Stuck in Combat = Lag? Maybe?

danthemann5

A few days ago my group was in discord lamenting the incredible lag in Cyrodiil while we were walking to our next destination. We were walking because we were all stuck in combat from our previous fight and couldn't mount. At one point, someone put forth an interesting theory:

The combat system could be what is causing the lag.

It's not uncommon after some fights to be stuck in combat mode for 5, 10, 20, or even 30 minutes sometimes. Sometimes you blink in and out of combat. It seems to be related to whom you fought last and whether they're in combat, even if it's not combat with you.

For instance, I fight with player X. We both disengage and go our separate ways for whatever reason. For some period of time after that, I may go into and out of combat, even at the other end of the map, even after not engaging anyone or anything. I assume that to mean that I am "tied" to player X, and every time he goes into combat after our initial fight, so do I, so long as neither of us has died.

What this implies is that the game or server or something tracks who you are in combat with and have been in combat with for the entire time you're alive until your next death. If I fight a ball group and leave the area alive, I'm still in combat with them since they are still alive and fighting. This may also extend to people I may have healed who are still in combat, or people in combat with people I have healed.

The bottom line is that's a LOT of things for the server or game to monitor and track. If I fight 30 people between deaths, it has to keep track of those 30 people to determine if they're in combat and thus if I am in combat. Multiply that by several hundred people, and we're looking at a huge amount of data, checks, calculations, etc.

It would explain why ball groups severely impact performance, since they can be in combat with hundreds of players between deaths, since they don't die very often. It explains why performance is good at lower population numbers and goes to crap once the big zergs start running.

I'm not an a programmer, or a developer, and I am certainly not an expert; I'm just a dumb engineer. But it makes sense from what I have observed. Certainly it's something worth looking into.

Defilted

Interesting thought

Ackwalan

i have noticed that for awhile after escaping a fight. I will be in and out of combat for a long time. But there is a work around. What you need to do is, sheath your weapons, go into stealth, open the crown store. When the game pulls you out of stealth you then have a brief window of not being in combat. This window is just long enough to mount up or swap gear or skills around, but you will go back into combat fairly quickly.

Kartalin

What usually works for me is letting all my buffs fall off, and keep teammates from casting group buffs like rapids as well.