Has the Mac client been abandoned?

FatalDarkness

I am concerned that with the recent announcements to the game's subscription model that what little funding development on the Mac client that exists will be diminished even further leading to an abandoned product (much like the GW2 Mac "port" which is useless).

The Mac client is still filled with so many issues it is nearly unplayable. Here's a few that I personally experience:

• I crash almost every time I use a way shrine (roughly about 80% of the time).
• I'm burning through a fortune in repair bills and soul gems due to frequent crashes in PVE combat. (Engage in mob, swing for attack or use ability, immediate crash, mob kills unresponsive character, log back in to dead character).
• Occasionally in combat the controls are unresponsive, cannot attack or use abilities.
• Upon entering a town or building I usually have to do a /reloadui to get the textures to load. Sometimes entering a building there are no walls, just a white void with furniture.
• Various cosmetic/ui issues. For example, if I purchase a bank upgrade, the text says "Increase bank size to <<1>> items?" Also /bug and /help still do not function (the submit button is not clickable).

I haven't seen a Zenimax post on this forum in months and unless I missed something the Mac client hasn't been mentioned in any recent patch notes. There is still no official Yosemite support despite the OS being out since October. Is there any development being done on this? Can we please get some kind of feedback on the current state of the Mac client?

Thanks.

KhajitFurTrader

Just a few points:

• Mention of specific fixes for specific platforms in the patch notes always have been rare exceptions, not the norm.
• Not all of Chris' comments here have been flagged as mod posts by the forum, so you don't necessarily see all of them in the thread view.
• As Chris mentioned here, bringing FaceFX to the Mac client means getting on a newer OpenGL version. My guess is that they're busy building and QAing a new branch of the client. Once you start doing that, the older branch gets abandoned, as new features are added only to the new one.

VisceralMonkey

Weird, I have zero issues with the mac client on my macbook pro. In fact, it runs very well.

chris.dillman

Hi, FatalDarkness, VisceralMonkey

Can I have your machine stats? OS version? GPU?
and current graphics settings?

>I crash almost every time I use a way shrine (roughly about 80% of the time).

>Upon entering a town or building I usually have to do a /reloadui to get the >textures to load. Sometimes entering a building there are no walls, just a white >void with furniture.

These 2 issues sound like the App might be running out of memory.
I suggest running the ESO on medium settings and see if things improve.

Wookyenub18_ESO

OS 10.9.5: crashed every 3+ hours. Upgraded to
Yosemite 10.10.1: crashes every 10+ minutes.
iMac 27" (2012) OS 10.10.1, 3.4GHz i7, 32GB RAM, GTX680MX 2GB VRAM, 3GB Fusion drive, runs only ESO and Razer Synapse.
Windowed (Fullscreen), VSYNC OFF, AA ON, TQ High, SSQ High, SQ High, WRQ Medium, MPS 1019, PSD 50, VD 62, AO=Bloom=DoF=Distortion=SR=Grass=ON
What are your max settings for:
iMac(2012) GTX680MX(2GB)
iMac(2013) GTX780M(4GB)
iMac(5K) R9 M295X(4GB)

VisceralMonkey

Hardware

Macbook Pro Retina, 15-Inch, Early 2013
OSX Yosemite
Processor 2.4 ghz Intel Core i7
Memory 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Graphics Nvidia Geforce GT 650M

Game Settings

I run fullscreen or windowed (Full screen 1440x900)
Texture Quality: Medium
Subsampling: High
Shadow Quality: Medium
Water Reflection : Off or low
Max Particles: 1024
Particle Suppression Distance: 50
View Distance: 25
Ambient: Off
Bloom: Off
Depth: Off
Distortion: Off
Sunlight Rays: On
Grass: On

I've never had a glitch or crash. The graphics look "good" at these settings and I can even do AvA with some slowdown. It's not as good as when I'm playing on my i5 4.5 with SLI GTX 780's, but hey, it's stable and I think performs very well.

chris.dillman

Hi Wookyenub18_ESO,

You can run some tests and see if ESO is running out of memory.

While running ESO in windowed mode, open up the Activity Monitor and select the memory tab.

Watch ESOs memory usage.
ESO is a 32 bit application and can use around 2.5 GB of ram before crashing.

Try changing the settings to High, does ESO crash around 2.3-2.5 GB of RAM?
If that happens change the settings to Medium and repeat.
Try Low repeat etc.


Does running on medium improve your time to crash?


The main things that effect ram usage:

1. Starting out with settings at High, Medium, Low,
changes some settings behind the scenes.
So its best to start at say medium vs high and then turn options on.

2. Texture Size.

3. View distance.

4. Screen size. Giant screens are going to use more ram.

>What are your max settings for:
>iMac(2012) GTX680MX(2GB)
>iMac(2013) GTX780M(4GB)
>iMac(5K) R9 M295X(4GB)

The crash is not a GPU issue.
All of these GPUs should be fine.

For VRAM needed:
Low 256 MB
Medium 512MB
HIgh 1024MB

This is current and may change in the future as the game grows.

Another note we have seen the memory usage grow under 10.10 and not come back down if the ESO window is resized a few times.

Balance

I have also been getting crashes.

Cyrodiil. Regularly, a short time after joining a campaign and seems to have been around since launch (but I gave up trying for months until trying again last week so I am not being scientific). Crash usually occurs usually during the heat of a battle so I am not sure if time is a factor. In any case its pretty annoying to keep running into this so long after launch. I would love to try Cyrodiil properly.

PVE. Occasionally. After continual crashes when the game launched they went away. The crashed reappeared last week. Seldom... Say every few hours.

I have sent system crash logs when the screen comes up (but the screen doesn't always appear and logging an internal bug report doesn't always work).

The tip on resizing is interesting as I sometimes have to <Command> 'F' to use a password manager for login if I timeout on initial login.

I don't run mods.

My system specs are:

OSX 10.10.1 (now 10.10.2)
Imac Late 2012 (27 Inch)
3.4Ghz I7
32GB
GeForce GTX 680MX 2048MB

I run everything on high except, Shadows, water which are on low and I have most of the candy toggles off except grass and distortion). Interestingly no matter my preference the game insists that I need lense flare.....:/ (sunlight rays)

Deciding on a setting is problematic as you might be on 50-70 fps for PVE only to have it drop dramatically when you change zones (it doesn't always seem to be in places with lots of people).

Computer fan is in overdrive which seems to have only come about after recent patches.

I have tried running at Native resolution as well as lower resolutions.

Would really like to hear something concrete about client optimization being on the way as most of the talk has been about consoles and the revamp. Although the changes look great, my main beef with the game has always been performance.

Kyuumu

It's not ram. I have been playing since early access with the same settings I am using now with no issues. However for the last 2 to 3 days I am crashing out every hour or so. Today has been the worse by far. I have crashed out 25 times in the span of an hour.

Wookyenub18_ESO

Hello Chris;

ESO crashes around 2.17GB (at best).

Running on Medium delays crashing 30 to 60 minutes, but makes my toon look like a toon.

I have the identical h/w to Balance, whose crashes under 10.10.x don’t seem to occur as often as mine. The main difference in settings is Balance has Shadow Quality: Medium (vs High). (C) below also suggests lower SQ helps.

Details:
(A) 10.10.2 with Graphics Quality=High: no improvement. Crashed after first transit when App memory was 1.4GB, and 1.74GB. Both times App memory “jumped” to 1.95GB when the CrashReporter came up.

(B) VisceralMonkey’s “never had a crash” changes: Texture Quality: High->Medium, Water Reflection: Medium->Off, View Distance: 37->25, Distortion: ON->OFF.
Still crashed on transit, but after five vs one or two. Crash came after seeing App memory reach 1.95GB.

(C) Graphics Quality=Medium: The changes here are Shadow Quality: High->Medium, Sunlight Rays: ON->OFF.
App memory starts ~1.45GB and goes up a little with each transit. When App memory gets to 2.17GB it stays there until transit or a pitched battle or ? and then it crashes.
Test 1: 15 transits in 45 minutes before it crashed (App memory = 2.17GB before crash).
Test 2: 90 minutes of outdoor raiding before crashing after transiting (App memory = 2.17GB before crash).

[Note: Whenever I switched to Activity Monitor, the ESO window got a little smaller and when I switched back I typed Cmd-F.]

chris.dillman

Hi Wookyenub18_ESO

Thank you for the beautiful report.
This was exactly what we needed.

Today we were able to locate the root cause of why 10.10 does not play nice with many 32bit games.

Basically the Apples IOKit Framework that handles communications between hardware and the application works differently in 10.10.

1. It uses up more RAM then past OS versions.
2. When data is pushed to the GPU and later deleted. IOKit does not free up ram and instead stays at the high-water mark.

ESO crashes a lot when teleporting inside a zone because ESO loads in new data for the location you are teleporting to before releasing unused data. Unused data from the old location times out 5 seconds later. Thus pushing the GPU / IOKIT high water mark higher then what is actually needed to run the game.

PVP uses a lot more RAM then PVE on average which is why it crashes more.

The current solution is to run the game on medium or lower settings.

Anything that saves ram.

Texture quality is a big one.
Shadow quality setting it lower or off will save RAM.
Running at lower screen resolutions will save RAM.
View distance can save RAM since less textures will need to be loaded.
Rolling back to an OS version before 10.10 would also help a lot.

On our end we are going to have to figure out how to free up hundreds of megs of additional ram.

Wookyenub18_ESO

Hello Chris;

Unless you want me to remain on Yosemite to test a patch on either Live or PTS, I'll revert to Mavericks tomorrow to resume High settings.

Still on 10.10.2, I disabled Spotlight, reset PRAM, repaired disk permissions and turned off a few other non-essentials which may or may not have freed up some RAM the application could use.

Tonight I set Graphics to Low for the first time (yuk but nice to have 60 fps in PvP) and did minor raids and keep defense for 6 hours. I estimate population on Thornbalde at 50% capacity (as usual the bars do not seem to be accurate, tonight overestimating EP considerably). I experienced very little server lag. In the midst of this I switched briefly to two PvE chars to make some food for a friend.

At this point, Memory was at 2.04GB (I had not done Cmd-F at all to this point). After a couple of transits and action it was 2.17 and after Cmd-F 2.19. From there I ran mostly in the slightly shorter window to avoid need for Cmd-F and did 35 transits with little action. Mem trended up about 0.5GB per transit and often 0.2 after the occasional Cmd-F or significant PvP action.
At 2.46GB I did inner keep defense (Kingscrest) and purchased from the vendor. Now 2.50GB and while I was looking at it went down to 2.49GB. I meant to transit but think I invoked the vendor again. As soon as I pressed E it crashed Thread 0. I submitted the Apple report (10am EST).
Uptime of ESO was > 8hrs. But I am not going to play with Low or even Medium settings again unless needed for a test.

chris.dillman

Hi Wookyenub18_ESO

Go ahead and roll back to Mav.

Thank you very much of last nights testing that was a big help to us.

The IOKit leak like behavior might not be showing up in the total ram being used
which is why you were able to get it up to 2.5 GB last night.

>Still on 10.10.2, I disabled Spotlight, reset PRAM, repaired disk permissions >and turned off a few other non-essentials which may or may not have freed up >some RAM the application could use.

Nothing like that will help at all.
It is not about having enough RAM in the machine.
It is about the fact that a 32bit app can only use 4GB of RAM.
There nothing external that can be done to help.

If you ever play on low it might be fine to turn the subsampling back up to high.

Wookyenub18_ESO

Hello Chris;

> Mem trended up about 0.5GB per transit...
I meant 0.05GB.

I rolled back to Mavericks - was easy for me as I use that Mac only for ESO. I'm using Medium in Cyrodiil and in two days have had one crash, after entering the breach of a keep we were attacking.

Jitterbug

I play on a 13" macbook air from around 2012 with yosemite 10.10.2 and I don't experience anywhere near that amount of problems.
It's not smooth, it's on low settings, it's basically barely playable (which is fair my rig considered), but I don't crash on wayshrines, I don't crash "often" when in PvE, I don't get unresponsiveness more than on my mid-high range PC, I don't think the UI bugs out all that much.
I do get the unloaded textures quite often though.

KhajitFurTrader

Jitterbug wrote: »

I play on a 13" macbook air from around 2012 with yosemite 10.10.2 and I don't experience anywhere near that amount of problems.
It's not smooth, it's on low settings, it's basically barely playable (which is fair my rig considered), but I don't crash on wayshrines, I don't crash "often" when in PvE, I don't get unresponsiveness more than on my mid-high range PC, I don't think the UI bugs out all that much.
I do get the unloaded textures quite often though.

I think crash frequency strongly depends on individual "usage" or "movement" profile. I can get play sessions lasting around 100 minutes on customized ultra-high settings (Shadow Quality and Water Reflections on medium). But this is me questing quietly in some hinterlands, barely using wayshrines, and rarely zoning. If, at the end of a session, I return to a city and start seeing only very low-res textures on stairs or house walls, I know that a crash might me imminent.

henrycupcakerwb17_ESO

chris.dillman wrote: »

Hi Wookyenub18_ESO

Go ahead and roll back to Mav.

Thank you very much of last nights testing that was a big help to us.

The IOKit leak like behavior might not be showing up in the total ram being used
which is why you were able to get it up to 2.5 GB last night.

>Still on 10.10.2, I disabled Spotlight, reset PRAM, repaired disk permissions >and turned off a few other non-essentials which may or may not have freed up >some RAM the application could use.

Nothing like that will help at all.
It is not about having enough RAM in the machine.
It is about the fact that a 32bit app can only use 4GB of RAM.
There nothing external that can be done to help.

If you ever play on low it might be fine to turn the subsampling back up to high.

nothing external that can be done to help. is that mean adding more system ram won't help any?
because to be able to play seamlessly for hours without crashing i will have to tone down the game like this

chris.dillman

henrycupcakerwb17_ESO wrote: »

chris.dillman wrote: »

Hi Wookyenub18_ESO
nothing external that can be done to help. is that mean adding more system ram won't help any?
because to be able to play seamlessly for hours without crashing i will have to tone down the game like this

More system ram will not help as ESO is 32bit and can only access 4GB worth.

EOS Runs best on a machine with 8GB or more installed.