Aleswell just now on Vivec PC NA was an absolute shambles. No wonder they don't charge a sub for this game, they would have refunds left right and centre.

Ackwalan wrote: »

This month on the PC NA Vivec campaign I earned 150 AP on three characters, one for each alliance. With about 12hours left their rankings were, AD-7600, DC-7800 and EP-7400. I understand this is not the total number of separate accounts, but how many characters. Yet, having at least 23K characters logging in (I know not at the same time) means PvP is active, so the idea of having 50-100 max players at anyone one time is not true. Unless those few folks are running 200 different characters in PvP.

That's only because players are playing multiple characters just for end of campaign geodes -- it's the Cyrodiil version of doing writs on all of your characters. It's a bad system.

It's been this bad before. My clips from 2.3 tell me it was just as bad if not worse. That was an awful patch for PVP performance.

I use 3.0 as my baseline. Think back to the first Midyear Mayhem event during 3.0. It was SO smooth compared to now despite massive zergs. It's been downhill since.

I think the key problem is the gameplay is designed for 12 player instances. In game development, designers don't just add abilities and other functions on a whim. Performance is profiled extensively to ensure players can't break the game. IMO, ZOS does not factor AvA into its performance profiling at all. That's why Battlegrounds PVP is limited to 12 players -- like Trials.

Faction stacks and never ending fights are also a factor. 50+ players on at least one faction showing up at a keep or outpost is completely normal. Those fights feature an incredible amount of server calculations, not only in the form of player abilities, but also siege. How many objective fights are siege-heavy stalemates for 10-20 minutes before a 2nd breach is opened? In a keep fight that can happen twice. Long fights attract players like moths to flame, compounding the problem.

AP payouts have been more than doubled over the years, so there are a never ending supply of Forward Camps to extend these long lagfests.

ZOS keeps adding more proc functions to weapons, sets and passives.

Finally, players are better than ever. Target Skeletons have elevated the overall skill level of the playerbase. There are more competent players than ever before. Competent players stress the server more than inexperienced players because they are more mobile, survive longer and execute abilities at a faster rate -- thus the per player server load is probably higher than ever.

frozywozy wrote: »

RMerlin wrote: »

Ackwalan wrote: »

This month on the PC NA Vivec campaign I earned 150 AP on three characters, one for each alliance. With about 12hours left their rankings were, AD-7600, DC-7800 and EP-7400. I understand this is not the total number of separate accounts, but how many characters. Yet, having at least 23K characters logging in (I know not at the same time) means PvP is active, so the idea of having 50-100 max players at anyone one time is not true. Unless those few folks are running 200 different characters in PvP.

AP were running three raids last night (and LFG were running a small raid as well), and I saw DC have full raids in two different locations for a good portion of the day. I'd say there are definitely more than 50-100 active fighters at a time, just taking into account those EP and DC raids. The problem is, it was always multi-raid versus multi-raid in a given location. Those large scale fights are the real performance killers.

I believe the campaign cap is somewhere around 150 per faction (correct me if I'm wrong),

Yes, the lag and server stability is still pretty bad. Ride to a keep that's currently under attack, and there's a good chance you will get disconnected as you get near to the keep. And afterward it takes 2-3 attempts to connect back, as you get an error that you are unable to connect to the server. Makes me wonder if those disconnect are not caused by some anti-flood technology within their network, where a lag burst would trigger these, blocking you from connecting for 5 minutes.

nailed it.

You need to help EP stop running 3 raids in one TS and stacking together in the same spot. Props to Drac for fighting elsewhere all weekend.