Totally in agreement with everything except for the resized Cyrodiil. I doubt that is a good idea, nor have I heard from anyone proposing such a thing. A re-write of the code should render such an idea unnecessary in which we would drift further away from large-scale, large map, large-scale fights concept which was their sales pitch in the very begining.
With that being said, it makes me and probably many others echo the same question: Whap happened to the re-writing of the code? It should be on testing stage by now. When are you testing it on PTS?

MrLasagna wrote: »

Do people really believe that they are going to do such great effort for a game that is in a clear declining state?
People that need better performance are PvPers and trials end gamer and they showed very clearly that they don't care about them.
This game is becoming more and more a sandbox for very casual players and they don't need such great performance.

This is, obviously, just my opinion.

Yes, but it’s a sound opinion. We’re 8 years into the life span of this game. How many more years does ZoS expect to squeeze out of it before putting it into maintenance mode? (Some would argue we’re there now given new zones are getting smaller and smaller with no new game systems). A task as Herculean as a complete code re-write? I had my doubts when I first heard it and I’ll be without socks if it does actually happen.

Besides, look at Matt’s blurb. Special weekend events or rule sets. How many have we had… one? I seriously doubt a code re-write is on the horizon.

My friend and I were talking about this and all the seemingly unfocused changes happening to the game. Maybe it was the whisky talking, but we landed upon the idea that maybe all these changes are prep work for moving the game to a newer engine.

Seems outlandish, I know (remember - whisky), but not impossible. Will be interesting to see what, if anything, happens.

MrLasagna wrote: »

Do people really believe that they are going to do such great effort for a game that is in a clear declining state?
People that need better performance are PvPers and trials end gamer and they showed very clearly that they don't care about them.
This game is becoming more and more a sandbox for very casual players and they don't need such great performance.

This is, obviously, just my opinion.

Not just your opinion. All evidence points to this is the primary focus of the game last couple plus years.

If there was an official update regarding server rewrite and future PvP content right now, I think it'd look kind of like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOCD_Jzre3c

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_MattFiror

Any idea if the developers are planning to update us soon about the code rewrite? We're 10 months in now to a project that was projected to take "much of 2022". We are eager to hear an update on this.

rpa wrote: »

If they are actually still doing the rewrite and have not found the task of untangling the spaghetti impossible, I hope they take their time and only release it when it is ready.

I also hope they do not release it until it is ready. However, communication on this is 100% necessary. This project was claimed as the reason we would not receive any PVP content in 2022, despite there having been four consecutive years now since PVP content was released.

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

No update as of right now, @React. But when we have an update, we will share across our social channels and on the forum in a specific post highlighting any updates.

Thank you for the reply, Kevin. Looking forward to this, and hopeful that it comes sooner rather than later.

MrLasagna wrote: »

Well, sad to say but that was expected.
All we can get is an update to tell us there is no update.

Better than silence. I hope they have something new to share by the end of the year.

Lumsdenml wrote: »

MrLasagna wrote: »

Do people really believe that they are going to do such great effort for a game that is in a clear declining state?
People that need better performance are PvPers and trials end gamer and they showed very clearly that they don't care about them.
This game is becoming more and more a sandbox for very casual players and they don't need such great performance.

This is, obviously, just my opinion.

I disagree that this game is in a "clear state of decline. " Looking at the population trend from launch it is clearly increasing in population. The current downtrend could be seen as simple seasonal decline, and is still too little data to accurately call a trend, much less a "clear state of decline. "

This.

It is so easy to make claims the game is dying or in decline, What is interesting is there have been people saying this game was dying and dead for years and it is clear their claims were baseless.

"and also if we can expect PVP related DLC content to come in Q1/Q2 2023. After all, by that time it will have been four years since our last PVP content was added in the form of a single BG map."

I hope not unless it is a change in dynamics with existing content. We don't need to spread the already thin PvP population any thinner.

A smaller Cyrodiil is a bad idea. A smaller map would take away much of the strategy in controlling the map. All PvP needs is performance improvements. Improvements will bring the players back.

It's always easy to scream for throwing newer and faster hardware on a problem though this might never solve the core issue. ZOS has analyzed and measured the throughput under various scenarios in the last year but wasn't really explaining the results of the investigations to us players. We therefore can only speculate what might have lead to performance degradation over the years. Sure, splitting the DB into cold and hot accounts has helped to some degree but it was just one part of the puzzle.

Years ago there was already a login-issue with chars that have quested a lot as the DB was just overburdened with loading data for each player back then. ZOS managed to "fix" this issue some weeks later, mostly by throwing bigger hardware at the problem. Whether they also changed something in the way data is loaded is beyond my knowledge. I at least can clearly see a difference in terms of login-times of characters/accounts that haven't done many quests or explored much of the zones and ones that did all the content. There is a difference of almost 2-3 minutes noticeable in that regards. That at least leaves me with the conclusion that the data-model each char carries around, where the progress of each zone and so forth is stored, is just very large and takes some time to load in comparison to ones that hardly have done anything.

A rewrite here might eventually split up the data or allow to stream only data in that is required for the current zone or the like. I have no insights in what databases they are using or about their internals. Maybe they switch part of their backend to a more graph-based DB like Neo4J or the like. In Star Citizen i.e. the devs changed their backend to such a graph-based DB to help to stream only data in that is needed for the current portion of the area they are in and clear out any unneeded data. They called this technique persistent entity streaming and it took them over 4 years of implementation and they still are working on it.

While I do find the rewrite necessary on the long run, it though can't be an excuse for not listening to their PvP community for years, and I am by no means a PvPer at all. I literally have to force myself to go to a PvP-Zone when one of the events is live and was only in a battleground once when someone of the group queued for battleground instead of the daily dungeon he actually looked for. An arena-like PvP skirmish shouldn't be to hard to implement and should also not be very demanding on network/database bandwidth. A 2v2, 3v3, 4v4, 12v12 with ranking option and eventual matchmaking and/or monthly tournaments can't be that hard to implement.

kargen27 wrote: »

"You seem worried about spreading the population, but the reality of the population is that a good deal of those players quit because of the lack of content."

No, the vast majority left because of performance issues. You can almost pinpoint the dates of mass exodus. First was when ZoS had to make more calculations server side to deal with cheats. That really hurt performance and players left. They from time to time check back to see if performance has improved. There have been other significant (though not as significant) events that caused players to leave.
With PvP the players provide the dynamics of the area. It is good to change things up from time to time to shake up player actions some but new areas isn't what PvP needs.
I do think they could do some fun things with Imperial City and have voiced ideas on that in the past. I think the flags in Imperial City was a mistake. Events where the flag doesn't matter for spawning in one district from time to time I think would get a good number of people participating.

And I stick by my opinion that a smaller Cyrodiil would be a bad idea. It needs to be large to allow for a variety of strategies in controlling the map. If/when ZoS figures out the performance issues all kinds of people will come back to PvP.

Yes, the majority left because of performance issues. Again, performance is the top priority.

However, on PC NA, they "fixed" the performance issues. The population rose for several months, but in the past two months has dwindled back to pre server upgrade numbers. Therefore, I disagree with your sentiment that "fixing performance will bring these players back".

I know from talking to many of these people myself that their issue playing the game now, post performance fix, is that they are bored of doing the exact same thing in the exact same environments with no new rewards or incentives.