Do you think Cyrodiil will ever be lag/delay free?

Tommy_The_Gun · May 3

Other (please explain)

It is a combination of things OP mentions and those are all affecting "lag". Yeah, I have placed it in a "quotes" as this is not a regular type of lag you normally see in a video game, but rather server-side lag & delays.

Can't say if it is possible to fix it, but "Duct Tape & WD40" fixes won't do any more. I mean how much more ZOS can ninja-nerf population or something ? Not by a lot.

Scribing is gonna kinda destroy what is left out of already badly lagging PvP Experience. I mean, I am not being pessimistic, but rather realistic here.

blktauna · May 4

Jsmalls wrote: »

Also No CP, no proc campaigns (during MYM when they are populated) do not suffer from lag/delays.

Today on EU NoCP I had more that one instance of loading screens dropping on me in combat, bar swaps that show as being swapped but the skills did not change and just horrific lag. So no that's not particularly correct. However I do agree that sets need fixing and stacking needs addressing

Jsmalls · May 4

Heal stacking and overlapping abilities causing too much stress on servers

blktauna wrote: »

Jsmalls wrote: »

Also No CP, no proc campaigns (during MYM when they are populated) do not suffer from lag/delays.

Today on EU NoCP I had more that one instance of loading screens dropping on me in combat, bar swaps that show as being swapped but the skills did not change and just horrific lag. So no that's not particularly correct. However I do agree that sets need fixing and stacking needs addressing

Any chance it's a hardware or connection issue? Obviously I'm only myself, but I have guild mates that agree, No CP No Proc Even when there are over 100+ players in/around one keep runs amazingly.

xFocused · May 5

I mean, at this point it's gotta be the servers right? Every update they release only furthers the problems Cyrodiil faces day in and day out not to mention the existing bugs & problems they've still yet to fix. Stuck in combat bug, skills not working properly, players on current gen consoles still getting disconnects, frame rates skipping and dropping all over the place, it's just a mess. I feel like at this point they need to either scrap Cyrodiil altogether or just take the PvP servers down for a week or however long it takes for them to update them all

SaffronCitrusflower · May 5

Other (please explain)

Stamicka wrote: »

No, but because they don't care enough to take fixing the lag seriously.

Yep, if they wanted to fix the lag issues they would be fixed. And we'd have a reasonable population cap restored as well.

Iskiab · May 23

Main issue is Tech stack related (needs new hardware, etc.)

I noticed cyrodiil had better performance during some events and would deteriorate back to normal afterwards. There's likely lots of optimization they could do, but they can do something to improve performance if they wanted to, they don't.

CrazyKitty · May 23

Main issue is Tech stack related (needs new hardware, etc.)

reazea wrote: »

El_Borracho wrote: »

Not a tech guy, but it seems that if you encourage massive battles in Cyrodiil involving 18-24+ players (like a siege), lag is unavoidable. There is lag in PVE trials, albeit uncommon, with only 12 players battling a NPC/preprogrammed enemy. Double that number and then deal with the randomness of classes, skills, buffs, debuffs, styles, etc. in PVP, and you get lag

Cyrodiil used to work very well and virtually lag free with populations 3-5x what they are today. It's not a hardware limitation. ZOS skimps on server resources.

And this is the problem. ZOS could, fairly easily, make Cyrodiil great again if they tried. Instead ZOS is continually focused on how they can cut expenses without much regard to how the cuts will impact the game.

taugrim · May 24

ixthUA wrote: »

I play another game with 10k online players (during prime time) and it has 7 ms lag. Whole map is open for pvp and there are massive world boss battles with hundreds of players killing each other. The difference is that it has almost no damage\healing over time skills, no CP tree, gear sets are passive, basically many times less things to account into calculations. Also they use many hundreds of cores AMD EPYC servers.

What game is that?

taugrim · May 24

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

No game company has solved this n² problem, excluding player culling. (e.g. GW2)

This is the most important fact but sadly no one has responded to your comment.

I would challenge anyone on this thread to give examples of games where thousands or even several hundred players can fight in the same area without there being meaningful lag. Certainly I've never seen it in an MMORPG.

A game developer can buy better hardware, optimize server side calculations, optimize client side graphics for rendering, etc, and all that will help incrementally.

But the bottom line is having to transmit each player's location & actions in real-time to server infrastructure that does calculations and then relays all that to all the other players in that vicinity puts a tremendous load on the server (calculations, data transmission, etc) that scales exponentially and on the client (graphics rendering from all the effects and actions, etc).

In software development, you try to limit N² scaling issues with simplifications such as on which nodes interact with which, distribution of processing across servers / instances, caching of data / results, etc, but a lot of those techniques aren't really applicable in an online gaming environment where each node is an independent player who needs to be visible to everyone else in the vicinity.

ESO does implement some of these techniques, e.g. instancing of zones, limiting the number of players in a BG, etc.

I do agree that things such as HoT stacking really need to be looked at, IMO primarily from a balance/gameplay perspective, but that would likely incrementally help with performance as well.

Amottica · May 24

It is simply not possible to have a Cyrodiil that is lag/delay free

No offense, but this is a simple yes or no question. Except for one choice, what is provided asks someone to state their opinion on the cause, which is irrelevant to whether this will ever be fixed. That exception is the second to last.

To answer the actual question, No. I doubt it will ever be fixed. Hopefully, it will improve, but I doubt it will ever be great.

_adhyffbjjjf12 · May 24

Main issue is Software/coding related (unoptimized, subpar code, etc.)

The problems are well documented if you go far enough back in time, and read between the lines with the devs comments on performance issues.

What we have with ESO is an extremely Poorly architected code base and an inappropriate game engine. Re Servers, it will never compensate for poor code such as this. People apply confirmation bias whenever they see an improvement on a server, but its simply because there is a low population and low zerg balls at the given moment in time and they are desperate to see some kind of improvement.

Other games handles hundreds of more players with more complex spells and aoe with bigger zerg balls and have zero issues, and will use similar hardware.

Put it this way, if it wasn't for the super strong solo questing experience the game would be dead.

xylena_lazarow · May 24

Other (please explain)

Yeah the lag will be gone tomorrow. I fixed it thanks to all the IRL network engineers and software devs ITT.

JustLovely · May 25

Other (please explain)

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Yeah the lag will be gone tomorrow. I fixed it thanks to all the IRL network engineers and software devs ITT.

ZOS could fix Cyrodiil performance if they wanted to. Even if it meant something as extreme as reverting things back to v1.6, they could fix it if they wanted to.

_adhyffbjjjf12 · May 26

Main issue is Software/coding related (unoptimized, subpar code, etc.)

JustLovely wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Yeah the lag will be gone tomorrow. I fixed it thanks to all the IRL network engineers and software devs ITT.

ZOS could fix Cyrodiil performance if they wanted to. Even if it meant something as extreme as reverting things back to v1.6, they could fix it if they wanted to.

If they could have they would have. The problem is that the game engine is and allways has been fundamentally flawed and requires a total rewrite (i.e ESO 2)

GooGa592 · May 26

Other (please explain)

_adhyffbjjjf12 wrote: »

JustLovely wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Yeah the lag will be gone tomorrow. I fixed it thanks to all the IRL network engineers and software devs ITT.

ZOS could fix Cyrodiil performance if they wanted to. Even if it meant something as extreme as reverting things back to v1.6, they could fix it if they wanted to.

If they could have they would have. The problem is that the game engine is and allways has been fundamentally flawed and requires a total rewrite (i.e ESO 2)

If this were true ZOS would have built the game on a different engine. Also, who is it again that is making this claim? People should always consider the source of the information they're being given and rate it's validity accordingly.

edward_frigidhands · May 29

Main issue is Tech stack related (needs new hardware, etc.)

It has been a lot worse lately.

xylena_lazarow · May 29

Other (please explain)

GooGa592 wrote: »

If this were true ZOS would have built the game on a different engine.

This game began development in the 00s and I do recall ZOS stating something to the effect that the game would need to be completely rebuilt from the ground up in order to properly solve the performance problems.

CrazyKitty · May 29

Main issue is Tech stack related (needs new hardware, etc.)

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

GooGa592 wrote: »

If this were true ZOS would have built the game on a different engine.

This game began development in the 00s and I do recall ZOS stating something to the effect that the game would need to be completely rebuilt from the ground up in order to properly solve the performance problems.

This is what bothers me now that we are a decade into playing ESO. Supposedly ZOS knew they needed a different or better engine from the start, but they went ahead and built the game on an engine they knew wouldn't stand the test of time anyway?

And, now that we know for sure there is at least one game engine out there that can handle ESO style game play, ZOS isn't making any effort to rebuild the game on an engine they know will support their game.

These are the kinds of management decisions that legitimately shake the faith of anyone paying attention all these years.

_adhyffbjjjf12 · June 5

Main issue is Software/coding related (unoptimized, subpar code, etc.)

GooGa592 wrote: »

_adhyffbjjjf12 wrote: »

JustLovely wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Yeah the lag will be gone tomorrow. I fixed it thanks to all the IRL network engineers and software devs ITT.

ZOS could fix Cyrodiil performance if they wanted to. Even if it meant something as extreme as reverting things back to v1.6, they could fix it if they wanted to.

If they could have they would have. The problem is that the game engine is and allways has been fundamentally flawed and requires a total rewrite (i.e ESO 2)

If this were true ZOS would have built the game on a different engine. Also, who is it again that is making this claim? People should always consider the source of the information they're being given and rate it's validity accordingly.

oh it was true, it was discussed in great length during beta, where it was generally recognised how inappropriate the hero engine was for a mmorpg. ZOS argued they had a modified version of it that they used to 'whiteboard' (why would you modify software you are throwing away..) This was scoffed at by software engineers who just boggled at the naïve thinking. After the game released it very quickly came to light that major changes were needed and so the infamous patch that hacked the design to push load to the servers, the rest is history.

This was the early early chat where focus started to fall on the engine and they felt they needed to respond. It makes you laugh now when you read this nonsense. https://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2012/05/25/why-the-elder-scrolls-online-isn-39-t-using-heroengine.aspx

"Fans have expressed concerns about tech and tools limiting or defining the kind of content you can create, not wanting “just another MMO.” How do you respond to that?"

Housing object limitations , Cryrodil, anytime a blob of players get together casting spells.......

SandandStars · June 14

no

it will get worse

little by little

sometimes a new bug will be so impactful (remember when block stopped working for months?) that it will be given attention

but overall as they add new stuff to sell new chapters pvp will continue to be more buggy and less stable