Hi all, we wanted to provide you with a small update. As many of you know, overall performance in any online game can be affected by a variety of different factors, many of which are outside of our influence. We do have ways of mitigating those outside influence situations as they arise. We have also been investigating whether there may be more than the normal "order-of-business-for-an-online-game" happening lately.
As we continue to monitor your feedback and investigate game performance, when we make back-end adjustments in the future we will check in with you to gauge whether you are seeing improvements. Thank you for your continued patience and feedback – please keep it coming. Specific details including what type of performance issues you experienced (high ping, rubber-banding, disconnect, etc.), the time of day you experienced a game performance issue, and where you were in the game, is especially helpful.
@ZOS_Kevin thank you for keeping communication alive
in my humble understanding:
- freezes are caused by the Zenimax load balancers, which do not have enough buffers and lose packets
- lags are overloaded servers lacking CPU capacity
- disconnects have two reasons: the major one is load balancers do not have sufficient buffers to service the entire amount of connections from online players, the minor one is the code unable to relocate players from one location to another or poor backend server interconnections (derived from the fact connection is often broken because of teleporting from one zone/house to another)
Being "bundled" together these different issues (and many other issues like bugs) form the Gordian Knot of ESO hard to diagnose and fix.
Issues need man-hours and budget to be fought and, eventually, resolved. Plus intent, motivation and skills to proceed with them fixes attempts.
Hi all, we wanted to provide you with a small update. As many of you know, overall performance in any online game can be affected by a variety of different factors, many of which are outside of our influence. We do have ways of mitigating those outside influence situations as they arise. We have also been investigating whether there may be more than the normal "order-of-business-for-an-online-game" happening lately.
As we continue to monitor your feedback and investigate game performance, when we make back-end adjustments in the future we will check in with you to gauge whether you are seeing improvements. Thank you for your continued patience and feedback – please keep it coming. Specific details including what type of performance issues you experienced (high ping, rubber-banding, disconnect, etc.), the time of day you experienced a game performance issue, and where you were in the game, is especially helpful.
dk_dunkirk wrote: »Hi all, we wanted to provide you with a small update. As many of you know, overall performance in any online game can be affected by a variety of different factors, many of which are outside of our influence. We do have ways of mitigating those outside influence situations as they arise. We have also been investigating whether there may be more than the normal "order-of-business-for-an-online-game" happening lately.
As we continue to monitor your feedback and investigate game performance, when we make back-end adjustments in the future we will check in with you to gauge whether you are seeing improvements. Thank you for your continued patience and feedback – please keep it coming. Specific details including what type of performance issues you experienced (high ping, rubber-banding, disconnect, etc.), the time of day you experienced a game performance issue, and where you were in the game, is especially helpful.
Oof size: huge.
You guys know exactly when this started. You know the patch that started the problems. You can look at the changes that went in then, and work backwards to find the problem. I wouldn't say it's programming 101, but it's probably not more than 202.
When multiple people get dropped in a run, that seems like a "you" problem. When multiple people in the trial suddenly rubber-band for several seconds at the same time, that's definitely a "you" problem. You say different factors are outside of your influence, but that's not really true. Even if the problem isn't your core networking code, or the addition of a layer of AI filtering, or anything else in the code base -- even if it is due to some deep routing or caching issue from various providers -- you can and should be able to identify these issues, and fix or work around them. Like the Twilight Zone, YOU control the horizontal AND the vertical. You guys get to make the calls and choices that make up the entire stack.
I despise the notion that the game is some mysterious magical tower at this point, that can't be questioned or inspected, and that we're just going to have to live with it now, because it's too hard to fix. I love programming because code never does anything except precisely what you've told it to do, and when it doesn't work like you think, it's because you didn't understand what you thought you were telling it to do. And even if it's a bug at the very lowest level, down in a kernel driver, all the tools to find and fix the problem are at your disposal.
One thing I am positive of: if there were a third-party boogey man here -- say, an Akami thing or a Cloudflare thing or Windows update thing or a Steam thing -- you'd throw that thing under the bus in a heartbeat, and there's been none of that. Not even a whisper. That's telling.
dk_dunkirk wrote: »Hi all, we wanted to provide you with a small update. As many of you know, overall performance in any online game can be affected by a variety of different factors, many of which are outside of our influence. We do have ways of mitigating those outside influence situations as they arise. We have also been investigating whether there may be more than the normal "order-of-business-for-an-online-game" happening lately.
As we continue to monitor your feedback and investigate game performance, when we make back-end adjustments in the future we will check in with you to gauge whether you are seeing improvements. Thank you for your continued patience and feedback – please keep it coming. Specific details including what type of performance issues you experienced (high ping, rubber-banding, disconnect, etc.), the time of day you experienced a game performance issue, and where you were in the game, is especially helpful.
Oof size: huge.
You guys know exactly when this started. You know the patch that started the problems. You can look at the changes that went in then, and work backwards to find the problem. I wouldn't say it's programming 101, but it's probably not more than 202.
When multiple people get dropped in a run, that seems like a "you" problem. When multiple people in the trial suddenly rubber-band for several seconds at the same time, that's definitely a "you" problem. You say different factors are outside of your influence, but that's not really true. Even if the problem isn't your core networking code, or the addition of a layer of AI filtering, or anything else in the code base -- even if it is due to some deep routing or caching issue from various providers -- you can and should be able to identify these issues, and fix or work around them. Like the Twilight Zone, YOU control the horizontal AND the vertical. You guys get to make the calls and choices that make up the entire stack.
I despise the notion that the game is some mysterious magical tower at this point, that can't be questioned or inspected, and that we're just going to have to live with it now, because it's too hard to fix. I love programming because code never does anything except precisely what you've told it to do, and when it doesn't work like you think, it's because you didn't understand what you thought you were telling it to do. And even if it's a bug at the very lowest level, down in a kernel driver, all the tools to find and fix the problem are at your disposal.
One thing I am positive of: if there were a third-party boogey man here -- say, an Akami thing or a Cloudflare thing or Windows update thing or a Steam thing -- you'd throw that thing under the bus in a heartbeat, and there's been none of that. Not even a whisper. That's telling.
dk_dunkirk wrote: »Hi all, we wanted to provide you with a small update. As many of you know, overall performance in any online game can be affected by a variety of different factors, many of which are outside of our influence. We do have ways of mitigating those outside influence situations as they arise. We have also been investigating whether there may be more than the normal "order-of-business-for-an-online-game" happening lately.
As we continue to monitor your feedback and investigate game performance, when we make back-end adjustments in the future we will check in with you to gauge whether you are seeing improvements. Thank you for your continued patience and feedback – please keep it coming. Specific details including what type of performance issues you experienced (high ping, rubber-banding, disconnect, etc.), the time of day you experienced a game performance issue, and where you were in the game, is especially helpful.
Oof size: huge.
You guys know exactly when this started. You know the patch that started the problems. You can look at the changes that went in then, and work backwards to find the problem. I wouldn't say it's programming 101, but it's probably not more than 202.
When multiple people get dropped in a run, that seems like a "you" problem. When multiple people in the trial suddenly rubber-band for several seconds at the same time, that's definitely a "you" problem. You say different factors are outside of your influence, but that's not really true. Even if the problem isn't your core networking code, or the addition of a layer of AI filtering, or anything else in the code base -- even if it is due to some deep routing or caching issue from various providers -- you can and should be able to identify these issues, and fix or work around them. Like the Twilight Zone, YOU control the horizontal AND the vertical. You guys get to make the calls and choices that make up the entire stack.
I despise the notion that the game is some mysterious magical tower at this point, that can't be questioned or inspected, and that we're just going to have to live with it now, because it's too hard to fix. I love programming because code never does anything except precisely what you've told it to do, and when it doesn't work like you think, it's because you didn't understand what you thought you were telling it to do. And even if it's a bug at the very lowest level, down in a kernel driver, all the tools to find and fix the problem are at your disposal.
One thing I am positive of: if there were a third-party boogey man here -- say, an Akami thing or a Cloudflare thing or Windows update thing or a Steam thing -- you'd throw that thing under the bus in a heartbeat, and there's been none of that. Not even a whisper. That's telling.
I am a normal person, not an expert, so please explain briefly. Is this a problem that can be solved by us players? Or is it a problem on the ZoS side? Is there anything an individual can do?
thinkaboutit wrote: »I am a network engineer by trade and this is definitely a network/infra problem.
thinkaboutit wrote: »I am a network engineer by trade and this is definitely a network/infra problem.
dk_dunkirk wrote: »Hi all, we wanted to provide you with a small update. As many of you know, overall performance in any online game can be affected by a variety of different factors, many of which are outside of our influence. We do have ways of mitigating those outside influence situations as they arise. We have also been investigating whether there may be more than the normal "order-of-business-for-an-online-game" happening lately.
As we continue to monitor your feedback and investigate game performance, when we make back-end adjustments in the future we will check in with you to gauge whether you are seeing improvements. Thank you for your continued patience and feedback – please keep it coming. Specific details including what type of performance issues you experienced (high ping, rubber-banding, disconnect, etc.), the time of day you experienced a game performance issue, and where you were in the game, is especially helpful.
Oof size: huge.
You guys know exactly when this started. You know the patch that started the problems. You can look at the changes that went in then, and work backwards to find the problem. I wouldn't say it's programming 101, but it's probably not more than 202.
When multiple people get dropped in a run, that seems like a "you" problem. When multiple people in the trial suddenly rubber-band for several seconds at the same time, that's definitely a "you" problem. You say different factors are outside of your influence, but that's not really true. Even if the problem isn't your core networking code, or the addition of a layer of AI filtering, or anything else in the code base -- even if it is due to some deep routing or caching issue from various providers -- you can and should be able to identify these issues, and fix or work around them. Like the Twilight Zone, YOU control the horizontal AND the vertical. You guys get to make the calls and choices that make up the entire stack.
I despise the notion that the game is some mysterious magical tower at this point, that can't be questioned or inspected, and that we're just going to have to live with it now, because it's too hard to fix. I love programming because code never does anything except precisely what you've told it to do, and when it doesn't work like you think, it's because you didn't understand what you thought you were telling it to do. And even if it's a bug at the very lowest level, down in a kernel driver, all the tools to find and fix the problem are at your disposal.
One thing I am positive of: if there were a third-party boogey man here -- say, an Akami thing or a Cloudflare thing or Windows update thing or a Steam thing -- you'd throw that thing under the bus in a heartbeat, and there's been none of that. Not even a whisper. That's telling.
I am a normal person, not an expert, so please explain briefly. Is this a problem that can be solved by us players? Or is it a problem on the ZoS side? Is there anything an individual can do?
This is 100% an issue on ZoS infa side.
The only thing that has been mentioned that slightly improves the issue on our side is using a VPN to play. When I played I would use Kansas and Seattle and that would sometimes work. Other times it made it even worse. Overall, I'd say a VPN brought my crashes down from 5-10 an hour to about 2 an hour. Still... unacceptable for a game.
XBOX EU - After today's maintenance I finally logged in at first try and been able to remain in game without disconnections for a couple of hours. To be fair I just did housing and trading, so nothing intense, and I still got worried during a long loading screen to my house, but at the moment it seems better for me. I'll see in the coming days.
Btw still no fix on consoles' broken new features, but that's a whole other thread.
Fingers crossed it's fixed for you!!!!
dk_dunkirk wrote: »Hi all, we wanted to provide you with a small update. As many of you know, overall performance in any online game can be affected by a variety of different factors, many of which are outside of our influence. We do have ways of mitigating those outside influence situations as they arise. We have also been investigating whether there may be more than the normal "order-of-business-for-an-online-game" happening lately.
As we continue to monitor your feedback and investigate game performance, when we make back-end adjustments in the future we will check in with you to gauge whether you are seeing improvements. Thank you for your continued patience and feedback – please keep it coming. Specific details including what type of performance issues you experienced (high ping, rubber-banding, disconnect, etc.), the time of day you experienced a game performance issue, and where you were in the game, is especially helpful.
Oof size: huge.
You guys know exactly when this started. You know the patch that started the problems. You can look at the changes that went in then, and work backwards to find the problem. I wouldn't say it's programming 101, but it's probably not more than 202.
When multiple people get dropped in a run, that seems like a "you" problem. When multiple people in the trial suddenly rubber-band for several seconds at the same time, that's definitely a "you" problem. You say different factors are outside of your influence, but that's not really true. Even if the problem isn't your core networking code, or the addition of a layer of AI filtering, or anything else in the code base -- even if it is due to some deep routing or caching issue from various providers -- you can and should be able to identify these issues, and fix or work around them. Like the Twilight Zone, YOU control the horizontal AND the vertical. You guys get to make the calls and choices that make up the entire stack.
I despise the notion that the game is some mysterious magical tower at this point, that can't be questioned or inspected, and that we're just going to have to live with it now, because it's too hard to fix. I love programming because code never does anything except precisely what you've told it to do, and when it doesn't work like you think, it's because you didn't understand what you thought you were telling it to do. And even if it's a bug at the very lowest level, down in a kernel driver, all the tools to find and fix the problem are at your disposal.
One thing I am positive of: if there were a third-party boogey man here -- say, an Akami thing or a Cloudflare thing or Windows update thing or a Steam thing -- you'd throw that thing under the bus in a heartbeat, and there's been none of that. Not even a whisper. That's telling.
I am a normal person, not an expert, so please explain briefly. Is this a problem that can be solved by us players? Or is it a problem on the ZoS side? Is there anything an individual can do?
This is 100% an issue on ZoS infa side.
The only thing that has been mentioned that slightly improves the issue on our side is using a VPN to play. When I played I would use Kansas and Seattle and that would sometimes work. Other times it made it even worse. Overall, I'd say a VPN brought my crashes down from 5-10 an hour to about 2 an hour. Still... unacceptable for a game.
Dear LadyGP-san
I know you have been working hard for months now. Thank you so very, very much.
dk_dunkirk wrote: »Hi all, we wanted to provide you with a small update. As many of you know, overall performance in any online game can be affected by a variety of different factors, many of which are outside of our influence. We do have ways of mitigating those outside influence situations as they arise. We have also been investigating whether there may be more than the normal "order-of-business-for-an-online-game" happening lately.
As we continue to monitor your feedback and investigate game performance, when we make back-end adjustments in the future we will check in with you to gauge whether you are seeing improvements. Thank you for your continued patience and feedback – please keep it coming. Specific details including what type of performance issues you experienced (high ping, rubber-banding, disconnect, etc.), the time of day you experienced a game performance issue, and where you were in the game, is especially helpful.
Oof size: huge.
You guys know exactly when this started. You know the patch that started the problems. You can look at the changes that went in then, and work backwards to find the problem. I wouldn't say it's programming 101, but it's probably not more than 202.
dk_dunkirk wrote: »This thread started on May 7th. So we're coming up on 5 months of a major annoyance that LITERALLY everyone playing the game is experiencing. Lag, disconnects, rubber-banding : these are kind of a big deal for an online game, aren't they? At least, I would have thought so.
Not to diminish the importance for those who do suffer the problems, but it's simply not the case that everyone is suffering them, far from it. That's probably why it's so difficult for ZOS to track it down, they may be unable to recreate it at their end. It seems to be a combination of where you play from (i.e. how you route your connection to the servers) and what content you do (i.e. PvP - especially Cyrodiil - and competitive PvE). Some say it is beginning to affect overland content but I've never experienced that myself.
I have same thing going on for some months now but assumed it was a driver issue. Maybe not...dk_dunkirk wrote: »This thread started on May 7th. So we're coming up on 5 months of a major annoyance that LITERALLY everyone playing the game is experiencing. Lag, disconnects, rubber-banding : these are kind of a big deal for an online game, aren't they? At least, I would have thought so.
Not to diminish the importance for those who do suffer the problems, but it's simply not the case that everyone is suffering them, far from it. That's probably why it's so difficult for ZOS to track it down, they may be unable to recreate it at their end. It seems to be a combination of where you play from (i.e. how you route your connection to the servers) and what content you do (i.e. PvP - especially Cyrodiil - and competitive PvE). Some say it is beginning to affect overland content but I've never experienced that myself.
....And lately sound lag separate from the visuals, which is new....
Greetings,
We have recently removed some off-topic posts. While we understand that you may have interest in other games, this forum was created to talk about ESO. For further posts, we ask that you keep things more ESO related.
Thank you for your understanding.
Greetings,
We have recently removed some off-topic posts. While we understand that you may have interest in other games, this forum was created to talk about ESO. For further posts, we ask that you keep things more ESO related.
Thank you for your understanding.
-________________- There were comparisons between ESO and Tomatoes & Lettuce. Over moderating is real on these forums.
Theist_VII wrote: »Greetings,
We have recently removed some off-topic posts. While we understand that you may have interest in other games, this forum was created to talk about ESO. For further posts, we ask that you keep things more ESO related.
Thank you for your understanding.
-________________- There were comparisons between ESO and Tomatoes & Lettuce. Over moderating is real on these forums.
Such a good thing, Tomatoes & Lettuce.
They have yet to betray me, while the response Kevin gave to us reeks of it, it’s easy to echo a blame made from a higher up onto your consumers because it is an omission of guilt, but the burden is on Zenimax, make no mistake. When you’re working with Tomatoes & Lettuce, you have consistency, and always get what you signed up for, and occasionally, you will find the bacon.
Given we're at 65 pages and several months of this thread (not to mention the countless years of poor performance preceding this) I have to wonder if anyone has tried switching it off and on again?
/s
Greetings,
We have recently removed some off-topic posts. While we understand that you may have interest in other games, this forum was created to talk about ESO. For further posts, we ask that you keep things more ESO related.
Thank you for your understanding.
-________________- There were comparisons between ESO and Tomatoes & Lettuce. Over moderating is real on these forums.
[snip]