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

Aurielle

dk_dunkirk wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

sshogrin wrote: »

KaironBlackbard wrote: »

virtus753 wrote: »

Varana wrote: »

LadyGP wrote: »

Varana wrote: »

No it doesn't. :rolleyes: I have no idea what the reason for your personal crusade is, but just let it go.
The method enables a ton of very useful functionality. And works just fine.

I mean, if an add on someone in group is running is giving someone who doesn't have it performance issues... I would say it does not "work just fine".

I didn't spend a stupid amount of money on my pc to have someone in my group making my latency go through the roof and my system bog down because of the add-ons they decide to run.

Apart from what others have written, I was talking about the general method of using map pings to share information in the group. That works just fine, as numerous addons use it without causing issues.

If Bandits does something wonky with it (or another method) - which, again, hasn't actually been proven yet - that's another topic. But the guy was calling for the whole method to be shut down for whatever personal grudge, not just investigating the addon.

If it wasn’t shut down when Hodor took it to the point of remotely controlling other players’ characters, I don’t foresee it getting shut down for this.

That's creepy

It was a feature that is no longer in the addon that allowed the raid leader to keep other players in the group from attacking the boss or trash mob. It didn't "take control of other player's characters" like you think, it just prevented group members from starting a fight (using abilities and light/heavy attacks) until tanks/group were ready. You have a lot of people spamming abilities before a fight when the raid leader is explaining a fight or getting people assigned to a task, ie. portals, bridge, etc. As a raid leader myself, I have seen a lot of early pulls by impatient players spamming abilities, this is also distracting when trying to explain stuff, and a lot of times the people spamming stuff end up being the people that don't listen to the mechanics and end up being dead the most because they aren't paying attention.

Was that feature on an opt-in basis? Or did it also impact non-users if a user was grouped with them? Goes without saying that the latter would be extremely problematic and invasive. Things like Loot Spy are already bad enough.

Because one of the issues that keeps surfacing here is non-users being (potentially) impacted by users of add-ons in ways that they 100% do not consent to. And that (potentially) impacting their performance/game experience. As I've said before, the rights of add-on users end when they start to touch other players.

Like, I categorically do NOT consent to being sent arbitrary data by other players via any mechanism, no matter how big or small it is or how efficiently or inefficiently it is supposedly being done. Full stop.

A large part of that is out of principle but also what an add-on dev considers to be trivial bandwidth to their Google Fiber connection in suburban LA might not be so trivial to someone on a rickety satellite connection from rural Idaho or someone on a fixed data plan.

Besides, there are many posts in this thread that point out that people are having the same lag and disconnect problems on consoles. I don't understand why everyone is focused so hard on mods. One or more of them may exacerbate the problems for their users on PC, but the overall problem is clearly not related to mods.

My understanding (as someone who comes back to this thread mostly on a weekly basis) is that everyone is actually not focused on mods — less than a handful are, but they are being quite loud about it, so it just feels like mods are the focus. A number of us have pointed out that we don’t use Bandits and that console users can’t use addons period, and yet…. Bandits, Bandits, Bandits.

LadyGP

Aurielle wrote: »

dk_dunkirk wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

sshogrin wrote: »

KaironBlackbard wrote: »

virtus753 wrote: »

Varana wrote: »

LadyGP wrote: »

Varana wrote: »

No it doesn't. :rolleyes: I have no idea what the reason for your personal crusade is, but just let it go.
The method enables a ton of very useful functionality. And works just fine.

I mean, if an add on someone in group is running is giving someone who doesn't have it performance issues... I would say it does not "work just fine".

I didn't spend a stupid amount of money on my pc to have someone in my group making my latency go through the roof and my system bog down because of the add-ons they decide to run.

Apart from what others have written, I was talking about the general method of using map pings to share information in the group. That works just fine, as numerous addons use it without causing issues.

If Bandits does something wonky with it (or another method) - which, again, hasn't actually been proven yet - that's another topic. But the guy was calling for the whole method to be shut down for whatever personal grudge, not just investigating the addon.

If it wasn’t shut down when Hodor took it to the point of remotely controlling other players’ characters, I don’t foresee it getting shut down for this.

That's creepy

It was a feature that is no longer in the addon that allowed the raid leader to keep other players in the group from attacking the boss or trash mob. It didn't "take control of other player's characters" like you think, it just prevented group members from starting a fight (using abilities and light/heavy attacks) until tanks/group were ready. You have a lot of people spamming abilities before a fight when the raid leader is explaining a fight or getting people assigned to a task, ie. portals, bridge, etc. As a raid leader myself, I have seen a lot of early pulls by impatient players spamming abilities, this is also distracting when trying to explain stuff, and a lot of times the people spamming stuff end up being the people that don't listen to the mechanics and end up being dead the most because they aren't paying attention.

Was that feature on an opt-in basis? Or did it also impact non-users if a user was grouped with them? Goes without saying that the latter would be extremely problematic and invasive. Things like Loot Spy are already bad enough.

Because one of the issues that keeps surfacing here is non-users being (potentially) impacted by users of add-ons in ways that they 100% do not consent to. And that (potentially) impacting their performance/game experience. As I've said before, the rights of add-on users end when they start to touch other players.

Like, I categorically do NOT consent to being sent arbitrary data by other players via any mechanism, no matter how big or small it is or how efficiently or inefficiently it is supposedly being done. Full stop.

A large part of that is out of principle but also what an add-on dev considers to be trivial bandwidth to their Google Fiber connection in suburban LA might not be so trivial to someone on a rickety satellite connection from rural Idaho or someone on a fixed data plan.

Besides, there are many posts in this thread that point out that people are having the same lag and disconnect problems on consoles. I don't understand why everyone is focused so hard on mods. One or more of them may exacerbate the problems for their users on PC, but the overall problem is clearly not related to mods.

My understanding (as someone who comes back to this thread mostly on a weekly basis) is that everyone is actually not focused on mods — less than a handful are, but they are being quite loud about it, so it just feels like mods are the focus. A number of us have pointed out that we don’t use Bandits and that console users can’t use addons period, and yet…. Bandits, Bandits, Bandits.

Well put.

Clearly there is smoke there with Bandits or add-ons in general or else ZoS wouldn't be investigating.

In parallel with that there is obviously other issues at play because people on ALL systems are having issues.

ZOS_JessicaFolsom

Hey everyone, we've been seeing a recent increase in malicious activity targeting our servers, so we have made adjustments on our end to address this threat. Because of this, you may experience decreased game performance while these adjustments are in place. Please note that this is not related to the datacenter power failure last week.

We will continue to monitor for any malicious activity, and thank you for your patience and understanding.

sarahthes

Huh. I thought so.

KaironBlackbard

sshogrin wrote: »

KaironBlackbard wrote: »

thaellin wrote: »

@sshogrin @KaironBlackbard

"The addons only get information from the ZOS servers, they don't travel to ZOS servers, then back to your computer, than back to ZOS, then back to them. The addons only get information like I stated directly from the servers that are part of the base game API. "

This is incorrect. KaironBlackbard has correctly observed the 'map ping backchannel communication' method. Map pings are used by addons which want to do data sharing outside the stuff provided by the game. In particular, any addon which has ultimate sharing (such as Hodors) or other realtime group data sharing (group DPS) will send map pings to the group which encode the data. It's a rather brilliant way to bypass the lack of any dedicated data passing API. Sometimes if you have your map up you can see the ping marker dancing around.. This is also (likely) why some group DPS trackers will sometimes show an absurd DPS score from users who have Bandit's UI installed: there is no firm protocol to prevent interfering with another addon's backchannel messaging.

I think there is an addon library which tries to standardize the process (might be internal to hodors), but it's optional and may not be written to minimize the bandwidth usage across a group. I have only looked at it in passing, thought "that is really clever" and realized I didn't need it for what I was writing at the time.

It might be possible for ZOS to limit the frequency of map pings before they are issued from the addon API, or de-prioritize the messages. At the API layer, an attempt to send a map ping could report failure if one had been sent too recently. That would prevent server spamming without kicking anyone and have no impact on regular users, so it might be a valid approach.

@LadyGP if you are not grouped, it should not be possible to get map ping backchannel stuff.

I had a feeling it was a backdoor.

Backdoor needs to be locked.

this is not a "back door", it's backchannel which is much different. Read a post of mine that I replied to @thaellin about this.
Now please explain to me why disconnects, latency, low frame rates, getting booted from server are happening on Xbox and PS when those are completely different servers and not even connected to the PC servers. They don't have any addons.

Because it's a different issue.
It's not a one size fits all.
It's multiple problems, which needs multiple different solutions.
Here in Florida, we don't have those latency problems like you do in California.
Xbox works flawlessly.
However, it is quite evident when someone has BanditsUI (PC), and in dungeons it often snails or even crashes my game.
All you gotta do is see them auto pinging while their map isn't open, and every time I've asked they've responded BanditsUI.
Over 30 times in the past week.
Almost every group I get, someone has BanditsUI.
I'm tired of seeing those autopings, I'm tired of getting slowed with them in my team, I'm tired of it.
And there's nothing I can do to resist their influence. Nothing I can do to stop the auto pings. Nothing I can do to resist their calls and their info thefts.
I want options to allow us to resist, to allow us to decline their requests, to decline BanditsUI pulling from my system every second.
It's not affecting console, It's the only thing affecting me.
And I'm tired of it.

imaslowlearner

Was the data center fires apart of the malicious activity? If they aren't, hear me out.... lets blame it on them anyways.


Also have you considered asking the bad actors to not attack the servers during the holidays?

KaironBlackbard

zenonuk wrote: »

In case it helps with anything ... every time I've had issues over recent days, I triggered Windows' own wait chain analysis... always it's stuck waiting on network I/O. Not sure this is helpful, may not help pin-point the root cause, but may be indicative of some dodgy code in the client that doesn't handle things too well?



It's only ESO that exhibits issues on my rig, no other game suffers with the latency problem, no other AAA title suffers from drops in frame rate - several of us often see fps drop below 10fps in some trials.

In case it was related to drivers, I've even refreshed and reinstalled Windows, drivers, etc. along with ESO itself... took a while... but still the issues exist with ESO. They've been apparent on my system since the most recent client update. No idea if that's just coincidence.

I wonder if it will help. Hope it does help.

imaslowlearner

KaironBlackbard wrote: »

sshogrin wrote: »

KaironBlackbard wrote: »

thaellin wrote: »

@sshogrin @KaironBlackbard

"The addons only get information from the ZOS servers, they don't travel to ZOS servers, then back to your computer, than back to ZOS, then back to them. The addons only get information like I stated directly from the servers that are part of the base game API. "

This is incorrect. KaironBlackbard has correctly observed the 'map ping backchannel communication' method. Map pings are used by addons which want to do data sharing outside the stuff provided by the game. In particular, any addon which has ultimate sharing (such as Hodors) or other realtime group data sharing (group DPS) will send map pings to the group which encode the data. It's a rather brilliant way to bypass the lack of any dedicated data passing API. Sometimes if you have your map up you can see the ping marker dancing around.. This is also (likely) why some group DPS trackers will sometimes show an absurd DPS score from users who have Bandit's UI installed: there is no firm protocol to prevent interfering with another addon's backchannel messaging.

I think there is an addon library which tries to standardize the process (might be internal to hodors), but it's optional and may not be written to minimize the bandwidth usage across a group. I have only looked at it in passing, thought "that is really clever" and realized I didn't need it for what I was writing at the time.

It might be possible for ZOS to limit the frequency of map pings before they are issued from the addon API, or de-prioritize the messages. At the API layer, an attempt to send a map ping could report failure if one had been sent too recently. That would prevent server spamming without kicking anyone and have no impact on regular users, so it might be a valid approach.

@LadyGP if you are not grouped, it should not be possible to get map ping backchannel stuff.

I had a feeling it was a backdoor.

Backdoor needs to be locked.

this is not a "back door", it's backchannel which is much different. Read a post of mine that I replied to @thaellin about this.
Now please explain to me why disconnects, latency, low frame rates, getting booted from server are happening on Xbox and PS when those are completely different servers and not even connected to the PC servers. They don't have any addons.

Because it's a different issue.
It's not a one size fits all.
It's multiple problems, which needs multiple different solutions.
Here in Florida, we don't have those latency problems like you do in California.
Xbox works flawlessly.
However, it is quite evident when someone has BanditsUI (PC), and in dungeons it often snails or even crashes my game.
All you gotta do is see them auto pinging while their map isn't open, and every time I've asked they've responded BanditsUI.
Over 30 times in the past week.
Almost every group I get, someone has BanditsUI.
I'm tired of seeing those autopings, I'm tired of getting slowed with them in my team, I'm tired of it.
And there's nothing I can do to resist their influence. Nothing I can do to stop the auto pings. Nothing I can do to resist their calls and their info thefts.
I want options to allow us to resist, to allow us to decline their requests, to decline BanditsUI pulling from my system every second.
It's not affecting console, It's the only thing affecting me.
And I'm tired of it.

If you're truly tired of it, maybe consider playing solo or with friends instead of queuing into groups that ping you. @KaironBlackbard

StihlReign

Booted again. Ugh...

This is a lot of crashing.

KaironBlackbard

imaslowlearner wrote: »

KaironBlackbard wrote: »

sshogrin wrote: »

KaironBlackbard wrote: »

thaellin wrote: »

@sshogrin @KaironBlackbard

"The addons only get information from the ZOS servers, they don't travel to ZOS servers, then back to your computer, than back to ZOS, then back to them. The addons only get information like I stated directly from the servers that are part of the base game API. "

This is incorrect. KaironBlackbard has correctly observed the 'map ping backchannel communication' method. Map pings are used by addons which want to do data sharing outside the stuff provided by the game. In particular, any addon which has ultimate sharing (such as Hodors) or other realtime group data sharing (group DPS) will send map pings to the group which encode the data. It's a rather brilliant way to bypass the lack of any dedicated data passing API. Sometimes if you have your map up you can see the ping marker dancing around.. This is also (likely) why some group DPS trackers will sometimes show an absurd DPS score from users who have Bandit's UI installed: there is no firm protocol to prevent interfering with another addon's backchannel messaging.

I think there is an addon library which tries to standardize the process (might be internal to hodors), but it's optional and may not be written to minimize the bandwidth usage across a group. I have only looked at it in passing, thought "that is really clever" and realized I didn't need it for what I was writing at the time.

It might be possible for ZOS to limit the frequency of map pings before they are issued from the addon API, or de-prioritize the messages. At the API layer, an attempt to send a map ping could report failure if one had been sent too recently. That would prevent server spamming without kicking anyone and have no impact on regular users, so it might be a valid approach.

@LadyGP if you are not grouped, it should not be possible to get map ping backchannel stuff.

I had a feeling it was a backdoor.

Backdoor needs to be locked.

this is not a "back door", it's backchannel which is much different. Read a post of mine that I replied to @thaellin about this.
Now please explain to me why disconnects, latency, low frame rates, getting booted from server are happening on Xbox and PS when those are completely different servers and not even connected to the PC servers. They don't have any addons.

Because it's a different issue.
It's not a one size fits all.
It's multiple problems, which needs multiple different solutions.
Here in Florida, we don't have those latency problems like you do in California.
Xbox works flawlessly.
However, it is quite evident when someone has BanditsUI (PC), and in dungeons it often snails or even crashes my game.
All you gotta do is see them auto pinging while their map isn't open, and every time I've asked they've responded BanditsUI.
Over 30 times in the past week.
Almost every group I get, someone has BanditsUI.
I'm tired of seeing those autopings, I'm tired of getting slowed with them in my team, I'm tired of it.
And there's nothing I can do to resist their influence. Nothing I can do to stop the auto pings. Nothing I can do to resist their calls and their info thefts.
I want options to allow us to resist, to allow us to decline their requests, to decline BanditsUI pulling from my system every second.
It's not affecting console, It's the only thing affecting me.
And I'm tired of it.

If you're truly tired of it, maybe consider playing solo or with friends instead of queuing into groups that ping you. @KaironBlackbard

Kind of hard to do when I desperately need help with Graven Deep.

sarahthes

KaironBlackbard wrote: »

sshogrin wrote: »

KaironBlackbard wrote: »

thaellin wrote: »

@sshogrin @KaironBlackbard

"The addons only get information from the ZOS servers, they don't travel to ZOS servers, then back to your computer, than back to ZOS, then back to them. The addons only get information like I stated directly from the servers that are part of the base game API. "

This is incorrect. KaironBlackbard has correctly observed the 'map ping backchannel communication' method. Map pings are used by addons which want to do data sharing outside the stuff provided by the game. In particular, any addon which has ultimate sharing (such as Hodors) or other realtime group data sharing (group DPS) will send map pings to the group which encode the data. It's a rather brilliant way to bypass the lack of any dedicated data passing API. Sometimes if you have your map up you can see the ping marker dancing around.. This is also (likely) why some group DPS trackers will sometimes show an absurd DPS score from users who have Bandit's UI installed: there is no firm protocol to prevent interfering with another addon's backchannel messaging.

I think there is an addon library which tries to standardize the process (might be internal to hodors), but it's optional and may not be written to minimize the bandwidth usage across a group. I have only looked at it in passing, thought "that is really clever" and realized I didn't need it for what I was writing at the time.

It might be possible for ZOS to limit the frequency of map pings before they are issued from the addon API, or de-prioritize the messages. At the API layer, an attempt to send a map ping could report failure if one had been sent too recently. That would prevent server spamming without kicking anyone and have no impact on regular users, so it might be a valid approach.

@LadyGP if you are not grouped, it should not be possible to get map ping backchannel stuff.

I had a feeling it was a backdoor.

Backdoor needs to be locked.

this is not a "back door", it's backchannel which is much different. Read a post of mine that I replied to @thaellin about this.
Now please explain to me why disconnects, latency, low frame rates, getting booted from server are happening on Xbox and PS when those are completely different servers and not even connected to the PC servers. They don't have any addons.

Because it's a different issue.
It's not a one size fits all.
It's multiple problems, which needs multiple different solutions.
Here in Florida, we don't have those latency problems like you do in California.
Xbox works flawlessly.
However, it is quite evident when someone has BanditsUI (PC), and in dungeons it often snails or even crashes my game.
All you gotta do is see them auto pinging while their map isn't open, and every time I've asked they've responded BanditsUI.
Over 30 times in the past week.
Almost every group I get, someone has BanditsUI.
I'm tired of seeing those autopings, I'm tired of getting slowed with them in my team, I'm tired of it.
And there's nothing I can do to resist their influence. Nothing I can do to stop the auto pings. Nothing I can do to resist their calls and their info thefts.
I want options to allow us to resist, to allow us to decline their requests, to decline BanditsUI pulling from my system every second.
It's not affecting console, It's the only thing affecting me.
And I'm tired of it.

And yet it's not a universal problem. The person I play with the most uses Bandits. I don't. I never crash, and almost never have ping/latency issues (except when it's obvious there's something external at play, such as 'malicious bad actors' ddosing the server, or my kids queuing up 7 steam downloads at once).

LadyGP

sarahthes wrote: »

KaironBlackbard wrote: »

sshogrin wrote: »

KaironBlackbard wrote: »

thaellin wrote: »

@sshogrin @KaironBlackbard

"The addons only get information from the ZOS servers, they don't travel to ZOS servers, then back to your computer, than back to ZOS, then back to them. The addons only get information like I stated directly from the servers that are part of the base game API. "

This is incorrect. KaironBlackbard has correctly observed the 'map ping backchannel communication' method. Map pings are used by addons which want to do data sharing outside the stuff provided by the game. In particular, any addon which has ultimate sharing (such as Hodors) or other realtime group data sharing (group DPS) will send map pings to the group which encode the data. It's a rather brilliant way to bypass the lack of any dedicated data passing API. Sometimes if you have your map up you can see the ping marker dancing around.. This is also (likely) why some group DPS trackers will sometimes show an absurd DPS score from users who have Bandit's UI installed: there is no firm protocol to prevent interfering with another addon's backchannel messaging.

I think there is an addon library which tries to standardize the process (might be internal to hodors), but it's optional and may not be written to minimize the bandwidth usage across a group. I have only looked at it in passing, thought "that is really clever" and realized I didn't need it for what I was writing at the time.

It might be possible for ZOS to limit the frequency of map pings before they are issued from the addon API, or de-prioritize the messages. At the API layer, an attempt to send a map ping could report failure if one had been sent too recently. That would prevent server spamming without kicking anyone and have no impact on regular users, so it might be a valid approach.

@LadyGP if you are not grouped, it should not be possible to get map ping backchannel stuff.

I had a feeling it was a backdoor.

Backdoor needs to be locked.

this is not a "back door", it's backchannel which is much different. Read a post of mine that I replied to @thaellin about this.
Now please explain to me why disconnects, latency, low frame rates, getting booted from server are happening on Xbox and PS when those are completely different servers and not even connected to the PC servers. They don't have any addons.

Because it's a different issue.
It's not a one size fits all.
It's multiple problems, which needs multiple different solutions.
Here in Florida, we don't have those latency problems like you do in California.
Xbox works flawlessly.
However, it is quite evident when someone has BanditsUI (PC), and in dungeons it often snails or even crashes my game.
All you gotta do is see them auto pinging while their map isn't open, and every time I've asked they've responded BanditsUI.
Over 30 times in the past week.
Almost every group I get, someone has BanditsUI.
I'm tired of seeing those autopings, I'm tired of getting slowed with them in my team, I'm tired of it.
And there's nothing I can do to resist their influence. Nothing I can do to stop the auto pings. Nothing I can do to resist their calls and their info thefts.
I want options to allow us to resist, to allow us to decline their requests, to decline BanditsUI pulling from my system every second.
It's not affecting console, It's the only thing affecting me.
And I'm tired of it.

And yet it's not a universal problem. The person I play with the most uses Bandits. I don't. I never crash, and almost never have ping/latency issues (except when it's obvious there's something external at play, such as 'malicious bad actors' ddosing the server, or my kids queuing up 7 steam downloads at once).

Maybe instead of us all having a back and forth about Bandits - let's just let ZoS run their investigation and then let them tell us what the deal is. Just because one person runs Bandits and you don't have issues doesn't mean other people don't have issues.

I used to play with people daily who never have the issues reported in this thread - 6 of them didn't to be exact. However, there was a solid 4 of us who ALWAYS had the issues reported in this thread.

LadyGP

imaslowlearner wrote: »

KaironBlackbard wrote: »

sshogrin wrote: »

KaironBlackbard wrote: »

thaellin wrote: »

@sshogrin @KaironBlackbard

"The addons only get information from the ZOS servers, they don't travel to ZOS servers, then back to your computer, than back to ZOS, then back to them. The addons only get information like I stated directly from the servers that are part of the base game API. "

This is incorrect. KaironBlackbard has correctly observed the 'map ping backchannel communication' method. Map pings are used by addons which want to do data sharing outside the stuff provided by the game. In particular, any addon which has ultimate sharing (such as Hodors) or other realtime group data sharing (group DPS) will send map pings to the group which encode the data. It's a rather brilliant way to bypass the lack of any dedicated data passing API. Sometimes if you have your map up you can see the ping marker dancing around.. This is also (likely) why some group DPS trackers will sometimes show an absurd DPS score from users who have Bandit's UI installed: there is no firm protocol to prevent interfering with another addon's backchannel messaging.

I think there is an addon library which tries to standardize the process (might be internal to hodors), but it's optional and may not be written to minimize the bandwidth usage across a group. I have only looked at it in passing, thought "that is really clever" and realized I didn't need it for what I was writing at the time.

It might be possible for ZOS to limit the frequency of map pings before they are issued from the addon API, or de-prioritize the messages. At the API layer, an attempt to send a map ping could report failure if one had been sent too recently. That would prevent server spamming without kicking anyone and have no impact on regular users, so it might be a valid approach.

@LadyGP if you are not grouped, it should not be possible to get map ping backchannel stuff.

I had a feeling it was a backdoor.

Backdoor needs to be locked.

this is not a "back door", it's backchannel which is much different. Read a post of mine that I replied to @thaellin about this.
Now please explain to me why disconnects, latency, low frame rates, getting booted from server are happening on Xbox and PS when those are completely different servers and not even connected to the PC servers. They don't have any addons.

Because it's a different issue.
It's not a one size fits all.
It's multiple problems, which needs multiple different solutions.
Here in Florida, we don't have those latency problems like you do in California.
Xbox works flawlessly.
However, it is quite evident when someone has BanditsUI (PC), and in dungeons it often snails or even crashes my game.
All you gotta do is see them auto pinging while their map isn't open, and every time I've asked they've responded BanditsUI.
Over 30 times in the past week.
Almost every group I get, someone has BanditsUI.
I'm tired of seeing those autopings, I'm tired of getting slowed with them in my team, I'm tired of it.
And there's nothing I can do to resist their influence. Nothing I can do to stop the auto pings. Nothing I can do to resist their calls and their info thefts.
I want options to allow us to resist, to allow us to decline their requests, to decline BanditsUI pulling from my system every second.
It's not affecting console, It's the only thing affecting me.
And I'm tired of it.

If you're truly tired of it, maybe consider playing solo or with friends instead of queuing into groups that ping you. @KaironBlackbard

This response doesn't help the conversation going on in here. If you have to play solo because of an add-on... then clearly there is a problem.

Seravi

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Hey everyone, we've been seeing a recent increase in malicious activity targeting our servers, so we have made adjustments on our end to address this threat. Because of this, you may experience decreased game performance while these adjustments are in place. Please note that this is not related to the datacenter power failure last week.

We will continue to monitor for any malicious activity, and thank you for your patience and understanding.

No joke! First time since I came back and I am sitting here waiting for the 999+ latency to go away. The game has been running almost flawless for me upon return.....until today.

High latency in game started at 11:50AM and stopped at 12:10PM 12/16/24. PC NA West Weald

LadyGP

Seravi wrote: »

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Hey everyone, we've been seeing a recent increase in malicious activity targeting our servers, so we have made adjustments on our end to address this threat. Because of this, you may experience decreased game performance while these adjustments are in place. Please note that this is not related to the datacenter power failure last week.

We will continue to monitor for any malicious activity, and thank you for your patience and understanding.

No joke! First time since I came back and I am sitting here waiting for the 999+ latency to go away. The game has been running almost flawless for me upon return.....until today.

High latency in game started at 11:50AM and stopped at 12:10PM 12/16/24. PC NA West Weald

I already know the answer to this but... did you change anything?

Seravi

LadyGP wrote: »

Seravi wrote: »

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Hey everyone, we've been seeing a recent increase in malicious activity targeting our servers, so we have made adjustments on our end to address this threat. Because of this, you may experience decreased game performance while these adjustments are in place. Please note that this is not related to the datacenter power failure last week.

We will continue to monitor for any malicious activity, and thank you for your patience and understanding.

No joke! First time since I came back and I am sitting here waiting for the 999+ latency to go away. The game has been running almost flawless for me upon return.....until today.

High latency in game started at 11:50AM and stopped at 12:10PM 12/16/24. PC NA West Weald

I already know the answer to this but... did you change anything?

Yeah I didn't change anything. Blew my mind how well it's been playing and my in game latency (or frame latency per Rich) is lower than before. I've had the one hiccup today due to the server attacks.

LadyGP

Seravi wrote: »

LadyGP wrote: »

Seravi wrote: »

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Hey everyone, we've been seeing a recent increase in malicious activity targeting our servers, so we have made adjustments on our end to address this threat. Because of this, you may experience decreased game performance while these adjustments are in place. Please note that this is not related to the datacenter power failure last week.

We will continue to monitor for any malicious activity, and thank you for your patience and understanding.

No joke! First time since I came back and I am sitting here waiting for the 999+ latency to go away. The game has been running almost flawless for me upon return.....until today.

High latency in game started at 11:50AM and stopped at 12:10PM 12/16/24. PC NA West Weald

I already know the answer to this but... did you change anything?

Yeah I didn't change anything. Blew my mind how well it's been playing and my in game latency (or frame latency per Rich) is lower than before. I've had the one hiccup today due to the server attacks.

Well sweet, happy for you that things seemed to improve! Fingers crossed things start to improve for others as well.

Seravi

I went into PVP today with a fairly new character. I don't ever PVP but I wanted to see what my game did in there. I lagged like mad, skills non responsive and had the 999+ a lot. I wasn't there 30 minutes! Went back to questing in PVE and had zero issues.

I will be staying in PVE I think. Something not right with that zone.....

acastanza_ESO

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

sshogrin wrote: »

KaironBlackbard wrote: »

virtus753 wrote: »

Varana wrote: »

LadyGP wrote: »

Varana wrote: »

No it doesn't. :rolleyes: I have no idea what the reason for your personal crusade is, but just let it go.
The method enables a ton of very useful functionality. And works just fine.

I mean, if an add on someone in group is running is giving someone who doesn't have it performance issues... I would say it does not "work just fine".

I didn't spend a stupid amount of money on my pc to have someone in my group making my latency go through the roof and my system bog down because of the add-ons they decide to run.

Apart from what others have written, I was talking about the general method of using map pings to share information in the group. That works just fine, as numerous addons use it without causing issues.

If Bandits does something wonky with it (or another method) - which, again, hasn't actually been proven yet - that's another topic. But the guy was calling for the whole method to be shut down for whatever personal grudge, not just investigating the addon.

If it wasn’t shut down when Hodor took it to the point of remotely controlling other players’ characters, I don’t foresee it getting shut down for this.

That's creepy

It was a feature that is no longer in the addon that allowed the raid leader to keep other players in the group from attacking the boss or trash mob. It didn't "take control of other player's characters" like you think, it just prevented group members from starting a fight (using abilities and light/heavy attacks) until tanks/group were ready. You have a lot of people spamming abilities before a fight when the raid leader is explaining a fight or getting people assigned to a task, ie. portals, bridge, etc. As a raid leader myself, I have seen a lot of early pulls by impatient players spamming abilities, this is also distracting when trying to explain stuff, and a lot of times the people spamming stuff end up being the people that don't listen to the mechanics and end up being dead the most because they aren't paying attention.

Was that feature on an opt-in basis? Or did it also impact non-users if a user was grouped with them? Goes without saying that the latter would be extremely problematic and invasive. Things like Loot Spy are already bad enough.

Because one of the issues that keeps surfacing here is non-users being (potentially) impacted by users of add-ons in ways that they 100% do not consent to. And that (potentially) impacting their performance/game experience. As I've said before, the rights of add-on users end when they start to touch other players.

Like, I categorically do NOT consent to being sent arbitrary data by other players via any mechanism, no matter how big or small it is or how efficiently or inefficiently it is supposedly being done. Full stop.

A large part of that is out of principle but also what an add-on dev considers to be trivial bandwidth to their Google Fiber connection in suburban LA might not be so trivial to someone on a rickety satellite connection from rural Idaho or someone on a fixed data plan.

The amount of data that can be encoded in a mapping is quite small, and the creation of these pings is ratelimited. The main issues arise when multiple different addons are trying to send information, and especially in incompatible ways. Multiple addons - such as running both Bandits and RDK with data sharing enabled - will violate the rate-limit and cause the sender's client to disconnect.

Looking briefly at the Bandit's code, it does appear that statShare (but not ultimate share) is enabled by default - this is probably a bad practice that could cause issues. Some other addons forcibly disable other addon's data sharing specifically to prevent these kinds of issues (like I know Hodor's has some protections), but then it becomes a game of "who feels their addon is most important (which is also bad).

Different addons also use different game maps - that aren't the current map you're on - to send pings, so if you aren't running the same addon, then your client shouldn't be looking for, and would therefore never see, and never get the information for, these pings. Where a client sends pings though, is dependent on the specific addon and it is possible, that sending a ping on the map that you're currently on could cause clients that aren't running the addon to see them and this could theoretically cause issues.

It's a very complicated problem, but, in general, MapPings are very important to a lot of addon's core functionality that many many people find very useful, but it is possible for addon developer's that aren't respecting best-practices and aren't using core libraries (like LibMapPing) to cause problems with them, both for their users and for other grouped players.

Bandit's should almost certainty have their data sharing rewritten to use LibMapPing and to comply with best practices around pings, and to disable the data sharing by default. That said, issues aside from violating the rate limit, are pretty rare, and I think in general "investigating" these addons is very likely barking up the wrong tree.

(Other addon devs can feel free to chime in here and correct anything I've said if it's wrong, MapPings aren't my area of expertise)

sshogrin

KaironBlackbard wrote: »

sshogrin wrote: »

KaironBlackbard wrote: »

thaellin wrote: »

@sshogrin @KaironBlackbard

"The addons only get information from the ZOS servers, they don't travel to ZOS servers, then back to your computer, than back to ZOS, then back to them. The addons only get information like I stated directly from the servers that are part of the base game API. "

This is incorrect. KaironBlackbard has correctly observed the 'map ping backchannel communication' method. Map pings are used by addons which want to do data sharing outside the stuff provided by the game. In particular, any addon which has ultimate sharing (such as Hodors) or other realtime group data sharing (group DPS) will send map pings to the group which encode the data. It's a rather brilliant way to bypass the lack of any dedicated data passing API. Sometimes if you have your map up you can see the ping marker dancing around.. This is also (likely) why some group DPS trackers will sometimes show an absurd DPS score from users who have Bandit's UI installed: there is no firm protocol to prevent interfering with another addon's backchannel messaging.

I think there is an addon library which tries to standardize the process (might be internal to hodors), but it's optional and may not be written to minimize the bandwidth usage across a group. I have only looked at it in passing, thought "that is really clever" and realized I didn't need it for what I was writing at the time.

It might be possible for ZOS to limit the frequency of map pings before they are issued from the addon API, or de-prioritize the messages. At the API layer, an attempt to send a map ping could report failure if one had been sent too recently. That would prevent server spamming without kicking anyone and have no impact on regular users, so it might be a valid approach.

@LadyGP if you are not grouped, it should not be possible to get map ping backchannel stuff.

I had a feeling it was a backdoor.

Backdoor needs to be locked.

this is not a "back door", it's backchannel which is much different. Read a post of mine that I replied to @thaellin about this.
Now please explain to me why disconnects, latency, low frame rates, getting booted from server are happening on Xbox and PS when those are completely different servers and not even connected to the PC servers. They don't have any addons.

Because it's a different issue.
It's not a one size fits all.
It's multiple problems, which needs multiple different solutions.
Here in Florida, we don't have those latency problems like you do in California.
Xbox works flawlessly.
However, it is quite evident when someone has BanditsUI (PC), and in dungeons it often snails or even crashes my game.
All you gotta do is see them auto pinging while their map isn't open, and every time I've asked they've responded BanditsUI.
Over 30 times in the past week.
Almost every group I get, someone has BanditsUI.
I'm tired of seeing those autopings, I'm tired of getting slowed with them in my team, I'm tired of it.
And there's nothing I can do to resist their influence. Nothing I can do to stop the auto pings. Nothing I can do to resist their calls and their info thefts.
I want options to allow us to resist, to allow us to decline their requests, to decline BanditsUI pulling from my system every second.
It's not affecting console, It's the only thing affecting me.
And I'm tired of it.

It's not affecting console? Really? I see posts in this thread from console users, I even see the posts on the ESO FB group page from console players...so it IS happening on console.
Again, I have run with groups that not one person was running Bandits and we had people booted from game, lags, frame rate drops, etc.
You need to take your blinders off and maybe look at what others are posting instead of your posts being "me, me, me".
Again, there is a comment to the ESOUI page for BanditsUI about this, we'll see if there's a response other than what is posted on the about page of the addon.
Again, you have failed to explain why this is happening on PS and XBox, which it IS happening on. The hardware is not the same on the server side. You being in denial of it happening on console doesn't help either.

StihlReign

PvE is broken. Please take the servers off-line. The lag is unreal in West Weald +999 and we cannot complete World events.
ERROR. crashed again...

16:53 EST 12/16/2024

sarahthes

StihlReign wrote: »

PvE is broken. Please take the servers off-line. The lag is unreal in West Weald +999 and we cannot complete World events.
ERROR. crashed again...

16:53 EST 12/16/2024

Which server?

sshogrin

StihlReign wrote: »

PvE is broken. Please take the servers off-line. The lag is unreal in West Weald +999 and we cannot complete World events.
ERROR. crashed again...

16:53 EST 12/16/2024

I got booted from game at around 3:30 CST today in a vKA run. Things started out fine, then I started getting lag spikes on the last boss, then everything froze and I got the "ESO is not responding" window, then booted from game. When I tried to log back in, I got a 103, and 201 errors back to back, they kept cycling between the 2 when trying to get back in to game. PC/NA.
I ended up losing out on the perfected weapons and turning in the quest...that really sucks tbh.

LadyGP

Seravi wrote: »

I went into PVP today with a fairly new character. I don't ever PVP but I wanted to see what my game did in there. I lagged like mad, skills non responsive and had the 999+ a lot. I wasn't there 30 minutes! Went back to questing in PVE and had zero issues.

I will be staying in PVE I think. Something not right with that zone.....

Well, PvP has been like this for years.

KaironBlackbard

sshogrin wrote: »

KaironBlackbard wrote: »

sshogrin wrote: »

KaironBlackbard wrote: »

thaellin wrote: »

@sshogrin @KaironBlackbard

"The addons only get information from the ZOS servers, they don't travel to ZOS servers, then back to your computer, than back to ZOS, then back to them. The addons only get information like I stated directly from the servers that are part of the base game API. "

This is incorrect. KaironBlackbard has correctly observed the 'map ping backchannel communication' method. Map pings are used by addons which want to do data sharing outside the stuff provided by the game. In particular, any addon which has ultimate sharing (such as Hodors) or other realtime group data sharing (group DPS) will send map pings to the group which encode the data. It's a rather brilliant way to bypass the lack of any dedicated data passing API. Sometimes if you have your map up you can see the ping marker dancing around.. This is also (likely) why some group DPS trackers will sometimes show an absurd DPS score from users who have Bandit's UI installed: there is no firm protocol to prevent interfering with another addon's backchannel messaging.

I think there is an addon library which tries to standardize the process (might be internal to hodors), but it's optional and may not be written to minimize the bandwidth usage across a group. I have only looked at it in passing, thought "that is really clever" and realized I didn't need it for what I was writing at the time.

It might be possible for ZOS to limit the frequency of map pings before they are issued from the addon API, or de-prioritize the messages. At the API layer, an attempt to send a map ping could report failure if one had been sent too recently. That would prevent server spamming without kicking anyone and have no impact on regular users, so it might be a valid approach.

@LadyGP if you are not grouped, it should not be possible to get map ping backchannel stuff.

I had a feeling it was a backdoor.

Backdoor needs to be locked.

this is not a "back door", it's backchannel which is much different. Read a post of mine that I replied to @thaellin about this.
Now please explain to me why disconnects, latency, low frame rates, getting booted from server are happening on Xbox and PS when those are completely different servers and not even connected to the PC servers. They don't have any addons.

Because it's a different issue.
It's not a one size fits all.
It's multiple problems, which needs multiple different solutions.
Here in Florida, we don't have those latency problems like you do in California.
Xbox works flawlessly.
However, it is quite evident when someone has BanditsUI (PC), and in dungeons it often snails or even crashes my game.
All you gotta do is see them auto pinging while their map isn't open, and every time I've asked they've responded BanditsUI.
Over 30 times in the past week.
Almost every group I get, someone has BanditsUI.
I'm tired of seeing those autopings, I'm tired of getting slowed with them in my team, I'm tired of it.
And there's nothing I can do to resist their influence. Nothing I can do to stop the auto pings. Nothing I can do to resist their calls and their info thefts.
I want options to allow us to resist, to allow us to decline their requests, to decline BanditsUI pulling from my system every second.
It's not affecting console, It's the only thing affecting me.
And I'm tired of it.

It's not affecting console? Really? I see posts in this thread from console users, I even see the posts on the ESO FB group page from console players...so it IS happening on console.
Again, I have run with groups that not one person was running Bandits and we had people booted from game, lags, frame rate drops, etc.
You need to take your blinders off and maybe look at what others are posting instead of your posts being "me, me, me".
Again, there is a comment to the ESOUI page for BanditsUI about this, we'll see if there's a response other than what is posted on the about page of the addon.
Again, you have failed to explain why this is happening on PS and XBox, which it IS happening on. The hardware is not the same on the server side. You being in denial of it happening on console doesn't help either.

Because the BanditsUI Issue is NOT the same issue.
It's one of a thousand issues.
You're telling me to take blinders off?
If you think it's a one problem for all thing, you're the one with blinders on.
There are a thousand problems, not all are related.
BanditsUI is just one of many problems.
One of many.
It doesn't affect console because console doesn't have addons. Can you prove otherwise?

Though I have myself said that if its just multiple virtual servers on one hardware, it could cause problems.
I'm just trying to get the others saying converse to chill.
Most are claiming the hardware is different.
You and I are saying but what if it's not.
They don't care.
And I don't like repeating myself.

StihlReign

LadyGP wrote: »

Seravi wrote: »

I went into PVP today with a fairly new character. I don't ever PVP but I wanted to see what my game did in there. I lagged like mad, skills non responsive and had the 999+ a lot. I wasn't there 30 minutes! Went back to questing in PVE and had zero issues.

I will be staying in PVE I think. Something not right with that zone.....

Well, PvP has been like this for years.

No, not for everyone. I've rarely lagged in PvP or PvE since the game begin...meaning once or twice every few months. My ping until earlier this year was a consistent avg 60-80. Now it's never below 90 averaging 120+ and the game crashes often, which it did a lot of in the first few years, but not so much in the last 3 until the 10 year Anniversary.

phairdon

Lag spikes & roll backs.

Quackery

This is REALLY weird, but it seems like my game is working again. I've had no issues at all on PC NA-server, so it seems like whatever ZOS did helped me.

HOWEVER, things could change, but I just wanted to give an update.

Edit: I only get a 999+ ping when I swap zones. Otherwise no issues.

Edit 2: Got an error message when trying to reset the morphs in the Temple. Have to restart the entire client. This sucks.

Edit 3: Used a skill scroll instead, and game runs flawlessly.

LadyGP

Quackery wrote: »

This is REALLY weird, but it seems like my game is working again. I've had no issues at all on PC NA-server, so it seems like whatever ZOS did helped me.

HOWEVER, things could change, but I just wanted to give an update.

Edit: I only get a 999+ ping when I swap zones. Otherwise no issues.

Gonna log on and see what my experience is like then.

Edit: Logged on. Went to cyro because I know that is where it will be at its worst. Seems to be okay so far.

Edit2: Just had a big fight at chal and, while not perfect and there was 2 instances of rubberbanding, i didnt crash or get disconnected.

Edit3: An hour straight of playing with only one lag spike... which very well could be their DDoS mitigation tools causing it. I'm curious if something was changed/disabled to see if it would help. @ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_JessicaFolsom do you all happen to know if anything was changed recently? Don't need to know if the issue was fixed or anything just curious if something was changed at all as a first step. Very very very early indications are it may have helped.

StihlReign wrote: »

LadyGP wrote: »

Seravi wrote: »

I went into PVP today with a fairly new character. I don't ever PVP but I wanted to see what my game did in there. I lagged like mad, skills non responsive and had the 999+ a lot. I wasn't there 30 minutes! Went back to questing in PVE and had zero issues.

I will be staying in PVE I think. Something not right with that zone.....

Well, PvP has been like this for years.

No, not for everyone. I've rarely lagged in PvP or PvE since the game begin...meaning once or twice every few months. My ping until earlier this year was a consistent avg 60-80. Now it's never below 90 averaging 120+ and the game crashes often, which it did a lot of in the first few years, but not so much in the last 3 until the 10 year Anniversary.

Yes - my post was an over simplified statement. For the vast majority of people cyro has been filled with lag, slideshow, roll backs, rubber banding, etc. Yes, there are a few handful of people who don't have issues.

thedocbwarren

I don't know if it's the same for others, but my game crashes to desktop and shows a popup error window I can't select and have to spam tab and enter to clear it. This happens very often during play. I have a ticket open but it's not been solved.