ZOS, Massive Spike in Ping/LAG in Recent Days - What Gives?

LadyGP · December 4

meekmiko wrote: »

I just got a brand spanking new computer today to replace my old Windows 10 (with a 970) to a fancy schmancy Windows 11 (with a 4060) annnd it performs just as poorly as my 9 year old PC did. (ESO that is)

As soon as I booted up the game and signed into my account it froze on the loadscreen before character select. Par for the course. Lawl! I gave it a good 10 minutes before having to close out and reopen. No crash report it just stopped responding.

And when I did get in I still had the exact same lag spikes (300s-400s-300s-600s) while I was just standing around in Deshaan far away from anyone. This WITHOUT ANY add-ons as I haven't gone about reinstalling any of them yet.

Thankfully I didn't buy the new PC exclusively for ESO, but I'm just extremely disappointed. 😕

I have very fast internet speeds and everything else besides ESO runs smooth as silk.

I feel you here. Built a second pc with a 4090, AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D, 64GB RAM, WD Black SN850X, like... I've thrown as much money (aside from a thread ripper) at this problem and it still is happening.

LadyGP · December 4

dk_dunkirk wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

Quackery wrote: »

Eclipse318 wrote: »

Last night we were trying to do a guild fishing run and everything was going nuts. Rubber banding, monsters like trolls going down with just one little hit, tons of lag (dead monsters still standing there with health bars, looting containers sometimes took 2-3 clicks to open them), fishing holes really glitchy (disappearing as we got close or had just 1 fish), my horse running really slowly (like 2/3 normal speed)... seems better today, but wow it was like a bad dream.

They should just shut down the game entirely. Make an ESO 2, because performance really can't get any worse than this. IT IS LITERALLY UNPLAYABLE!!! It's a game I CAN NOT play! I'm about to permanently uninstall it from my PC and focus on Xbox.

The problem with that is that we still don't really know how extensive the issue is, but it seems probable that it is only affecting a comparatively small section of the playerbase. Yes, this thread has been running for 7 months and is on page 85 but there are some players who've posted mass comments on it, which is totally fine and understandable, but it makes it difficult to assess how many individual posters are affected. Usually on a forum for a game that is having such an issue across the whole playerbase you'd get to page 85 and beyond overnight!

All we can do seemingly is keep pressing ZOS for some more meaningful answers. Personally I don't experience these issues and never have, but I keep pressing ZOS on it because I realise that it's a really critical issue for those who do experience them.

A major source of my frustration with this situation is that we do not know how extensive the issue is, but ZOS does. Part of the hell of being a 30-year full-stack developer, network admin, sysop, and DBA is that you understand what's possible in a scenario like this. Without question, ZOS can see lag spikes and disconnects in their logs. They know exactly how extensive this issue is. They know who is having the problems, they can correlate that to ISP's or locations or versions of Windows or whatever, and they can simulate anything they'd like in their internal development and testing environments to investigate the ideas that come up, and work towards a solution. I know it probably feels "nice," and I've said this before in this thread, but giving them the benefit of the doubt that there's some kind of "fog of war" about this issue that they can't deal with is simply not warranted.

Bingo. And this is where my frustration comes from. It's been 7 months and they know how deep this issue is. And if for some bizarre reason they don't have the infrastructure to see these kind of metrics... then we have bigger problems.

manukartofanu · December 4

I just created a new character and got an Unexpected Error in the starting area. Fantastic! If I were a new player, I would absolutely stick around to figure out what’s going on…

Alinhbo_Tyaka · December 5

Tandor wrote: »

Quackery wrote: »

Eclipse318 wrote: »

Last night we were trying to do a guild fishing run and everything was going nuts. Rubber banding, monsters like trolls going down with just one little hit, tons of lag (dead monsters still standing there with health bars, looting containers sometimes took 2-3 clicks to open them), fishing holes really glitchy (disappearing as we got close or had just 1 fish), my horse running really slowly (like 2/3 normal speed)... seems better today, but wow it was like a bad dream.

They should just shut down the game entirely. Make an ESO 2, because performance really can't get any worse than this. IT IS LITERALLY UNPLAYABLE!!! It's a game I CAN NOT play! I'm about to permanently uninstall it from my PC and focus on Xbox.

The problem with that is that we still don't really know how extensive the issue is, but it seems probable that it is only affecting a comparatively small section of the playerbase. Yes, this thread has been running for 7 months and is on page 85 but there are some players who've posted mass comments on it, which is totally fine and understandable, but it makes it difficult to assess how many individual posters are affected. Usually on a forum for a game that is having such an issue across the whole playerbase you'd get to page 85 and beyond overnight!

All we can do seemingly is keep pressing ZOS for some more meaningful answers. Personally I don't experience these issues and never have, but I keep pressing ZOS on it because I realise that it's a really critical issue for those who do experience them.

Or they are players like me who have voiced their complaints with performance and with the lack of anything concrete from ZOS have decided ESO isn't worth the effort anymore so move on to other games.

LadyGP · December 5

Alinhbo_Tyaka wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

Quackery wrote: »

Eclipse318 wrote: »

Last night we were trying to do a guild fishing run and everything was going nuts. Rubber banding, monsters like trolls going down with just one little hit, tons of lag (dead monsters still standing there with health bars, looting containers sometimes took 2-3 clicks to open them), fishing holes really glitchy (disappearing as we got close or had just 1 fish), my horse running really slowly (like 2/3 normal speed)... seems better today, but wow it was like a bad dream.

They should just shut down the game entirely. Make an ESO 2, because performance really can't get any worse than this. IT IS LITERALLY UNPLAYABLE!!! It's a game I CAN NOT play! I'm about to permanently uninstall it from my PC and focus on Xbox.

The problem with that is that we still don't really know how extensive the issue is, but it seems probable that it is only affecting a comparatively small section of the playerbase. Yes, this thread has been running for 7 months and is on page 85 but there are some players who've posted mass comments on it, which is totally fine and understandable, but it makes it difficult to assess how many individual posters are affected. Usually on a forum for a game that is having such an issue across the whole playerbase you'd get to page 85 and beyond overnight!

All we can do seemingly is keep pressing ZOS for some more meaningful answers. Personally I don't experience these issues and never have, but I keep pressing ZOS on it because I realise that it's a really critical issue for those who do experience them.

Or they are players like me who have voiced their complaints with performance and with the lack of anything concrete from ZOS have decided ESO isn't worth the effort anymore so move on to other games.

Oh, I've moved onto other games. But there is a part of me... thats been playing this since beta and put so many thousands of dollars and literally years worth of hours into this game... that I want to see it fixed.

I still secretly hope we get some massive Cyro change/revamp coming next year thats has been "years in progress" or something that will bring a new life to the game.

One can hope, right?

Zama666 · December 5

As soon as I logged on into Cyro, transport to a keep under attack, kicked.

So I got in, I connected, then done.

The week before I was traveling for work. I would play about an hour a night.

My ping about 20-50ms better than my home location and I never got booted.

Today back at home, I am getting 307 followed by 310 errors
ESO Service Alerts

2024.12.04 - 16:15 UTC (11:15 EST)

The North American Xbox megaserver is currently available.

The European Xbox megaserver is currently available.

The North American PlayStation® megaserver is currently available.

The European PlayStation® megaserver is currently available.

Is location an issue?

Tankz,

Z

Alinhbo_Tyaka · December 5

LadyGP wrote: »

Alinhbo_Tyaka wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

Quackery wrote: »

Eclipse318 wrote: »

Last night we were trying to do a guild fishing run and everything was going nuts. Rubber banding, monsters like trolls going down with just one little hit, tons of lag (dead monsters still standing there with health bars, looting containers sometimes took 2-3 clicks to open them), fishing holes really glitchy (disappearing as we got close or had just 1 fish), my horse running really slowly (like 2/3 normal speed)... seems better today, but wow it was like a bad dream.

They should just shut down the game entirely. Make an ESO 2, because performance really can't get any worse than this. IT IS LITERALLY UNPLAYABLE!!! It's a game I CAN NOT play! I'm about to permanently uninstall it from my PC and focus on Xbox.

The problem with that is that we still don't really know how extensive the issue is, but it seems probable that it is only affecting a comparatively small section of the playerbase. Yes, this thread has been running for 7 months and is on page 85 but there are some players who've posted mass comments on it, which is totally fine and understandable, but it makes it difficult to assess how many individual posters are affected. Usually on a forum for a game that is having such an issue across the whole playerbase you'd get to page 85 and beyond overnight!

All we can do seemingly is keep pressing ZOS for some more meaningful answers. Personally I don't experience these issues and never have, but I keep pressing ZOS on it because I realise that it's a really critical issue for those who do experience them.

Or they are players like me who have voiced their complaints with performance and with the lack of anything concrete from ZOS have decided ESO isn't worth the effort anymore so move on to other games.

Oh, I've moved onto other games. But there is a part of me... thats been playing this since beta and put so many thousands of dollars and literally years worth of hours into this game... that I want to see it fixed.

I still secretly hope we get some massive Cyro change/revamp coming next year thats has been "years in progress" or something that will bring a new life to the game.

One can hope, right?

I participated in the original beta and follow on betas up to release. With the poor state of the game I decided ESO wasn't worth the monthly subscription and stuck with WoW. When Summerset was available for prerelease purchase I decided to give the game another try on a free trial weekend (or however long it was). I thought the game was in a pretty good place so prepurchased Summerset and played ESO pretty much exclusively. Then came 2022. I decided not to prepurchase High Isle and cancelled my ESO+ sub after U34. After U35 I decided to move on only returning to the game long enough to fill out my event tickets and buy whatever was the object for that quarter. I did buy Necrom when it went on sale and thought ZOS had righted the ship but after playing it for a couple of months i started seeing my performance continually degrade. I decided they hadn't improved and went back to other MMOs. I haven't played ESO in any serious manner since then and doubt I will again.

silky_soft · December 5

Insane lag in bg, worst its been in weeks. I've started taking screen shots of scoreboard each game I experience it. See if I always experience it with certain people.

blktauna · December 5

Again today on PCNA and PCEU kicking me every 10 to 15 minutes with huge number of ahkamai jumps. Ugh.

method__01 · December 5

high latency >400 here all morning ,weekend will be so much fun.....

moderatelyfatman · December 5

The situation hasn't changed in Australia...

@Tandor
I don't know about US players but here in Australia it's not just a small minority of players. Typically it will affect half a trial group which can make it very difficult to complete runs when one of the tanks drops out mid pull against the Twins in vDSR.

TX12001rwb17_ESO · December 5

I just brought a 14,000 crown pack, in Australia that is $135 and I cannot log in.

Seravi · December 5

Been watching my routes for a while and thought maybe I would try to come back. Did a tracert today and saw you have placed Akami back into my route. It has been out of my route for a few weeks. Any reason it is back? And yes I am the one that can throw meatballs at the data center guys so the Akami lag in a normal, 2-3ms route is horrid, Each Akami hop is 200-400ms guys.....

LadyGP · December 5

Seravi wrote: »

Been watching my routes for a while and thought maybe I would try to come back. Did a tracert today and saw you have placed Akami back into my route. It has been out of my route for a few weeks. Any reason it is back? And yes I am the one that can throw meatballs at the data center guys so the Akami lag in a normal, 2-3ms route is horrid, Each Akami hop is 200-400ms guys.....

Welcome back! As you can see, we are in the exact same situation (and lack of coms) that we had when you left some months ago.

Seravi · December 5

LadyGP wrote: »

Seravi wrote: »

Been watching my routes for a while and thought maybe I would try to come back. Did a tracert today and saw you have placed Akami back into my route. It has been out of my route for a few weeks. Any reason it is back? And yes I am the one that can throw meatballs at the data center guys so the Akami lag in a normal, 2-3ms route is horrid, Each Akami hop is 200-400ms guys.....

Welcome back! As you can see, we are in the exact same situation (and lack of coms) that we had when you left some months ago.

This is so sad. I thought MAYBE I would have a decent chance having Akami out of the loop but for some reason it's back now.

Eva13 · December 5

Same here. And same silence as usual. I guess I have a lot of games much more worth attention and time

Arunei · December 5

KaironBlackbard wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

tincanman wrote: »

@KaironBlackbard - add-ons and associated api are clearly NOT the issue as console players who have zero access to either are experiencing the same disconnect and other performance issues.

Your observed performance improvement on a 1-time basis with this add-on and others use of it, which has not been significantly replicated by other pc gamers and CANNOT be experienced by CONSOLE users, is likely to be entirely coincidental and have zilch to do with the add-on. Your conclusion, methinks, is likely to just be a false correlation (...does not equal causation....).

Great that you are having a better experience of the game, though.

BOTH can be true at the same time.

The server IS clearly struggling on its own BUT ALSO shoddily-made and/or incompatible and/or out-of-date add-ons can cause additional performance problems.

Add-ons that are constantly polling in the background and making calls to the API like, quite obviously, cannot be helpful for anyone's performance.

Doesn't change the fact that console, with no addons and no infrastructure for them, are having the exact same issues.

People need to stop using their disdain or dislike for addons as a reason to constantly label it as a problem even in cases where they obviously aren't.

PC was made with the idea of addons in mind. It was designed for them. When addons behave in ways that are detrimental, the API gets changed to help counter it. MM and/or another trader addon idr the name of used to bombard the servers with info requests, so they slowed down how often those requests could be made. So other people using addons also don't create an issue for people who don't because if that was happening again, the API would be changed to either block the functionality of those problematic addons, or would be changed so that those addons were slowed.

And I'm pretty sure we'd have been told already if addons were the main issue since that's probably the first and easiest thing for them to look at and rule out.

@KaironBlackbard
So how many times have other people using Bandits' given you issues? If you're saying that one instance of someone else disabling an addon giving you increased performance means that addon is 100% an issue and somehow regularly causing players not using it to have issues...even if one or two other people claim the same thing, that doesn't mean anything.

If you want to prove what you think is a problematic addon, you need to have a much larger sample size that a couple of people saying they've experienced the same thing. Because out of thousands of people playing, a couple of people experiencing the same thing can very easily be chalked up to chance.

Lately, unless Centurylink is having its own issues, I have pristine connectivity to ESO. However, sometimes when I'm grouped with people, my connection can stutter or falter.
That specific instance was pristine time, and when he joined mine effectively died, and that auto ping was annoying.
When the auto ping went away, so did my problems.
The one he disabled was Bandits UI.

And if both PC and Console Virtual Servers are hosted on the SAME HARDWARE, PC addon problems can likewise cause issues on the console side due to hardware being overloaded. Even though the virtual servers don't interact, the problems can be caused by being on the same hardware.

I do randomly receive issues in towns. The last town to really give me problems was Vivec City. I mostly aim for less populated areas, like Private Dungeon runs (enter via manual entrance or wayshrine instead of dungeon finder), or less used places like Hews Bane or Shadowfen. I rarely see more than 5 people total. When I see 10+, I have issues.

Late because I've been busy irl.

The servers for console are completely separate from the ones for PC. They all have separate hardware (PC from XBox from PS). It's one reason we don't have cross-platform play, along with others.

And again...one cannot say X is the cause of Y with one one anecdotal instance. Correlation is not causation. Your internet likely isn't the problem, considering how many people are having it. But it's not people you're grouped with causing the issue either, nor their addons. If you've only ever had ONE instance of someone disabling any given addon giving you a performance boost, it's because the issue we're all having cleared up at around that moment for a while.

Addons are NOT contributing to this issue. If Bandits was causing a problem we'd know already. If any given addon was causing the issue we'd know. First of all because console wouldn't also be swamped by the lag and disconnects and being unable to log in. Second, because addons are probably one of the things the devs look at first (or rather the API). Third, we aren't having a bunch of people having with these issues saying they all have a common thread in one or two addons. I think at most I've seen two people mention Bandits, but out of the number that have posted...that's not enough people having that in common for it to be a problem.

LadyGP · December 5

idk why I even try.

EDIT- Yeah duck this game.

moderatelyfatman · December 6

TX12001rwb17_ESO wrote: »

I just brought a 14,000 crown pack, in Australia that is $135 and I cannot log in.

Ummm... you know that you can still access the Crown Store with your web browser?

LadyGP · December 6

5 minutes later

Couple minutes after that

this game is fun

this is what it's like playing eso @ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_Kevin

ESO: Are You Online?

I love this game.

LOLOLOL You can't make this up. I hope ZOS can see the timestamps on each edit so they can track against these.

No lie, this is what we have been dealing with for 7 months. I don't think you all understand how frustrating this poop is

So this all is only like... what 45 minutes of playing?

For reference my partner is playing a game right now online and having ZERO issues. Monitoring my network health within my router and latency is super low and packet loss isn't an issue.

This is 100% a ZoS issue.

This is why my partner and I cancelled our subs that we had on for like 5 years straight.

Thats it. I'm done. I came back and tried ESO but theres just no hope at this point. I can't believe this is a typical night for people who play this game and it's just been allowed to keep happening. Theres zero chance you don't have logs to show the amount of disconnects happening each night so the lack of action on that is extremely concerning.

/end 2 hour rant

moderatelyfatman · December 6

@LadyGP
It's a bit of a Hail Mary, but have you tried a full restart? Open only ESO an no other program that accesses the internet (ie. Chrome).
It has worked for me before.

LadyGP · December 6

moderatelyfatman wrote: »

@LadyGP
It's a bit of a Hail Mary, but have you tried a full restart? Open only ESO an no other program that accesses the internet (ie. Chrome).
It has worked for me before.

Yup, I always do a fresh repair of ESO before I play and then restart my pc.

JonnytheKing · December 6

mmmmmmmmmmmm

moderatelyfatman · December 6

JonnytheKing wrote: »

mmmmmmmmmmmm

Don't say it!

(I know you're being sponsored by....)

moderatelyfatman · December 6

LadyGP wrote: »

moderatelyfatman wrote: »

@LadyGP
It's a bit of a Hail Mary, but have you tried a full restart? Open only ESO an no other program that accesses the internet (ie. Chrome).
It has worked for me before.

Yup, I always do a fresh repair of ESO before I play and then restart my pc.

Are you by any chance on Steam?

LadyGP · December 6

moderatelyfatman wrote: »

LadyGP wrote: »

moderatelyfatman wrote: »

@LadyGP
It's a bit of a Hail Mary, but have you tried a full restart? Open only ESO an no other program that accesses the internet (ie. Chrome).
It has worked for me before.

Yup, I always do a fresh repair of ESO before I play and then restart my pc.

Are you by any chance on Steam?

Nope. Should I?

KaironBlackbard · December 6

Arunei wrote: »

KaironBlackbard wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

tincanman wrote: »

@KaironBlackbard - add-ons and associated api are clearly NOT the issue as console players who have zero access to either are experiencing the same disconnect and other performance issues.

Your observed performance improvement on a 1-time basis with this add-on and others use of it, which has not been significantly replicated by other pc gamers and CANNOT be experienced by CONSOLE users, is likely to be entirely coincidental and have zilch to do with the add-on. Your conclusion, methinks, is likely to just be a false correlation (...does not equal causation....).

Great that you are having a better experience of the game, though.

BOTH can be true at the same time.

The server IS clearly struggling on its own BUT ALSO shoddily-made and/or incompatible and/or out-of-date add-ons can cause additional performance problems.

Add-ons that are constantly polling in the background and making calls to the API like, quite obviously, cannot be helpful for anyone's performance.

Doesn't change the fact that console, with no addons and no infrastructure for them, are having the exact same issues.

People need to stop using their disdain or dislike for addons as a reason to constantly label it as a problem even in cases where they obviously aren't.

PC was made with the idea of addons in mind. It was designed for them. When addons behave in ways that are detrimental, the API gets changed to help counter it. MM and/or another trader addon idr the name of used to bombard the servers with info requests, so they slowed down how often those requests could be made. So other people using addons also don't create an issue for people who don't because if that was happening again, the API would be changed to either block the functionality of those problematic addons, or would be changed so that those addons were slowed.

And I'm pretty sure we'd have been told already if addons were the main issue since that's probably the first and easiest thing for them to look at and rule out.

@KaironBlackbard
So how many times have other people using Bandits' given you issues? If you're saying that one instance of someone else disabling an addon giving you increased performance means that addon is 100% an issue and somehow regularly causing players not using it to have issues...even if one or two other people claim the same thing, that doesn't mean anything.

If you want to prove what you think is a problematic addon, you need to have a much larger sample size that a couple of people saying they've experienced the same thing. Because out of thousands of people playing, a couple of people experiencing the same thing can very easily be chalked up to chance.

Lately, unless Centurylink is having its own issues, I have pristine connectivity to ESO. However, sometimes when I'm grouped with people, my connection can stutter or falter.
That specific instance was pristine time, and when he joined mine effectively died, and that auto ping was annoying.
When the auto ping went away, so did my problems.
The one he disabled was Bandits UI.

And if both PC and Console Virtual Servers are hosted on the SAME HARDWARE, PC addon problems can likewise cause issues on the console side due to hardware being overloaded. Even though the virtual servers don't interact, the problems can be caused by being on the same hardware.

I do randomly receive issues in towns. The last town to really give me problems was Vivec City. I mostly aim for less populated areas, like Private Dungeon runs (enter via manual entrance or wayshrine instead of dungeon finder), or less used places like Hews Bane or Shadowfen. I rarely see more than 5 people total. When I see 10+, I have issues.

Late because I've been busy irl.

The servers for console are completely separate from the ones for PC. They all have separate hardware (PC from XBox from PS). It's one reason we don't have cross-platform play, along with others.

And again...one cannot say X is the cause of Y with one one anecdotal instance. Correlation is not causation. Your internet likely isn't the problem, considering how many people are having it. But it's not people you're grouped with causing the issue either, nor their addons. If you've only ever had ONE instance of someone disabling any given addon giving you a performance boost, it's because the issue we're all having cleared up at around that moment for a while.

Addons are NOT contributing to this issue. If Bandits was causing a problem we'd know already. If any given addon was causing the issue we'd know. First of all because console wouldn't also be swamped by the lag and disconnects and being unable to log in. Second, because addons are probably one of the things the devs look at first (or rather the API). Third, we aren't having a bunch of people having with these issues saying they all have a common thread in one or two addons. I think at most I've seen two people mention Bandits, but out of the number that have posted...that's not enough people having that in common for it to be a problem.

Yesterday, My brother did a trial and 5 of them were running bandits. Most of them had to disable it for him to quit getting booted.

And yes, I've had some other run ins with bandits UI users as well. I mostly try to run with guildies to avoid that though.

And, if I see that auto ping, I know they are using Bandits UI. I don't know what it is that is causing Bandits to auto ping, but it is very annoying and kills my connection.

KaironBlackbard · December 6

He could only type 6 words before getting re-booted
So when he asked if any were using Bandits UI...
The next time he logged in he wasn't booted as fast because some of them disabled it.
Once enough disabled it, he was able to run with them again.

TX12001rwb17_ESO · December 6

I cannot even stay logged in for more than a few minutes at a time.

blktauna · December 6

I don't use Bandits and have never used it, yet..