PvP Event queues and you're doing maintenance?

Crown · March 2

RE: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/653527/

We're in the middle of the last weekend of the Mayhem PvP event. Most of us have taken the day away from responsibilities to have fun and play PvP.

@ZOS_GinaBruno Are you aware that queues to get into PvP are 2-3 hours? On behalf of the PvP community, please do the maintenance overnight when there are less players in PvP! Most of us don't care at all about the free DLC, and for those who do, they can get it tomorrow / after a real maintenance period!

If this is however meant to fix the bug/exploits being used in PvP affecting many of us (combat bug?), then please go ahead and we'll be less unhappy.

UPDATE: Since maintenance went ahead (as expected, but we had to ask), and the afternoon/evening plan of slaughtering is now ruined for all the PvP folks who probably won't get back into the campaign for a few hours after the servers come back up and/or have just given up knowing that the queues are so bad that they probably won't get to play with their friends.. We ask that you extend Mayhem into next weekend (and maybe keep the additional VMs and server infra that you spun up for the event active for longer so we can enjoy PvP a lot more without all the crashes and lagging that we usually have outside this event).

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO · March 2

I believe the combat bug only affect players who either stack multiple groups on top of each other or play along with their own faction's front line. I have never been affected playing away from my own faction and other groups.

You might want to try this and see if it helps, it would be useful to be able to narrow it down for ZOS's team to reproduce.

Crown · March 2

Never thought about it being related to groups.. In that case when the servers come back up, the CrownZerg will only open groups 1 through 5 for a maximum of 60.

It'll be first come first serve, with a priority for 4 healers and 4 damage dealers set up per https://darkelves.com/zerg guidelines, and only 4 open slots for anyone in any build per group.

The old groups 6 and 7 and the three who were waiting, I'm sorry you'll have to join another zerg.

Desiato · March 2

We ask that you extend Mayhem into next weekend (and maybe keep the additional VMs and server infra that you spun up for the event active for longer so we can enjoy PvP a lot more without all the crashes and lagging that we usually have outside this event).

This is entirely reasonable and consistent with what they do when an issue like this arises during PVE events.

DarkHero1989 · March 2

Please extend mayhem. To have a unexpected downtime of 2 hours is just insane on a weekend.

SaffronCitrusflower · March 2

Crown wrote: »

RE: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/653527/

We're in the middle of the last weekend of the Mayhem PvP event. Most of us have taken the day away from responsibilities to have fun and play PvP.

@ZOS_GinaBruno Are you aware that queues to get into PvP are 2-3 hours? On behalf of the PvP community, please do the maintenance overnight when there are less players in PvP! Most of us don't care at all about the free DLC, and for those who do, they can get it tomorrow / after a real maintenance period!

If this is however meant to fix the bug/exploits being used in PvP affecting many of us (combat bug?), then please go ahead and we'll be less unhappy.

UPDATE: Since maintenance went ahead (as expected, but we had to ask), and the afternoon/evening plan of slaughtering is now ruined for all the PvP folks who probably won't get back into the campaign for a few hours after the servers come back up and/or have just given up knowing that the queues are so bad that they probably won't get to play with their friends.. We ask that you extend Mayhem into next weekend (and maybe keep the additional VMs and server infra that you spun up for the event active for longer so we can enjoy PvP a lot more without all the crashes and lagging that we usually have outside this event).

Performance was so bad we're all better off with a server reset though. I agree with you, but it was getting really, really bad. They really needed to reset the server. Performance is always better after maintenance. (well, almost always anyway)

SaffronCitrusflower · March 2

Crown wrote: »

Never thought about it being related to groups.. In that case when the servers come back up, the CrownZerg will only open groups 1 through 5 for a maximum of 60.

It'll be first come first serve, with a priority for 4 healers and 4 damage dealers set up per https://darkelves.com/zerg guidelines, and only 4 open slots for anyone in any build per group.

The old groups 6 and 7 and the three who were waiting, I'm sorry you'll have to join another zerg.

Interesting comment. What do you think the population cap is?

Crown · March 2

.

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

What do you think the population cap is?

Best guess based on what I see in game playing the past few days:
0-29 = 1 bar
30-59 = 2 bar
60-89 = 3 bar
90 = locked
Once it's locked, they only open up one slot every minute or three based on server capability/performance and that could be anywhere from 110 to maybe 150 during Mayhem.

Beaverton · March 2

Crown wrote: »

.

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

What do you think the population cap is?

Best guess based on what I see in game playing the past few days:
0-29 = 1 bar
30-59 = 2 bar
60-89 = 3 bar
90 = locked
Once it's locked, they only open up one slot every minute or three based on server capability/performance and that could be anywhere from 110 to maybe 150 during Mayhem.

Unrelated to the actual thread topic but Crown, you imply that you think the cap is a dynamic number so if a faction is poplocked for longer, they will have a higher cap than factions that have been pop locked for less time. Am I interpreting your post correctly?

Crown · March 2

Beaverton wrote: »

Unrelated to the actual thread topic but Crown, you imply that you think the cap is a dynamic number so if a faction is poplocked for longer, they will have a higher cap than factions that have been pop locked for less time. Am I interpreting your post correctly?

We've been trying to figure this out for years, and most of us are pretty sure that it is dynamic.. Whatever pop locked number is, once you reach that, they'll let in more at a reduced rate. Something like:

At 60 players, only allow 1 in per minute.
At 80 players, only allow in 1 per 2 minutes.
At 100 players, only allow 1 in per 3 minutes.
At 120 players, don't allow anyone in until someone drops.

EDIT: The timing of that could also be more related to the longer you're in and the deeper you get, the less people quit queue so it just seems slower later on. We're pretty sure that the pop cap increases through the night (or possibly more people log off than we're able to identify).

It would be awesome if one of you ZOS folks let us know how this all actually works! An interface addon showing current population in each campaign would also help people plan how they intend to play more easily. We'd all be happy to comment and help build metrics of subjective performance if we had a reference model - even just the number of potential opponents on the map.

EDIT 2: The AD queue has moved 27 slots in the last 60 minutes (18h50 eastern on Saturday).

dcrush · March 3

Yesterday I queued three hours to get into GH.

Today, after maintenance, I crashed seven times in two hours.

Pretty bad all around.

xylena_lazarow · March 3

Lag seems worse post-fix and I just crashed trying to load into Bleakers, after no crashes in the past week.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO · March 4

Crown wrote: »

Beaverton wrote: »

Unrelated to the actual thread topic but Crown, you imply that you think the cap is a dynamic number so if a faction is poplocked for longer, they will have a higher cap than factions that have been pop locked for less time. Am I interpreting your post correctly?

We've been trying to figure this out for years, and most of us are pretty sure that it is dynamic.. Whatever pop locked number is, once you reach that, they'll let in more at a reduced rate. Something like:
At 60 players, only allow 1 in per minute.

At 80 players, only allow in 1 per 2 minutes.

At 100 players, only allow 1 in per 3 minutes.

At 120 players, don't allow anyone in until someone drops.

EDIT: The timing of that could also be more related to the longer you're in and the deeper you get, the less people quit queue so it just seems slower later on. We're pretty sure that the pop cap increases through the night (or possibly more people log off than we're able to identify).

It would be awesome if one of you ZOS folks let us know how this all actually works! An interface addon showing current population in each campaign would also help people plan how they intend to play more easily. We'd all be happy to comment and help build metrics of subjective performance if we had a reference model - even just the number of potential opponents on the map.

EDIT 2: The AD queue has moved 27 slots in the last 60 minutes (18h50 eastern on Saturday).

This isn't strictly what is happening but it is kind of similar. Essentially population is dependent on the overworld population only. This is why players are getting 'stuck' in delves for some time.

I would say that based on my own testing with groups there is a hard cap of around 60 players per faction currently, but this can be exceeded if players go into delves / some porting or crash conditions occur. It used to be a confirmed 90-100 (due to a certain pact guild from some time ago's numbers, having almost 4 x 24m) so it has definitely been reduced.

mook-eb16_ESO · March 4

There was maintenance today? The servers are worse than yesterday I tried Ashpit eu and gave up its so bad.

Crown · March 4

mook-eb16_ESO wrote: »

There was maintenance today? The servers are worse than yesterday I tried Ashpit eu and gave up its so bad.

A lot of people have been experiencing that. A few of us just all crashed while standing on the porch at Fare 2 minutes into a break, and we're all out of Cyrodiil. The queue is over 100 already, and some of us are stuck on Error 108 (login failed) waiting for our logins to time out..

ZOS team, this is so far beyond unacceptable for a PvP that there are no words to describe the disappointment that most of us feel.