Game Performance in Cyrodiil

GorraShatan

Still not fixed after maintenance.

Grim13

Now even small scale combat is suffering "weirdness"!

Had a fight that was 2 v 3... 5 people battling... and suffering severe lag. My compatriot died, so I cloaked away... I was about to successfully escape when I was suddenly knocked into the air by nothing and no one on my screen, teleported 30 feet back in front of the people I'd just escaped from... then cloak failed 4 times in a row... and I died the pathetic sort of death only a NB can.

My sub runs out tomorrow and I have zero intention of renewing or returning until I've read sufficient customer feedback that proves you've managed to get your fat *** heads out of your asses.

eragard

Maybe another 12 gig patch download will fix it......

GorraShatan

I'll say after a night of PvP it seems better on the whole, but it sounds from chat that it's not entirely fixed.

Hybris6

Ok fine to see the devs posting bout this so till try to be constructive despite my frustration. Didnt read all the replies so someone maybe said this already:

1 With FC there were huge lagspikes that affected both raidgroups. Thought removal of FC would solve this but I experienced same type of lag even if no of players in area were reduced.

2 Personal lag. After dying sometimes i start to lag. I cant exit a keep but the guy next to me can.. Continues to i relog

Evergnar

Thread is just laughable. PvP ran fine in beta and early access. We've gone from "100 of players on the screen at the same time" to "There are a few key things we need everyone to know. When a large number of players clumps together and spams PFX-heavy abilities, it will cause slow-down."

Nothing more really needs to be said.

MornaBaine

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

There are a few key things we need everyone to know. When a large number of players clumps together and spams PFX-heavy abilities, it will cause slow-down. We've put in a number of fixes and tools to help reduce this, but the reality is there will always be some slow-down when this happens.

Ummm... you KNEW that lots of people were going to be fighting in Cyrodil all at once, right? And you KNEW that lots of abilities have some pretty showy visual effects, right? So...why DIDN'T you know this would be an issue? And why do you seem to think it's okay that it "can't" be fixed?

The truth is that PvP IS a separate game from PvE. Maybe it's time you started treating it as such and make changes that ONLY take effect upon entering Cyrodil? Like ALL visual effects being altered and/or drastically reduced?

Razzak

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Crogster wrote: »

Great to see a response. Some feedback to you is with the slider turned right down and no addons enabled the game goes does not improve. It can work fine in low population but in the evening when i run a PvP raid it is slow for EVERYONE and i mean EVERYONE at the same time. We all talk in zone and we can not cast any abilities, we can not place siege and the server is crashing and kicking everyone out 2 or 3 times a nigh sometimes!. I am playing on the Thornblade campaign Europe and no matter what we try nothing makes the gaming performance enjoyable. I am running a guild and i am losing numbers turning up every day soon we wont have a pvp! Please please please do something quickly :P

Thank you, @Crogster. This info does help. When you mention crashing, is it a region crash where everyone is kicked out, or individuals experiencing a client crash?

This is a perfect example of how to engage your player base in finding fixes sooner.
You open a thread of a known bug and you present it in all it's glory. You post a series of questions to players and get a lot of very important "real-life" answers and examples.
Now, all we need is more threads like this. And not only for the most game breaking bugs, but for most of them in general.

Mountain_Dewed

I posted this somewhere but don't remember where. Is it possible that the player to player ping equalizer has anything to do with it here? It's just an idea.

I remember in some games that players could figure a way to slow their ping to gain better edge over other players, which sounds backwards but they were doing so.

Cherryblossom

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Thank you all very much for the replies and detailed information. It's helped immensely, and we're getting closer to pinpointing the cause of the lag and unresponsiveness in Cyrodiil that many of you have reported.

After further investigation, and as some of you surmised, we now believe this is an issue with client-to-server communication responsiveness during high volume combat situations. We would love more feedback on what specific abilities/actions stop working when this happens, and which continue working. For example, does chat still work? Mounting? Weapon swapping? Projectiles? Self-target abilities? Any details you can provide will help us better track down this specific issue and make improvements.

We have noticed the Latency change when there is a large group nearby, when sieging a keep you can tell when another zerg has portaled into the area, as latency increases.

On My Templar following skills I have found work

Most synergies, where you have to press X (talons seems to work the best)
Sorry I'm old and can't remember the name, Dawns wrath with the 3 fireballs works most of the time.
Breath of Life works, my favourite skill for keeping ourside alive in these situations.

On my Nightblade,
Light Bow attacks hit, heavy do nothing.
Poison arrow sometimes.

These work most of the time although there is a delay between Keyboard and game.

Impulse spamming shows the animation but doesn't do any damage.

derpsticks

Two things I have noticed but may have been fixed recently:

After a keep wall was repaired enough to become a full wall again I noticed immediately a jump from 20fps to 30fps. This was when I was standing inside the keep wall.

At roughly 4:30am eastern I noticed a sharp rise in lag while playing on chillrend. There were at most 20 people fighting outside a keep near a mill. I suspect a cron job set to run at this time eating the servers resources.

Ghenra

Crogster wrote: »

Also you mentioned addon causing a problem maybe you could implement some simple things so we dont have to use addons

1) A better Group window to allow us to see shields and health of allies better
2) A group leader icon that stands out maybe a different colour and slightly larger
3) An auto invite tool for groups
4) Buff displays - Displays buffs such as food and spell buffs on screen with count down

The reason we download so many addons is that that it seem to us some simple implementations to improve the interface have been missed :P Just my opinion

And 5) Drawing free health/stamina/magicka enemy bars like Tamriel Foundry Combat.

Kromus

MornaBaine wrote: »

Ummm... you KNEW that lots of people were going to be fighting in Cyrodil all at once, right? And you KNEW that lots of abilities have some pretty showy visual effects, right? So...why DIDN'T you know this would be an issue? And why do you seem to think it's okay that it "can't" be fixed?

Agreed. Here's the unique selling point from official game site...
http://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/game-guide/the-alliance-war


MASSIVE, EPIC BATTLES

The Elder Scrolls Online features the largest PvP battles seen in a major online RPG. The game supports hundreds of onscreen players in epic battles. Swords and axes collide, spells and powers illuminate the ground and sky, and fires rage on embattled stronghold walls. Will you survive these epic battles? Can your overwhelming force take the keep, or will you be forced to retreat?

The Elder Scrolls Online is built to accommodate hundreds of players onscreen at once.

---

As it stands right now you are cheating the customers and potential customers with info only visible at these forums and completely opposite of what you are saying at your website visible by everyone...

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

There are a few key things we need everyone to know. When a large number of players clumps together and spams PFX-heavy abilities, it will cause slow-down. We've put in a number of fixes and tools to help reduce this, but the reality is there will always be some slow-down when this happens.

---

This is the game that provided me with best and worst pvp experience I ever had in a mmo, and sad thing is that bad experience is piling up from patch to patch for me and many other players from both technical side (lag, fps, bugs, crashes) and from functional side with broken abilities (like healing debuff in latest patch, removal of guild store in cyrodiil etc.).

I can understand heavy issues like lag, bugs and crashes take time to fix, but to wait for weeks/months for simple fixes in UI that initially worked and got [sniped] after maintance/patch is $%$#@^%#^. On small things you are loosing faith of players to stick with the game even when major issues plaguing the game.

GorraShatan

So I tried unplugging my modem mid fight when it lagged, and all that did was drop me from Cyrodiil! What gives?

Rasimir

Saturday evening on Thornblade EU.

As usual for the last weeks I had the latency display enabled. I have no counts on lag spikes, but the periods when the display went red are significantly shorter and less frequent than before the patch. You obfiously are coming closer!

The crashes to desktop or to login seem to be fixed for me, I didn't have one for more than a week now.

The game experience though didn't improve much. Some say it even got worse, but since nobody really exactly reproduces the battles from before, I'm reluctant to say this. Battles not working are simply that: not working.

In detail:

We encountered a fight in an outpost where attackers and defenders stood close together near a flag,attacking each other for minutes, nobody took damage, nobody died. At some point one faction was annihilated all of a sudden, the other survived with no casualties.

We had a fight over Glademist. people all over the place, nothing worked. Siege engines didn't drop, almost no skills worked. This went on for at least 15 minutes. At one point I was inside the keep, and I saw someone repairing the wall. We tried to attack him, he took no damage and kept repairing the wall while we tried to stop him. No chance, the wall went up to 100% and he walked away.

I took my party of about twelve to a Glademist resource, and we had massive problems to do any damage to the defending npcs, it took minutes to get one down. I can't tell which skill did work, my own as a sorcerer did not. The npcs didn't fight back. We got the resource after perhaps 5 minutes.

We switched over to the other side of the map. Sieges still didn't work there for a lot of people, while some others could place one.

I could go on with these stories for quite some time.

Which skills did and did not work:

It's easier to tell the few things that still worked, most did not.

I could mount my horse and ride away.
Someone could repair walls inmidst the fight
Sounds for doors or skills worked even when the doors and skills did not work
Skill animations worked. Sometimes magicka/stamina got reduced, sometimes not.
Playing music (/drum) worked, I even could hear the music others were playing
chat worked
dancing worked
some kind of attack must have worked on the npcs, can't tell which kind, but it was something with a very low damage.

OtarTheMad

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom‌

Just wanted to add that instant cast ultimates like Meteor, Dawnbreaker (and Morphs) seem to cast but do no damage and you can cast it multiple times as well.

Also do not look past some players on this thread who have said that players are also responsible for the lag in PvP because it is true. I am sure it is also some client-server communication but people doing it on purpose has been proven to happen and should be taken care of sooner rather than later.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom‌ @ZOS_GinaBruno‌

Any update on the status of fixes for this? The scrollback crashes appear to have been resolved (at least i haven't seen one yet) but the lag is still here and as bad as ever.

Just run a simulation with 30 people on each side spamming different skills like Impulse, sap essence, talons, liquid lightning, healing springs etc and you should be able to test the lag internally if you don't want to see it on live servers. Really needs to be resolved urgently please

WhiskyBob

Copy from EvE Online - Time Dilution.
How does it work?
EvE is known for collossal space battles, im not talking 20vs20 but 200vs200 or bigger. Servers (even tho EvE has really monster servers) couldn't handle that so they have invented Time Dilution.
When the information going around is too much for servers to handle game simply SLOWS DOWN by certain amount, game goes into slight slow motion for the pocket the battle is taking place.
Slow motion applies to everyone in said pocket (eve battles take place in "pockets" its kinda hard for me to explain) equally. Its better than lag as Lagzor The Terrible is not a fair god, some get no lag, some get 1 minute freeze, some get out of the freeze faster than the others. Time Dilution slows down time equally for everyone.

It might be hard to apply as Cyrodill is not divided into pockets and time dilution applying to whole zone would be just terrible. But perhaps there is a solution here somewhere.

Just saying.

Rune_Relic

My Radical suggestion.

Collision detection and minimum player to player distance for allies.

All Aoe at the monent have a radius and player limit.
6 players in that radius would mean all 6 get hit by aoe.
30 players in that same area mean only 6 get hit BUT.... 6 out of 30 have to be selected first too.

So if you force people out of the detection radius....you minimise the size of the crowd that the 6 players need to be selected from. In effect...CD radius lets you regulate how many aoes need to be calculated AND how big the selection process is too.

Would this not (counter intuitivley with CD lag) help with the problem ?
Especially in regard smart heals.

With 1m2 person you could get 30 players in a 3m detection radius.
Make it 1.25m radius personal space and that only 6 players per 3m radius.
This seems to be the player/area density you are aiming for and would minimise selection time.

You can fit 30 people in a 7m radius. If AoE hit 30 people on those 7m spells...you also minimise the selection process (like AoE removal... people hit => player in detection area).

So is it just a question of balancing player space and players hit with detection radius ?

Cherryblossom

After much thought, I have decided that there has been no improvement and no indication from ZOS (last ZOS post 2 weeks ago) that this issue is going to be solved any time soon.
With this in mind I have cancelled my subscription until such time that ZOS decides it should start fixing the issues.

Rasimir

Thornblade EU ended in chaos and disappointment last evening. From 21:00 to 22:00 central european time again almost nothing worked. We tried to fight for the campaign, tried to get scrolls, tried eveything to get enough points to turn the tide. But finally half of my raid gave up. It's not fun anymore.

I made one observation that may help find the issue:

I revived in a keep. The keep was empty, nobody else was there, definitely no large group. Doors didn't work though. I waited several minutes after activating it (click sound came immediately). Nothing, it wouldn't let me in. Latency varied between 200 and 450.
Then I left the group. Surprise: Now the door worked and responded immediately. Plase check the in-group statuc update code/communication and whatever else may be going on while being in a group!

ewhite106b16_ESO

Since the incremental patch, lag is still happening when I play on Thornblade. I notice a large ping spike combined with abilities, weapon switching, doors and sometimes basic light attacks not working at all or being severely delayed.

I've noticed the lag occuring specifically when fighting organized groups of players that spam elemental wall and impulse/pulsar combined with aoe shield buffs (barrier, DK magma shield, undaunted bone wall ect) and ultimates. This co-ordinated AOE spam from groups of 20-40ish players creates enormous amounts of lag, much more lag then I"ve gotten from huge seige battles with around 4x as many enemies that were NOT continually spamming AOE attacks. Lastly, the lag usually disappears when I get a distance away from the AOE spamming enemy group.

IMO the code for AOE attacks is something that really needs looking at, how client/server communication happens when players are continually spamming both defensive and offensive AOEs while in a group. In my experience this problem is specific to players spamming AOE abilities, even having a full compliment of 20 seige engines going at once isn't producing major lag.

I played at launch as well, the lag around palyer groups using heavy AOE was nowhere near as bad. I heavily suspect the AOE target cap of six players might be a big part of the current problem. Aside from looking at the code, increasing the cost of AOE abilities in Cyrodil across the board might help with the lag. Another alternative would be drastically increasing the cost of consecutive offensive AOEs cast within a short period of time (eg casting elemental pulse within 5 seconds of the first pulse would double the magicka cost).

Cherryblossom

OtarTheMad wrote: »

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom‌

Just wanted to add that instant cast ultimates like Meteor, Dawnbreaker (and Morphs) seem to cast but do no damage and you can cast it multiple times as well.

Also do not look past some players on this thread who have said that players are also responsible for the lag in PvP because it is true. I am sure it is also some client-server communication but people doing it on purpose has been proven to happen and should be taken care of sooner rather than later.

Always thought it was AD doing this! But as your AD saying it I guess not, unless you know something specific from within AD!
On EU Thornblade, we always get much worse lag when a certain group of AD come on to exploit the low population bonus!

OtarTheMad

Cherryblossom wrote: »

OtarTheMad wrote: »

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom‌

Just wanted to add that instant cast ultimates like Meteor, Dawnbreaker (and Morphs) seem to cast but do no damage and you can cast it multiple times as well.

Also do not look past some players on this thread who have said that players are also responsible for the lag in PvP because it is true. I am sure it is also some client-server communication but people doing it on purpose has been proven to happen and should be taken care of sooner rather than later.

Always thought it was AD doing this! But as your AD saying it I guess not, unless you know something specific from within AD!
On EU Thornblade, we always get much worse lag when a certain group of AD come on to exploit the low population bonus!

On NA Thornblade I've seen all sides doing it at one time or another since I PvP'd a lot up until this past Sunday. I have, unfortunately, seen AD run into a house in a resource and spam the living crap out of AoEs for no reason but I have only seen that once and none were names I am used to seeing in PvP. I have seen EP and DC do it but did not see who it was. It's sad but I am sure it will stop just like all other things that were extremely frustrating at one time or another.

Rune_Relic

So because AoE causes sever lag.....we get the lag bomb group whose sole purpose is to cause lag.
Anything that can be exploited will be exploited is defo going to be my new sig lol.

GorraShatan

Rune_Relic wrote: »

So because AoE causes sever lag.....we get the lag bomb group whose sole purpose is to cause lag.
Anything that can be exploited will be exploited is defo going to be my new sig lol.

It also so happens that even with out the lag, spamming AoE is crazy effective, even out of combat. That doesn't help.

Sylvyr

MornaBaine wrote: »

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

There are a few key things we need everyone to know. When a large number of players clumps together and spams PFX-heavy abilities, it will cause slow-down. We've put in a number of fixes and tools to help reduce this, but the reality is there will always be some slow-down when this happens.

Ummm... you KNEW that lots of people were going to be fighting in Cyrodil all at once, right? And you KNEW that lots of abilities have some pretty showy visual effects, right? So...why DIDN'T you know this would be an issue? And why do you seem to think it's okay that it "can't" be fixed?

The truth is that PvP IS a separate game from PvE. Maybe it's time you started treating it as such and make changes that ONLY take effect upon entering Cyrodil? Like ALL visual effects being altered and/or drastically reduced?

If there were testing of global alteration and the effects on PvP or even consideration or communication between the programmers/designers of the PvP systems and others, that might help to minimize some of these issues.

I agree with you @MornaBaine, ZOS knew and designed this system...

Here's what I would have liked to see:

"There are a few key things we need everyone to know. When a large number of players clumps together and spams PFX-heavy abilities, it will cause slow-down more demand on the server. We've put in a number of fixes and tools to help reduce this, but the reality is there will always be some slow-down a strain on the server when this happens and we will do everything we can to meet this demand so that you do not experience slow-downs.

The "reality" is, if responsiveness is too slow, players will get upset. They will either leave, or complain or both. For some that threshold (in seconds) might be different. For some 1 second is eternity, for others 500ms is. But once it starts getting into multiple seconds, it's going to be clearly noticeable and problematic. That's the reality.

Please don't pass this off to us as this is supposed to be acceptable and to be expected. If you guys couldn't have designed a system that could handle real time "epic" battles, you shouldn't have released it and expect your customer base to simply accept poor performance as the norm. Even worse, before release and through release there were no issues in response time. Now that there are, it's somehow ok to say "there will always be some slow-down"?

I personally don't expect the game to be spot on, and I know it's a process and there will be issues. The thing that gets me here is when ya'll don't own up to them and blow smoke up our _____s.

CS does a decent job here and there, give ya credit, but this default everything is within acceptable range stance that is sometimes taken is just.... meh.

nukeemstudiosub17_ESO

What about going after players who are Exploiting this broken mechanic?
I can show you pics video whatever you want if you want names to start with.

You ban people for using an exploit that gives them double the equipment. So Why not these guilds and people who purposely exploit broken mechanics like this?

Every time there is an exploit it is the SAME groups abusing and destorying the fun of the game. Why dont we see bans and action against anyone?

It is game breaking. EP basically won last campaign by lagging through every battle. And it was the SAME people the whole time! And since the crew in question is both AD and EP (which i think something should REALLY be done about being able to have a character on same server in multiple factions).

Ep had backup from ad ANY time the battle got tough they called the ad friends to help. (I know its cutthroat but when two of the three sides are the same people it is no longer cutthroat its now just 2v1).
Stop the ability to have different characters in the same campaign.

Rune_Relic

nukeemstudiosub17_ESO wrote: »

What about going after players who are Exploiting this broken mechanic?
I can show you pics video whatever you want if you want names to start with.

You ban people for using an exploit that gives them double the equipment. So Why not these guilds and people who purposely exploit broken mechanics like this?

Every time there is an exploit it is the SAME groups abusing and destorying the fun of the game. Why dont we see bans and action against anyone?

It is game breaking. EP basically won last campaign by lagging through every battle. And it was the SAME people the whole time! And since the crew in question is both AD and EP (which i think something should REALLY be done about being able to have a character on same server in multiple factions).

Ep had backup from ad ANY time the battle got tough they called the ad friends to help. (I know its cutthroat but when two of the three sides are the same people it is no longer cutthroat its now just 2v1).
Stop the ability to have different characters in the same campaign.

I agree it should be faction locked for 12 months or at least fpr a 30 day campaign where you can only play 1 faction.
Problem is people then just pay for a second account and flip at their leisure.
It means faction lock will have to be tied to bank details or some other common denominator.

Cherryblossom

nukeemstudiosub17_ESO wrote: »

What about going after players who are Exploiting this broken mechanic?
I can show you pics video whatever you want if you want names to start with.

You ban people for using an exploit that gives them double the equipment. So Why not these guilds and people who purposely exploit broken mechanics like this?

Every time there is an exploit it is the SAME groups abusing and destorying the fun of the game. Why dont we see bans and action against anyone?

It is game breaking. EP basically won last campaign by lagging through every battle. And it was the SAME people the whole time! And since the crew in question is both AD and EP (which i think something should REALLY be done about being able to have a character on same server in multiple factions).

Ep had backup from ad ANY time the battle got tough they called the ad friends to help. (I know its cutthroat but when two of the three sides are the same people it is no longer cutthroat its now just 2v1).
Stop the ability to have different characters in the same campaign.

I disagree, they should fix the issue. The simple fact is that any combat causes crazy amounts of lag in Cyrodill. The fact that groups are exploiting this, are the symptom of the problem not the cause.