ZOS please consider this possible reason for lag

Guizan

I have some suspicions that one of the main culprits for lag in Cyrodiil are all the customized gear that we are wearing. For each player that you meet the server has to send lots of data specifying what piece of armor they wear, the current wardrobe morph as well as the current color of each piece and costume and color changes on the costume. Then when we have 50 vs 50 battles around a keep there is lots of data to send over continuously depending if a player is in rendering distance or not. We are talking 7 armor slots, and 2 weapon slots per player and the other customizations being constantly transfered.

It would be much better if we recognize that Cyrodiil is a Warzone where three armies fight and all people automatically wore the alliance outfit and the alliance mounts with no skins and no outfits except the Emperor costume on the current reigning Emperor. Have you ever considered this change @ZOS_GinaBruno ?

Seraphayel

Guild Wars 2 is doing exactly this. Players are wearing red, blue or green PvP costumes to reduce server load and to make it clear who’s an ally and who’s an enemy. This is a very good solution and should be the go to in PvP in ESO as well. Plus disable all the other cosmetic effects etc.

marius_buys

Fully support this idea, let the PvE guys do all the color, war is about playability and victory, the rest, like multiple costume variants, is insignificant

Brrrofski

Yeh, I 'd be ok with this.

I like looking cool, but I'd lag free gameplay more.

It's worth a try at the point right. Nothing else has worked lol.

vesselwiththepestle

Yesterday during the night pop was around 2/3/locked bars. I was at a keep with 2 other DC players, there were 4 AD smallscalers. Still there was heavy lag, desync, Dizzy taking several seconds...

At another place even I alone against some npc guards - heavy lag.

I am more and more thinking it is not the amount of calculations that need to be done, but something on the back-end how the game is handled by the server, prioritizing memory or cpu power or whatever. Of course we see regular lag with lots of players at the same place, that is to be expected. This might only add to the "base line" server lag we often experience even with only a few players around.

Someone had the theory that npc guards are involved. I mean... How often do I have seen those guards just dancing around, not using their skills etc., while my Uppercut needed seconds to cast, then suddenly several skills hitting at once and so on, when I was soloing a ressource! On CP campaigns you might not notice that as much, as npc guards die a lot faster. On no cp depending on your build it could take a while to kill those guards.

I know some players made fun about it, but I honestly would wish to see a test with the npc guards removed. Although a test like that wouldn't need to happen, maybe the Quality assessment team (or however it is called) should check that npc guard code and scripting again for errors, loops and so on.

I don't remember to ever have seen the same lag in pve environments even in heavy lag, it always was different in some way, so I honestly think there is something up with the guards' code and/or scripting.

Vizirith

CSose wrote: »

I'm convinced ZOS knows exactly why performance is in the tank. Management is deciding not to take the actions needed to fix things for some reason. If they don't know at this point, it's time to hire new devs.

Everybody knows the reason for lag it's abundantly obvious if you spend around 6 hours in cyrodiil. They just don't want to address it.

Gilvoth

horrible idea, and i hope it never happens.
and by the way, when they made cryodiil and eso, they already calculated for the server opacity to allow for those calculations.

BlakMarket

lmao first non-proc cyro, now non-outfit cyro? Maybe turn off cross healing first, then let us run around nude.

Guizan

BlakMarket wrote: »

lmao first non-proc cyro, now non-outfit cyro? Maybe turn off cross healing first, then let us run around nude.

If you got to choose would you prefer using your proc sets or a flashy outfit?

If those were the choices I would go with using proc sets and forego my custom looks...

Guizan

Gilvoth wrote: »

horrible idea, and i hope it never happens.
and by the way, when they made cryodiil and eso, they already calculated for the server opacity to allow for those calculations.

Well, the calculatioons they made then might not be relevant now, in general our computers have become better, graphics cards and memory are up, many use SSD disks now and most internet connectivity have improved a lot in speed. Still we are seeing worse and worse performance and the game supporting fewer and fewer people in Cyrodiil without lag and other problems.

I am convinced that reducing the size of the data having to be transfered between the server and the clients would improve the latency of the game. And for me having a faction uniform is less intrusive than removing sets which did not even effect the speed and lag. My preference for no proc sets is due to me having longer and more fun battles the last couple of weeks compared to earlier this year so I am putting my crimson and arena weapons on my PVE characters instead.

Jaraal

BlakMarket wrote: »

Maybe turn off cross healing first

They already did that, it didn't help. They even said so.


How does this myth get perpetuated so much? Extreme wishful thinking? Amnesia? Distrust of the veracity of official statements?

Guizan

Jaraal wrote: »

BlakMarket wrote: »

Maybe turn off cross healing first

They already did that, it didn't help. They even said so.


How does this myth get perpetuated so much? Extreme wishful thinking? Amnesia? Distrust of the veracity of official statements?

Most of the healing skills are capped to 12 people anyway even if there are 20+ inside the area of effect.

Reducing group size to 12 did not improve anything apart from causing irritation for organized guilds who need discord or some other chat software to coordinate now.

BlakMarket

Jaraal wrote: »

BlakMarket wrote: »

Maybe turn off cross healing first

They already did that, it didn't help. They even said so.


How does this myth get perpetuated so much? Extreme wishful thinking? Amnesia? Distrust of the veracity of official statements?

So they turn off procs and turn cross healing back on, the lag gets somehow worse. Clearly cross healing impacted performance. So what next? Method of deduction? Yes? No? Question mark?

Idinuse

Guizan wrote: »

I have some suspicions that one of the main culprits for lag in Cyrodiil are all the customized gear that we are wearing. For each player that you meet the server has to send lots of data specifying what piece of armor they wear, the current wardrobe morph as well as the current color of each piece and costume and color changes on the costume. Then when we have 50 vs 50 battles around a keep there is lots of data to send over continuously depending if a player is in rendering distance or not. We are talking 7 armor slots, and 2 weapon slots per player and the other customizations being constantly transfered.

It would be much better if we recognize that Cyrodiil is a Warzone where three armies fight and all people automatically wore the alliance outfit and the alliance mounts with no skins and no outfits except the Emperor costume on the current reigning Emperor. Have you ever considered this change @ZOS_GinaBruno ?

No problem here, except of course all Emperor's regalia need to be be enabled. It should still be something to have been Emperor.

Jaraal

BlakMarket wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

BlakMarket wrote: »

Maybe turn off cross healing first

They already did that, it didn't help. They even said so.


How does this myth get perpetuated so much? Extreme wishful thinking? Amnesia? Distrust of the veracity of official statements?

So they turn off procs and turn cross healing back on, the lag gets somehow worse. Clearly cross healing impacted performance. So what next? Method of deduction? Yes? No? Question mark?

So cross healing was determined to have no appreciable effect on performance when it was turned off. But you're saying that somehow it magically became the reason for lag? [snip]

[Edited to remove Baiting]

Red_Feather

Yeah in guild wars 2 it gets so bad you have to lower character quality to low and character quantity to low. And it has nothing to do with graphics or graphics cards.

BlakMarket

Jaraal wrote: »

BlakMarket wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

BlakMarket wrote: »

Maybe turn off cross healing first

They already did that, it didn't help. They even said so.


How does this myth get perpetuated so much? Extreme wishful thinking? Amnesia? Distrust of the veracity of official statements?

So they turn off procs and turn cross healing back on, the lag gets somehow worse. Clearly cross healing impacted performance. So what next? Method of deduction? Yes? No? Question mark?

So cross healing was determined to have no appreciable effect on performance when it was turned off. But you're saying that somehow it magically became the reason for lag? [snip]

I've been pvp'ing daily for just over a year, throughout the peak/off-peak times specifically GreyHost(PC-NA). Noticed a sizable difference with performance cross healing on and off, everyone I play with daily also noticed a difference & finally if it made no difference in performance why did they turn it off?

[snip]

[Edited to remove Baiting]

Jaraal

BlakMarket wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

BlakMarket wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

BlakMarket wrote: »

Maybe turn off cross healing first

They already did that, it didn't help. They even said so.


How does this myth get perpetuated so much? Extreme wishful thinking? Amnesia? Distrust of the veracity of official statements?

So they turn off procs and turn cross healing back on, the lag gets somehow worse. Clearly cross healing impacted performance. So what next? Method of deduction? Yes? No? Question mark?

So cross healing was determined to have no appreciable effect on performance when it was turned off. But you're saying that somehow it magically became the reason for lag? [snip]

I've been pvp'ing daily for just over a year, throughout the peak/off-peak times specifically GreyHost(PC-NA). Noticed a sizable difference with performance cross healing on and off, everyone I play with daily also noticed a difference & finally if it made no difference in performance why did they turn it off?


[snip]

So you're saying ZOS is lying about cross healing having no appreciable effect on performance? That your vague personal perception of performance for one user, combined with some anecdotal hearsay from a few of your peers is more valid than actual data collected by the people who actually operate the game?

[snip]

[Edited to remove Baiting]

Seraphayel

BlakMarket wrote: »

lmao first non-proc cyro, now non-outfit cyro? Maybe turn off cross healing first, then let us run around nude.

Super flashy and special outfits in massive PvP are unnecessary and irritating. It’s absolutely sufficient to wear alliance themed costumes / outfits, it would make everything easier in Cyrodiil.

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.

tsaescishoeshiner

Guizan wrote: »

I have some suspicions that one of the main culprits for lag in Cyrodiil are all the customized gear that we are wearing. For each player that you meet the server has to send lots of data specifying what piece of armor they wear, the current wardrobe morph as well as the current color of each piece and costume and color changes on the costume. Then when we have 50 vs 50 battles around a keep there is lots of data to send over continuously depending if a player is in rendering distance or not. We are talking 7 armor slots, and 2 weapon slots per player and the other customizations being constantly transfered.

It would be much better if we recognize that Cyrodiil is a Warzone where three armies fight and all people automatically wore the alliance outfit and the alliance mounts with no skins and no outfits except the Emperor costume on the current reigning Emperor. Have you ever considered this change @ZOS_GinaBruno ?

What's your evidence or reason to believe that this is causing major lag, or straining the server? I'm pretty sure that once a character is loaded in with all their cosmetics, the rest of the processing happens on the client side. Why would the server need to constantly check someone's shoulder style and dye channels?

It's not like I have enough counterevidence to disagree with what you're saying. Just figure it's best to start with some evidence & theory before bandwagoning on the next performance scapegoat.

Araneae6537

IF fashion is an issue, then maybe a compromise would be costumes only as that’s a single item and set of dye channels.

I don’t know why healing keeps being brought up. I don’t think it’s fair to nerf one ability set. If healing is going to be restricted to group only, then maybe you should be able to do damage only to opponents in one group at a time. And no, I’m not in favor of either of those options.

aetherial_heavenn

Last thursday night USEST the game ran smooth as silk in Cyrodil, skills fired, no desyncs, it was such fun. Then they rolled out the hotfix/patch and the weekend came and the play degenerated to its usual laggy mess again. Both occasions I logged in (prime and later US EST on NA Cyrodil Grayhost) there were long queues of 60 plus on DC side, so it wasn't pop related. However, i think they remove/reallocate server resources from Cyrodil when they need them for PvE on weekends - they certainly use Cyrodil server resources for their PTS server.

It's that or whatever they did that last maintenance broke the game again.

The real cause of lag, in my opinion, is insufficient capacity to do the number of complex calculations required for combat since they shifted those calcs to server side from client side.

I'm pretty sure cosmetics are a one off calculation...although sweaty trials groups that run with other players invisible or in the skele skin may have evidence to the contrary

aetherial_heavenn

Jaraal wrote: »

BlakMarket wrote: »

Maybe turn off cross healing first

They already did that, it didn't help. They even said so.

How does this myth get perpetuated so much? Extreme wishful thinking? Amnesia? Distrust of the veracity of official statements?

Because certain celebrity streamers have been pushing this BS for 2 years with no evidence because they prefer a completely different style of PvP but they won't get their income if they start trying to compete with established streamers in those FOTM no healing shooter games.

Even when disproven, and even when ZoS said it made no difference, they persist in telling their zergling followers that healing-any healing- is the cause of lag.

Personally I think it is just as likely that another cause of lag is the endless AOE dps calculations, particularly dot and ground based aoes that stack.

After all why would cross healing with rapids cause more lag than multiple aoe dps ground effects spammed by every single DPSer in a zerg which are all calculated at same time on every single player that runs through them? Answer, it wouldn't. But try telling the 'blame cross healing' streamers and their fanbois that.

You'll never get said celebrity streamers to agree cross healing isn't the sole issue, after all they make money on show reels 1vXing PvEers and when they can't kill someone it's always overhealing that's the fault...not their one trick pony game-play being countered by other legitimate game play, like purging their DoTs, roll dodging/LoSing their Zan's cheese and healing through their ground damage.

Increasing numbers of Proc calculations haven't helped with additional calculations (performance has degraded the more procs that have been introduced) Many of us have noticed much less lag in proc free Cyro despite the proc set cheesers oops defenders' remarks to the contrary but most people I have spoken to believe the real cause is simply lack of resources for PVP calculations on server side and some really dodgy code that appeared a couple/three years ago.

max_only

If I can’t be cute, then what’s the point?

Recremen

This would not be correct unless ZOS super messed up the client-server paradigm. Character appearance changes almost never, so you don't need to send that data over live through the server, you can have it live as a table in client space. All the server needs to do is send an update to the table whenever someone changes styles, which again is infrequent and is already speed-capped. You couldn't crash the server even if you got the entire population spamming dye station confirms.

If things worked the way you're imagining, you would have way bigger problems than costumes and armor colors. Imagine the server sending the frame-by-frame animation status to all clients for all players at once. It could never happen. But we don't need that, because all of the animation information lives in the giant client-side 85 gigabyte game file. The server just sends update information, like "is running" and "is casting flame whip" and such. It's the same for costumes. It all lives locally, they'll just be sending updates for which local files to reference whenever something changes, which is almost never.

Guizan

tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »

What's your evidence or reason to believe that this is causing major lag, or straining the server? I'm pretty sure that once a character is loaded in with all their cosmetics, the rest of the processing happens on the client side. Why would the server need to constantly check someone's shoulder style and dye channels?

It's not like I have enough counterevidence to disagree with what you're saying. Just figure it's best to start with some evidence & theory before bandwagoning on the next performance scapegoat.

I assume that the servers won't continuously send a complete list of all players in Cyrodiil from all factions, their equipment, looks, and position as that could be exploited by someone making a packet sniffer program and running it on their computer. The looks of the player can change at any time with abilities, ww transformations, as well as outfit changes and it would be wasteful to spend bandwidth updating players outside of rendering distance so I assume they only do it when the players actually can potentially see each other.

Edit: Also remember that players go in and out from the delves instances which most likely are run on another server thus forcing possible local lists in memory of all characters to update.

YandereGirlfriend

aetherial_heavenn wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

BlakMarket wrote: »

Maybe turn off cross healing first

They already did that, it didn't help. They even said so.

How does this myth get perpetuated so much? Extreme wishful thinking? Amnesia? Distrust of the veracity of official statements?

Because certain celebrity streamers have been pushing this BS for 2 years with no evidence because they prefer a completely different style of PvP but they won't get their income if they start trying to compete with established streamers in those FOTM no healing shooter games.

Even when disproven, and even when ZoS said it made no difference, they persist in telling their zergling followers that healing-any healing- is the cause of lag.

Personally I think it is just as likely that another cause of lag is the endless AOE dps calculations, particularly dot and ground based aoes that stack.

After all why would cross healing with rapids cause more lag than multiple aoe dps ground effects spammed by every single DPSer in a zerg which are all calculated at same time on every single player that runs through them? Answer, it wouldn't. But try telling the 'blame cross healing' streamers and their fanbois that.

You'll never get said celebrity streamers to agree cross healing isn't the sole issue, after all they make money on show reels 1vXing PvEers and when they can't kill someone it's always overhealing that's the fault...not their one trick pony game-play being countered by other legitimate game play, like purging their DoTs, roll dodging/LoSing their Zan's cheese and healing through their ground damage.

Increasing numbers of Proc calculations haven't helped with additional calculations (performance has degraded the more procs that have been introduced) Many of us have noticed much less lag in proc free Cyro despite the proc set cheesers oops defenders' remarks to the contrary but most people I have spoken to believe the real cause is simply lack of resources for PVP calculations on server side and some really dodgy code that appeared a couple/three years ago.

Recall what ZOS said of the tests over the summer.

They did indicate that the most extreme anti-AoE tests did reduce lag but that they could not realistically implement them due to how they were received by the PvP community (remember Templars not being able to cast Jabs because of the 5-second cooldown?). It completely obliterated gameplay for all classes other than stamBlades and it would have required a re-work of basically 75% of all skills in the game. Yet the results were there.

So AoE calculations absolutely do impact server performance - and, of course, that includes healing AoE calculations. However, healing AoE calculations also have some additional overhead associated with them due to Smart Healing. For example, if you are casting Illustrious Healing on a crowded ram, the spell must select the 6 most-damaged players to prioritize during any given tick of the heal. That means popping all players within range into a min-queue and keeping it constantly updated as their HP values fluctuate. Repeat that across numerous instances of Illustrious Healing and it is objectively more work for the server than, say, calculating the damage for Boneyard or something.

So there is a kernel of truth in saying that cross-healing contributes to lag - it is simply overstated how much of an impact that it alone has.

relentless_turnip

aetherial_heavenn wrote: »

Last thursday night USEST the game ran smooth as silk in Cyrodil, skills fired, no desyncs, it was such fun. Then they rolled out the hotfix/patch and the weekend came and the play degenerated to its usual laggy mess again. Both occasions I logged in (prime and later US EST on NA Cyrodil Grayhost) there were long queues of 60 plus on DC side, so it wasn't pop related. However, i think they remove/reallocate server resources from Cyrodil when they need them for PvE on weekends - they certainly use Cyrodil server resources for their PTS server.

It's that or whatever they did that last maintenance broke the game again.

The real cause of lag, in my opinion, is insufficient capacity to do the number of complex calculations required for combat since they shifted those calcs to server side from client side.

I'm pretty sure cosmetics are a one off calculation...although sweaty trials groups that run with other players invisible or in the skele skin may have evidence to the contrary

I still don't understand the PTS theory... How can the PTS in the US use resources for the pc EU server? Because it has often been noted pc EU performance is worse and yet as far as I know it would next to impossible for it to share resources with the PTS. EU server is located in Germany.

Jayserix

vesselwiththepestle wrote: »

Yesterday during the night pop was around 2/3/locked bars. I was at a keep with 2 other DC players, there were 4 AD smallscalers. Still there was heavy lag, desync, Dizzy taking several seconds...

At another place even I alone against some npc guards - heavy lag.

I am more and more thinking it is not the amount of calculations that need to be done, but something on the back-end how the game is handled by the server, prioritizing memory or cpu power or whatever. Of course we see regular lag with lots of players at the same place, that is to be expected. This might only add to the "base line" server lag we often experience even with only a few players around.

Someone had the theory that npc guards are involved. I mean... How often do I have seen those guards just dancing around, not using their skills etc., while my Uppercut needed seconds to cast, then suddenly several skills hitting at once and so on, when I was soloing a ressource! On CP campaigns you might not notice that as much, as npc guards die a lot faster. On no cp depending on your build it could take a while to kill those guards.

I know some players made fun about it, but I honestly would wish to see a test with the npc guards removed. Although a test like that wouldn't need to happen, maybe the Quality assessment team (or however it is called) should check that npc guard code and scripting again for errors, loops and so on.

I don't remember to ever have seen the same lag in pve environments even in heavy lag, it always was different in some way, so I honestly think there is something up with the guards' code and/or scripting.

The first days after the patch were awesome, and then everything crumbled. Last night on GH EU we had the good old laggy experience ... RIP

Pattceht

Vizirith wrote: »

CSose wrote: »

I'm convinced ZOS knows exactly why performance is in the tank. Management is deciding not to take the actions needed to fix things for some reason. If they don't know at this point, it's time to hire new devs.

Everybody knows the reason for lag it's abundantly obvious if you spend around 6 hours in cyrodiil. They just don't want to address it.[/quote

You mean ballgroups right?