Cyrodiil Population Cap Testing

ZOS_Kevin

EmilyElizabethESO wrote: »

Freilauftomate wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

... Providing the video or link to the video will assist the PvP team in identifying any issues...

They hired a PvP team? And they will look at videos and bug reports? Omg i am so happy!

Is there seriously a PVP team now? That's amazing, we've never had a full team before

For clarity, this is our combat team. They are also working on PvP. This is the same that that has always handled this. Sorry if we gave the impression of a new team around this. That was not the intention.

ZOS_Kevin

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi All! As you may have seen, the Population Cap Testing is now underway. We are starting in PC EU for now, with PC NA and consoles being added later in the week. In the event you run into any issues (bugs, lag, etc.) we ask in addition to describing the issue you are experiencing, that you provide the following information:

• If possible, please record the issue occurring in-game during the Population Cap Test. Providing the video or link to the video will assist the PvP team in identifying any issues.
• In your post, please list what campaign you are participating in when the noted issue occurs.

Feel free to post issues either in this thread or in the Bug Report section of the forum.This information will assist our teams during this test in better identifying issues experienced during the Population Cap Test. Thanks in advance to everyone who participates!

@ZOS_Kevin do you want us to assume the team doesn't know any of the current bugs when areas are at high population when we report issues or are the current bugs 'known' and we should only focus on new things?

Examples of known issues by the playerbase include: permanent debuffs 49000days, crashing approaching large keep fights due to network traffic trying to load all the players, npcs and terrain at the same time, movement slowed without cause ('slow bug'), desynchronization issues where players get trapped in stuns and rolled back in position, cyrodiil queue getting stuck for players randomly and no longer progressing and players being stuck in delves unable to enter the main cyrodiil map again because the area is full.

Also it would help if there was some direction to the testing, for example do you want to test just the queues, the performance in cyrodiil etc..

Some dialog between players and devs would be really helpful including feedback to us after the tests please this has been lacking a lot during the past testing events.

That's a good question. Here is what we would suggest. Note any issues you come across. If you know this is an existing issue, note that with something like this [Previous existing issue]. Just for clarity of information.

ZOS_Kevin

Mogli wrote: »

I would love a general road map of the game in general. I absolutely love ESO, but not having a road map of content planned while it's a standard for other MMORPGs is concerning. I get wanting to keep new ideas a secret for a big reveal, but especially for those of us who are ESO+ subscribers, it's nice to see what is planned for the game that we are actively supporting.

Noted. We had a thread in the forum earlier last month noting this as well. We are passing this feedback on for the relevant teams to assess. But totally understand the sentiment here. Thanks for the feedback.

VenularStar

PC/NA GH is unplayable at this moment in time, people in group are crashing every 2 minutes. Some can't get back in, and some crash as soon as they load back in. I don't think this test is going very well, unfortunately.

TechMaybeHic

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi All, just wanted to provide a quick update. We've seen some confusion regarding if the test is only on PC EU right now. We have expanded the test to PC NA as well. As noted before, if you are hitting lag or having other issues, please record the footage and pass that along here or in the Bug Reports section. This will help with the tests our teams are conducting. Thank you.

For more on this, lets join our reporter on the scene in PCNA. Ollie.


Thank you Ollie

MedicInTheWild

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi All, just wanted to provide a quick update. We've seen some confusion regarding if the test is only on PC EU right now. We have expanded the test to PC NA as well. As noted before, if you are hitting lag or having other issues, please record the footage and pass that along here or in the Bug Reports section. This will help with the tests our teams are conducting. Thank you.

Thank you for the update, preliminary notes, lag, skill snot firing, cant move etc

woe

The sheer amount of people is amazing and I love it. What I don't like is the 80-100ms increase when doing nothing at all, skills not working and everything being clunky. Needs a lot of optimization and it could be amazing.

Photosniper89

There being no q and high pop is nice.

HOWEVER, this is the worst lag, desyncs are off the charts, ping is brutal, and skills take 4 to 5 casts to fire.

Quackery

Population increase has made PvP even more fun, but the lag is just horrid during fights. I think a bunch of us would be willing to pay for a service where the funds go directly towards improving PvP. Just give us an incentive to subscribe to the PvP service specifically. Most gamers nowadays can buy ESO for a few dollars and have access to Cyrodiil and its quite unfair that we longtime players of ESO and PvP in particular, (those of us who have invested a lot of time AND MONEY) should suffer for it.

Photosniper89

Fights are amazing.

If they can ever figure out the lag/skill casting issues/desyncs this will hands down be the best PvP for an MMO.

TechMaybeHic

PCNA hasn't been as bad as of around 10 PM EST. Maybe a little earlier

sunshineflame

It reminds me of the good ole days before you could cast skills and play for weeks without crashing....it's kind of nostalgic to see cyro in such a pathetic state again. No interest in logging back in after I crashed with how sad the performance was.

MedicInTheWild

Quackery wrote: »

Population increase has made PvP even more fun, but the lag is just horrid during fights. I think a bunch of us would be willing to pay for a service where the funds go directly towards improving PvP. Just give us an incentive to subscribe to the PvP service specifically. Most gamers nowadays can buy ESO for a few dollars and have access to Cyrodiil and its quite unfair that we longtime players of ESO and PvP in particular, (those of us who have invested a lot of time AND MONEY) should suffer for it.

I think ESO+ should cover improvements to a PVP portion of a game marketed as the 3 alliance war, however at this point if they could prove that some type of ESO+PVP subscription would correct the lag and other day one issues that they would get people who have never got a subscription to this game. I would even pay by the year!!

One thing I dont understand with performance is how after the server updates that PVP performance was so smooth for a few weeks, why dont they do whatever they did before, wipe and reload. I would rather have 8 hours downtime every 2 weeks for better performance than current status of poor performance and updates.

fred4

Stamicka wrote: »

fred4 wrote: »

And by this time the game has ceased to function. Still only 3 bars. Oh, it still renders, and people still play regardless, but skills have become totally unreliable. I hope you're getting good server statistics out of this.

I'm on NA and I don't have an EU account. You're saying the lag is really noticeable?

That would be an understatement. I'm saying it's unplayable for people who can actually play and are not merely spamming one AOE skill. It's basically back to the state it was in prior to the server upgrade. That said, this has never stopped players from flocking to Gray Host who I can only presume are more casual than I am or who possibly run somewhat lag-proof tanky AOE builds.

Can you tell that there's more fights on the map and stuff?

Yes.

I'm wondering just how much they increased the caps for this test

A lot, but they're going to vary it day to day.

If you ask me whether there will be a happy medium, then sadly no. The caps were at a historic low state that made Cyrodiil feel sad and deserted. However you might get the odd big battles with a single flashpoint on the map before the test and I could already feel slight lag at those times. The game was teetering on the edge of lag before the test.

I can only hope that ZOS are gathering data that will help them optimise the game. If they're just trying to find the right size population cap without optimising the code, then all is lost.

Photosniper89

sunshineflame wrote: »

It reminds me of the good ole days before you could cast skills and play for weeks without crashing....it's kind of nostalgic to see cyro in such a pathetic state again. No interest in logging back in after I crashed with how sad the performance was.

THIS. If you know you know.

React

@ZOS_Kevin

PC NA, 11PM EST - 12AM EST, GH with1-2 bars of population on each faction. East Coast with typically between 70-130 ping.

This is post-prime time and the population was rapidly dying off. Ability functionality was normal up until I approached render distance of a big fight - as soon as I came into range, I was experiencing massive delays on ability use, light attack animations, break free, etc. The typical prime time lag, but much worse with *seemingly* less people online.

Multiple times I was stunned, and was completely unable to break free. In the two clips below, you can clearly see my character attempting to begin the break free animation, but I remain frozen with my abilities unusable. This is a pre-existing bug, but not one that usually happens often - to see it twice in one hour of gameplay is unheard of to me.

https://streamable.com/d3m1os
https://streamable.com/47pyf3

In this next clip, I experience an extreme location desync as a result of being stunned. What you will see in the clip is that I will get hit by an arcanist rune of colorless pool, then presumably when I break free my character becomes "location desynced". While visually on my screen I begin walking up the stairs unable to cast any abilities, the reality is my character is physically located back in the spot where I was hit by the stun. You can tell that this is the case because you'll see my enemies hitting me directly through the wall with projectiles, as if I was standing right in front of them. I escape the bug by casting undo, but usually what occurs is that you keep moving until you die, at which point your camera ports back to the spot in which you became location desynced. Many players will often refer to this as "rollback" or similar. This is also a pre existing bug, which I previously thought would only occur with knockback abilities such as dragon leap, aurora javelin, magnum shot, etc - this is the first time I have ever seen it happen with a non-knockback ability.

https://streamable.com/cd9tya

Idinuse

Photosniper89 wrote: »

fred4 wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi All! As you may have seen, the Population Cap Testing is now underway. We are starting in PC EU for now, with PC NA and consoles being added later in the week. In the event you run into any issues (bugs, lag, etc.) we ask in addition to describing the issue you are experiencing, that you provide the following information:

• If possible, please record the issue occurring in-game during the Population Cap Test. Providing the video or link to the video will assist the PvP team in identifying any issues.
• In your post, please list what campaign you are participating in when the noted issue occurs.

Feel free to post issues either in this thread or in the Bug Report section of the forum.This information will assist our teams during this test in better identifying issues experienced during the Population Cap Test. Thanks in advance to everyone who participates!

PC EU Gray Host here. Predictably the lag is right back. I don't know what you possibly expect to see from video. Lag is something you feel. Your skills stop responding in a timely fashion. If you can SEE the lag, then it's WAY past acceptable levels, not that I find any server lag acceptable for my playstyle. I've also gotten "stuck in combat", even though I've been crouched quite outside the battle area as I write this. When will THAT ever be fixed? For reference:

Continuous ping to zos.de running in the background: ~60ms
In-game ping: ~120ms (from Ireland)
Player population: Only 3 bars
Location: Chalman Keep, Gray Host, PC EU (battle)
PC: Ryzen 5800x3d, nVidia RTX3070, 32GB RAM, NVME SSD, Windows 10

Oh, you can see the lag in videos. Been that way for 5+ years. My favorite is the slideshow bug when you can feel the server processing information and your fps counter is 100+ but everything else is moving at 1fps for about 10 seconds lol.

This is when I receive my frames via e-mail from ZOS.

[Previous existing issue] I also get complete sound cut offs during huge fights i.e. 3 faction. It's not even stutter it's like using the mic switch on a Gibson guitar to cut sound on and off, if you know what I mean. This is rather new to me, before sound would still be playing right even if I was playing a slide show. This however has been happening before the cap increase so not directly connected to that.

PS. I play on NA from Sweden with an average ping of 220ms.

ValarMorghulis1896

I like that you don't have to wait half an hour to log in during peak times. And - as said above - population increase has made PvP even more fun (80:80:60 at chal in the evening). And the lag is not worse than it was in the days of the old servers - but there is a lag.

NotTaylorSwift

It was laggy in prime time yesterday PC EU but not as bad as the lag that existed pre server upgrade.

Einar_Hrafnarsson

Idinuse wrote: »

Photosniper89 wrote: »

fred4 wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi All! As you may have seen, the Population Cap Testing is now underway. We are starting in PC EU for now, with PC NA and consoles being added later in the week. In the event you run into any issues (bugs, lag, etc.) we ask in addition to describing the issue you are experiencing, that you provide the following information:

• If possible, please record the issue occurring in-game during the Population Cap Test. Providing the video or link to the video will assist the PvP team in identifying any issues.
• In your post, please list what campaign you are participating in when the noted issue occurs.

Feel free to post issues either in this thread or in the Bug Report section of the forum.This information will assist our teams during this test in better identifying issues experienced during the Population Cap Test. Thanks in advance to everyone who participates!

PC EU Gray Host here. Predictably the lag is right back. I don't know what you possibly expect to see from video. Lag is something you feel. Your skills stop responding in a timely fashion. If you can SEE the lag, then it's WAY past acceptable levels, not that I find any server lag acceptable for my playstyle. I've also gotten "stuck in combat", even though I've been crouched quite outside the battle area as I write this. When will THAT ever be fixed? For reference:

Continuous ping to zos.de running in the background: ~60ms
In-game ping: ~120ms (from Ireland)
Player population: Only 3 bars
Location: Chalman Keep, Gray Host, PC EU (battle)
PC: Ryzen 5800x3d, nVidia RTX3070, 32GB RAM, NVME SSD, Windows 10

Oh, you can see the lag in videos. Been that way for 5+ years. My favorite is the slideshow bug when you can feel the server processing information and your fps counter is 100+ but everything else is moving at 1fps for about 10 seconds lol.

This is when I receive my frames via e-mail from ZOS.

[Previous existing issue] I also get complete sound cut offs during huge fights i.e. 3 faction. It's not even stutter it's like using the mic switch on a Gibson guitar to cut sound on and off, if you know what I mean. This is rather new to me, before sound would still be playing right even if I was playing a slide show. This however has been happening before the cap increase so not directly connected to that.

PS. I play on NA from Sweden with an average ping of 220ms.

I noticed the sound cutoffs too. Especially in big fights it sounds like your Headphones or Speakers are dying. But nothing, not even the 3 second Skillfire delay. is as bad as the in Combat bug.

Tranquilizer

Had a lot of fun yesterday on PC/EU gray host. Started at about 18.30 UTC with no lag at all, played up to 20.00 UTC, where the lag increased somewhat.

Saw a lot of angry posts in zone chat about unplayable lag, and yes, it became more clunky over time, but never as unplayable as it was back in the time before the server hardware upgrade. And yes, we had some big fights going on at BRK and Faregyl.

So maybe there are other things that add to the lag, maybe the internet connection speed. More players mean more data to trasfer to and from the servers, if the line isn't able to manage that this could increase lag also.

cptfrog

Hi @ZOS_Kevin
Is there any possibility for the community to be aware what the actual number of population cap is being tested?

Yesterday (1st day of test) on PC-EU server it was very rarely locked but for sure alot of people around, felt like the cap had to be increased quite alot.
Also if you want to share any planned changes to the cap during the test period?

Photosniper89

cptfrog wrote: »

Hi @ZOS_Kevin
Is there any possibility for the community to be aware what the actual number of population cap is being tested?

Yesterday (1st day of test) on PC-EU server it was very rarely locked but for sure alot of people around, felt like the cap had to be increased quite alot.
Also if you want to share any planned changes to the cap during the test period?

This. Just release the numbers somewhere. Honestly, it felt like they took the cap off all together.

CrazyKitty

Quackery wrote: »

Population increase has made PvP even more fun, but the lag is just horrid during fights. I think a bunch of us would be willing to pay for a service where the funds go directly towards improving PvP. Just give us an incentive to subscribe to the PvP service specifically. Most gamers nowadays can buy ESO for a few dollars and have access to Cyrodiil and its quite unfair that we longtime players of ESO and PvP in particular, (those of us who have invested a lot of time AND MONEY) should suffer for it.

I disagree. If ZOS has funding to keep the crown store running with all those cosmetics, they can afford to keep PvP running properly as well.

If they ever do fix PvP though, I'll consider resubbing to ESO+. That should be plenty enough financial resources for ZOS to do their job of keeping the game running as advertised.

EmilyElizabethESO

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

EmilyElizabethESO wrote: »

Freilauftomate wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

... Providing the video or link to the video will assist the PvP team in identifying any issues...

They hired a PvP team? And they will look at videos and bug reports? Omg i am so happy!

Is there seriously a PVP team now? That's amazing, we've never had a full team before

For clarity, this is our combat team. They are also working on PvP. This is the same that that has always handled this. Sorry if we gave the impression of a new team around this. That was not the intention.

@ZOS_Kevin that's really sad. I thought PVP was finally getting the attention it needs

YandereGirlfriend

VenularStar wrote: »

PC/NA GH is unplayable at this moment in time, people in group are crashing every 2 minutes. Some can't get back in, and some crash as soon as they load back in. I don't think this test is going very well, unfortunately.

This sounds like every night that I try to play in Grey Host with my group, LMAO.

Xandreia_

i hope the devs are going to be going into cyrodiil to experience it for themselves.

Photosniper89

,

Xandreia_ wrote: »

i hope the devs are going to be going into cyrodiil to experience it for themselves.

Nah fam zero chance lol.

Zama666

Is this thread where I can share my experience or will I get yelled at for 'spamming'.

Yesterday, NO ISSUE for about an hour. PC/NA

Today, kicked after 20 minutes.

Got in again, things WERE going well then my ping rate jumped to 570ms. Hug lag

Did a speed test - a showing a 38ms ping from my ISP. Very good download/uplooad 44MBs\7.5MBs down

I am trying to get info on what others are seeing.
Is there a good place to report this for ZOS feedback?

Galeriano

Seeing how Cyrodill works during that test they should start testing lowering the population cap instead of increasing it...