The Glory Days of Cyrodiil

Desiato · May 12

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJiWSWA4aLQ

And the critical issue that took way too long to fix which was the nail in the coffin for me:

2018 The Invisible Postern Wall Glitch
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/417435/the-invisible-postern-wall-glitch/1

Cyrodiil AvA has always been broken on main campaigns.

Vaqual · May 12

I admire your dedication and the effort you made to prove other users wrong.

Desiato · May 12

Vaqual wrote: »

I admire your dedication and the effort you made to prove other users wrong.

It only took like 10 minutes. Misinformation is a pet peeve of mine. And we live in the age of misinformation.

SaffronCitrusflower · May 13

Desiato wrote: »

Vaqual wrote: »

I admire your dedication and the effort you made to prove other users wrong.

It only took like 10 minutes. Misinformation is a pet peeve of mine. And we live in the age of misinformation.

I feel like your post, while not misinformation outright, is misdirection and doesn't address the actual issue. Through the years there has always been issues that popped up and negatively affected performance in Cyrodiil. Until about 4 years ago, ZOS was pretty good about fixing the issues when they popped up. Now all ZOS does is lower the population cap and call the job done without ever fixing the core performance issues in Cyrodiil.

Cyrodiil needs more server resources. That's the bulk of what's causing the issues.

Desiato · May 13

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

Desiato wrote: »

Vaqual wrote: »

I admire your dedication and the effort you made to prove other users wrong.

It only took like 10 minutes. Misinformation is a pet peeve of mine. And we live in the age of misinformation.

I feel like your post, while not misinformation outright, is misdirection and doesn't address the actual issue. Through the years there has always been issues that popped up and negatively affected performance in Cyrodiil. Until about 4 years ago, ZOS was pretty good about fixing the issues when they popped up. Now all ZOS does is lower the population cap and call the job done without ever fixing the core performance issues in Cyrodiil.

Cyrodiil needs more server resources. That's the bulk of what's causing the issues.

The actual issue is that ZOS made the choice to deprioritize Cyrodiil and not do the things necessary to provide the experience promised because they pivoted to a different audience. ESO was originally designed for core MMO players, but they pivoted to the massive casual Skyrim audience. Like Matt Firor said himself, Skyrim changed everything.

History shows that bugs in Cyrodiil weren't quickly resolved. Here are some that immediately come to mind off the top of my head:

- stuck in combat bugs which have plagued Cyrodiil since launch
- loading screen bugs which took years to be fixed and still recur now and then
- LOD texture bug that took 5+ years to be resolved
- postern wall hole bug, a critical gameplay issue, that took years to fix
- sound bug introduced in 2.3 (TG) that took months to be fixed
- 50% FPS drop bug introduced in 2.2 that took years to be fixed
- server processing lag isn't a bug, but it's a design flaw that has never been resolved when the server is highly active

Also, ZOS explained long ago that the problems that cause server lag in Cyrodiil cannot be fixed by throwing more hardware at the problem. If it was that easy, they would have done it. The bottom line is they designed gameplay their servers cannot support. The ultimate solution is a combination of software and gameplay changes. But they chose to deprioritize Cyrodiil and invest in other aspects of the game instead.

xFocused · May 13

Desiato wrote: »

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

Desiato wrote: »

Vaqual wrote: »

I admire your dedication and the effort you made to prove other users wrong.

It only took like 10 minutes. Misinformation is a pet peeve of mine. And we live in the age of misinformation.

I feel like your post, while not misinformation outright, is misdirection and doesn't address the actual issue. Through the years there has always been issues that popped up and negatively affected performance in Cyrodiil. Until about 4 years ago, ZOS was pretty good about fixing the issues when they popped up. Now all ZOS does is lower the population cap and call the job done without ever fixing the core performance issues in Cyrodiil.

Cyrodiil needs more server resources. That's the bulk of what's causing the issues.

The actual issue is that ZOS made the choice to deprioritize Cyrodiil and not do the things necessary to provide the experience promised because they pivoted to a different audience. ESO was originally designed for core MMO players, but they pivoted to the massive casual Skyrim audience. Like Matt Firor said himself, Skyrim changed everything.

History shows that bugs in Cyrodiil weren't quickly resolved. Here are some that immediately come to mind off the top of my head:

- stuck in combat bugs which have plagued Cyrodiil since launch
- loading screen bugs which took years to be fixed and still recur now and then
- LOD texture bug that took 5+ years to be resolved
- postern wall hole bug, a critical gameplay issue, that took years to fix
- sound bug introduced in 2.3 (TG) that took months to be fixed
- 50% FPS drop bug introduced in 2.2 that took years to be fixed
- server processing lag isn't a bug, but it's a design flaw that has never been resolved when the server is highly active

Also, ZOS explained long ago that the problems that cause server lag in Cyrodiil cannot be fixed by throwing more hardware at the problem. If it was that easy, they would have done it. The bottom line is they designed gameplay their servers cannot support. The ultimate solution is a combination of software and gameplay changes. But they chose to deprioritize Cyrodiil and invest in other aspects of the game instead.

It's actually insane how the "stuck in combat" bug is still a thing, also, if the current servers cannot handle the current gameplay, how do they think the current servers are going to handle Scribing? There's just no way when you look at how laggy, unstable and overall messy the current servers are. Zos should absolutely just take the Cyro servers down for however long it takes and do a mass upgrade of the servers

xylena_lazarow · May 14

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

Until about 4 years ago, ZOS was pretty good about fixing the issues when they popped up.

Anyone who remembers the infamous 1.3 Lighting Patch knows this is the rose-tinted glasses OP is talking about.

adirondack · May 14

Ah the poor deer and bees.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO · May 16

I think the reason people have a better memory of past Cyro is because despite the lag the number of players and action on the map made things feel more epic than it is now with the tiny population base and very static map gameplay.

for example we used to fight upwards of 5 or 6 different 20+ player groups each night we played. (as different groups would play at different times etc but there was space on the server for all of them).
In general between 2014-2018 I would say that whilst the lag was progressively getting worse it was still a lot of fun and very playable (NA was way better performance wise than EU back then).

After 2019 things were just getting worse and worse with rollbacks and desyncs becoming more and more of a problem on top of group size and cyrodiil population getting reduced even more drastically.

Desiato · May 19

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

I think the reason people have a better memory of past Cyro is because despite the lag the number of players and action on the map made things feel more epic than it is now with the tiny population base and very static map gameplay.

The posts that inspired this thread were varied. There were multiple periods defined as the glory days, a magical time that never really existed when Cyrodiil had no performance issues and other problems. Some remember 2014 as working well, some 2015, others 2016 and so on.. But the record shows that server-side performance started to tank during the summer of 2014 and has remained bad during peak times since.

It's a known human psychological phenomenon to have a better memory of the good times and to perceive bad events as less bad than they really were. We tend to gloss over the bad points of the past, especially when contrasting the past with something we don't like today. As an older person, I find myself doing this a lot.

I experienced this when I returned to ESO and went through my old screenshots. I was shocked by how poorly I remembered some pretty bad events. Some bad events had been erased from my memory, while I had falsely idealized some of the good times.

I had glory days from 2014-2019 too. They all involved good times with friends, despite all the problems. I think that's true for most of us. To many current players the glory days are right now as they'll realize after they're over -- probably after some time passes and their brain scrubs away some of the messiness.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO · May 20

Using forum posts as a recollection of history is one measurement but I prefer to use videos as they show more accurately the playability of the game and numbers faced etc. There were specific lag issues all they way back to launch, these worsened with the addition of the server side anticheat stuff brought in with the lighting patch. (E.g. 2014) When enough players clashed in a ball the server would essentially completely stop responding, sometimes even crashing, you could place 30/40 banners without the ultimate spending because of the lag etc BUT this was a specific lag instance and wasn't the norm. ZOS even ran a PTS test with players to try and identify issues back then. Ofc people are going to complain about that in a post but the general gameplay was so much smoother than now. The point I'm making is that the level of performance we have now with how few players there are on the map is really sad to see when you compare it to the actual playability of 2014-2017 cyro. That being said performance now is 'slightly' better than 2020-2022 Cyrodiil but has worsened significantly since 2023.

xylena_lazarow · May 21

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Using forum posts as a recollection of history is one measurement but I prefer to use videos as they show more accurately the playability of the game and numbers faced etc.

Both are valuable, as the forum posts give an idea how players felt and reacted to the videos and numbers. Dunno when my own glory days were, I've done too many different things from sweaty dueling to being a zerglord, but I know for sure they aren't right now. Awful range spam meta, low pop caps... Scribing can't come soon enough.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO · May 21

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Using forum posts as a recollection of history is one measurement but I prefer to use videos as they show more accurately the playability of the game and numbers faced etc.

Both are valuable, as the forum posts give an idea how players felt and reacted to the videos and numbers. Dunno when my own glory days were, I've done too many different things from sweaty dueling to being a zerglord, but I know for sure they aren't right now. Awful range spam meta, low pop caps... Scribing can't come soon enough.

@xylena_lazarow written response generally lacks context, also players are often only motivated by extremes on forum topics. For example, 90% of players wouldnt vist the forum normally but if the game crashes once then they might come and write that it's crashed. This doesn't mean that it crashes all the time just that it happened. Compare that to the multiple videos showing crash after crash after crash following one of the updates this gives a lot more context.

Also I don't think you realise how bad scribing is going to be for pvp if you want it to come soon :P Groups are gonna be insane after it.

xylena_lazarow · May 21

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Also I don't think you realise how bad scribing is going to be for pvp if you want it to come soon :P Groups are gonna be insane after it.

I have been hoping for years a meta where ball groups can annihilate a zerg in seconds. No more stalemates, no more 40 minutes of running in circles, just 40 seconds of 40 zergers getting absolutely destroyed by the ball and not coming back. Never coming back. Now they know better. Finally.

Unless I'm with my smallscale and it's even numbers, I'm avoiding engaging groups (and have been for years).

Stamicka · May 22

I don't think people are just looking at the "glory days" of Cyrodiil through rose tinted glasses. There's definitely something there. What your post shows most is that people will always complain. Cyrodiil has never been perfect, that much is true. There has always been issues with it. The thing about each of the posts you listed is that the people complaining had no idea that things could get SO much worse.

I remember when One Tamriel first came out. I couldn't believe the heavy armor proc fest that the game had become. I had my complaints then for sure, but the game now has gotten so bad that I would go back to One Tamriel in a heart beat. That's saying something.

Every single thing that people have complained continued to get worse until we reached the point we are at today. Think about it:

Tank Meta
I remember people said there was a tank meta in 2016, that meta is NOTHING compared to the tank meta of today and that's almost objective truth. If I saw 40k+ health in Cyrodiil in 2016, it was an emperor. Now it would probably just be a warden PvP build.

Lag
I also remember complaints about lag as early as 2015. The thing is, it was lagging with 5 times MORE population than we have today. The degree of lag is hard to measure, but it is safe to say that the lag of today is at least not worse than the lag of 2015.

Population Caps
Population caps right now are certainly lower than they ever were in 2015, this is due to repeated cuts.

Cheese Builds
There's more cheese in the game now than there has ever been. ZOS just keeps releasing procs and overtuned mythics.

So yea, people have always complained that's true, but everything they complained about continued to get worse. So much so that even in it's broken state it truly was the "glory days". In terms of PvP, you would have a better experience if you went back to the previous patch almost every time. It adds up, it isn't just nostalgia.

xylena_lazarow · May 22

Stamicka wrote: »

There's more cheese in the game now than there has ever been

Another good example of rose tinted glasses. Let's see, cheese nerfed long ago...

Light armor DDs with literal permablock

MagSorcs with more shields than hp

15k Skoria procs

Camo Hunter as a burst damage proc that affected humans

3 years of Warden tanks wearing 3 damage sets

40k Inferno heavies from stealth

Overload + Crystal Wep + Crushing Wep stacked from stealth

Zaan + vamp mist

Every source of oblivion damage before it got multiple nerfs

Steel Tornado spam when it was 12.5m radius and was also the execute morph

Implosion passive

High uptime Corrosive Armor

Mara's Balm causing the worst tank meta in history

Stamicka · May 22

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Stamicka wrote: »

There's more cheese in the game now than there has ever been

Another good example of rose tinted glasses. Let's see, cheese nerfed long ago...

Light armor DDs with literal permablock

MagSorcs with more shields than hp

15k Skoria procs

Camo Hunter as a burst damage proc that affected humans

3 years of Warden tanks wearing 3 damage sets

40k Inferno heavies from stealth

Overload + Crystal Wep + Crushing Wep stacked from stealth

Zaan + vamp mist

Every source of oblivion damage before it got multiple nerfs

Steel Tornado spam when it was 12.5m radius and was also the execute morph

Implosion passive

High uptime Corrosive Armor

Mara's Balm causing the worst tank meta in history

Now list the cheese currently in the game. By the way, some of these things never coexisted with each other. There's always been cheese, but the game has never had more sets and mythics total than it does now, that's an objective truth. There's more ways to cheese than ever for that reason.

xylena_lazarow · May 22

Stamicka wrote: »

Now list the cheese currently in the game.

Range spam from players that cannot be engaged

Hardened Ward, Healthy Offering, Polar Wind, burst heal spam in general

64 attributes in hp on DDs and healers

Pull sets and pull spam in general

Burst procs like Tarnished and Scavenging proccing off Poison Arrow dots for 20 seconds

Echoing Vigor on group DDs

Knockback stuns and their associated exploits

Duel-specific cheese like Jerall

Snow Treaders, the only Mythic that's still a problem in PvP

Honestly not that much, but range spam + class imbalance + tank meta = bad PvP experience

Sluggy · May 22

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Also I don't think you realise how bad scribing is going to be for pvp if you want it to come soon :P Groups are gonna be insane after it.

I have been hoping for years a meta where ball groups can annihilate a zerg in seconds. No more stalemates, no more 40 minutes of running in circles, just 40 seconds of 40 zergers getting absolutely destroyed by the ball and not coming back. Never coming back. Now they know better. Finally.

Unless I'm with my smallscale and it's even numbers, I'm avoiding engaging groups (and have been for years).

Your absolutely toxic take is exactly the reason Cyrodiil is the way it is now. Ballgroups can and do exactly that - the good ones anyway (which are few and far between these days). No on wants to play in a zone where simply stepping in and seeing what it's all about means they will be ground to dust instantly with zero ability to fight back and then told to get out and never return. Which is why there's three empty Campaigns almost every single night and ZoS has little-to-no interest in changing that.

xylena_lazarow · May 22

Sluggy wrote: »

Your absolutely toxic take is exactly the reason Cyrodiil is the way it is now. Ballgroups can and do exactly that

No they don't, and you seem to have missed the irony. In a hypothetical scenario where balls won so decisively that pugs literally stopped trying to fight them at all, the consequences would certainly be interesting. I think that's what it would take for ZOS to finally bring a change to the group meta. When a ball group runs around the walls 12v40 for an hour, ZOS sees 52 players engaging for an hour, why would they change that? Like the players complain but still do it lol.

In case it wasn't clear, I'd quite like to see a significant shakeup in the organized group meta, but we're getting off topic.

Desiato · May 22

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Using forum posts as a recollection of history is one measurement but I prefer to use videos as they show more accurately the playability of the game and numbers faced etc. There were specific lag issues all they way back to launch, these worsened with the addition of the server side anticheat stuff brought in with the lighting patch. (E.g. 2014) When enough players clashed in a ball the server would essentially completely stop responding, sometimes even crashing, you could place 30/40 banners without the ultimate spending because of the lag etc BUT this was a specific lag instance and wasn't the norm. ZOS even ran a PTS test with players to try and identify issues back then. Ofc people are going to complain about that in a post but the general gameplay was so much smoother than now. The point I'm making is that the level of performance we have now with how few players there are on the map is really sad to see when you compare it to the actual playability of 2014-2017 cyro. That being said performance now is 'slightly' better than 2020-2022 Cyrodiil but has worsened significantly since 2023.

I don't agree the gameplay was smoother than it is today. Based on how I play, the server is more responsive than it has ever been.

I've never seen any evidence server-side anticheat was introduced. In fact, we see evidence of the contrary. For example, glitches that allow more than two 5 piece set bonuses show that the server isn't even performing basic sanity checks. The client is still trusted by the server in many ways and that will never change because it's impractical. What ZOS did post-Zazeergate was introduce some basic client user-mode anticheat functions and client memory obfuscation to make it more difficult for amateurs to analyze memory. ESO is still fundamentally insecure. It's just that the people with the skills to exploit it are busy making money selling cheats for popular games. Memory hacking remains an issue, as it has been from day one.

The ZOS explanation for why server performance degraded is reasonable. They have said they analyzed why lag got worse around the lighting patch and they concluded it was purely coincidence. The root cause was players loading the server more with better developed characters and more players learning the group meta of balling up.

Proc sets, unlimited sustain and the high TTK of the modern era also impact server load.

Before target dummies were introduced, the vast majority of players didn't know how to weave. Now almost every regular can do it. Though Cyrodiil may be less popular than ever, a greater percentage of the playerbase knows how to play. I've never seen a time when skilled solo and small group players represented such a large percentage of the playerbase. This affects server load too. The higher the player APM, the more stressful it is on the server.

I miss the high pop days as well, but I don't miss the terrible lag and crashes that came with it.

Stamicka wrote: »

I don't think people are just looking at the "glory days" of Cyrodiil through rose tinted glasses. There's definitely something there. What your post shows most is that people will always complain. Cyrodiil has never been perfect, that much is true. There has always been issues with it. The thing about each of the posts you listed is that the people complaining had no idea that things could get SO much worse.

My post was purely about server-side lag and technical issues, without consideration for gameplay. Server-side processing lag has always been an issue, but it was much worse then. My post was inspired by an emerging player narrative that server-side lag didn't exist in the past, when the record shows it has been a major issue since at least the summer of 2014. And really, if one looks more closely, they can find escalating complaints beginning shortly after launch as players levelled and learned the game better, putting a high load on the server.

In terms of gameplay, I admit to viewing the past through rose-tinted glasses to some degree. There has always been cheese and major gameplay issues, but I truly believe 2.1 (IC) to approximately 3.0 (Morrowind) had much better gameplay than we experience today.

3.1 introduced Earthgore and with it a period that we're still in where ZOS has worked hard to make Cyrodiil more survivable for its ultracasual audience. This also has the side effect of increasing server load. A lower TTK would result in shorter fights, fewer stalemates and less load.

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

No they don't, and you seem to have missed the irony. In a hypothetical scenario where balls won so decisively that pugs literally stopped trying to fight them at all, the consequences would certainly be interesting. I think that's what it would take for ZOS to finally bring a change to the group meta. When a ball group runs around the walls 12v40 for an hour, ZOS sees 52 players engaging for an hour, why would they change that? Like the players complain but still do it lol.

In case it wasn't clear, I'd quite like to see a significant shakeup in the organized group meta, but we're getting off topic.

This used to happen. In the distant past I used to play in some meta ball groups and often the opposition would give up and we would leave an unflagged keep. I also recall experiencing it as a random fighting guilds like Haxus, Drac and Vehemence.

It doesn't happen as often anymore. I rarely see a ball group get an dtick from a keep they've captured. Most ball groups less adept at killing and more adept and not dying -- like everyone else.

Joy_Division · May 23

For clarification, while I can't speak for everyone, I imagine I do speak for many that when I refer back to the Cyrodiil's past as being better than what it is now, that did not mean it wasn't flawed, there weren't serious issues that we complained loudly about, or that we just uncritically asserted it was better in every way than what Cyrodiil is today.

Also, the scope of when the "glory days" of cyrodiil were in the OP is highly problematic. I most certainly would not say 2018, to say nothing of 2020 (!), were anything resembling glorious. You might get an old school player stating that a particular patch in 2019 was decent, but if they are talking "glory days," they are most likely talking about years before.

Just exactly when the "glory days" were is going to vary from player to player. But people have put up polls asking when Cyrodiil was at its best and the two most common responses were 1.6 patch (CP introduction and the first "stamina" builds) or one of the patches just before (typically, 1.4 or 1.5).

The other issue I have is the thread is linking "glory days" with "My post was purely about server-side lag and technical issues, without consideration for gameplay." That's way oversimplifying things. When I refer to Cyrodiil's better days, I am mostly referring to gameplay, charm, population size, build variation, etc., not server-side lag because I know full well that after the Lighting Patch (1.3, I might be mixing that up), performance went into the shitter. If any of us do refer to PvP's early day performance as good, we are almost always referring to pre-lighting patch. And by the way, no, I don;t find ZoS's explanation of their own ineptitude here at all reasonable. First, they are giving the explanation (how objective!). Second, they are trying to sell a narrative that would have us believe that overnight thousands of PvPers all of sudden got their fighter guild passives, skill morphs, or suddenly realized they could weave ... all while the servers were down for maintenance.

If the point was strictly Cyrodiil's performance is better than the "glory days," I would not argue with that. Though I would say it's almost hard to have performance issues with, what, a whopping 60-80 players is maximum faction population. I'm not impressed their solution to the lag was by removing actual PvP (to say nothing of interesting and varied PvP). We have a better performing Cyrodiil, but it is boring. Boring is precisely why we long for what Cyrodiil once was instead of appreciating it for what it is now.

Desiato · May 23

Joy_Division wrote: »

(typically, 1.4 or 1.5).

The other issue I have is the thread is linking "glory days" with "My post was purely about server-side lag and technical issues, without consideration for gameplay." That's way oversimplifying things.

I'm not saying that server-side lag and technical issues are the only important factors. What I'm saying is I observed an emerging narrative that those things weren't as bad in the past which simply isn't true.

If someone wants to say that 1.5 was the glory days era for them, no one can argue that. But if they want to say that there was no server-side lag or technical issues, then I'm saying that's absurd.

For me, 2.2-3.0 offered the best gameplay. 2.2 was a refinement of 1.6 with the initial CP cap introduced -- it was the third update after 1.6. 3.0 was the last patch before Earthgore. I also liked 2.1(IC), but I didn't like having the the demigods of the uncapped CP 1.0 period. I would take the gameplay of any patch within that range over what we have today.

xylena_lazarow · May 24

Joy_Division wrote: »

If any of us do refer to PvP's early day performance as good, we are almost always referring to pre-lighting patch.

Yeah like a few months in 2014 lol. Performance was also better back then because there was a lot of stuff being done client side (which allowed for a lot of cheating), they moved all that stuff server side after the Meteor Incident. Performance got worse, but at least there's very little cheating now (of course bad players still cry cheats constantly).

Desiato · May 24

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

If any of us do refer to PvP's early day performance as good, we are almost always referring to pre-lighting patch.

Yeah like a few months in 2014 lol. Performance was also better back then because there was a lot of stuff being done client side (which allowed for a lot of cheating), they moved all that stuff server side after the Meteor Incident. Performance got worse, but at least there's very little cheating now (of course bad players still cry cheats constantly).

This is just a player theory without any evidence.

Consider that you correlate a patch in the summer of 2014 as the time when client calculations were moved server-side, but we know hacking client memory was still a thing in 2016 when Zazeergate happened. That's when the player named Zazeer cheated in obvious ways to expose the depth of cheating in ESO.

When Zazeer exposed himself, other players admitted they had guildmates who had been cheating in similar ways since day one.

I recall players being banned for this as late as 2018 and after that I stopped paying attention. A quick look at places where cheaters discuss memory hacking suggests the client is still trusted in the ways that it's always been. They describe obfuscation and client-side user-mode anticheat functions as the only mitigations.

Furthermore, we know there are glitches that allow for more than 2 5 set bonuses, so that shows the server does not perform basic sanity checks, much less validate everything the client says is true.

The reality is that a game like ESO could not perform well without the client being trusted in multiple ways. Only a slow traditional MMO could validate everything server-side.

Just as memory hacking cheating was in the shadows from launch to 2016, it is very likely lurking in the shadows today.

xylena_lazarow · May 24

Desiato wrote: »

Just as memory hacking

Yeah sorry hacked my own memory. Years often blur together for me, but I was there in game at the fight, watching Zazeer spam meteors, going out in a blaze of glory to finally bring down Cheat Engine.

Desiato · May 24

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Desiato wrote: »

Just as memory hacking

Yeah sorry hacked my own memory. Years often blur together for me, but I was there in game at the fight, watching Zazeer spam meteors, going out in a blaze of glory to finally bring down Cheat Engine.

Except it wasn't brought down. They added mitigatations that prevented methods that existed at the time from working, but it didn't solve the fundamental issue.

And the fundamental issue can't be solved, which is why cheating is such a major issue in every popular PC PVP game. The only reason it can stay in the shadows in ESO is because AvA is so unpopular and the people capable of overcoming mitigations are focused on popular games where they can make money selling cheats.

The fundamental issue is that almost every PC user has full admin access to their PC, so that means they can install cheating apps that affect the lowest level of the OS. Any value in memory can be read and modified. Functions designed to detect this can be bypassed. It is a constant cat and mouse game.

If ZOS was serious about mitigating cheating to the greatest degree possible, ESO would have kernel-mode anticheat like every popular PVP game. But they don't because ESO is primarily an ultracasual "Online RPG" played like a single player game by Skyrim fans.

xylena_lazarow · May 24

Desiato wrote: »

The only reason it can stay in the shadows in ESO

If you think cheating now is anywhere near what it was pre Meteor, I've got an Alessia Bridge to sell you.

Desiato · May 24

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Desiato wrote: »

The only reason it can stay in the shadows in ESO

If you think cheating now is anywhere near what it was pre Meteor, I've got an Alessia Bridge to sell you.

I'm not attempting to quantify the level of cheating in ESO. I am only saying it is still possible. If it possible, it's likely someone is doing it. People in cheat discussion forums say they are. They don't want to be caught, so they are low-key about it.

But even before Zazeer-gate, if one complained about cheating, they were laughed at. It's not like it was a new thing then. When AvA was much more popular than it is today, it stayed in the shadows for years.

They made it more difficult for amateurs to cheat, but they didn't eliminate it, nor can they -- and they're not really trying to, either.

Reverb · May 24

I had to stop clicking 3 links in. Seeing all those names of people I still miss playing with/against made me unbearably sad.

reiverx · May 31

I remember back in the days of Azuras Starr that you would get randomly dismounted when a keep changed color. There was also the mount slowdown bug that persisted for ages. And those long load screens.... ugh.

I do miss the monumentally large scale battles and the abundance of good PVP guilds. These are not coming back.