Update on Cyrodiil Performance

synnerman

I actually cant believe what I have just read , after all the promises about Cyrodiil what you are now saying if there is a final emporer keep under attack please not too many of you go and defend or attack it. Before you say we understand that in that situation we understand players will come together I really think you need to come and Pvp on Thornblade in the evenings .

After the removal of the camps its basically become a seesaw battle between keeps that have been more or less the same all day long because by the time 1 zerg gets to the keep to attack the defenders just constantly ress at the keep and push back out all the way back to the next keep and then vice versa. The only time this dynamic changes is when there is a nightcap.

Its about time the camps that have been worked on since November according to ESO live were introduced in the form of death within the radius allows ress. This will then allow guilds /players to move further out to different keeps and try some strategy. At the moment people are grouping up for safety to get to the next keep or else the horse simulator kicks in.

Where your comments fall short Paul is that there have actually been several occasions where large scale battles have been fine but every patch brings this lagfest.

Seriously , if this is your only suggestion to this problem after 12 months then PVP will die and I and I know many of my guildies will be gone.

Oughash

ZOS_PaulSage wrote: »

Hello everyone,

Our Cyrodiil performance is something we are very aware of. Performance drags when there are numerous players in the same place at the same time. This is why performance in Cyrodiil is fine for much of the day, but gets worse during more popular times. We are currently investigating ways in which we can reduce the spike of performance loss. We added in some features for Update 6 which we hoped would help, but ultimately did not. This is not a situation where we can just add more hardware. Player population in a given area hurts the performance and the more people that are in one area, the more performance is going to be hurt.

Actively, we are looking at changing the behavior of the players to remove incentives for large groups to stay in the same area. We want to do this by providing larger incentives for Alliances to split up and take on multiple-challenges in Cyrodiil. We’ll continue to work on this. We are also asked by players if there is anything they can do to help. In this situation, the best thing you can do is split off to different objectives when you notice performance going down. Cyrodiil is a big place with lots of different things to do. And thank you for asking.

Thanks for the note.

Observations:
1. The game was advertised as large-scale PvP. Posters above have quoted your marketing. You are now asking us to spread out, voluntarily, so that we don't lag your servers. Please consider this contradiction.
2. Ideas for adding additional objectives on the Cyrodiil map have be thrown out on these forums for more than a year. We want these. Some include: captureable towns (Bruma, Chey, etc) with spawn points, Ayleid wells with meaningful bonuses for whoever owns them, extra outposts between the keep triangles, more meaningful resources at the keeps, removing ALL NPCs so that players are forced to spread out to defend owned keeps, etc.
3. Adding battlegrounds or arenas won't solve Cyrodiil lag problems -- they will simply mask symptoms by drawing players away.
4. Your PvP zone and gameplay is really, really fun when it works. Your players are really, really excited for the Imperial City addition. Please work hard to fix this performance issue -- we will reward you with continued subscriptions and crown store purchases. Continued failure to fix the performance issues will kill PvP.
5. I cannot recommend Cyrodiil PvP to friends in its current state. I want to be able to recommend it to friends so that the fights can get bigger and even more amazing.
6. I suggest some drastic changes. Re-adding forward camps, with the previously discussed fixes, may be one.

WebBull

All spell effects should be removed. Casting/bow/weapon animations OK but get rid of all spell effects.

CMG138

@ZOS_PaulSage Take out the NPCs in the PvP areas, with the exception of siege merchants and quarter masters. If this is done, players would be forced to defend the keeps themselves, which would mean that they would have to prioritize what they would want to keep, which could give other factions a chance to not be driven back to the point where they are being spawn camped. If a faction owns most of the map and they want to try to keep it, they would be spread pretty thin, even with a high population, which would mean there would be less zergs. Small groups could also take keeps if they're not heavily defended by players making them a viable option to actually accomplish something, which again, could mean less zergs. Overall, I think it could make PvP very unpredictable, which would make it a lot more fun in my opinion.

kevlarto_ESO

How about getting the imperial city in place, spread out he population doing different things around the map, how about we stop allowing players to have multiple toons of different factions in the same campaign. Just a thought

IcyDeadPeople

I imagine boosting the XP from the quest hub towns or making the quests repeatable again would attract a lot more players. Around launch these were fun areas for ganking and small scale battles.

Gravord

Robbmrp wrote: »

So why not add in Arena battles then. This will help to reduce the Cyrodil population while giving players more PVP options.

This. PvPers asking for arenas from looong time.

Vizier

@ZOS_PaulSage you do realize Cyrodiil didn't have all the lag issues it does now BEFORE you forced the graphic "improvements" on everyone with the post processing "upgrade" right? Which by the way look great but doesn't really enhance my pvp experience all that much. The gain is lost with much poorer performance during large battles.

Make all the post processing crud optional so folks can just turn off all the "improvements." Half your Cyrodiil lag issues will go away IMO.

That said I totally applaud the concept of splitting up the alliances. Removing Forward camps helped in that there are more fights away from the keeps but it still doesn't stop the Zerg from moving back and forth between keeps. There may be no way to stop that.

WHAT YOU CAN DO though, is to introduce more small towns, mines, farms, priories, etc and give them strategic value with regard to offense and defense of keeps. If it is virtually impossible to successfully attack and or defend keeps without holding the roads and townships and resources AND impossible to hold those resources without spreading your armies around then the player base will be spread out. There will be a place for he Zerg but it won't be able to be effective within the campaign by just Zerging around taking resources and moving on.

Of course there would have to be some incentive for small groups or individuals to stay on these resources and protect them but I'm sure you could work out the details.

IcyDeadPeople

Ishammael wrote: »

6. I suggest some drastic changes. Re-adding forward camps, with the previously discussed fixes, may be one.

I believe removing the camps has generally improved performance and resulted in more small scale open field battles.

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

• The removal of Forward Camps has cut down on some of the player-character pile-up, which has helped game performance in Cyrodiil.

Jahosefat

Thank you for the update, I hope your advice is headed and things start to spread out more.

I think a good incentive system would be an effective way to make this happen; currently the most AP and XP can be obtained at large battles which draws more people into those battles making the problem worse.

AllPlayAndNoWork

Valkyn Skoria procs off dots........ Try changing that.....

synnerman

IcyDeadPeople wrote: »

Ishammael wrote: »

6. I suggest some drastic changes. Re-adding forward camps, with the previously discussed fixes, may be one.

I believe removing the camps has generally improved performance and resulted in more small scale open field battles.

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

• The removal of Forward Camps has cut down on some of the player-character pile-up, which has helped game performance in Cyrodiil.

That was when camps could be blood ported to .. the fix they were talking about was that if you die in the radius of the camp then you can ress. I personally only play PvP and sometimes for 10-12hrs at a time sna d I don't think for a minute it has encouraged less people to grp. I watch the same back and forth on thornblade all day long. This is because people fear being ganked and having to run back all the time.

Finally if you and Jessica are so right why is the lag worse than ever if what paul sage is saying is right that the lag is caused by too many people at once in the same place .

ThatNeonZebraAgain

This recent thread from the ESO subreddit has some great ideas for spreading out action in Cyrodiil.

Xsorus

ZOS_PaulSage wrote: »

Hello everyone,

Our Cyrodiil performance is something we are very aware of. Performance drags when there are numerous players in the same place at the same time. This is why performance in Cyrodiil is fine for much of the day, but gets worse during more popular times. We are currently investigating ways in which we can reduce the spike of performance loss. We added in some features for Update 6 which we hoped would help, but ultimately did not. This is not a situation where we can just add more hardware. Player population in a given area hurts the performance and the more people that are in one area, the more performance is going to be hurt.

Actively, we are looking at changing the behavior of the players to remove incentives for large groups to stay in the same area. We want to do this by providing larger incentives for Alliances to split up and take on multiple-challenges in Cyrodiil. We’ll continue to work on this. We are also asked by players if there is anything they can do to help. In this situation, the best thing you can do is split off to different objectives when you notice performance going down. Cyrodiil is a big place with lots of different things to do. And thank you for asking.

How come when there are large battles on Chillrend for example, with similar numbers of people..the lag isn't nearly as bad as it is on Thornblade?

Grim13

ZOS_PaulSage wrote: »

Cyrodiil is a big place with lots of different things to do.

..but with only so many places to be to win.

liquid_wolf

Even EVE had to implement time dilation when too many players gathered in one area. It is one of the reasons so many MMORPGs switched to arena and medium scale PvP.

ESO is in a very sticky situation - how do we allow hundreds (up to a thousand) players into the same area at the same time?

This seems like a hardware issue... what systems can currently run that? None that I have seen.

As far as I have ever encountered, most games just block it off at specific numbers - 100 of each faction in this particular "bubble" and others will have to go around or wait locked out til people drop out.

is it possible to put up a shield/bubble around a high-conflict/population area in Cyrodiil that other players have to go around? Once the faction hits the limit, no more can enter that area. Other factions can enter til they hit their limit.

What is the current count before we see performance drop? 50v50v50? 100v100v100? At the very least, you could color a section of the map where there is currently high latency/population.

Big circle that gets pinker/redder as more players gather.

Sallington

Grim13 wrote: »

ZOS_PaulSage wrote: »

Cyrodiil is a big place with lots of different things to do.

..but with only so many places to be to win.

I think they thought people would go around Cyrodil PvEing, and then some battles would pop up? I know I actively look for fights, so I go to where there action is. That makes sense right?

Armitas

ZOS_PaulSage wrote: »

Hello everyone,



Actively, we are looking at changing the behavior of the players to remove incentives for large groups to stay in the same area. We want to do this by providing larger incentives for Alliances to split up and take on multiple-challenges in Cyrodiil. We’ll continue to work on this. We are also asked by players if there is anything they can do to help. In this situation, the best thing you can do is split off to different objectives when you notice performance going down. Cyrodiil is a big place with lots of different things to do. And thank you for asking.

Respectfully, this is not a long term solution.

I cannot stress how important it is to have large scale pvp as a selling point of your game. Large scale PvP is a title that will continually attract new PvPers, but subdued pvp will only retain current pvpers. Of those retained many will leave once an MMO comes out with large scale PvP. You will also divide guilds so that they cannot all play together in the same place.

Losing this title is a very big deal, I urge you to find a long term solution. You have 2 console editions coming out with a brand new audience, do not lose this selling point.

bloodenragedb14_ESO

i think it might help by added a non-pvp instance of cyrodiil for roleplayers, explorers, and people who generally dont like pvp. that might help illeviate traffic on some servers

yodased

I would love to see all particle effects turned off for a couple hours of thorneblade primetime.

Keep it wireframe or whatever you need to do, but somehow stop the server from having to render all those little particles and calculate damage for a hundred players.

There is no way that you can replicate what players do on the test servers you guys have. Unless you write some sort of script that brings a bunch of exploiters into a keep and spams particle heavy spells, it isn't going to break the same way live does.

I'm sure that the players wouldn't mind this, especially if it helps fix the problem.

damn I would go so far as to say they wouldn't mind what pvp looked like, to an extent, if it simply WORKED.

Kragorn

ZOS_PaulSage wrote: »

Actively, we are looking at changing the behavior of the players to remove incentives for large groups to stay in the same area

So after pushing large scale battles as ESO's PVP USP over 'arena-based' MMOs, you're now saying you can't deliver the server tech to support it.

Is that correct?

Maybe ask CCP how they manage to sustain massive battles in EVE?

Dreyloch

[quote="DHale;1627359"
Imminent destruction is not the not the zerg buster I was hoping for. The channel time gets lagged out and 2 seconds become 10 and sometimes it does not fire at all and makes it look like I am perma hitchhiking. It should do way more damage like when 6 enemy are near or something like that. It will discourage grouping and zerging. The other ability is soul shatter when you are about to die. It does min damage and should really level the playing field as in really doing tremendous damage but your death is imminent so it’s not ever going to be spammed. Maybe it does min damage when one person is there and scales as more ppl are within 5 meters for example. Players that have this passive are ticking time bombs and if multiple ppl have this then zergs will hesitate running into other groups that all are ticking time bombs that would stack on one another.
[/quote]

Although I like this idea, here's how to exploit it. Have a good number of people seiging a keep? Log in your low level alts all stationed at key Keeps on the map. Now once you get enough, run them into the opposing faction. Unless this ability scaled by level, it would only serve as an exploitable tactic =/

Snit

Paul's post makes sense to me.

The ugly, time-freeze lag happens when you fight the massive red zerg. It rarely happens otherwise; it always happens when you encounter that zerg inside a breached keep. Blue and Yellow tend to travel in groups smaller than, "everyone logged in on our faction" (this is in Thornblade NA)

The current combat mechanics and reward systems encourages zergs. Both of those could be changed. Heck, you could eliminate zergs this week with a few tweaks:

- Experience/ AP in groups over XX have severely diminishing returns
- Groups over XX people have their movement speed debuffed
- Magicka Detonation scales upward in damage when more players are hit

These all have downsides, and other ideas would work, too. But the basic idea to fix this via mechanics rather than hardware seems sound to me.

ginoboehm

So PvP is done for the foreseeable future? Wow they really gave up. Will you at least give us a timeline and change your promotion because one of your sale arguments big avava battles is not working

wraith808

So they give an update on what they're experiencing, what they're doing, and what we can do to help in the meantime until they solve the problem... and these are the responses?

*sigh*

They explicitly said they continue to work on the problem in his post. Or did I misread something?

Sallington

wraith808 wrote: »

So they give an update on what they're experiencing, what they're doing, and what we can do to help in the meantime until they solve the problem... and these are the responses?

*sigh*

They explicitly said they continue to work on the problem in his post. Or did I misread something?

You missed the part where it's the player's fault and not the fact that the zone doesn't work as advertised.

ginoboehm

Since you can't deliver on huge battles can we have dueling now and 3v3 and so on? Focus on balancing in small scale batteling because that will be your next problem if you abandon large scale battles

ZOS_PaulSage

Just to clarify. There seemed to be a misunderstanding that I was saying we are "giving up" or "blaming this on players." Absolutely not. We are looking at the issue from many angles. I certainly didn't mean to imply we couldn't or wouldn't change code to improve performance, but rather that the answer wasn't more hardware. (It is often suggested this is the best way to fix problems.) I also wasn't implying you shouldn't play naturally, but unfortunately it is true that more players right now in a smaller area causes the performance problems. I say this not to discourage behavior or try push off the issue, but rather to give completely frank information about the root cause.

drzycki_ESO

I am extremely disappointed. My guild and I came here for the advertised massive pvp and we are now being told to spread out into lots of little battles??? We play with the zerg because that is what we find the most fun. We don't care about the points so much. Even if we got more points for smaller battles, we would still prefer the zerg. Please don't ruin that for us.

Satiar

Can't help but wonder if it is aoe caps. Too much calculation.