[Mac] Crashing to desktop

warbles · July 2021

**This is a ticket I sent to Support, who told me nothing but to post this here.**

I am on MacOS and have been experiencing frequent crashes to desktop ever since I re-downloaded the game in June. Below is a description of some crash conditions observed over the last 1.5 months:

(1) Player-to-player teleporting, e.g. moving to a group member: nearly 100% crash rate. Queueing for dungeons results in the same crash rate
(2) Wayshrine teleporting inter-zone, e.g. moving from Glenumbra to Deshaan: approx 70% crash rate (NB: using the non-city wayshrines between those zones are more reliable, e.g. don't port directly between Daggerfall and Davon's Watch, 30% crash rate)
(3) Wayshrine teleporting intra-zone: 10% crash rate
(4) Map teleport, i.e. non-shrine teleport: around 70% crash rate
(5) Entering delves: usually fine, but some delves are completely broken, see (8)

Special conditions:
(6) Having a pet, companion or a group member: nearly 100% crash rate when travelling using (1) or (2), around 20% when engaging (3), (4) and (5)
(7) Zone main quests that have portals back and forth (e.g. Stonefalls end quest, Summerset Evergloam quest) crashes without pets or group members, no remedy found
(8) Certain delves/portals are completely inaccessible: Old Orsimer, Emberflint Mine. I have a list of more, including the start of the main Coldharbour quest (teleporting from Benefactor!)

As you might imagine, this is at best frustrating and at worst absolutely fatal to core aspects of the game (e.g. not being able to start Soul Shriven quest line). At this stage the game is quite unplayable. Dungeons and certain quests cannot be completed, and I have been softlocked in the game world multiple times and had to have a friend on a Windows PC log into my account to move me manually.

There have been numerous forum posts dating from March identifying the cause of this fatal bug which I can link if you'd like. Decided to send in a support ticket to provide more information to the team to fix this as it is quite ridiculous to have to put up with it. I know M1 Macs are not officially supported but Intel Mac users on the forums are experiencing this as well, and the problem identified has nothing to do with the chipset.

ZOS_Chiroptera · July 2021

Hello @warbles, if you have a ticket number, we can check to see if it's reached the right queue.

warbles · July 2021

ZOS_Chiroptera wrote: »

Hello @warbles, if you have a ticket number, we can check to see if it's reached the right queue.

Hi Chiroptera, my ticket number is 210724-007862.

doesurmindglow · July 2021

Yeah, I think every Mac user is experiencing this. It seems to have primarily arisen (for me and others in my guild) at the Flames of Ambition patch. There were crashes prior to that for sure but they weren't nearly as frequent or as patterned as these; most everyone seems to have the "crashing on port" bug.

You have all the problem areas correctly identified here, though I'd suggest a couple of my own: the problem seems to be worse during peak hours, such as early and mid-evening EST. Getting into the wee hours (ie. 1 am or later PST), there are less occurrences. There are a few areas that trigger non-port crashes with similar crash logs as those we see on port. I've experienced this in some delves, dungeons, newer overland zones such as Northern Elsweyr and Western Skyrim, and battleground instances.

Imperial City is also very bad.

Based on the pattern of crashes, (pure speculation here, I have no real idea) it maybe has something to do with character modeling, especially when character models are in an "altered" state, such as the transparency state you trigger on a map teleport. Imperial City's "silenced" state on instance change seems to have a similar effect. Similarly, the presence of a large number of character models creates unstable conditions somehow.

My ticket number is 210705-007707.

I have yet to see if the problem persists on PTS or if something is in the works with a software build to resolve this persistent instability of the Mac game client.

ZOS_Bill · July 2021

@warbles

We've sent you a forum PM with an update on the ticket you submitted.

ZOS_Bill · July 2021

@doesurmindglow

Another forum PM has ben sent regarding your ticket 210705-007707 and its current status.

warbles · July 2021

doesurmindglow wrote: »

Yeah, I think every Mac user is experiencing this. It seems to have primarily arisen (for me and others in my guild) at the Flames of Ambition patch. There were crashes prior to that for sure but they weren't nearly as frequent or as patterned as these; most everyone seems to have the "crashing on port" bug.

You have all the problem areas correctly identified here, though I'd suggest a couple of my own: the problem seems to be worse during peak hours, such as early and mid-evening EST. Getting into the wee hours (ie. 1 am or later PST), there are less occurrences. There are a few areas that trigger non-port crashes with similar crash logs as those we see on port. I've experienced this in some delves, dungeons, newer overland zones such as Northern Elsweyr and Western Skyrim, and battleground instances.

Imperial City is also very bad.

Based on the pattern of crashes, (pure speculation here, I have no real idea) it maybe has something to do with character modeling, especially when character models are in an "altered" state, such as the transparency state you trigger on a map teleport. Imperial City's "silenced" state on instance change seems to have a similar effect. Similarly, the presence of a large number of character models creates unstable conditions somehow.

My ticket number is 210705-007707.

I have yet to see if the problem persists on PTS or if something is in the works with a software build to resolve this persistent instability of the Mac game client.

Agree with the above and concur on the point about server load: I've observed the same as well.

While I'm on the ARM Mac which isn't officially supported, other Intel Mac users on this forum are reporting the same issue (and the same error message with MoltenVK): given that this is a bug that's been reported as early as March I'm surprised that more hasn't been said to address this problem which, to put it bluntly, renders core aspects of the game unplayable. Unless ZOS is dropping support for MacOS in general (which should be communicated ASAP), I think we can expect better.

aldriq · July 2021

doesurmindglow wrote: »

Based on the pattern of crashes, (pure speculation here, I have no real idea) it maybe has something to do with character modeling, especially when character models are in an "altered" state, such as the transparency state you trigger on a map teleport. Imperial City's "silenced" state on instance change seems to have a similar effect. Similarly, the presence of a large number of character models creates unstable conditions somehow.

Load has definitely something to do with it, probably the more stuff to load/unload makes the crash more likely - in my case I get most crashes on log out of a char, next most frequent is when porting, and last (and most annoying) is some rare cases on char log in. Pets and companions exacerbate this but are not the only cause. Last time I got a char 'trapped' in Blackwood (I made the mistake of leaving the companion active) I managed to log back in to it by lowering the view distance setting to 4 - with a value so low I imagine even the companion is not visible and therefore not drawn, avoiding the crash and allowing me to dismiss the companion and restore the view distance to its normal value again safely.

My last ticket number related to this was 210628-003530, I was told my crash details would be passed to the dev team, but if there is any fresh info on this I'd be happy to hear it.

ZOS_Bill · July 2021

@aldriq

Thanks for your ticket number. Your ticket 210628-003530 was successfully sent over to the development as feedback.

doesurmindglow · August 2021

It would appear my ticket has been kicked to Bethesda Customer Service following the implementation of recommended removal of add-ons and game repair; I proceeded with those steps and, unsurprisingly, the issue persisted such that I was able to provide two crash logs in under an hour following game repair and PRAM reset in the vanilla UI.

One thing I am considering as an avenue to explore is potentially submitting the issue to the MoltenVK developers here: https://github.com/KhronosGroup/MoltenVK/issues

This is not my area of expertise, but it is possible those who work directly with the library may be able to provide more insight into the cause (and potentially a solution, I dunno) of these crashes. But it's equally likely the problem isn't resolvable without access to the game's actual source code or to the game servers.

I'll probably put together a submission for that venue and see what if anything I hear back.

aldriq · August 2021

ZOS_BillE wrote: »

@aldriq

Thanks for your ticket number. Your ticket 210628-003530 was successfully sent over to the development as feedback.

Thanks for double-checking.

doesurmindglow wrote: »

This is not my area of expertise, but it is possible those who work directly with the library may be able to provide more insight into the cause (and potentially a solution, I dunno) of these crashes. But it's equally likely the problem isn't resolvable without access to the game's actual source code or to the game servers.

I'll probably put together a submission for that venue and see what if anything I hear back.

Do we know what version of MoltenVK ESO is currently using in U30? It'd be interesting to see if the PTS/U31 has updated it.

BloodyLady · January 2022

I stil have those crashes sometimes 3 times in a hour , what i do then is very different sometimes when i just logged most of the time im playing/doing quests . Something new is everytime i ride/walk in a town i get a screen like i get with login in or go to another town/world , sometimes even when im fighting ,then im happy with Bastian at my side .

BloodyLady · January 2022

BloodyLady wrote: »

I stil have those crashes sometimes 3 times in a hour , what i do then is very different sometimes when i just logged most of the time im playing/doing quests . Something new is everytime i ride/walk in a town i get a screen like i get with login in or go to another town/world , sometimes even when im fighting ,then im happy with Bastian at my side .

Btw that happens on a windows pc

ZOS_Bill · January 2022

As this discussion is now over 6 months old, we've decided to close out the thread. If you still need assistance, please feel free to start a new thread in the Mac Support forum.