ZoS About the FPS issue. Lets help isolate it.

Laura

I'm not here to complain but its not fixed and I see people in all my guilds still complaining. I am not here to argue or point fingers but... there are some pretty simple things that you can isolate and repeat this. *i am ebonheart NA if it helps*

PLEASE ADD ANY YOU HAVE NOTICED.

1.) Kill a wisp mother - This is the single most consistent FPS drop I've seen. It is bad if you kill any wisp mother in the world but if you kill the one in the trial it will drop you down to single digit FPS. From our raiders with the worst machines to the raiders with the bleeding edge top of the line "i've got more money than I know what to do with" computers this will kill your FPS for a period of time. This is not just isolated to our guild it is with pugs I have joined too. Whatever is causing this might be the culprit in most areas.

2.) Close lots of anchors - I have noticed that, particularly, the ones in deshaan are bad but the one on the top left of the map seems to always do it. I have been farming the anchor achievement and when I close that one everyone in the immediate area stops and says that there FPS took a serious nose dive. It isn't DURING the anchor it is when you close it and a few seconds after it. It seems like almost any anchor can do it but not always (that one and the anchors in free march seem to be the worst)

3.) PvP - I will admit this is a little better. It was playable today but there were still some significant dips that weren't there before, and the guild is still complaining. I think it might have something to do with the new lighting and mage light. Everyone uses magelight so.. maybe that? I really can't isolate this.



have you found any more areas or things you can do to get a repeat absolute frame drop? I'm not talking about personal incidents where its just you but something you have noticed causes massive frame loss for many people? Seems this issue is more complex than it seemed and for the sake of the game I want to help the developers with it. Another nail in the coffin is the last thing this game needs.

Laura

Apparently some people are getting FPS issues right after the first boss in Hel Ra now which to my knowledge is new, I'll report on it when we hit hel ra tonight

Audigy

Its not an area, its the client itself. Any place which is crowded and has a high particle density will make you drop heavily.

Their client just isn't optimized for multi threading and even if we know which area´s are more affected than others (Daggerfall > Devons Watch) it wont help them, as they can not just redesign those cities, player textures or spell effects.

I also doubt that they remove the lightning fix, as the game looks 10x better now and I at least run it pretty decent still on ultra, like others with good PC´s. It is however a shame for those with weaker PC´s, like with AMD CPU´s. For them an option to enable the lightning might be a wise idea.

That said, the issue is still the multi threading - fix that and hardly anyone will have FPS issues.

SirAndy

Being in a group and engaging in battle (PvP) has a huge FPS impact for me. As soon as i leave the group, the FPS go back to normal(ish). Seems worse the bigger the group is.

The new lighting code/shaders have a noticeable impact on FPS. I think there should be an options to turn off the "new and improved" in Cyrodiil or even completely.
Right now, turning down the light quality does not seem to make much of a difference.

;-)

SirAndy

The more i think about it, i think there is another possibility.

This may be related to changes ZOS made in the client server code. Initially they had the client make lots of decisions and sent the result to the server.
That resulted in quick client/server communication but left the door wide open for hackers and exploits.
I'm afraid in an attempt to stem the tide of botters they may have changed the client/server code to a handshake request/response communication.

That would explain the increase in lag when you're grouped since there is more information to send between group members.

If i'm right, they replaced the exploitable version of their client/server code with a slow as molasses handshake version.

@ZOS, if this is correct, you really need to look into using a prediction based model!
I've posted this several times before. The only way you will get rid of the lag and at the same time make the system more hack proof is by switching to a client/server prediction model. Don't use a handshake, use UDP packets and build the communication stream in a way that you don't have to rely on guaranteed delivery.
You will see tremendous performance gains that way.

Every multi-player game engine i have ever worked on used this in one way or the other. And for a good reason!

tomiffseb17_ESO

Audigy wrote: »

It is however a shame for those with weaker PC´s, like with AMD CPU´s. For them an option to enable the lightning might be a wise idea.

That said, the issue is still the multi threading - fix that and hardly anyone will have FPS issues.

For me it has nothing to do with the lightning, getting the same performance on AMD(PVE ofc, Cyrodiil drops to single digits, well i have that one aswell:). As you stated number 1 priority should be the cpu utilization.

ArconSeptim

Yeah some of the mobs in anchors are not visible and you get hit like a train an die...

jambam817_ESO

I'm copy/pasting my response in another thread with some examples:

i5 3570k @ 4.2ghz on Corsair Liquid
MSI Class 3 Mobo
eVGA GTX 780 SC with ACX cooler
16gigs ram
Soundblaster 3d Recon Soundcard
Crappy HDDs

Settings:
Ultra High, view distance down to 70 because anything over doesn't do anything IMHO
1920x1080 Fullscreen


This game ran great since Beta! Now, however, inside Delves, in Cities, Dungeons, even random open areas in PVE i get frame drops all over the place. My rig has been stable since i built it about a 1.5 years ago (started with a GTX 580), played many many hours of ESO since early release and haven't had performance issues before.

One thing I have noticed while monitoring CPU usage, my first thread Core1 or on occasion Core 2 seems to be getting battered and nears 100% usage during these times of frame drops. I understand how CPU bottlenecks work, so this might be some sort of processing for the new lighting/particle system thats bogging down the other threads.

Examples:
Doing the Poisoned Johad quest in Ala'kir or whateva, when i jumped into the rain catcher pools to hit "E" for the quest. I went from a solid 60 FPS to 15!! Just standing in water! graphic settings on default Ultra High (never had problems) using in-game FPS counter. If i moved just over the line of the water to stand on dry land, the FPS problem disappeared and all was good again.

City crafting areas, interiors (empty or full of players) and random spots in town can bring my FPS down to the low 40s, sometimes 30s! This didn't happen before the most recent patch.

Open PVE seems to be affected as well, as just being in a zone and looking a certain direction or being in a certain area causes frame drops into the 40s sometimes for me.

Rain seems to now negatively impact my performance, where before it wouldnt at all. During rains in cities or PVE zones i can see dips into 40 FPS as well.

PVP degradation i can understand, I've yet to find an MMO that has few to zero problems with mass battles. Even GW2 runs like crap in PVP. This may be an ongoing battle the devs will have to deal with.

Caduryn

jambam817_ESO wrote: »

PVP degradation i can understand, I've yet to find an MMO that has few to zero problems with mass battles. Even GW2 runs like crap in PVP. This may be an ongoing battle the devs will have to deal with.

And this i cant understand, massive Battles in ESO runs with 30+fps before 1.2.3