weeks before that patch I was able to play quite well.

Now we have long loading screens (others have reported that), and frequent disconnects again. Those disconnects are of the sort "everybody stands still, just my char can moce around for a while". This looks like a desync issue, and usually announces itself by latency gioing up, 600 and more are a bad sign.

These disconnects occur everywhere, not even a large battle nearby is needed. They occur more often when passing through doors or jumping down keep walls. Quite often I get the "cannot connect to game server" error when I try to log in again. The login screen often shows the "cannot retrieve announcements" message as well.

Yesterday it was so bad (around 8pm) that I spent 30 seconds in the game, went out of a castle to join a fight and thats ist ... killed the client (tried both 32 bit and 64 bit ... made no difference). I always needed several tries to log in again. At about 8:30 pm I finally gave up after trying for 10 minutes.

teamspeak, browsers and such work perfectly well during these times. Other guild members report similar problems, people are coming from all over germany, switzerland and austria, using different providers and all kinds of even powerful machines.

SwaminoNowlino

Xbox NA Haderus, pick a time pick a place same old issues as always. Run around stuck in the crit rush animation (longest I could get it to stay in that animation was 30 whole seconds, sometimes I get the macroslice). Anywhere near a big keep battle? Have fun getting dashboarded and missing that AP. Want to get your AP tick for taking a keep? Have fun sitting on the wall for 5 minutes. Want to bar swap? Nah.

Same old same old. Promises of a better PVP experience from @ZOS_BrianWheeler yet nothing ever changes. Patch after patch and no silver bullet after no silver bullet. And no, its not my internet. I even upgraded my internet for the month to see if things improved, but no dice. Can play Overwatch flawlessly though, which I turn to more and more whenever I think about wanting some PVP. It's a real shame.

outsideworld76

PvP lag is as bad as it always have been, totally unplayable for me.

Katahdin

Cyro TF loading screens. 1-2 minutes every time I try to resurrect or transport somewhere.
Used to happen occassionally but never been a big problem before.

Zaldan

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Further back-end updates went in today's patch. Please post any experiences with server performance, both good or bad as well as your FPS/Latency read out when you were having issues.

another update and no noticeable difference, just logged off Trueflame EU and abilities taking 2-3 seconds to fire, game is unplayable and beyond a joke now.

Sharee

Zaldan wrote: »

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Further back-end updates went in today's patch. Please post any experiences with server performance, both good or bad as well as your FPS/Latency read out when you were having issues.

another update and no noticeable difference, just logged off Trueflame EU and abilities taking 2-3 seconds to fire, game is unplayable and beyond a joke now.

This is a recent thing tho. Like a few days recent. It was much better before.

I have a theory. Remember that not long ago we had an inaccessible server? People got kicked and could not log back in. Lasted almost the whole day. I guess it was a DDoS attack. And ZOS reacted by activation DDoS protection which allows legit player to log in and play while keeping the server accessible. But the side effect is significantly increased latency.

Rasimir

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Further back-end updates went in today's patch. Please post any experiences with server performance, both good or bad as well as your FPS/Latency read out when you were having issues.

It didn't get any better. It was quite Ok for me four weeks ago, but whatever you did in the last three patches made it worse. I observed the actual behaviour for quite some time, and found at least four different effects.I mostly play on Trueflame EU.

I have a new machine now, I7-6700, 16GB, GTX1060 with 6GB. With this I got most of the client based effects from my former equipment out of the way. When everything runs fine, I have 90-100 FPS and a ping around 100 (measured with the ingame fps/ping display). I monitor my router as well, the game doesn't use much bandwidth, a few spikes now and then put overall I can see nothing extraordinary.

I get lag resulting in disconnects of at least three types. All three end in a situation where I can move around, but everybody else stands still.If I wait long enough, I'm back at the login screen:

1. As soon as my kids start youtube on their mobile phones, the ping goes up, 999+, and the game desyncs within a few minutes. Line bandwidth is at max in these situations, lag is to be expected, but the game should not crash. Its hard to reconnect to the game, it usually takes several tries to get past that "unable to connect to game server" error.
I can easily reproduce this effect, and invite @ZOS to analyse whatever happens here with me. Give me some logging options, a test client, whatever... I'm willing to help wherever I can.

2. Another situation happens when the bandwidth is OK, below 20% usage. Latency goes up over several minutes, reaches the 999+, and then it's a gamble... does it recover or not? I'd say in at least 1/3 of these events it does not.

3. The third phenomenon happens out of the blue. latency is at around 150-250, and all of a sudden everything stops.

These three may have a common cause, or may be unrelated. I described them as different effects to help you to find the issues or at least find some workarounds.

I have a lot of experience as a software architect and QA manager, and from my point of view there is a glitch in your networking protocol. When some packet doesn't arrive in time, or in the right order, or whatever, the client isn't able to resync with the server. Only one time I saw the game going into some "fast-forward-mode" after a high latency period... I assume there IS some kind of catchup mechanic in place, but it doesn't work reliably. Especially situation 2 suggests that the game is struggling to keep everything in line, but slowly loses the battle.

Situation 4 is a bit different:
This is about others in my group of 4-8 people. They report massive lags while I don't have problems. But I see my frame rate going down and down... to 20 or even less. This happens near huge fights, but on my screen I don't have to actually see this fight. People with a less powerful graphics card will have serious problems here, while I can still move around and kill the enemies who have similar problems.
My guess here: Most likely clipping is done at the client, and I don't see the combat effects because they are clipped away. The graphics has to do that, and obviously is using a lot of resources. On the other hand, to do this it must receive informations about the effects, and that again stresses the comm protocol. If this increased traffic meets some glitch in the protocol, we'll see again such a disconnect like in 1-3.

Please, do something. I'll help with diagnostics tools, tracing, whatever. When such disconnects happen, it takes several minutes to get back into the game, ride to the fight because after some login tries you start at the gates again, just to crash within minutes again. That is no fun.

Of course I have the long loading screen effect as well... but that is another story.

sincerely,
-Rasimir

SwaminoNowlino

@ZOS_BrianWheeler

Any data from over the weekend with Xbox NA - Particularly Haderus?

ZOS_BrianWheeler

NA Haderus on Xbox over the weekend definitely showed perf spikes and we are using that data to look at what else we can do performance wise. That's not to say we didn't see spikes on other Campaigns as well, but we are well aware of the difference in performance from platform to platform and campaign to campaign.

mdylan2013

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

NA Haderus on Xbox over the weekend definitely showed perf spikes and we are using that data to look at what else we can do performance wise. That's not to say we didn't see spikes on other Campaigns as well, but we are well aware of the difference in performance from platform to platform and campaign to campaign.

I've been experiencing freezing on the ps4 EU server whilst in Cyrodiil over the last few days. It usually happens when starting into combat, the screen freezes for around a second and then restarts. Other players and your character have moved or casted abilities during the time you've been frozen, there's also no sound disturbance.

Is that something game related or could it be my ps4?.. I'm totally not looking for a reason to upgrade to a PS4 Pro

SwaminoNowlino

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

NA Haderus on Xbox over the weekend definitely showed perf spikes and we are using that data to look at what else we can do performance wise. That's not to say we didn't see spikes on other Campaigns as well, but we are well aware of the difference in performance from platform to platform and campaign to campaign.

Cool. Thanks Brian. I wasn't suggesting it was limited to Haderus, that's just where I felt it the most and wondered if that translated to the data on your end. And its great to see that it does!

Just a shot in the dark, but it would be cool to see like a weekly performance synopsis for each platform/sever. May require too many resources to justify it on your end but it would be a great way to track performance as a community!

Also out of curiosity, can you provide any information on how performance does fluctuate across platforms? Is a particular platform suffering performance issues above the others?

outsideworld76

I'm having a very unresponsive PS4 consule since the latest patch. PVE is also effected, PVP has delays of more than a second. This is unplayable and I don't understand why this issue is not being addressed.

Steelriver

The LAAAAAAG PS4 Lag in PvP is so horrible. I have 300 mbs internet. I know it isn't my internet. I play GW2 with 0 lag. They doing anything about this? I usually don't gripe but im not going to continue to pay for this.

bottleofsyrup

10 hour load screens on NA/PC.

aetherial_heavenn

Trueflame.
PC/NA
Being Australian I play with 320-400 ms ping in Cyrodil. Die a lot but at least skills work, sort of. Today been sitting at 500 plus. Went to 1200 a few times. Then later LD.

In the last week:
Loading screens of 2/3 minutes even in open landscape.Sometimes longer, getting worse each day.
Frame rates of 2-10 fps in seiges. Normally about 40-60 in pop areas (wayrest) and 90 in open landscape
LD where I can move and see others but they are frozen. Would make awesome video but not nice to play.
Today:
Last link dead 2.50pm Australian EST. (approx 12.50am sundayUS EST). Couldn't reconnect.



Specs. Not great: Asus RoG laptop, SSD, nVidia 580M, windows 7, vsync: off, graphics: all low or off, addons: all disabled except pChat.

aetherial_heavenn

oh and when I did get in others had crashed too. Ping still 625 even at gate to Cyro and we missed a huge D tick

SwaminoNowlino

Xbox NA Skull

Last night my group of 6 was fighting 30+ in a keep. They were 90% malubeth reactive templars (the funny part is this isn't an exaggeration. We recorded it and counted the templars and what they are wearing). but that's a different rant. We are surviving and wiping them. Then we all get put into a load screen, come back, we are dead. Awesome gameplay.

Fighting the same zerg at same undermanned odds on other occasions. We start wiping the group. The templars all ball up and hit the Ultimate heal at the same time. We all crash to loading screen. Come back to being dead.

Then it happened again. and again. and again. They start losing, they ball up, and hit the ultimate heal all at the same time. We crash. A+ gameplay right there. After about the fourth time I just quit playing and moved on to overwatch. Played that flawlessly for about an hour. Thanks ZOS.

@ZOS_BrianWheeler (Not blaming Brian. Just wanted to make he and his team aware of the issue)

Sugaroverdose

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

NA Haderus on Xbox over the weekend definitely showed perf spikes and we are using that data to look at what else we can do performance wise. That's not to say we didn't see spikes on other Campaigns as well, but we are well aware of the difference in performance from platform to platform and campaign to campaign.

Just look at EU PS4 Thornblade - it's one huge load spike starting from ~7PM GMT

Kymee

I have already commented under the cheaters and hackers area but just want to reiterate the following:
I used to spend hours in pvp. I bought the game to play pvp as was shown in the companies advertisements and videos. PVP is no longer fun because of the problems with programing and development and the cheating and exploiting going on. Therefore, I will not play pvp until the grouping issue is fixed and when that is accomplished I will only play a couple of hours while my guild is active until the cheating and exploiting is resolved. If my friends move on so do I which at this point is inevitable unless major changes take place.

I suggest a visible force playing in Cyrodill made up of your developers at least one in each faction. Look at other games if you do not know how and find a fix for the cheating and exploiting. I hear tell of older games that have found a way to handle these issues. Quit caving in to whiners.

Oh, and sidenote: scale the bosses and dolmens to the number of people that are at the site or in the group. That way everytime you get a group together for a raid or guild event you don't have to worry about the number of folks that are able to come. It would also make it more fun to not just go in and wipe everything without a real fight. That is totally boring. It would help ensure that all guilds big and small get a chance to do the raids and whatnot.

I think that to ensure your bottom line and stay profitable you must make this a priority as companies are busy trying to take your business away as we speak and some of them look enticing. Love the game, it is a beauty, but this has become unplayable, really a shame!

Kibbles (Not a cheater, hacker, or exploiter)

Alfie2072

Almost a year latter and ping is still a HUGE issue, framerate isnt as bad anymore, but ping is just crazy at times
will this ever be fixed? can we atleast have some sort of test without the lighting patch that ruined ping & framerate?

mook-eb16_ESO

Hi campaign performance is bad getting especially killed with eye of flame with no animation being hit multiple times then health just disappears. really annoyed today I have an ok templar heavy build, maybe not the best but if cant stay alive in these sets there no point playing . New proc meta is shameful and not helping, what sad way for eso to go I dont remember a day when I wrote so many tickets.

NBrookus

PC NA Trueflame was pretty much unplayable tonight. 2 second delays in abilities and bar swapping, NPCs rubberbanding, 1k+ pings while my internet connection was smooth.

SwaminoNowlino

I encourage a Dev to come participate in PVP with my small group on Xbox NA. Please. I'll even give up running VMA during the event for a dev to come run with us. I want someone at ZOS to experience the game from our point of view and chat with us and let us know if the performance and experience is acceptable to them.

More than 10 people on your screen? Better count on at least one group member dropping and being unable to log back onto that character.
Want to use an ability? Good luck, 50/50 chance of it firing.
Weapon Swap? Keep on dreaming.

And this doesn't even get into the quality of the PVP. But that's a different BLAZING rant.

CompactVirus

It's so far beyond a joke now it's actually quite funny. Lag has always been bad in Cyrodiil and at some stages I can understand it like when defending or attacking the last emp keep, there are going to be high numbers over working the servers. I get it. But when you used to get dashboarded you could log back in (normally) with no trouble. Now I'm finding that I dashboard, attempt to log in, have a long load time which is pretty much indefinite (I have actually gone shopping and returned still in the long load screen.) So I hard reset and attempt again. 9 times out of 10 I just hit another load screen after a hard reset. How is anyone supposed to have fun with this?

Rasimir

@compactVirus When you have those indefinite loading screens after a hard crash/reset, try to log in to anothrt character, and then switch back to the one that crashed. For me, this solves the problem most of the time.

CompactVirus

@Rasimir I have learned that now still shouldn't happen though zenimax seem to be the only company that realise something is broke and then break it more haha

AlexTech0x

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

This thread is for ongoing discussions about Cyrodiil performance as we continue to make adjustments now and in the coming months. Most recently, regarding the Cyrodiil performance questions and what's going on there with the recent changes to some abilities in case you missed ESO Live...and the fancy graph which is now a meme thread...

We have been making changes to abilities bit by bit to save calculation cycles on the server. Using the example of Hemorrhage, this ability would check an area around the size of a 2700 meter circle around the Nightblade which critically hit. The Hemorrhage ability would then apply a bonus (minor Savagery) to all allies in that area.

"All allies" can be 1 ally or 100 allies, but the ability system first needs to get ALL the entities in that area first...monsters, players, siege weapons, friend and foe, then sort that list out to find allies, then apply the bonus to them. Changing the ability to Group only cuts out a lot of sorting the server would have to do. That change has helped a little bit, but not a ton, so obviously we're still digging.

The reason we're looking at abilities and the combat system at it's roots, is clear when you look at the difference between non-veteran Campaigns and veteran campaigns as we stated on ESO Live. The non-veteran Campaigns have better performance than veteran allowed Campaigns, and the biggest difference between those are the players making up the population of those campaigns and how much more the server has to calculate when higher level players fight each other. Veteran players simply have more "stuff" on their characters that has to be cycled into every combat calculation on the server. This means all the passives, weapon procs, blocks, roll dodges, potions, food, all of it, add up to the server needing to check all of that every second. This is why we're looking into how they're structured and their functionality at their basic operation level and making changes for performance reasons as we see opportunities to improve how they function.

We are also looking at how the server handles information from combat itself, so not all changes are going to be ability based, but also at the root of the server and how it processes the info coming from combat, movement, items, etc. Some of these changes will be deep rooted in the server code and some will be a bit more front facing, but we're making changes not just Ability wise like you've seen recently, but also how the servers handle combat at their core. Basically anything that can effect your character we are digging into and applying updates to them as we come across what we believe will improve performance.

This is an ongoing effort which we are resolved to delivering a solid PVP experience in ALL Campaigns, and we thank you for wholeheartedly for your continued support of ESO!

I think the main problem is how the client is made, people with overclocked machines and last model video cards get no more tan 25 frames in big zergs ( which happens all the time ). And it's not only PvP, trial areas also decrease FPS by A LOT compared with other areas.
Not to even mention the ping, as long as i enter Cyrodill i already have 100 more ping than usual, and in fights more than 500+.

Bashev

The performance is really terrible. It is clear that the dev team cannot handle the problems. But what amaze me in PC EU is how everybody plays only the 3 campaigns (Blackwater, Azura and TF). Especially TF is so laggy in prime time that there is no pleasure to participate in any battle. 6 months ago at least in prime time we had descent population in SB and EB but this is not the case anymore. It is a shame how bad ZoS treat the PvP players.

Waseem

i used to play ESO mostly at night..
3 days ago wanted to give PvP a try at primetime
played 5 mins with 791 ping and then alt+f4
feels to bad to find yourself unable to play a game properly when you invest more than enough money in your PC to run games on best performance while the game's company running all on low-end budgets and accepting crappy performance standards as optimal