Update on Cyrodiil Performance & Upcoming AOE Tests

TineaCruris

Iskaldt wrote: »

I find it very interesting that during midyear mayhem the servers were performing better than ever, even with all the extra players. i mean, there was still lag and desyncs at points but all in all it was a better experiance than usual. Even on the max capacity servers.

I swear the day the event ended i could feel the server performance going to ***... Almost like they tuned down the hamsters instantly as it ended.

They seriously need to add another NO CP Cyrodiil campaign. As the servers are at their very limit every day and i cant/wont play becouse of this.
If i enter the NOCP campaign during primetime all that will do is induce rage and make me quit becouse of the 3-5 second delay on every skill i do, if they even go off at all.

Personally i wouldnt be affected that much if they added a 3 second individual CD on aoe's but so many classes will die if this ever happened. Destroying the game and its player base more than it allready is.

Exactly.

Why aren't we talking about making the changes made for the MYM event permanent? Those changes mostly worked, and we can make incremental improvements from there.

Just revert things back to how they were during the MYM event.

It seems like this test plan is a distraction more than it is an attempted solution.

NBrookus

If you are going to destroy the combat system, just shut down Cyro.

Make it a new PVE zone with new story quests. Use new dungeons and trials to have the lore that justifies a truce and removes the daedra from upper IC. IC is new PVP zone, no CP and under 50 only; add campaigns as needed. Dramatically reduce TV values to reflect new population.

Now create open world PVP events -- caravans, sieges, etc. that people have to flag up to participate in (so no griefing pve'ers) and drop AP and resources.

Xael

This is a horrible idea and based on deceit. Just tell the damned truth already.

First off I have been playing this game since 2013. When it launched especially the first few months, the game had more people in Cyrodiil across several different full campaigns. More people were playing the game. Period.
More people were spamming AOE abilities. I can say this with 100% confidence and accuracy because back then when you were not fighting, you were filling up your ultimate. This was often done by equipping a resto staff and spamming healing ward, rapid, and combat prayer on as many people possible or other means.

Before someone tries to argue that Cyrodiil is more populated now, it's not. We had tons of campaigns back in 2014, several of which were full, Auriels Bow, Wabbajack, etc. You could go practically anywhere and find people to fight. This meant quest hub towns, delves, fishing spots, wherever. Today? No. You only have people at contested areas, occasionally the bridge, and that's about it. Most of the towns are dead and delves are usually empty. Now on NA we have one full campaign (alliance locked) and 1 that sometimes get's close (no cp).

The game had it's performance problems, but the clownshow that is cyrodiil today had nothing to do with AoE. The idea that powercreep and CP led to more AoE spam is an egregious lie.

Those of us who were here in April-August of 2014 who pvped regularly remember patch v.1.2.3. and the horror it brought to ESO. It made the PvP damn near impossible with frames dropping to 3. Even after the multiple patches and hotfixes it never really got much better. There are tons of threads on this even some done by me with screenshots showcasing it.





It took months of hotfixes and patches to make the game somewhat stable but it never recovered fully and only appeared to do so simply because by the end of 1.5 it was largely dead. The game didn't resurge until 1.6. When this happened the game started showing it's typical lag issues which over time would only get worse. You never rolled back updates, you only know how to move forward. You patch in something, it fails badly, you simply pave over it with something else. By the time 1 Tamriel rolled around I am sure your code looked like spaghetti.

The one thing this game had on other games in terms of PvP was no cooldowns on skills and few cast times. Being able to flow into other abilities via weaving was something not seen since Age of Conan and they were basically the first that I know of. You are in a unique position and this is what keeps a lot of players despite the many drawbacks and bad decisions.

The hallmark of ESO used to be the economy of motion and fluidity in combat. Putting in cast times and cooldowns is going to do more damage than good. The game never intended on these features so don't start now. Things are bad enough as is. A lot of people are going to quit over this.

zaria

Gelmir wrote: »

This direction of "solutions" is plain and simple stupid. No disrespect, but with this kind of "solutions" you guys show how desperate you are with the game's current situation. Maybe introduce client performance fixes as well, e.g. converting all player models to have one of basic 3-4 looks when 100+ of them converge to one location? Would help greatly. Not all Cyrodiil problems that look server-related are actually server-related you know.

This so much.
For some reasons I had no Issues on Cyrodil on my 6 year old rig, granted mostly on overflow campaigns.
In short if you can not be near an zerg in Alkir during double xp without freaking out you have no place in Cyrodil.
Note that doing surveys, delves and quests in Alkir away from the zergs is no issues still all are on the same server.

Have separate graphic settings for Cyrodil, perhaps even run an display test of something like an alkir zerg with boots.
You get 30 fps or your lower your settings.

TineaCruris

Crow_IX wrote: »

What does changing AOE's have to do with fixing these issues?

1: Positioning desync (targeting issues)
2: Health desync
3: Skills that take resources but don't activate (dud skills)
4: Skill delay

^this

Calgrin

Ever since the block change the performance has been worse at all times in Cyrodiil, ping spikes everywhere at random. Maybe have a look at it again.

zaria

Firstmep wrote: »

Remove smart healing, especially from aoe heals and thing like radiating regen.
Every time you cast it the server has to make a list of players in range, then choose the lowest hp target(s) and then run thru all the usual calculations like cp, healing bonuses etc.
Multiply this by 20,30 times in a ballgroup every second, and you start to see the problem.
It's really not hard to figure this out pls don't destroy combat.
@ZOS_RichLambert

Think ground based AoE / AoH dots is more of an issue as you have to calculate who is in or out,

likecats wrote: »

Lannharr wrote: »

With all due respect, isn't hardware upgrade a solution but not cost effective?

Infinite hardware resources is a solution to all inefficient code problems. But it's usually smarter to fix software inefficiencies. Transitioning from AOE spam to single target spam with intermittent AOE's will not destroy the game, but it will make performance a lot better.

Ofcourse a lot of skills and classes will need to be redesigned before this takes place.

Another option who is much better than any of the mother of all nerfs is to make Cyrodil an PvE zone.

You know that is an option who will be more cost effective and hit the bottom line way less than this mess.
No I would hate most of my best memories in ESO is in Cyrodil but if this mess hit live I quit.

Finedaible

I am glad that this post was made, simply so that we might better understand the situation is and what difficulties are causing issues within the game. This is finally communication and I thank you for that.

About the tests themselves, I am worried they will confirm what we already suspect about which solutions will need to be made to fix the problems. Hopefully the issues can be alleviated with Test #2's scenario (individual AoE cooldown), because otherwise the entire game and all the skills are going to have to be MASSIVELY overhauled and who knows how long that will take. I do not like the idea of ramping costs though, sometimes you need to move an AoE ability to follow a group or PvE boss and that would become very punishing in my opinion.

I assume all these changes to AoE will not be apply outside of PvP areas? If they have to rebalance all the abilities I worry that will destroy everything in group PvE settings.

Dusk_Coven

Put PvP on its own server running it's own ruleset so it won't keep messing up what's fun in PvE.
If this goes through on PvE you will probably have to rebalance all the endgame PvE achievements or have a cutoff where the "original" achievement can no longer be attained because of a drastically different ruleset.

Nomad1098

And there it is, the real reason for wanting to "help" low APM players. Combat is the only redeemable thing this game has left. The lore sucks, the story writing is subpar, the zones are bland, and character customization is loot box heavy. The sense of progression is always being diminished because single-digit percentages of the player base have clears on certain vet dungeons. Instead of fixing the problems, you keep deflecting. Every cyro performance "test" you've done has proven to be ineffective. Performance has been an issue for years. Do you honestly expect us to just believe that after all this time you just now thought of adding cooldowns? I highly doubt it. This is another effort to save face and pretend to care.

Galarthor

Thank you for finally addressing the elephant in the room!

But I think you are still trying to work on the "edges" instead of addressing the problem head on.
What you should do is making (most) AoEs in PvP unusable or undesirable to use (e.g. by reducing their damage by 90%). Add that debuff to battle spirit so that PvE is not affected b/c there AoE has a right to exist - unlike in PvP where you are supposed to fight other players on equal ground.

You could even make these adjustments more selective - i.e. have Puncturing Sweeps primary target damage stay the same but have the damage done to secondary targets be reduced by the debuff. Same goes for Sorc Curse, etc.

It's easy to implement. Cheap. Very effective. Only affects its intended target (i.e. ball groups) - if done correctly. Improves server performance by a lot. Improves quality of pvp as it returns to using your brain and skill to fight another player, rather than mindlessly spamming the same ability over and over again hoping to lag-out your opponents more than yourself.

ZarkingFrued

This will absolutely destroy this game for me and all of the players I know. The fluidity of ESO PvP is what makes it fun, and any of these changes proposed will absolutely suck out whatever fun is left in the game. I think we all knew that eventually this day would come, and I gotta say, it was fun while it lasted. Cool downs and ramping costs for regular AOE skills or any skill should absolutely never be implemented period. This is as bad as the light and heavy attack changes proposed. Seriously, if you want us to play this game at all then do not change the base mechanics and core of the game. I cannot stress enough how this will decimate the PVP population regardless of performance.

DirtyDeeds765

CaffeinatedMayhem wrote: »

Interesting, but maybe look at limiting casting in groups? How about 3 Eye of the Storm/Magicka Detonation per group? Maybe stop Hiti’s Hearth from stacking at all? Killing solo play isn’t going to fix the real issue: ball groups.

Ballgroups aren't the issue. The issue is the power of the servers.

Dusk_Coven

This is actually big news that they can isolate changes and tests like this to Cyrodiil.
Why did they never protect PvE by isolating skill/gear/set changes that were really meant to address PvP?

nemvar

I mean... this is horrible but at least we are getting balance/performance tests on live, something that didn't have precedent.

There is quite a bit of potential for this, I just hope it would be done with more sensible changes.

DirtyDeeds765

JamieAubrey wrote: »

I'm reading this and all I get is RIP BALL ZERGS

YES YES 10000000 TIMES YES

Yes, punish the people who coordinate and play the game with intelligence while grouped.

Radaney

Hey ZOS, hope you read this bit of feedback.

World of Warcraft has this exact same issue. Large scale PvP in World of Warcraft is actually impossible because of the amount of server commands, the server simply breaks.

Upgrading the servers has not even worked for Blizzard either so I'm going ZOS the benefit of the doubt here.

Blizzard also introduced GCD to try and make it better and it didn't work.

This is going to be a big challenge to fix and here's my personal suggestion;

1. Population Lock Cyrodil servers more tightly and introduce more individual Cyrodil servers. This will stop massive faction blobs and has the consequence of having lower cyrodil population per cyrodil server. The core of the problem is simply the amount of people in one space, try and fix this.

2. Nerf specific abilities. I think Test 3 will be the healthiest for the game. Add a ramping cost to purge specifically. I think ability CD needs to be the last priority, ramping costs is so much better and will allow for more fluid player challenge to overcome.

3. Heavily nerf regen in PvP. This will fix the problem, less things will be cast, more people will die in combat and this will alleviate the lag. Nerf regen sets, nerf regen passives, add a regen modifier exclusively to cyrodil that nerfs regen. Anything will help.

4. Following on from point 3, nerf DPS healing. Just annihilate it, destroy it. Make healers more useful. Stop people being able to be affected by 12 different rapid healing, only 1 should work. If a stronger one is hit then overwrite the previous one. This will promote healers. DPSers are too self sufficient.

5. Following on from point 4. Rework smart healing. Rapid Regen having to pick out who to heal in a blob of 50 people can't be good for the server. Especially when 15 of the people are casting Rapid Regen so there's like 1000 commands going off every 2 seconds. This is bad because all the DPSer's are using these healing spells. Buff healers and nerf dps healings. Make healing only work in your group. This will promote better group play whilst alleviating stress on the servers.

6. Remove CP from PvP. No one cares about CP PvP.

People saying 'just upgrade the servers' are just uneducated crybabies who have no idea what they're talking about, this server stability with overwhelming server commands is not exclusive to ESO, and ESO even has it worse than WoW because WoW does have cooldowns and still gets these issues. This is not an easy issue to fix.

JTD

Here's a couple of thoughts..
1. Cap AOE to a max amount of targets like in most mmorpgs focussed on pvp.
2. Make AOE (hit for more damage but) tick half as fast. Instead of 200 every 1 second make it 400 every 2 seconds...?

HybrisCross

WANted to burn houses at first, and in fact i can only just salute the fact ZOS is communicating for real now and hope they will stay in that way. I hope they will lsiten the community and not the little part of his pts community ruling for months the differents patchs, i hope they will stop to listen the complaining people and will hold their lines and assume what they want to do with their game.

Anyway i find all that improvment soluces are going in a flase way, for me, just add another super server, stop to stick with this laughable german server. Add capacity , get more monnay on the support.

Surely it will kill the economical system, and less money , but just expanding your capabilities instead of nerfing what you could allow to your players.. would be a supa change, a breath of fresh air to your gamers.

Have fun with your tests, and to all pvp-ers, just pray the gods ...

Eur0ed

Calypso589 wrote: »

Eur0ed wrote: »

NirnStorm wrote: »

IMO this test is gonna work out great, will definitely fix performance issues.
On another note, if we disabled combat altogether in PvP, that will also fix performance issues.

This test is basically "lets see if making our dynamic combat system less dynamic, will fix performance".
Of course it will. But at what cost?

I was going to write my own reply..but this is perfect.

Gutting the flow and feel of combat to fix performance will 100% work while also eliminating the one key thing that makes PVP in this game stand out.

Well right now the game in Cyrodiil is standing out for the wrong reasons (lag) so while there's understandable concern over the potential hit to the dynamics of combat in Cryodiil I have to ask then....what's your idea?

I don't presume to understand the inter workings of their systems, however if I in my professional life turned in a modification to user flow as severe as this in answer to a software performance issue I'd expect to be removed from the project.

DirtyDeeds765

There's only one solution to this problem. Use your companies truckloads of cash to fix the game's performance. It is 2020. It is not 2005. The game has been out for over 6 years. We should be way past this by now. We should be able to play cp pvp with 200 people per faction using all our abilities as we like with all of our sets we like with virtually no lag.

Styxius

Sounds nice but please don't push this to PvE

IEatCivics

ZarkingFrued wrote: »

This will absolutely destroy this game for me and all of the players I know. The fluidity of ESO PvP is what makes it fun, and any of these changes proposed will absolutely suck out whatever fun is left in the game. I think we all knew that eventually this day would come, and I gotta say, it was fun while it lasted. Cool downs and ramping costs for regular AOE skills or any skill should absolutely never be implemented period. This is as bad as the light and heavy attack changes proposed. Seriously, if you want us to play this game at all then do not change the base mechanics and core of the game. I cannot stress enough how this will decimate the PVP population regardless of performance.

I can only use my AOE abilities once every 3 seconds with the lag anyways, it doesn't fix the problem.

Sugaroverdose

JTD wrote: »

Here's a couple of thoughts..
1. Cap AOE to a max amount of targets like in most mmorpgs focussed on pvp.

Whole PvP community asked for AoE caps removal during all those lags for years, and here's hero with solution of lags, rofl.

mb10

I really dont think this is a good idea and would slow down combat pace by a very large amount

Is there no way you can invest into better servers, architects etc?

Dusk_Coven

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

This is not what we intended, but part of the fun of Elder Scrolls games is designing a build that has unexpected and powerful results, and we allowed it. However, as this behavior grew more prevalent, we reached a point where casting so many continuous AOE abilities in such a small area started to overwhelm the server process for that area, leading to situations where the "lag meter" spikes and the server becomes unresponsive for a period of time.

This is basically the story of combat decisions and design decisions in ESO.
It's out of their control and they let it out of their control.
Then they try to duct tape it even though it was always eventually going to break and cause problems.

You went ahead and "embraced" what happened with unrestricted builds for PvP just like you "embraced" animation cancelling.

What you should have done was first thought ahead to what problems it would have created instead of crossing your fingers.

HybrisCross

Radaney wrote: »

People saying 'just upgrade the servers' are just uneducated crybabies who have no idea what they're talking about, this server stability with overwhelming server commands is not exclusive to ESO, and ESO even has it worse than WoW because WoW does have cooldowns and still gets these issues. This is not an easy issue to fix.

maybe you need to learn to be respectfull. Do you know league of legend ? did you ever experimented this game the first two years with isntability, hours of queuiing and all ?
ANd you know what ? they just have resolve their problem in upgrading servers. And theirs servers experiment way more requiries than eso or wow ...

JasLaguna

PvE and PvP will never be able to be balanced the same way. If they all have the exact same skills, at least one will always be out of balance.

That said, please take a look at how Guild Wars 2 addressed this issue by balancing each separately. In PvE, specific skills that would break PvP would get adjusted ONLY within a PvP setting. In PvP, that same skill could have any of the following modifiers: added effect, subtracted effect, different cooldown timer, or an increased or decreased resource cost. If it needs to be tweaked in PvP, then tweak it just for PvP.

And as in Guild Wars 2, the tooltip would point out and highlight whatever difference it would have within a PvP setting, so that it was clear and easy to understand what the difference would be between the two settings.

I certainly don't want ESO to become GW2, and I love ESO immensely more, but GW2 got it right when they split PvE and PvP game balancing. In the vast majority of games that don't do this, balancing for one wrecks it for the other and it's always been like that in every game that keeps PvE and PvP skills the same. When you have a game with both PvE and PvP elements, being able to adjust the skills based on which setting you're in frees you up to balance the one without destroying the other.

The fact that this test is being conducted ONLY within Cyrodiil both proves my point and demonstrates my example! DO THAT! Adjust it within Cyrodiil! However you need to! But leave it out of the PvE realm!

*Edit: It's probably abundantly clear that I don't have anything to say about the actual PvP problems being tested, as I pretty exclusively just PvE. But that said, I sincerely dislike it when PvP needs fixing and the solution that is implemented adversely effects PvE balance and playstyle. Please, please separate the two so that the problems and solutions for one side will not bleed over into the other if it isn't also needed there.

Ixtyr

@ZOS_RichLambert @ZOS_Gilliam @ZOS_BrianWheeler -

Appreciate your candor here. Now allow me to be candid:

Nearly every "test" I've ever witnessed that your team has tried over the years, particularly for PvP, has been extremely one-sided and we've almost never seen or understood what the actual problems are that you're trying to solve. Not in their entirety, at least. We know "lag is bad and keeps getting worse", and that your servers have problems with mass calculations when people become "too efficient" at maintaining more buffs you originally designed us to be capable of maintaining back in beta.

Instead of seeing the full testing process of:

1. Diagnose the issue,
2. Communicate those findings,
3. Develop hypotheses,
4. Test those hypotheses and/or investigate them using existing data,
5. Propose potential solutions,
6. Implement solutions

We're usually only made privy to that final step, Point 6. You've gotten better about communicating a little bit more of #5, but we still don't really understand the first four points, as you're keeping virtually 100% of that entirely internal.

My question is - where do these four proposed tests fall? Are they actually #4, as I think most of us hope they are, as you're saying they are, where you have some hypothesis and you're seeking more data points and these four tests each offer you more potential data points that you cannot currently see?

Or are they just #6 again, except this time you're sparing us the agony of having to endure an entire patch and are doing it as a one-off? Because while your post states that you're treating this more as #4, each of these tests sound a lot like they're just a poorly-disguised #6 again.

As it stands, I can potentially see some of the value from Tests #3 & #4. That's a suggestion that many players have made for the past several years, and it's one that I suggested to your team several years ago when asked point blank how I'd suggest you slow down groups (like my own) without totally ruining the AvAvA environment. But this feels more like a "solution" than something you're actually trying to get new data points from.

Test #2 - a bit more concerning, I loathe the idea of any form of GCD or CD implemented en masse - and again, feels more like a "solution" than an actual test in the style of Point #4 above. But at least I can appreciate you may be looking to see which skills are most impacted, which classes would be most impacted, and where you'd need to gather more data to understand how to move forward before implementing - and I can appreciate you trying to force more of a true "rotation" across every class and build, even if conceptually I'd prefer the Test #3 or #4 method to achieve that goal.

Explain Test #1 though. What are you learning from Test #1 that you can't also learn from Test #2? I honestly can't think of anything unique that you can learn from this. It feels like the absolute worst band-aid you could possibly slap over top of this atrocious performance problem, gutting like 75% of all skills in your game and slowing PvP to a grinding halt.

I can't speak for everyone, but I can't imagine anyone who actually wants to play the game like this - am I understanding correctly that this means every single skill with any form of AoE check is put on a 3s GCD? If so...Honor The Dead? Check. Sap Essence? Check. Virtually any buff or debuff skill that targets a player other than yourself or your immediate target you're fighting? Check. Deep Fissure? Check. Even skills like Funnel Health, which is a single-target skill but then has an AoE range check for its accompanying heal? How does that work? Where do AoE proc sets (damage, buffs, heals) factor into this? If my set procs, does that reset my CD and make me wait even longer for my next skill? If every single one of these skills is now on a cooldown boxing each other out, this is a terrible band-aid. . .and again, I don't understand what else you could be learning from this "test" if it's not just a test to see whether or not players accept it, rather than actually gaining new insights into areas for optimization.

Explain that. Please. What do you actually want to learn? Clarify whether any of these are viewed as actual solutions you'll try to implement, or if you're trying to learn something else, and if it's the former and you're just doing a dry-run on a "fix". . .please, for the love of everything, do not bother with Test #1. Remove the Cyrodiil game mode entirely before you gut it to a shell of itself.

Tammany

People 3 years back "do not add more aoe you ruin the game turning into aoe fest!"
People now "let me spam my aoes do not ruin the game!"

It seems like they are doing right not listening the community since "you ruin the game" direction changes every year.