Server Talking Add-ons

Adamus

I believe the Add-on RDK and Add-on's like it that communicate with the server via Map Pings, etc., are possibly creating an unfair advantage to the Add-on user. I've come to this conclusion after engaging in fights with 24 & 12 player groups running this Add-on and having run the Add-on for less than a week myself. While perhaps not it's original design, the addon seems to create scenarios where the Add-on user can use their skills and their opponents can not use their skills. Additional side effects included increased damage mitigation from ground AoE's, including Siege. Allied players not running the Add-on seemed to gain the same benefits at times but found it difficult to use skills once enough players using the Add-on consolidated in one area. Negative effects for the non-user include the inability to swap bars, use skills, trigger ultimate, drink potion, fire siege, light/heavy attack and included phantom actions where animation & sound would trigger but resource consumption and effect/dmg would not register. Operating a unique PvP area like Cyrodiil doesn't come without it's own issues, whatever issues those maybe, this Add-on seems to only multiply them.

Given the choice between using skills (Add-on On) and not using skills (Add-on Off), I'm going to want those skills. While at first the number of groups running this Add-on remained small, the amount has grown exponentially since the group cap was lowered to 12. If this issue can not be addressed in a timely manner I'm going to be forced to recommend Add-on to be used in our groups as well.

Flangdoodle

I second this and would like to add a few thoughts:

RDK Group Tool and similar add-ons which ping the server seem to create an exploit which, intended or not, gives players running the add-on an unfair advantage over other players when fighting in Cyrodiil.

RDK Group Tool is a “Swiss Army Knife” add-on which, according to its own description, attempts to consolidate the functions of other add-ons into one, so that players can run one add-on instead of several. This is not to attack the creator of this add-on or discredit that premise, but merely to report that it appears to have the unintended side-effect of making gameplay against those who are running it next to impossible. Moreover, this is not an indictment of players who have been running this add-on. We are assuming that they don’t know that this is happening to players they encounter.

Our group members come from across the country and some from across the world. They have varying PC/ and internet setups from “potato” to “supercollider” and they are of varying skill levels and lengths of time in this game, yet they all report similar effects.

It’s one thing to lose a fair fight against other players, but this add-on and others like it have created a situation where players aren’t playing against other players -they’re playing against a glitch.

When we encounter groups (usually “ball-groups”) running this add-on or others like it:

- Our skills stop working (sometimes the player animation works but sometimes not, regardless there is no skill animation and clearly the skills have not affected the enemy players)

- Ultimate abilities will not fire off no matter how many times or how carefully the key is clicked

- Siege stops working (doesn’t fire even though apparently ready and often the message “the [siege] is busy)

- Light and heavy attacks stop working (no player animation at all no matter how often you click or how long you wait to click)

- Bar-swaps stop working (clicking the bar swap key does nothing)

- Potions stop working – the sound effect goes off, but there is no effect and the potion continues to display as ready to be used (i.e. the icon doesn’t “gray-out” as it does when the potion works)

- Often many in our group will completely crash and have to re-log into the game and into Cyrodiil.

- Damage often does not register on players in these groups. There are no damage numbers which appear, the health bars of the players in the group are unchanged. This has happened even when they are directly hit with cold fire siege. It’s not as if they are damaged and then healed, they’re just not taking damage.

This happens whenever we are in any proximity of these groups – sometimes even when we are outside of keeps where they are.

We know these groups are in fact running this add-on through contact with some of their members, because they post videos where the player recording the video has the interface of this add-on on their screen, and because some of these groups live-stream on Twitch and YouTube, and the add-on’s interface shows on the screen of the streamers.

This is not simply “lag”, because when we experience lag, our skills will eventually work – though late. Here the skills simply do not work at all – no damage registers on enemies, and even light attacks, potions, ultimates and siege stop working.

Neither is this simply being under the effect of Crowd Control skills (CC’s), because it has happened at times when we are all the way on the other side of a keep from these groups – and even sometimes when we are outside of a keep when they are inside.

We decided to run our own test where *we* were running this add-on for two nights. Here is what we observed:

- When we ran the add-on our skills both went off and registered damage on these groups and others nearly all the time.

- Performance wise, it felt as if a weight had been lifted from our gameplay

- While we were running this add-on, we noticed that many enemy players seemed to have difficulty “hitting” us.

At one point, I was actually able to stand right in the middle of groups of enemies who were trying to fight us – without a scratch – and without having cast any shields or buffs. Others in our group reported similar things. I can’t say for sure, but it appeared as if the enemies were trying to attack us but nothing was working – which is the same problem we had before we ran the add-on.

At times enemies seemed to either be frozen in place or noticeably slowed down – and this was when we hadn’t cast any CC’s.

Theories:

I personally don’t have much knowledge of computer code or servers -particularly as they apply to videogames; however, several in our group do. The consensus theory is that because this add-on attempts to do many things at once –especially functions which require data about where players in a group are on the map and where they are in proximity to one another, it makes too many “pings” to the server and that when people are running this add-on, there are so many requests being made of the server that data packets are lost, and players experience this as an inability to play the game.

The test(s) we ran for ourselves were with this add-on alone, with this add-on along with other add-ons, and with no add-ons at all.

Though we experienced slightly better performance with no add-ons, this was erased when we encountered the aforementioned groups, and we had the same problems mentioned above.

The determining factor seems to be this add-on, and possibly others like it which “ping” the servers. When we turned it on, the problem(s) nearly vanished and when we turned it off, things were as problematic as before.

Conclusion:

We appreciate the time and effort ZOS and the ESO teams have put into studying and testing the continuing performance problems in Cyrodiil. Our group has whole-heartedly endorsed these tests and have run full group raids nearly every night throughout every testing period so far. The effect that add-ons have on Cyrodiil performance has yet to be officially tested, but it desperately needs to be. If it’s possible to eliminate proc-sets for a test, it should be possible to eliminate add-ons for a testing period? In addition, this specific add-on needs to be examined at the code level, and as to how it interacts with the servers in Cyrodiil.

We shouldn’t have to run any add-on just to be able to play as intended, but if ZOS doesn’t do anything to fix this this I suppose we’ll have to run this one.

Sanctum74

All of those same problems happens on console and we have no add ons. It’s just years of neglecting their code and unfortunately I think it’s well past the time of no return.

They tried a year of performance fixes as well as various tests and nothing helps so I don’t think add ons will make a difference either.

Kwoung

Didn't we just have this same exact thread?
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/562981/other-peoples-addons#latest

NeillMcAttack

@ZOS_GinaBruno sorry to @ you. But would it be worth mentioning to the teams, or at least querying, whether or not these kinds of add-ons could have a negative effect on bandwidth and further congestion on the network. If there is a chance, would it be worth it to maybe develop a campaign rule set that disables these kinds of add-ons within Cyrodiil, whilst we are already invested in this kind of work?

FantasticFreddie

Using excessive addons will affect your own performance to a certain extent-- I notice if I accidentally take a big clunky addon like mm into Cyrodil for example-- but I think the extreme frustration from our console brothers and sisters should make it pretty clear they are not the problem overall.
And how on earth would it make sense that the people running these big fat addons aren't lagging out worse than the people they are fighting? I can't follow that logic at all.

vesselwiththepestle

FantasticFreddie wrote: »

And how on earth would it make sense that the people running these big fat addons aren't lagging out worse than the people they are fighting? I can't follow that logic at all.

Actually we ware lagging the same. The thing is, you use these addons to support a certain tactic and you will adapt, like using skills, that don't lag out so hard. Two examples:

You are experiencing heavy lag. What should you cast?
Bad choice: Uppercut
Good choice: Pulsar

That said, Master Merchant was making some troubles a while ago, too, and ZOS changed the abilities of add-ons like that. I would support a test which deactives whatever add-ons like that are doing. Do not think this would hurt ball groups in any way, though. Those add-ons are 99% QoL additions.

Flangdoodle

Comparing PC to consoles is like comparing cars and trains as modes of transportation: yes both can experience delays, both can break down, or have accidents - but it's not the same thing, and addressing a similar problem for each is not going to have the same cause or the same solution.

As far as the logic of other peoples add-ons affecting us, I thought addressed that, but regardless, I'm just reporting what I saw.. I'm totally open to another explanation, but this just seems to be the common denominator.

Lapin_Logic

Adamus wrote: »

I believe the Add-on RDK and Add-on's like it that communicate with the server via Map Pings, etc., are possibly creating an unfair advantage to the Add-on user. I've come to this conclusion after engaging in fights with 24 & 12 player groups running this Add-on and having run the Add-on for less than a week myself. While perhaps not it's original design, the addon seems to create scenarios where the Add-on user can use their skills and their opponents can not use their skills. Additional side effects included increased damage mitigation from ground AoE's, including Siege. Allied players not running the Add-on seemed to gain the same benefits at times but found it difficult to use skills once enough players using the Add-on consolidated in one area. Negative effects for the non-user include the inability to swap bars, use skills, trigger ultimate, drink potion, fire siege, light/heavy attack and included phantom actions where animation & sound would trigger but resource consumption and effect/dmg would not register. Operating a unique PvP area like Cyrodiil doesn't come without it's own issues, whatever issues those maybe, this Add-on seems to only multiply them.

Given the choice between using skills (Add-on On) and not using skills (Add-on Off), I'm going to want those skills. While at first the number of groups running this Add-on remained small, the amount has grown exponentially since the group cap was lowered to 12. If this issue can not be addressed in a timely manner I'm going to be forced to recommend Add-on to be used in our groups as well.

Wonder if this is why "No further Cyrodiil testing until update 31", because it was never "Lag" it was hacks (unintentionally)

alterfenixeb17_ESO

Flangdoodle wrote: »

Theories:

I personally don’t have much knowledge of computer code or servers -particularly as they apply to videogames; however, several in our group do. The consensus theory is that because this add-on attempts to do many things at once –especially functions which require data about where players in a group are on the map and where they are in proximity to one another, it makes too many “pings” to the server and that when people are running this add-on, there are so many requests being made of the server that data packets are lost, and players experience this as an inability to play the game.

The test(s) we ran for ourselves were with this add-on alone, with this add-on along with other add-ons, and with no add-ons at all.

Though we experienced slightly better performance with no add-ons, this was erased when we encountered the aforementioned groups, and we had the same problems mentioned above.

The determining factor seems to be this add-on, and possibly others like it which “ping” the servers. When we turned it on, the problem(s) nearly vanished and when we turned it off, things were as problematic as before.

Now that part is interesting as it could indeed be possible under condition that communication related to certain activities is done in similar way (example given for character position):

1. Server sends event on new character position
2. Client receives event and passes it to UI in form of blocking/synchronous operation
3. UI (including addons) processes it and gets back to client with confirmation that update is completed
4. Client sends back update to server that event has been successfully processed

If this or similar approach is used then it is a problem for a few reasons:

• It is an exploit - addons can utilize it by for instance creating never ending operations. Either client gets broken (in case above player never gets updates on where others are currently) or server has issue as i.e. suddenly too many updates may come from client. May result in for example need for recalculations.
• It is a bug basically - validity of information present on the screen may be always questionable

I have not tested it for this behavior but I hope it is not what is going on.

Kwoung

alterfenixeb17_ESO wrote: »

Flangdoodle wrote: »

Theories:

I personally don’t have much knowledge of computer code or servers -particularly as they apply to videogames; however, several in our group do. The consensus theory is that because this add-on attempts to do many things at once –especially functions which require data about where players in a group are on the map and where they are in proximity to one another, it makes too many “pings” to the server and that when people are running this add-on, there are so many requests being made of the server that data packets are lost, and players experience this as an inability to play the game.

The test(s) we ran for ourselves were with this add-on alone, with this add-on along with other add-ons, and with no add-ons at all.

Though we experienced slightly better performance with no add-ons, this was erased when we encountered the aforementioned groups, and we had the same problems mentioned above.

The determining factor seems to be this add-on, and possibly others like it which “ping” the servers. When we turned it on, the problem(s) nearly vanished and when we turned it off, things were as problematic as before.

Now that part is interesting as it could indeed be possible under condition that communication related to certain activities is done in similar way (example given for character position):

1. Server sends event on new character position
2. Client receives event and passes it to UI in form of blocking/synchronous operation
3. UI (including addons) processes it and gets back to client with confirmation that update is completed
4. Client sends back update to server that event has been successfully processed

If this or similar approach is used then it is a problem for a few reasons:

• It is an exploit - addons can utilize it by for instance creating never ending operations. Either client gets broken (in case above player never gets updates on where others are currently) or server has issue as i.e. suddenly too many updates may come from client. May result in for example need for recalculations.
• It is a bug basically - validity of information present on the screen may be always questionable

I have not tested it for this behavior but I hope it is not what is going on.

When to many updates/requests come from your client, the game kicks you out with a warning about message spamming. It is how ZOS deals with it now. So if it was done either purposefully or accidentally (like trying to load guild history to quickly by spamming E), you will be booted to login.

alterfenixeb17_ESO

Kwoung wrote: »

alterfenixeb17_ESO wrote: »

Flangdoodle wrote: »

Theories:

I personally don’t have much knowledge of computer code or servers -particularly as they apply to videogames; however, several in our group do. The consensus theory is that because this add-on attempts to do many things at once –especially functions which require data about where players in a group are on the map and where they are in proximity to one another, it makes too many “pings” to the server and that when people are running this add-on, there are so many requests being made of the server that data packets are lost, and players experience this as an inability to play the game.

The test(s) we ran for ourselves were with this add-on alone, with this add-on along with other add-ons, and with no add-ons at all.

Though we experienced slightly better performance with no add-ons, this was erased when we encountered the aforementioned groups, and we had the same problems mentioned above.

The determining factor seems to be this add-on, and possibly others like it which “ping” the servers. When we turned it on, the problem(s) nearly vanished and when we turned it off, things were as problematic as before.

Now that part is interesting as it could indeed be possible under condition that communication related to certain activities is done in similar way (example given for character position):

1. Server sends event on new character position
2. Client receives event and passes it to UI in form of blocking/synchronous operation
3. UI (including addons) processes it and gets back to client with confirmation that update is completed
4. Client sends back update to server that event has been successfully processed

If this or similar approach is used then it is a problem for a few reasons:

• It is an exploit - addons can utilize it by for instance creating never ending operations. Either client gets broken (in case above player never gets updates on where others are currently) or server has issue as i.e. suddenly too many updates may come from client. May result in for example need for recalculations.
• It is a bug basically - validity of information present on the screen may be always questionable

I have not tested it for this behavior but I hope it is not what is going on.

When to many updates/requests come from your client, the game kicks you out with a warning about message spamming. It is how ZOS deals with it now. So if it was done either purposefully or accidentally (like trying to load guild history to quickly by spamming E), you will be booted to login.

Actually one does not exclude another. First "too many" is relative term (how many is too many?). Second this mechanism is indeed in place but rather for cases where event is triggered by client and not when client is just purposely or not slacking with processing what was already triggered somewhere else. Situation I described is not for case when single client triggers 100 events that need to be propagated to other clients. It is case when 100 clients trigger 1 even each (so not too many) and information about this 100 is just propagated. Slacking client would not be spamming anything that is not expected by server but would just follow an ordinary routine designed by developers in order to maintain status sync between multiple clients. Also most certainly it is not increasing amount of updates sent to server as it does mess only with it's timing.

Sanct16

It's always helpful to look at the proportions of what is being discussed.

The only way to exchange information between clients at a meaningful rate is through map pings. These are limited to 1 map ping per second. Over a short duration a higher rate is possible, however you will eventually get kicked if you exceed this rate, so no group-share addon that I know of is pinging more than once a second.

This one ping event needs to be relayed to other group members, so for n players we have n events being send to the server and n*n events being send from the server to players. So in a 12 man group this cumulates to 12 + 12*12 = 156 events being caused.

So, let's put this into perspective: Is this a lot?
For simplicity, let's only look at combat events. Everything that happens in a fight is being processed as combat events. Amongst other things, healing and damage are handled as combat events. Let's narrow into these:
Whenever a player heals himself or someone else, a combat event is being sent to every player in a big radius around the person, and of course the same happens when a player deals damage.

To get a very rough estimate of a lower bound for the amount of combat events being caused, let's assume that every player in a fight keeps a hot up on himself, which ticks every 2 seconds. Each of those ticks will send 1 event to every player in the area, so let's look at the amount of events being caused for a total of n players in the area, since we assume that all of these players each trigger such a tick, it's a total of n * n events being sent from the server.
n = 10: 10 * 10 = 100 every 2 seconds
n = 50: 50 * 50 = 2500 every 2 seconds
n = 80: 80 * 80 = 6400 every 2 seconds

With this extremly conservative estimation we see that only healing events outweigh the addon communication by a lot. Now keep in mind that players might keep up several hots, apply several DoTs to enemies (maybe even AoE DoTs from sieges that damage several enemies per second). Now also keep in mind that a lot of skills in fact do multiple things (buff allies around you with a class passive, apply a snare, apply a seperate buff to yourself), which get handled with seperate combat events.

The real issue here is the scaling on players being present at a fight. Even if these players don't do a lot except keep up vigor on themself, the amount of sever stress still increases.

Now, also keep in mind that the server needs to update the positions of all players around 20 times per second and the positions of all players to each player.
For 80 people, that's another 80*80*20 = 128.000 "events" per second.

So, the 156 events for map pings are completly dominated by other information the server and client exchange.

alterfenixeb17_ESO

Sanct16 wrote: »

This one ping event needs to be relayed to other group members, so for n players we have n events being send to the server and n*n events being send from the server to players. So in a 12 man group this cumulates to 12 + 12*12 = 156 events being caused.

That logic is flawed for a two reasons:

• When player moves client does not have to care who is affected. In fact client may not even have this information as other players for instance are also moving and therefore client cannot even decide on how big is N. Only server is expected to have all VALID information that is up to date.
• Player position update is not interesting for just one group but for everyone in some range as well. For that reason even needs to be propagated not to just 11 more people but to everyone for instance within drawing range (so for example like 100 metres). So not 11 but more than hundred in some bigger 3 faction fight

So in fact assuming that event is triggered in some trial then it would take:

1. 1 event from client to server to trigger rest of updates
2. 11 events to rest of clients to propagate change

Altogether 12 events. Or if you count feedback information as separate event (which in case I have originally described would unlikely be as it was about synchronous actions) then it is:

1. 1 event from client to start rest of updates
2. 1 event as confirmation for receive
3. 11 events to propagate change
4. 11 responses as separate events
5. 1 or 11 response preparations to original client should that be needed

So total up to 35 events but this time non blocking so most likely causing less lag (no waiting for all client side UI updates to be completed, no waiting for all clients to confirm they are don and so on). In case of Cyro assuming that 100 is pop lock per faction and everyone is within valid range for update then those communications would be respectively:

1. 1 event from client to server to trigger rest of updates
2. 3 * 100 - 1 events to rest of clients to propagate change

So total 300 events per single status update which actually is in line with your conclusion however:

1. 1 event from client to start rest of updates
2. 1 event as confirmation for receive
3. 3 * 100 - 1 events to propagate change
4. 3 * 100 - 1 responses as separate events
5. 1 or 299 response preparations to original client should that be needed

So total up to 899 events per single status update. Which makes it off any charts. This topic is much wider really.
But regardless this does not even matter since we are talking here character position update which, by definition, is being sent regardless of addons (players need to move somehow after all). Given info I was referring to originally I still see what I described originally as most likely cause should this whole thing about such addons impact on lag be true. But enough of this theory crafting, while this is fun subject related to information security we still may be getting too off topic here unfortunately.

Adernath

Interesting ... I didn't even know such things are possible. In that case it needs to be addressed asap.

Adamus wrote: »

Allied players not running the Add-on seemed to gain the same benefits at times but found it difficult to use skills once enough players using the Add-on consolidated in one area. Negative effects for the non-user include the inability to swap bars, use skills, trigger ultimate, drink potion, fire siege, light/heavy attack and included phantom actions where animation & sound would trigger but resource consumption and effect/dmg would not register. Operating a unique PvP area like Cyrodiil doesn't come without it's own issues, whatever issues those maybe, this Add-on seems to only multiply them.

I observed such effects usually when fighting certain strong individuals (either solo or in small scale). Mostly the effect that my skills can not be fired off on time. I was always wondering why is it so laggy when I fight them.

InvitationNotFound

Adamus wrote: »

I believe the Add-on RDK and Add-on's like it that communicate with the server via Map Pings, etc., are possibly creating an unfair advantage to the Add-on user. I've come to this conclusion after engaging in fights with 24 & 12 player groups running this Add-on and having run the Add-on for less than a week myself. While perhaps not it's original design, the addon seems to create scenarios where the Add-on user can use their skills and their opponents can not use their skills. Additional side effects included increased damage mitigation from ground AoE's, including Siege. Allied players not running the Add-on seemed to gain the same benefits at times but found it difficult to use skills once enough players using the Add-on consolidated in one area. Negative effects for the non-user include the inability to swap bars, use skills, trigger ultimate, drink potion, fire siege, light/heavy attack and included phantom actions where animation & sound would trigger but resource consumption and effect/dmg would not register. Operating a unique PvP area like Cyrodiil doesn't come without it's own issues, whatever issues those maybe, this Add-on seems to only multiply them.

Given the choice between using skills (Add-on On) and not using skills (Add-on Off), I'm going to want those skills. While at first the number of groups running this Add-on remained small, the amount has grown exponentially since the group cap was lowered to 12. If this issue can not be addressed in a timely manner I'm going to be forced to recommend Add-on to be used in our groups as well.

Here we go again.

Lag exists also on console. The server do not have anything to do with consols and still aren't able to handle a lot of players.

A map ping contains 4 bytes. Of course it has to be sent to the group members. But overall, this is nothing in camparison to everything else that is being sent.

And other parts of your logic are flawed as well.
It is absolutely not true that AddOn users are able to use skills and people without the AddOn aren't. People in the group, not having the AddOn, should have t he same benefit? Who comes up with something like that. That does not make any sense at all.
Why would a map ping cause an issue for an ungrouped player but not for someone in the group? Someone who is actually receiving the map ping?
In addition, running the AddOn means that there is more code executed on the client. While it should not really make a difference (maybe a frame every minute) it sill means that the AddOn user has a (not noticable) worse client performance.

I don't really get how someone can come up with something like you just did.
And you completely neglect the fact that the issue appears when many players are at one spot. Ever considered that the server simply cannot handle that many players? Same as it is an issue on console? Holy...

And yes, go use the AddOn. You probably should have done this from the begging. You might have realized that nothing would have changed for you. At least not in regards of lag and performance issues.
I can assure you that every group running with an AddOn that sens map pings is suffering from bad performance. It isn't rare that i smash a button for 3-5 seconds and nothing happens.

Flangdoodle wrote: »

I second this and would like to add a few thoughts:

RDK Group Tool and similar add-ons which ping the server seem to create an exploit which, intended or not, gives players running the add-on an unfair advantage over other players when fighting in Cyrodiil.

No. It makes life more decent, but so do all AddOns. The ZOS ToS do allow them. If there is an issue, ZOS will restrict the API (as seen in Miat's).

Flangdoodle wrote: »

RDK Group Tool is a “Swiss Army Knife” add-on which, according to its own description, attempts to consolidate the functions of other add-ons into one, so that players can run one add-on instead of several. This is not to attack the creator of this add-on or discredit that premise, but merely to report that it appears to have the unintended side-effect of making gameplay against those who are running it next to impossible. Moreover, this is not an indictment of players who have been running this add-on. We are assuming that they don’t know that this is happening to players they encounter.

An AddOn does not make a bad player to a good player. A good group without AddOn will defeat a bad group running with an AddOn.

You make your life here to easy by pretending that using an AddOn makes all the difference.

Flangdoodle wrote: »

Our group members come from across the country and some from across the world. They have varying PC/ and internet setups from “potato” to “supercollider” and they are of varying skill levels and lengths of time in this game, yet they all report similar effects.

It’s one thing to lose a fair fight against other players, but this add-on and others like it have created a situation where players aren’t playing against other players -they’re playing against a glitch.

Nope. An AddOn does not play for you.
It only shows information that is already available.
The map pings basically send the following information (at least in RdK Group Tool):
- Ulti Status (you could easily say this in TS)
- Your healing and damage numbers (which does not really matter in a fight at all)
- Synergies that you took and are on cooldown (Well again, TS)
- Amount of debuffs (which most of the time do not matter as most groups have someone that takes care of this anyway)

Furthermore, it can be used to share the group's equipment with the leader (there are restrictions in place to prevent a random player from accessing and querying that information).
I hope i didn't forgett anything here.

You might want to work on your group setup (roles / equipment) and on how communication in your group works. It certainly has a bigger impact on your group play than an AddOn ever could.

Flangdoodle wrote: »

When we encounter groups (usually “ball-groups”) running this add-on or others like it:

- Our skills stop working (sometimes the player animation works but sometimes not, regardless there is no skill animation and clearly the skills have not affected the enemy players)

This has nothing to do with an AddOn. And this happens to everyone, not only your group. It is also an issue for the ball groups.

Flangdoodle wrote: »

- Ultimate abilities will not fire off no matter how many times or how carefully the key is clicked

Same as for everyone...

Flangdoodle wrote: »

- Siege stops working (doesn’t fire even though apparently ready and often the message “the [siege] is busy)

Same as for everyone...

Flangdoodle wrote: »

- Light and heavy attacks stop working (no player animation at all no matter how often you click or how long you wait to click)

Same as for everyone...

Flangdoodle wrote: »

- Bar-swaps stop working (clicking the bar swap key does nothing)

The same...

Flangdoodle wrote: »

- Potions stop working – the sound effect goes off, but there is no effect and the potion continues to display as ready to be used (i.e. the icon doesn’t “gray-out” as it does when the potion works)

The same...

Flangdoodle wrote: »

- Often many in our group will completely crash and have to re-log into the game and into Cyrodiil.

And again...

Flangdoodle wrote: »

- Damage often does not register on players in these groups. There are no damage numbers which appear, the health bars of the players in the group are unchanged. This has happened even when they are directly hit with cold fire siege. It’s not as if they are damaged and then healed, they’re just not taking damage.

Don't siege, fight

Flangdoodle wrote: »

This happens whenever we are in any proximity of these groups – sometimes even when we are outside of keeps where they are.

You basically described lag. As it has been for years. And this always has been an issue (sometimes a bit more than other times).
You just took ZOS' performance issues and blamed it on an AddOn.
Everyone struggles with the same issues. Regardless of your platform. Even before the first AddOn offering things with map pings, there has been lag and performance issues.

Flangdoodle wrote: »

We know these groups are in fact running this add-on through contact with some of their members, because they post videos where the player recording the video has the interface of this add-on on their screen, and because some of these groups live-stream on Twitch and YouTube, and the add-on’s interface shows on the screen of the streamers.

Most groups are using some sort of AddOn but that does not really matter as they do not cause the lag.

Flangdoodle wrote: »

This is not simply “lag”, because when we experience lag, our skills will eventually work – though late. Here the skills simply do not work at all – no damage registers on enemies, and even light attacks, potions, ultimates and siege stop working.

Welcome to Cyrodiil. But again, not an AddOn issue.

Flangdoodle wrote: »

Neither is this simply being under the effect of Crowd Control skills (CC’s), because it has happened at times when we are all the way on the other side of a keep from these groups – and even sometimes when we are outside of a keep when they are inside.

You can be at BRK and experience lag when there is some action at Glade. Blame ZOS, not an AddOn.

Flangdoodle wrote: »

We decided to run our own test where *we* were running this add-on for two nights. Here is what we observed:

- When we ran the add-on our skills both went off and registered damage on these groups and others nearly all the time.

- Performance wise, it felt as if a weight had been lifted from our gameplay

- While we were running this add-on, we noticed that many enemy players seemed to have difficulty “hitting” us.

I doubt that. You might have just picked good days for raiding.
Increase the sample size and you'll see that you are wrong.

Flangdoodle wrote: »

At one point, I was actually able to stand right in the middle of groups of enemies who were trying to fight us – without a scratch – and without having cast any shields or buffs. Others in our group reported similar things. I can’t say for sure, but it appeared as if the enemies were trying to attack us but nothing was working – which is the same problem we had before we ran the add-on.

This is normal when the server dies and has nothing to do with an AddOn. When your skills only work every 5 seconds, that's what will happen. People will run through each other and nobody will dies as skills are just completely off and nothing will work. This is not because of an AddOn (map pings) it is because the server can't handle that many players.

Flangdoodle wrote: »

At times enemies seemed to either be frozen in place or noticeably slowed down – and this was when we hadn’t cast any CC’s.

Another great bug we all love.

Flangdoodle wrote: »

Theories:

I personally don’t have much knowledge of computer code or servers -particularly as they apply to videogames; however, several in our group do. The consensus theory is that because this add-on attempts to do many things at once –especially functions which require data about where players in a group are on the map and where they are in proximity to one another, it makes too many “pings” to the server and that when people are running this add-on, there are so many requests being made of the server that data packets are lost, and players experience this as an inability to play the game.

You should not listen to these people as it is absolute nonesense.

In RdK Group Tool, player locations are only used for distance calculation (this only affects group members as the API does not really allow anything else). The location of the group members are already on the client, there is no need to send anything to the server to get these locations. There should not be any additional traffic or server load. No realizing this just shows that you probably should not listen to people that haven't spent a single minute on looking at someone's code.

In addition, the map pings are in general restricted to be sent every second. You might stretch this a little bit for a (really) short time, but that is isn't the case for AddOns like RdK Group Tool. I was trying to send more at the early beginning when writting that AddOn and you don't really want to send more as it does not take very long to get kicked from the server.

So no, this assumption is simply wrong.

Flangdoodle wrote: »

The test(s) we ran for ourselves were with this add-on alone, with this add-on along with other add-ons, and with no add-ons at all.

Though we experienced slightly better performance with no add-ons, this was erased when we encountered the aforementioned groups, and we had the same problems mentioned above.

There are many variables here. It all depends on the amount of player and action on the whole map.

Flangdoodle wrote: »

The determining factor seems to be this add-on, and possibly others like it which “ping” the servers. When we turned it on, the problem(s) nearly vanished and when we turned it off, things were as problematic as before.

Nonesense, as explained above.

Flangdoodle wrote: »

Conclusion:

We appreciate the time and effort ZOS and the ESO teams have put into studying and testing the continuing performance problems in Cyrodiil.Our group has whole-heartedly endorsed these tests and have run full group raids nearly every night throughout every testing period so far. The effect that add-ons have on Cyrodiil performance has yet to be officially tested, but it desperately needs to be. If it’s possible to eliminate proc-sets for a test, it should be possible to eliminate add-ons for a testing period? In addition, this specific add-on needs to be examined at the code level, and as to how it interacts with the servers in Cyrodiil.

We shouldn’t have to run any add-on just to be able to play as intended, but if ZOS doesn’t do anything to fix this this I suppose we’ll have to run this one.

Noone forces you to install an AddOn. And to be honest, using an AddOn won't make your group better.

Flangdoodle

InvitationNotFound wrote: »

]

Here we go again.

Lag exists also on console. The server do not have anything to do with consols and still aren't able to handle a lot of players [...]

Good grief. Dostoyevsky is rolling in his grave with jealousy at the length of that post.

So many words to basically ignore what we said and say "git guud".

Glad you enjoy running RDK. Have fun with it!

InvitationNotFound

Flangdoodle wrote: »

InvitationNotFound wrote: »

]

Here we go again.

Lag exists also on console. The server do not have anything to do with consols and still aren't able to handle a lot of players [...]

Good grief. Dostoyevsky is rolling in his grave with jealousy at the length of that post.

So many words to basically ignore what we said and say "git guud".

Glad you enjoy running RDK. Have fun with it!

Well, i did not ignore what you said, I made comments on what you said and came to completely other conclusion.
You're writing about distance calculations and stuff without any knowledge because some people told you so. Yet, they probably haven't read a single line of code of the aforementioned addon.

Instead of having a discussion, you deny that discussion by coming up with such a comment.
Being unable to discuss actually shows what your "arguments" are worth. Not much.

And see, here's the thing. A decent person would ask questions if he has no idea about what he's talking and wouldn't come up with weird theories that are simply wrong. You can proof that you're wrong by reading the addon code.
Yet, you prefer to write about Dostoyevsky. gz gg.

Flangdoodle

LOL. I admitted in my post that I didn't know anything about the calculations, etc., however you're mistaken - the people I spoke to read through your code with a fine-toothed comb. They were actually very impressed with your programming of it.

By the way- you might have mentioned that you were the author of the addon. [snip]

Sorry if you were hurt by my relating what we noticed regarding your addon. I went out of my way to say that my post was not meant to attack you or your work on it. [snip]

[Edited to remove Baiting]

InvitationNotFound

Flangdoodle wrote: »

LOL. I admitted in my post that I didn't know anything about the calculations, etc., however you're mistaken - the people I spoke to read through your code with a fine-toothed comb. They were actually very impressed with your programming of it.

By the way- you might have mentioned that you were the author of the addon. [snip]

Sorry if you were hurt by my relating what we noticed regarding your addon. I went out of my way to say that my post was not meant to attack you or your work on it. [snip]

[snip]

I thought that would be quite obvious.... besides i do not believe that it matters if I'm the author or not, it does not change anything on the facts.

In regards of the calculations:
You actually said that the people, reading the addon agree with this statement.
I don't know their skill set or what they've read, but it is simply not how it works.

[snip]

And I can assure you, that I certainly don't take this personal. Some people like my addons, others don't. I don't really care about that. I even don't care if some people believe that ZOS should restrict the API further or completely disable addons. I do not care. You can freely discuss that and I wont be offended or something like that.

[snip]
And that's the place where the decent person comes in play. A decent person, imho, would educate himself and not just write some weird stuff. BS travels fast and it makes things even more annoying and wastes a lot of time for many of us. Just ask if you do not understand something. There's nothing wrong with doing that.

You might want to read this thread here incl. my comment there: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7150478/#Comment_7150478

It's about the same thing and as you may see... I don't mind answering questions and giving my opinion about it. If you would have wanted that, you could have:
- Sent me an ingame Mail
- Sent me a private message on ESOUI (or addon comment)
- Sent me a private message on these forums here

In all likelihood you would have received an answer. That would have all been fine with me. I don't mind spending a few minutes (or sometimes longer) to clear things up.

And as offered in the other thread, I'm also willing to answer questions here if it comes to one of my addons.
Feel free to ask.

[Edited to remove Baiting]

Flangdoodle

Oh and BTW? Signatures don't display on mobile.

Adamus

Painful as it will be to run with no add-ons in Cyrodiil, I would humbly request Tests for No-Add-Ons & Client Side Only Add-Ons Campaigns, if that is indeed possible. It isn't about any particular Add-On, it's about testing an environment in which any number of Listed & Unlisted Add-Ons can be taken out of the equation. In short, be it RDK or my beloved mini map, please allow us to test environments where Add-Ons are not part of the equation.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

@Adamus

I'm happy to test this independently with you. [snip] You can run the add-on and we won't run it.

I'm confident you will find that we are both able to use skills. The only affecting factor will be whether there is a zerg fight on the other side of the map or not.

Additionally if you have at all looked into the crashes approaching keeps the game crashes out rendering player characters when there are too many. There are certain game settings you can change to lessen the chance of this. Add-ons are not a factor there.

[Edited to remove Baiting]

ZOS_ConnorG

Greetings all,

After review we have had to edit or remove several posts for rule violations, mostly Baiting. Ensure when engaging in a discussion that you keep said discussion civil, constructive, and within the rules. If you see a post that is baiting in nature do not engage it with further hostility and instead report it for the moderators to review.

You are welcome to review the Community Rules here.

Adamus

It wasn't about one Add-On during the no Add-on test, it was about zero Add-Ons. Rather than another No-Add-on test in an Add-On environment, I'm requesting a No-Add-on test in a No-Add-on environment. Groups are welcome to run their own tests of No-Add-Ons but the number one issue noted throughout our tests was that we were a No-Add-On group in an Add-On Environment engaging Add-On groups.

Add-On:
Asked players to download RDK specifically and was able to get 2 groups running that Add-On with a 3rd with players either not running the Add-On or groups 1&2 were full. Players not running the Add-On voiced "Event" issues even during non-PvP encounters. PvP encounters required enemy forces to regroup and start accompanying additional forces when engaging us. Groups we had previous encountered before tests displaying "Event" issues appeared to be on an "Even" playing field and required them to regroup as well.

No-Add-Ons:
Throughout our tests we had a group of picking up players who were using add-ons as turning off All Add-ons was a bridge too far. Voices of liberation quickly changed to voiced discomfort with players turning off all their Add-Ons but was able to run a 1-2 full groups with no Add-Ons, asked players at min. avoid any Map Ping Add-Ons. Guild members familiar with programing reviewed the code and provided lists of Add-Ons to what I specifically meant by map-ping Add-Ons. Players noticed & voiced considerable decrease in quality of gameplay when engaging in PvP, particularly with groups known for "Event" conflicts.

Having participated in a number of PvP battles I've noticed a particular flavor of lag. Most noticeably from the group that introduced RDK to me almost a year ago and was interested in training our group on how to run like they do. That event didn't happen, the group switched factions and every time they entered our zone they were often identified by the Signiant lag signature they seem to have carried. Since then it has been noticeable when a group adopts RDK or Add-Ons like it as we engage them.

RDK Group Tool isn't the only group leader Add-On on the market, there are a number of Add-Ons listed and unlisted that do the same things. RDK itself comprise of several other Add-Ons used in PvP and if the effects of such Add-Ons effect player experience it should be either removed or integrated. With that said, I can not ask players to stop running Add-Ons, they are a vital tool in any MMORPG, particularly one with no built in mini map. This is why I've also requested a test in which Add-Ons that are exclusively client side are allowed and cut the cord on any Add-on that relays information through the server.

InvitationNotFound

Adamus wrote: »

It wasn't about one Add-On during the no Add-on test, it was about zero Add-Ons. Rather than another No-Add-on test in an Add-On environment, I'm requesting a No-Add-on test in a No-Add-on environment. Groups are welcome to run their own tests of No-Add-Ons but the number one issue noted throughout our tests was that we were a No-Add-On group in an Add-On Environment engaging Add-On groups.

Add-On:
Asked players to download RDK specifically and was able to get 2 groups running that Add-On with a 3rd with players either not running the Add-On or groups 1&2 were full. Players not running the Add-On voiced "Event" issues even during non-PvP encounters. PvP encounters required enemy forces to regroup and start accompanying additional forces when engaging us. Groups we had previous encountered before tests displaying "Event" issues appeared to be on an "Even" playing field and required them to regroup as well.

No-Add-Ons:
Throughout our tests we had a group of picking up players who were using add-ons as turning off All Add-ons was a bridge too far. Voices of liberation quickly changed to voiced discomfort with players turning off all their Add-Ons but was able to run a 1-2 full groups with no Add-Ons, asked players at min. avoid any Map Ping Add-Ons. Guild members familiar with programing reviewed the code and provided lists of Add-Ons to what I specifically meant by map-ping Add-Ons. Players noticed & voiced considerable decrease in quality of gameplay when engaging in PvP, particularly with groups known for "Event" conflicts.

Having participated in a number of PvP battles I've noticed a particular flavor of lag. Most noticeably from the group that introduced RDK to me almost a year ago and was interested in training our group on how to run like they do. That event didn't happen, the group switched factions and every time they entered our zone they were often identified by the Signiant lag signature they seem to have carried. Since then it has been noticeable when a group adopts RDK or Add-Ons like it as we engage them.

RDK Group Tool isn't the only group leader Add-On on the market, there are a number of Add-Ons listed and unlisted that do the same things. RDK itself comprise of several other Add-Ons used in PvP and if the effects of such Add-Ons effect player experience it should be either removed or integrated. With that said, I can not ask players to stop running Add-Ons, they are a vital tool in any MMORPG, particularly one with no built in mini map. This is why I've also requested a test in which Add-Ons that are exclusively client side are allowed and cut the cord on any Add-on that relays information through the server.

Well, I don't mind having a complete no-addon test week. I'm quite confident here, that nothing in regards with lag will change as the only thing that is being actively transferred are map pings. Everything else runs directly on the client with information already available to the client.

Furthermore, I would like to have more information on how you tested this. Respectively how you believe that your feelings about this can really be measured. There are so many variables, like other fights nearby or at another spot on the map etc.
What you describe is Cyrodiil and bad code / servers in my opinion.

And here's another thing. As i play on a different Server (PC EU) i have no idea who Army of the Pact is (your guild right?). So i did a short little search on YouTube and found this one here:
[Video removed due to voice chat]

As it is publicly available and from one of your members (plays in the group) i think it is okay for being posted here. Otherwise let me know and I will edit the post.

Don't get me wrong here. You can play as you want and that's all part of the game and legit. I don't care if you do and won't judge here. But i can assure you, that the amount of players i see in that group including the ungrouped players with the same guild tag, stacking at a single place certainly adds more to the lag and performance issues than some map pings of an addon.

Edit: Removed video due to voice chat.

Adamus

By Testing Existing Cyrodiil (Add-Ons On) vs. Testing Cyrodiil (Add-ons Disabled) in a High Pop Campaign & comparing them. Tests might want to be short due to player reactions but solid request for testing min. Removal of Add-ons that create 'Events' to communicate data to Group & Guild members.

Army of the Pact is an EP(NA) Organized Casual PvP group that recruits from zone during primetime (CP) High Pop. Faction Lock Campaign. We run around 12-48+ player groups including several ranks of group leaders. Our rules for streamers consist of having a delay and recording or streaming audio from the groups discord channel is stickily prohibited. The clip you displayed was from 2018 during the years of it's founding, in addition to changes in Guild Leadership, updates to rules and regulations have been instituted since I've been granted the role of GM. We consist of a wide verity of active veteran players. We do not currently have requirements on Add-Ons and during our tests I was reliant on the honesty of our players to turn off their Add-Ons. And as I stated, throughout our tests we had a group picking up people who were using Adds because some players just need their Add-Ons, I get it. I'm voicing these opinions because I'm not against Add-ons, I love Add-ons. I've voicing them because I'm for fair play.

Add-On Recommendations:
There are a number Add-Ons that do the same thing and where one Map-Ping Add-On may have borrowed from other Map Ping Add-On, said Add-Ons established conflicts could create additional undesired effects. A programmer I am not, but logically one would think if a player is having a constant steady conversation with the server via a third party program or Add-On, other player's "Events" Add-Ons conversation might be helping prioritize additional Player "Event" packets as well as clogging up a Zone with a High "Event" count causing greater "Event" loss. If our theories about this Add-On and Add-On's like it are correct, considering the size of our groups and variety of tactics we deploy, there may be a noticeable increase in server stress. This isn't my intention, my intentions are recommending things to help players compete on an even playing field.

With the number groups running this these types of Add-Ons we're forced to run them ourselves, but not first without protest. While some players may have already discovered RDK or other Group Tool Add-Ons like it, if such issues do exist they will become noticeable when a group our size adopts one. That being said, April, 9th 2021, one year after being introduced to this Add-On, I'm going turn this mapPing Add-On back on as well as all my other favorite Add-Ons, and request our groups run them as well. Do we know what will happen? No. We do have our suppositions and inaction to address this issue forces us to conform.

InvitationNotFound

Adamus wrote: »

By Testing Existing Cyrodiil (Add-Ons On) vs. Testing Cyrodiil (Add-ons Disabled) in a High Pop Campaign & comparing them. Tests might want to be short due to player reactions but solid request for testing min. Removal of Add-ons that create 'Events' to communicate data to Group & Guild members.

I have no idea what exactly you mean with "Events" here. I'm not even sure you understand the difference between client and server side and what already is present on your client without having an addon send a request to the server.
An explanation of your events would be needed here.

Besides that, Pop Lock can mean a lot of different things. A lock is displayed before there is a queue so you don't really know how many players are really on the campaign. This alone can make a huge difference.
Same with the fights. They may be different. E.g. less players, other groups, action around the corner you haven't seen.
Personally, I don't know how to really measure such things properly and just the opinion of a few players is simply an opinion.

A test should be repeatable and i don't really see that here given. All i know is, that it lags everywhere during prime time for everyone, regardless of addons. Console lags the same (and they don't even have addons).

Adamus wrote: »

Army of the Pact is an EP(NA) Organized Casual PvP group that recruits from zone during primetime (CP) High Pop. Faction Lock Campaign. We run around 12-48+ player groups including several ranks of group leaders. Our rules for streamers consist of having a delay and recording or streaming audio from the groups discord channel is stickily prohibited. The clip you displayed was from 2018 during the years of it's founding, in addition to changes in Guild Leadership, updates to rules and regulations have been instituted since I've been granted the role of GM. We consist of a wide verity of active veteran players. We do not currently have requirements on Add-Ons and during our tests I was reliant on the honesty of our players to turn off their Add-Ons. And as I stated, throughout our tests we had a group picking up people who were using Adds because some players just need their Add-Ons, I get it. I'm voicing these opinions because I'm not against Add-ons, I love Add-ons. I've voicing them because I'm for fair play.

Again, feel free to let me know if i should remove the linked video from my post.

Adamus wrote: »

Add-On Recommendations:
There are a number Add-Ons that do the same thing and where one Map-Ping Add-On may have borrowed from other Map Ping Add-On, said Add-Ons established conflicts could create additional undesired effects.

What? I don't really understand that sentence. Please explain.

If it is about compatibility, then the main issue is, that multiple addons would send map pings, which would lead to a kick due to spamming. If a client receives a map ping from another addon, some arbitrary things might happen on the client. Not the server.

I don't understand, what you try to say here.

Adamus wrote: »

A programmer I am not, but logically one would think if a player is having a constant steady conversation with the server via a third party program or Add-On, other player's "Events" Add-Ons conversation might be helping prioritize additional Player "Event" packets as well as clogging up a Zone with a High "Event" count causing greater "Event" loss.

By moving your character you generate more data then the map pings.

Furthermore, an addon is not a third party program and third party programs are against the ToS as far as I know.
Please do not mix up different things that have nothing to do with each other.

The part about the packets is purely speculative as we both do not know how the server works and where things are interpreted. There might be different servers or threads for such things as map pings. They actually would not need to be handled by the campaign or zone anyway as they are usually set in a different zone.

Adamus wrote: »

If our theories about this Add-On and Add-On's like it are correct, considering the size of our groups and variety of tactics we deploy, there may be a noticeable increase in server stress. This isn't my intention, my intentions are recommending things to help players compete on an even playing field.

I don't think that there would be any performance impact (server side) even if every single player would run such an addon.

Adamus wrote: »

With the number groups running this these types of Add-Ons we're forced to run them ourselves, but not first without protest. While some players may have already discovered RDK or other Group Tool Add-Ons like it, if such issues do exist they will become noticeable when a group our size adopts one.

These addons certainly exist since 2017. They might be even older.
In my opinion, all organized groups are running them since then (or maybe earlier).

They aren't secret or hidden and could be downloaded the whole time. And again, i doubt it will have any negative server impact.

Adamus wrote: »

That being said, April, 9th 2021, one year after being introduced to this Add-On, I'm going turn this mapPing Add-On back on as well as all my other favorite Add-Ons, and request our groups run them as well. Do we know what will happen? No. We do have our suppositions and inaction to address this issue forces us to conform.

Provide some feedback how it went.

marlonbrando

InvitationNotFound wrote: »

Well, I don't mind having a complete no-addon test week. I'm quite confident here, that nothing in regards with lag will change as the only thing that is being actively transferred are map pings. Everything else runs directly on the client with information already available to the client.

I'd like to see that too.

Furthermore, I would like to have more information on how you tested this. Respectively how you believe that your feelings about this can really be measured. There are so many variables, like other fights nearby or at another spot on the map etc.
What you describe is Cyrodiil and bad code / servers in my opinion.

And here's another thing. As i play on a different Server (PC EU) i have no idea who Army of the Pact is (your guild right?). So i did a short little search on YouTube and found this one here:
*snip*

Not that it matters, but that video looks like it's a guest raid leader running my "Piece of Candy" addon which does a small subset of what RDK Group Tool does. It uses the same communication mechanism as your addon, of course. I'm one of the people in the raid who shows up on the ultimate list. That addon used to be required in the guest raid leader's primary guild. He's since moved using RDK, AFAIK. He's also switched factions. Not that any of that matters either.

As it is publicly available and from one of your members (plays in the group) i think it is okay for being posted here. Otherwise let me know and I will edit the post.

Since the video is exposing discord voice chat, I'd think it was against a TOS or a law or something. It might be safer to take it down. I'd say the guy who posted it on YouTube probably shouldn't have done that. If your point is that there may be people in Army of the Pact running a map ping addon, we can cheerfully attest to that. Until recently, there hasn't been an organized effort to use anything like that, though.

As you know, the only way an info sharing addon is of any use is if a large number (majority) of the people in raid are using it. The contention is that when every single person is using one of these, it causes problems. However, as it turns out, RDK is not the addon that is used by at least one of the people we fight against where we experience the most lag.

Don't get me wrong here. You can play as you want and that's all part of the game and legit. I don't care if you do and won't judge here. But i can assure you, that the amount of players i see in that group including the ungrouped players with the same guild tag, stacking at a single place certainly adds more to the lag and performance issues than some map pings of an addon.

I wish there was some way we could test this in controlled conditions. I also wish that someone techincal from ZoS would be willing to engage us on a technical level. Obviously some of us have programming backgrounds and could contribute in some small way.

InvitationNotFound

marlonbrando wrote: »

InvitationNotFound wrote: »

Well, I don't mind having a complete no-addon test week. I'm quite confident here, that nothing in regards with lag will change as the only thing that is being actively transferred are map pings. Everything else runs directly on the client with information already available to the client.

I'd like to see that too.

Furthermore, I would like to have more information on how you tested this. Respectively how you believe that your feelings about this can really be measured. There are so many variables, like other fights nearby or at another spot on the map etc.
What you describe is Cyrodiil and bad code / servers in my opinion.

And here's another thing. As i play on a different Server (PC EU) i have no idea who Army of the Pact is (your guild right?). So i did a short little search on YouTube and found this one here:
*snip*

Not that it matters, but that video looks like it's a guest raid leader running my "Piece of Candy" addon which does a small subset of what RDK Group Tool does. It uses the same communication mechanism as your addon, of course. I'm one of the people in the raid who shows up on the ultimate list. That addon used to be required in the guest raid leader's primary guild. He's since moved using RDK, AFAIK. He's also switched factions. Not that any of that matters either.

As it is publicly available and from one of your members (plays in the group) i think it is okay for being posted here. Otherwise let me know and I will edit the post.

Since the video is exposing discord voice chat, I'd think it was against a TOS or a law or something. It might be safer to take it down. I'd say the guy who posted it on YouTube probably shouldn't have done that. If your point is that there may be people in Army of the Pact running a map ping addon, we can cheerfully attest to that. Until recently, there hasn't been an organized effort to use anything like that, though.

As you know, the only way an info sharing addon is of any use is if a large number (majority) of the people in raid are using it. The contention is that when every single person is using one of these, it causes problems. However, as it turns out, RDK is not the addon that is used by at least one of the people we fight against where we experience the most lag.

Don't get me wrong here. You can play as you want and that's all part of the game and legit. I don't care if you do and won't judge here. But i can assure you, that the amount of players i see in that group including the ungrouped players with the same guild tag, stacking at a single place certainly adds more to the lag and performance issues than some map pings of an addon.

I wish there was some way we could test this in controlled conditions. I also wish that someone techincal from ZoS would be willing to engage us on a technical level. Obviously some of us have programming backgrounds and could contribute in some small way.

Yes, some feedback from ZOS would be nice.

The video wasn't about an addon or something like that. I didn't really check which addons are in use or who was in the group.
You might remember when ZOS once wrote or said that people should spread to reduce lag and stuff...
Stacking with two raids (now that would be 4) at a single location certainly causes more data to be transferred and more calculations on the server than some map pings. Changing that behavior might even change something on the server performance. I just think stacking that many players at one point and complaining about map pings is quite strange as the own behavior certainly causes more server stress. (And again, play as you want and so on. It is a game and it was intended to play like that. It is ZOS' fault, that their code / servers can't handle that properly)

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

InvitationNotFound wrote: »

I just think stacking that many players at one point and complaining about map pings is quite strange as the own behavior certainly causes more server stress. (And again, play as you want and so on. It is a game and it was intended to play like that. It is ZOS' fault, that their code / servers can't handle that properly)

You aren't alone in that thought but unfortunately many players are now conditioned to blame something other than themselves for their deaths in PvP and add-ons are the latest in the line of excuses regardless of veracity.

That being said I'm for testing all types of different scenarios provided ZoS can been responsive in their result feedback and also adjust tests without simply waiting for them to run their full course if they are shown to not be helpful. Both areas where we have now seen issues with 9 tests run and little to no feedback and seemingly PR based changes.