As the title says, after Stonethorn patch my ping got unstable and high. While under normal conditions I had 200-230 ping and most importantly stable one, allowing to PvP, now my ping is jumping between 200 and 500. Often it jumps to 999+ resulting in disconnection from the server. The ping is unstable both in PvP and PvE, although obviously in PvP it is much worse.
I have tried opening a ticked and contacting support but to no avail - the things they suggested are rather basic: forwarding ports (did, opened for both Steam and ESO), cycling routed (did multiple times), contacting ISP (did, network provider said there had been no outages and there is no issue on their side). A new thing the support suggested was dynamic IP, here is what they wrote:
"Playing The Elder Scrolls Online on a variable IP is not recommended. As your IP changes, which may be every few minutes or so, the game typically either times out or kicks you back to login the next time you hit a load screen, whether that be logging into a character or changing zones.
In some cases, the change in IP address is being assigned by the router itself, and a configuration change can resolve the issue. Due to variations between hardware, we are unable to provide step by step directions for setting a static IP for your PC, but in most cases it should be possible to do so through your router's options. Please consult your router's documentation for more information.
In other cases, such as in the cases a Network Address Translation (NAT) is used, the IP will fluctuate too quickly to keep any sort of stable connection to the game. This is typically the case in large private networks, but in some cases an ISP may use it to conserve unique IP addresses. If this is the case, we advise talking to your network administrator or ISP to discuss options."
Thing is, a dedicated IP costs tons of money. As for router's NAT - I have a manually assigned IP so this should not be the issue. They asked for tracert and pathping, so I did and here are the results:
Computing statistics for 350 seconds...
Source to Here This Node/Link
Hop RTT Lost/Sent = Pct Lost/Sent = Pct Address
0 DESKTOP-S8CD20M.flets-east.jp [192.168.11.3]
0/ 100 = 0% |
1 0ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% 192.168.11.1
0/ 100 = 0% |
2 35ms 1/ 100 = 1% 1/ 100 = 1% Tky67GFM1.vectant.ne.jp [163.139.102.106]
0/ 100 = 0% |
3 34ms 1/ 100 = 1% 1/ 100 = 1% 163.139.122.117
0/ 100 = 0% |
4 37ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% 163.139.29.49
0/ 100 = 0% |
5 38ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% ae2.core1.nihonbashi.vectant.ne.jp [163.139.131.29]
0/ 100 = 0% |
6 47ms 1/ 100 = 1% 1/ 100 = 1% 163.139.37.106
0/ 100 = 0% |
7 37ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% unknown.telstraglobal.net [210.57.59.237]
0/ 100 = 0% |
8 36ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% i-91.siko-core01.telstraglobal.net [202.84.148.69]
0/ 100 = 0% |
9 35ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% i-96.ntoh01.telstraglobal.net [202.47.216.106]
0/ 100 = 0% |
10 37ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% 210.176.33.18
0/ 100 = 0% |
[b] 11 --- 100/ 100 =100% 100/ 100 =100% po111.bs-a.sech-tyo.netarch.akamai.com [72.52.56.194]
0/ 100 = 0% |
12 --- 100/ 100 =100% 100/ 100 =100% a72-52-1-197.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com [72.52.1.197]
0/ 100 = 0% |
13 --- 100/ 100 =100% 100/ 100 =100% ae120.access-a.sech-tyo.netarch.akamai.com [72.52.56.197]
0/ 100 = 0% |[/b]
14 48ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% a72-52-63-85.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com [72.52.63.85]
And tracert:
Tracing route to 198.20.198.110 over a maximum of 30 hops
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.11.1
2 44 ms 45 ms 60 ms Tky67GFM1.vectant.ne.jp [163.139.102.106]
3 64 ms 60 ms 54 ms 163.139.122.117
4 56 ms 63 ms * 163.139.29.49
5 46 ms 66 ms 75 ms ae2.core1.nihonbashi.vectant.ne.jp [163.139.131.29]
6 86 ms 78 ms 61 ms 163.139.37.106
7 63 ms 49 ms 52 ms unknown.telstraglobal.net [210.57.59.237]
8 53 ms 69 ms 64 ms i-91.siko-core01.telstraglobal.net [202.84.148.69]
9 67 ms 59 ms 45 ms i-96.ntoh01.telstraglobal.net [202.47.216.106]
10 66 ms 57 ms 40 ms 210.176.33.18
11 57 ms 55 ms 61 ms po111.bs-a.sech-tyo.netarch.akamai.com [72.52.56.194]
12 57 ms 55 ms 54 ms a72-52-1-197.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com [72.52.1.197]
13 54 ms 69 ms 65 ms ae120.access-a.sech-tyo.netarch.akamai.com [72.52.56.197]
[b] 14 45 ms 53 ms 70 ms a72-52-63-85.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com [72.52.63.85] [/b]
15 * * * Request timed out.
16 * * * Request timed out.
17 * * * Request timed out.
18 * * * Request timed out.
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 * * * Request timed out.
21 * * * Request timed out.
22 * * * Request timed out.
23 * * * Request timed out.
24 * * * Request timed out.
25 * * * Request timed out.
26 * * * Request timed out.
27 * * * Request timed out.
28 * * * Request timed out.
29 * * * Request timed out.
30 * * * Request timed out.
Trace complete.
As one can see, there is a packet loss at Akamai, which has been known to be a problem to no resolve for Zenimax. Previously, before Stonethorn I returned after not playing for quite a while and had similar lag issues. I also contacted the support and got similar response but then I did not have ports forwarded. So I did forwarded them and voila - it improved the performance greatly. However, after the Stonethorn patch the lags returned and became even worse while nothing changed on my side regarding hardware/software. Am I missing something? Anything I can try to improve the performance? Right now the game is nigh unplayable since I mostly PvP and in PvP the lag is horrendous while mistakes are unforgivable. Even on tiny battlegrounds there are insane lags.
P.S. I do not have a potato PC with albeit now old but still potent GTX 1080, 32 GB RAM, i7 Core 5. The internet of 1 GB/s Rakuten Broadband (Japan) with stably giving no less than 150 mb/s on Speedtest, so technically it should work just fine.