Performance issues: Anyone else?

AnduinTryggva · November 2025

I'm currently training my rotations and weaving and I struggle with it due to some weird behavior that I cannot explain. This seems to be like this since one of the last two updates iirc.

The bar swap is extremely clunky and unreliable. Every third or fourth occasion it just does not bar swap and I have to press the button twice to perform the bar swap. First I thought it might be my mouse so I bound a keyboard key to war swap and tried it in a consecutive way there and compared it to what I get when using my mouse. Exactly the same result. Frequently the bar swap was not performed at all and I had to reapply the key/button. Now it might be that there is a sort of cooldown on barswap too but then I have this same behavior during my rota where I could not hit that cooldown prematurely.
Also I observe that occasionally when I apply a skill it fires with a noticeable delay in the range of 0.5s.
And sometimes it does not fire my light attacks. There are phases when light attacks just are not performed. Now this might be a rota issue but then it would probably be more erratic and stochastically distributed and not be phases in a parse where all light attacks fire as they should and others where they don't.

Gabriel_H · November 2025

What skills are you using? Some can interfere with barswap such as Critical Charge.

Also "instant" skills have a built-in 400ms delay. (Yes, they are not in fact instant).

Light attack does not trigger the global cooldown but is subject to it. i.e. once you fire a skill you can't LA again until after 1s. You can however press the button after 600ms and the LA will then fire 400ms later. i.e. you can queue the attack - applies to all skills too.

Edit: Do you have an addon to show the GCD or one that turns on the GCD animation on the skill bar?

Ardriel · November 2025

It's not you or the global cooldown. Many players are experiencing these issues. The question is, why it's not the same for everyone. Today, vOC on PC NA was almost unplayable for me.

I often had to click 3-4 times before bar swap responded. And that's definitely not because of Stampede skill. I always cancle stampede with a second skill before bar swap so there is no delay. After I logged into EU, the lag fun continued there. Not quite as bad, because the ping is a little better there, but still worse than usual. On other days, everything works smoothly. The skills fire as they should. No issues with bar swap. Something is wrong today. And why it only affects individual accounts is a mystery.

whitecrow · November 2025

Yes - having trouble with swapping, attacking, blocking... In-game response is very poor.
Also lots of delayed sound effects, enemies not realising they are dead for several seconds...

MorallyBipolar · November 2025

Yes. Since two updates ago there is a weird thing that happens when attacking NPC's in Cyrodiil. (I mostly PvP, so can't say if it's happening in PvE also or not) It's like we can get out of sync with the game or something and none of our attacks actually land. The NPC's stand there like they're not under attack and none of our attacks actually land. I'm still burning resources to use skills, but the NPC's don't even notice I'm there and I may as well not be since can't attack the NPC's anyway.

They changes something to do with the animations and I think that's what's causing the issue, but I'm not programmer or dev so I can only report on what I'm seeing.

katanagirl1 · November 2025

Just running around overland the frame rate is so slow and stuttering and there is nothing I can do to improve it on console. It used to be just in busy cities but even areas where I see I no other players it is terrible.

I haven’t parsed in a long time but I can imagine that it really sucks right now.

oregonrob · November 2025

The performance right now is by far the worse I have ever seen. In fact, during the whole Daedric quest event it had been constant screen reloading, NPCs taking up to a minute to acknowledge me, picking locks problematic, and trying to fight any boss of caliber, impossible. Hopefully this will be addressed soon because ESO right now is borderline unplayable.

Tandor · November 2025

Has the introduction of addons to consoles had any noticeable effect on performance on those machines? Have console players generally embraced addons and tried disabling them to see how performance compares?

Unfadingsilence · November 2025

I'm sorry to say it.But after I ended up upgrading my PC i no longer experience any issues no lag in pvp or pve and no odd things happening other than warden charm putting me in walls the game feels amazing 160-250 FPS depending on the activity and 50 PING

AnduinTryggva · November 2025

Unfadingsilence wrote: »

I'm sorry to say it.But after I ended up upgrading my PC i no longer experience any issues no lag in pvp or pve and no odd things happening other than warden charm putting me in walls the game feels amazing 160-250 FPS depending on the activity and 50 PING

Well and I am sorry but my rig is just 4 months old so I think decently recent to allow a smooth game experience.

Einar_Hrafnarsson · November 2025

On my Last PC, RTX 3060, Ryzen 5 5600x and 32 GB of Ram the Game was nearly unplayable in Cyro. Dungeons were okay but even in cities i had some random stutters. This only occured after the Hybridization Patch and never went away. When i got my new high Tier PC, all those issues went away but that has little meaning as i don't play anymore since my entire Friend list also stopped.

I doubt people are willing to pay 2000+ for a new PC just to play ESO, something the Console Crowd is not even able to do if they don't wanna start anew.

IsharaMeradin · November 2025

Pretty sure it is ZOS wanting to ensure that everything goes smoothly for the Daedric Wars Celebration event. After all, they don't want to have troubles with it like the Writhing Wall. The Daedric Wars Celebration culminates with the Mo' Lag Bal and they want our avatars able to dance their hearts out in stop motion. /s

SalamanNZ · November 2025

I feel it is something to do with the recent code changes. My older computer has issues with bar swapping and input lag that was not there a year ago. They seem to have optimized code for modern computers but this has affected older ones. Does anyone have a CPU or gfx card more than 3 years old affected with recent updates?

Unfadingsilence · November 2025

Einar_Hrafnarsson wrote: »

On my Last PC, RTX 3060, Ryzen 5 5600x and 32 GB of Ram the Game was nearly unplayable in Cyro. Dungeons were okay but even in cities i had some random stutters. This only occured after the Hybridization Patch and never went away. When i got my new high Tier PC, all those issues went away but that has little meaning as i don't play anymore since my entire Friend list also stopped.

I doubt people are willing to pay 2000+ for a new PC just to play ESO, something the Console Crowd is not even able to do if they don't wanna start anew.

That actually makes total sense based on your old specs.
The RTX 3060 + Ryzen 5 5600X combo is fine for most games, but ESO’s engine has some specific bottlenecks that hit that setup really hard. The 5600X is a good mid-range CPU, but ESO’s engine is old and relies heavily on single-core performance.
When hundreds of players are on screen (PvP, cities, guild traders), the CPU can’t keep up → stutters and frame drops. And since ESO uses a ton of CPU-driven draw calls. On weaker GPUs, this causes:

random micro-stutters

delayed rendering

FPS spikes in cities

Make sure that your RAM is not slower or not tuned, or you’d feel it in

asset streaming delays

loading lag

city stutters

Especially since the ESO engine absolutely punishes mid-range CPUs in large-scale PvP.

Unfadingsilence · November 2025

SalamanNZ wrote: »

I feel it is something to do with the recent code changes. My older computer has issues with bar swapping and input lag that was not there a year ago. They seem to have optimized code for modern computers but this has affected older ones. Does anyone have a CPU or gfx card more than 3 years old affected with recent updates?

I did up until I upgraded my whole setup and now I dont see or feel anything wrong with the game its truly amazing and feels great

heaven13 · November 2025

Unfadingsilence wrote: »

SalamanNZ wrote: »

I feel it is something to do with the recent code changes. My older computer has issues with bar swapping and input lag that was not there a year ago. They seem to have optimized code for modern computers but this has affected older ones. Does anyone have a CPU or gfx card more than 3 years old affected with recent updates?

I did up until I upgraded my whole setup and now I dont see or feel anything wrong with the game its truly amazing and feels great

I have a Ryzen 7 7800X3D, 64 GB of RAM, and a 4070 Ti Super and I still have random fps drops just wandering around.

I also experience issues with the skill delays (bar not swapping, or skill not firing at all - can see that I hit it when using an addon like Weave Delays but the skill doesn’t actually fire the first time). Sometimes attacks happen without animation/no visual cues. Not sure how much of this is performance specific or unintended consequences of the horrible animation changes that happened with the latest patch.

Either way, it feels pretty awful. Great that you’re not having issues with your new machine but just because you’re not doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s not an issue. That answer also does nothing to address console issues.

Lucasl402 · November 2025

AnduinTryggva wrote: »

Unfadingsilence wrote: »

I'm sorry to say it.But after I ended up upgrading my PC i no longer experience any issues no lag in pvp or pve and no odd things happening other than warden charm putting me in walls the game feels amazing 160-250 FPS depending on the activity and 50 PING

Well and I am sorry but my rig is just 4 months old so I think decently recent to allow a smooth game experience.

I don't think computer has much to do with a persons quality of connection to the zos server. I could see how a router might make a difference, but not the computer so long as it's at least an i7 or equivalent or better.

Einar_Hrafnarsson · November 2025

Unfadingsilence wrote: »

Einar_Hrafnarsson wrote: »

On my Last PC, RTX 3060, Ryzen 5 5600x and 32 GB of Ram the Game was nearly unplayable in Cyro. Dungeons were okay but even in cities i had some random stutters. This only occured after the Hybridization Patch and never went away. When i got my new high Tier PC, all those issues went away but that has little meaning as i don't play anymore since my entire Friend list also stopped.

I doubt people are willing to pay 2000+ for a new PC just to play ESO, something the Console Crowd is not even able to do if they don't wanna start anew.

That actually makes total sense based on your old specs.
The RTX 3060 + Ryzen 5 5600X combo is fine for most games, but ESO’s engine has some specific bottlenecks that hit that setup really hard. The 5600X is a good mid-range CPU, but ESO’s engine is old and relies heavily on single-core performance.
When hundreds of players are on screen (PvP, cities, guild traders), the CPU can’t keep up → stutters and frame drops. And since ESO uses a ton of CPU-driven draw calls. On weaker GPUs, this causes:

random micro-stutters

delayed rendering

FPS spikes in cities

Make sure that your RAM is not slower or not tuned, or you’d feel it in

asset streaming delays

loading lag

city stutters

Especially since the ESO engine absolutely punishes mid-range CPUs in large-scale PvP.

Im running a R7 7800X3D and a 5070ti now with 32 GB of Ram (6000mhz)
Total overkill for ESO but now that i could play the big Alliance battles again there aren't any.

Horny_Poney · November 2025

Yes.
PS5 on 1gbps connection, PVE overland: bar swap not working sometimes, and skills must be spammed.

katanagirl1 · November 2025

Tandor wrote: »

Has the introduction of addons to consoles had any noticeable effect on performance on those machines? Have console players generally embraced addons and tried disabling them to see how performance compares?

I only use two addons, Murf’s Treasures and HarvestMap with all icons except 3D world turned off. It can’t be causing the problems I have been seeing.

JaxontheUnfortunate · November 2025

There have been long standing performance issues with eso for over a year. There is very lengthy thread about this. I routinely have bar swaps not happen and it’s definitely not an issue on my end.

twisttop138 · November 2025

Tandor wrote: »

Has the introduction of addons to consoles had any noticeable effect on performance on those machines? Have console players generally embraced addons and tried disabling them to see how performance compares?

I use many add-ons. All the normal trease/lore/crafting/master writ/fishing etc. I also use all the trial ones except wizards wardrobe. When I start to experience issues I try disabling them all. When add-ons first dropped this was a fix a few times but they've been great lately.

I think when they took all the combat animations to the butcher shop, since then I've had weird issues on occasion. I've done 4 trials this week and on Monday and last night I had issues. Issues bar swapping, skills firing etc. The regular troubleshooting didn't help.

ShutUpitsRed · November 2025

I'm having these issues too.

SneaK · November 2025

Vengeance PvE would solve this

AngryPenguin · November 2025

katanagirl1 wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

Has the introduction of addons to consoles had any noticeable effect on performance on those machines? Have console players generally embraced addons and tried disabling them to see how performance compares?

I only use two addons, Murf’s Treasures and HarvestMap with all icons except 3D world turned off. It can’t be causing the problems I have been seeing.

Harvest Map is a very heavy add on. It has in the past been known to cause performance issues, especially when loading game or porting zone to zone. Just think how many data points that add on is keeping track of. I keep it turned off unless I'm looking for thieves troves.

Unfadingsilence · November 2025

heaven13 wrote: »

Unfadingsilence wrote: »

SalamanNZ wrote: »

I feel it is something to do with the recent code changes. My older computer has issues with bar swapping and input lag that was not there a year ago. They seem to have optimized code for modern computers but this has affected older ones. Does anyone have a CPU or gfx card more than 3 years old affected with recent updates?

I did up until I upgraded my whole setup and now I dont see or feel anything wrong with the game its truly amazing and feels great

I have a Ryzen 7 7800X3D, 64 GB of RAM, and a 4070 Ti Super and I still have random fps drops just wandering around.

I also experience issues with the skill delays (bar not swapping, or skill not firing at all - can see that I hit it when using an addon like Weave Delays but the skill doesn’t actually fire the first time). Sometimes attacks happen without animation/no visual cues. Not sure how much of this is performance specific or unintended consequences of the horrible animation changes that happened with the latest patch.

Either way, it feels pretty awful. Great that you’re not having issues with your new machine but just because you’re not doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s not an issue. That answer also does nothing to address console issues.

What SSD are you rocking? And 10 gig internet as well??

katanagirl1 · November 2025

AngryPenguin wrote: »

katanagirl1 wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

Has the introduction of addons to consoles had any noticeable effect on performance on those machines? Have console players generally embraced addons and tried disabling them to see how performance compares?

I only use two addons, Murf’s Treasures and HarvestMap with all icons except 3D world turned off. It can’t be causing the problems I have been seeing.

Harvest Map is a very heavy add on. It has in the past been known to cause performance issues, especially when loading game or porting zone to zone. Just think how many data points that add on is keeping track of. I keep it turned off unless I'm looking for thieves troves.

That is why I mentioned that I turned off the pins in the world map and compass. I only use it on my main character that does the harvesting and crafting.

mdjessup4906 · December 2025

Another tri prog cut short yesterday becasue people kept dc'ing out of nowhere.

redlink1979 · December 2025

I'm having issues mostly with bar swapping and attacking. This morning not even the travelling animation was working properly. And also delayed sound effects.
And at times, the char holds the dual wield weapons as if they are a 2H sword.

Apollosipod · December 2025

Yes. Work everything from break free to skills firing. If their goal was to make a more difficult overland was to make the game function worse then it's done guys! We did it!

Chaos2088 · December 2025

I push button - it does not do the thing. Screen freezes - I block for dear life hoping to get through the boss fight once unstuck - loads - I am dead, I disapoint my team mates, my guilds and my ancestors.