AOE is not the problem

Leslik · September 2020

I can't tell you what is but if the experience of the last 2 nights is anything to go by then no further proof is needed.

Last night was full of disconnects crashes and lag. Tonight was a little better but not by much.

Stop clutching at straws and blaming the easy target. It's not aoe. it's not ball groups.

As things stand 6 weeks will be wasted and you'll be no closer to the answer

[Edit to remove bashing]

Ackwalan · September 2020

My experience on PC NA has been different. Last there was very little skill delay, but also very few ball groups, even when zergs were fighting. This week there is a little more skill delay, better then normal, but there are also more ball groups and the same amount of zergs.

The large fight with zergs but no ball groups have been rather smooth. When a ball group does show up there is a little more delay but my skills work and I'm not being perma CC'ed. The ball groups also don't last nearly as long as before the test.

By skills I mean any ability like break-free, block, light/heavy attack, dodge-roll etc and of course class abilities.

vgastel · September 2020

My money is on just one simple parameter: population density. It doesn't matter if grouped or not, it doesn't matter if casting aoe or not, as long as there are huge numbers of people in a small area lag ensues. Why I think this? The only times I crash out from Cyrodiil is when approaching a keep where a big fight goes on.

Are there large numbers of aoe's in these fights? No! The lag starts already when we siege and counter siege each other. I am sure if you ever participated in huge siege fests for example PC EU dc/ad at ash or dc/ep at ales and bothered to siege, you know that sieges lag badly too. Sure, siege is aoe, but the number of siege and countersiege aoes are small, only max 20 offensive sieges allowed, with a few more for defending side.

After, the crash, the server consistently times out on relogging to cyrodill.

Characteristics on these huge siege fights: huge population density, largely ungrouped megazergs, relatively small number of aoes with most coming from siege weapons and maybe heals, and of course lag.

Conclusion: grouped or not is of minor importance. Casting Aoes or not is of minor importance. Only large population density in a small area seems to correlate with lag.

There seems to be something in the code that takes up time when players are near each other, even when doing nothing.

For all I know maybe even something silly like exchanging information for outfits, skins, colors, body parameters of all nearby players. Who knows how often per sec/min and at which radius that data is exchanged to the clients/players? With N players closeby, N*(N-1) pairs exist. The N^2 term may explode when more than 100 players are near each other in huge keep fights.

idk · September 2020

Pretty sure Zos is aware that the issue is not any one specific thing and that there is no single solution that will fix everything.