Update on Cyrodiil Performance

DisgracefulMind

DHale wrote: »

Sorry it just occured to me if you had a formal duel area it will bleed a lot of the best players to there and reduce population especially the zerging inclined players. I wont miss Germantrocity killing me a dozen times or whatever you made him rename himself cause he is OP.

LMAO

#NerfMyManPlz

@Germtrocity

Germtrocity

DHale wrote: »

Sorry it just occured to me if you had a formal duel area it will bleed a lot of the best players to there and reduce population especially the zerging inclined players. I wont miss Germantrocity killing me a dozen times or whatever you made him rename himself cause he is OP.

Arcane Requiem now

Vizier

WebBull wrote: »

With the removal of FC's players are less spread out. If you want players to spread out more, implement some sort of transport to farther out areas. Perhaps put a wayshrine for each alliance in the center of the map (until IC is implemented or something along these lines.

This is so untrue. Zergs were merely blood porting from keep to keep and then staying there until they wiped or won. Then off to the next enemy owned resource to blood-port to the next keep. Don't even try to act like folks were more spread out. (there were spread out FC's though- Cough, "can you say troll camps." Or have we all forgot about those?) At least now those that wipe and don't rez or are not in position to transit have to ride or hoof it. WAY Better than when FC's were in effect.

There has been a transition in that players had to learn new ways of coping. At first there were tons of target travelling alone. They've learned and travel in pairs or small groups or large groups. Gankers have become better at what they do too forcing some to move in larger groups then they normally would. It's give and take and the game evolves. We DO NOT need Forward Camps to be reintroduced to PvP. We need more objectives in the lands between keeps and keeps that are harder to take. Make the towns matter. Introduce more mines, mills, farms and priories, to have resources travel to the keeps near them. Ore, lumber, food, and priests for morale. Maybe owning them gives a great passive to those holding the keeps, maybe we have to escort them from their point of production to the nearest keep. Who knows. But as stated we need objectives other then the keeps and we need different criteria for what crowns an emperor. THIS will spread people out and foster fighting all over Cyrodiil....not FC's. sorry bro.

Erock25

ZOS_PaulSage wrote: »

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.

@ZOS_PaulSage Don't let people twisting your words and going extra dramatic with doom and gloom posts deter you from providing us with information like this. Honesty, even if it contains negative revelations, is always appreciated. It may be time to start putting together Team Deathmatch games with leaderboards and mostly vanity type rewards, such as titles and/or costumes. I think Team Keep Battles, with a limit of 25 players per side, would also be fun but I understand if others think that would remove too much from Cyrodiil. I think that with the hopeful influx of many players because of Tamriel Unlimited, that some organized guilds and teams doing something other than Cyrodiil will go a long way in reducing the density of players. In the least it will give people something to do if Cyrodiil is especially full and laggy.

Galalin

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.

@ZOS_PaulSage As a player that was so frustrated with this disgusting lack of communication and avoidance of paying customers questions.... all i can say is I APPLAUD YOU SIR!!! Better late than never. I'm sure I was not the only one on thier last straw from the lack of communication. I can atleast say the few mins it took you to write this has given me a small rejuvenated hope that will keep me here a little while longer. I'm sure this post alone has saved more subs then you realize.... now the only question is will it continue? I hope so

DK SCRUB OUT

ThinkerOfThings

Perhaps a massive armored troll or a giant can come by large groups and swat them across the map. Just a thought...

trimsic_ESO

@ZOS_PaulSage
Some reasons of the performance loss in Cyrodiil are in the metagame:
- Everyone can AOE, so everyone does
- It's not easy to assist a single target, even in a small scale combat (UI and targetting issue)
- There is no enough tool to control the masses (lack of range AOE CC), so small groups of players can hardly defeat the masses
- Lack of incentives in the game for building small groups (rewards, XP / CP gain, objectives, ...) - may be the imperial city will help (own the home keeps to get an access to the city)
- Mounts are not fast enough to cover the long distances in Cyrodiil

Rook_Master

Kevinmon wrote: »

Just GET RID OF THE *** LIGHTING PATCH IN CYRODIIL!!!!! THIS WILL SOLVE ALL YOUR PROBLEMS!!!

STICK PVP ON PTS SERVER BEFORE LIGHTING PATCH, AND HOST AN EVENT AND SEE IF IT CRASHES

Or actually PLAY on Thornblade NA during prime time with EP, AND FOLLOW AROUND HAVOC AND IR AND SEE HOW THEY ARE CAUSING THE LAG

This.

Satiar

Kevinmon wrote: »

Just GET RID OF THE *** LIGHTING PATCH IN CYRODIIL!!!!! THIS WILL SOLVE ALL YOUR PROBLEMS!!!

STICK PVP ON PTS SERVER BEFORE LIGHTING PATCH, AND HOST AN EVENT AND SEE IF IT CRASHES

Or actually PLAY on Thornblade NA during prime time with EP, AND FOLLOW AROUND HAVOC AND IR AND SEE HOW THEY ARE CAUSING THE LAG

We log off and rage because of lag but we are causing it, sure.

aco5712

today we thought we would go to chillrend so we wouldnt have to deal with the lag. Our group of 8-12 (small like you asked) when and fought at sej/bridge all night so we wouldnt be near the actual frontline keeps. We expericened lag spikes there somewhat throughout the night. Just then we had the unplayable lag when we went to ash to save the scroll.

So we went away from the lag of thornblade, to chillrend where the lag followed in even small group. Yall better do something smart coz B2P happens in a couple days. (Y)

Is it possible to remove aoe caps completely and try that on PTS and hold an event. All the new calculations that you introduced has probably increased the lag...

sirston

Satiar wrote: »

Kevinmon wrote: »

Just GET RID OF THE *** LIGHTING PATCH IN CYRODIIL!!!!! THIS WILL SOLVE ALL YOUR PROBLEMS!!!

STICK PVP ON PTS SERVER BEFORE LIGHTING PATCH, AND HOST AN EVENT AND SEE IF IT CRASHES

Or actually PLAY on Thornblade NA during prime time with EP, AND FOLLOW AROUND HAVOC AND IR AND SEE HOW THEY ARE CAUSING THE LAG

We log off and rage because of lag but we are causing it, sure.

Can you teach us you're secrets havoc

OH and @ZOS_PaulSage my recommendation is to I don't Know make your whole staff team work on the current issue Since you did say you guy's where slowing down of new production. Does not mean you can not work on your current stuff.

StienDeath

I don't know ,,, ( we are working to resolve the issues in PvP)

for all the Fixes that have came out ..... that cause more problems ... I call bull.

[Moderator Note: Edited per our rules on ZOS being Limp wristed.

tomiffseb17_ESO

By performance loss do you mean the lag we experience or there is a chance this also means the huge fps loss and weird cpu utilization aswell? Could anyone please clarify this?

Mujuro

ZOS_PaulSage wrote: »

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.

This is good to hear.

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.)

Throwing more hardware at the issue tends to work only if the underlying code is designed to support such scaling. I'm assuming that ESO did not anticipate such performance/load scaling.

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.

The root cause isn't zerging players in a small area. The root cause is poor design and/or poor coding: I was under the impression that ZOS wanted large-scale PvP battles. If this was the case, are you saying that you didn't anticipate many players all stacking on flags? After, that's the design mechanic. Am I missing something?

Joy_Division

@Paul Sage -

I appreciate the communication. Although it is not what we want to hear and not what you wanted to say, it is for the best that you let us know what is up and what is being done.

I have three suggestions.

1) A large part of me believes the "lighting patch messed up Cyrodiil" is based on nostalgia, but if you are so desperate enough to ask us not to engage in the sort of PvP that is being advertised for the game, what is the harm in rolling this back, or at least is it possible to disable this lighting in Cyrodiil? Hell, put it on the PTS and announce 1 night of "No lightning patch PvP" and invite 1000 people on the server. Put this theory to rest once and for all. If it actually is the problem: BAM! months and months of frustration instantly gone and you can devote resources to other stuff. At the very least, we will 100% know for sure this isn;t the problem and people can start thinking of other solutions.

2) We have been telling you for a year that Cyrodiil is too keep focused. And I am telling you adding a few sewer entrances into the Imperial City is not going to change the matter. The fact of the matter is that for nearly a year 90% of the beautiful map you created is not contested or even cared about: there is no reason to even patrol any non keep area except the Alessia bridge (and then only when EP controls Sejanus and AD Alessia), the Chalman milegate (similarly only important if opposing faction control Chalman and Bleakers), and the Ash gate (ditto different factions controlling Nikel and Ash). There is literally nothing useful a 4 man group can do except gank (and even that is not really making a difference in the AvAvA scheme of things.). That is a big reason why players zerg, because what else is a group of 4 going to do? We have been telling you to add supply caravans, flagable objectives off the beaten path, to make the cities and other bridges and gates worth fighting over.

3) The only counter to the Zerg is to Zerg moar. I appreciate and agree with the relatively conservative approach ZoS has implemented with the AoE cap removal, skills like magicka detonation, and seige damage because maikng these too strong will completely wreck the balance. But it is clear now that siege weapons do not do enough damage to vr14 characters (they do to non-vets!) and the magicka detonation skill has not provided a sufficient deterrent. These need to be tweaked.

I will add that I echo the concern other posters have with the suggestion that we spread ourselves out. I know have no intention of "giving up" but the lack of PvP content since launch really has many of us worried that we are third-class citizens behind the console and PVE communities. Until we see the sorts of changes that I and others have suggested, I think it is a reasonable reaction for us to have to (unfortunately) take a cynical interpretation of your otherwise informative feedback. We want a long-term solution and we would like to see meaningful steps to add some spice to Cyrodiil that will natural - as opposed to artificially - give us more to do than just zerg.

And, really, just try the 1 night of no lighting patch on the PTS and see what happens...

Goldie

I have to level with you here @ZOS_PaulSage

One of the MAIN attractions of this game was the Massive PvP Battles

In Fact, this is how you describe it on the ESO website;

"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."

Apparently this is an outright lie. We cant even get 40 players in the same battle without experiencing complete and utter game killing lag!

The promise of "the largest PvP battles seen in a major online RPG" has yet to be fulfilled. I have been a staunch supporter of ESO since BETA. I have been a loyal subscriber since day one, but you ARE losing me here. The appeal of PvP IS the Massive battles, and now your ideas, instead of fixing the lag and standing by the description you 'claim' for ESO PvP, your plan is "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".

I don't even have the words...

Sandmanninja

Other MMOs have had a bad history of world PvP. In the Burning Crusades, an entire zone was open PvP. It was a LAGtastic experience. Their fix: remove it.

Any WoWers remember Wintergrasp? That was fun. Tol *** wasn't too bad. Timed battles. They had it every 2 hours. Heck, double it and make it an hourly event.

Another idea: Go with large, instanced battle groups. You queue (ugh - maybe this would inspire a revamp of the que LFG system) for a battle ground. The BG could handle, say, 50-100 people. It would be instanced, so you'd have a controlled number of players in it at any given time. Make it big enough geography-wise to give players a sense of open world, but limit how many people can enter it.

Make it non-stop. You just enter a queue for BG #1 or BG #2 or BG #3 and when there is an opening, your queue pops and you zone in.

I don't PvP but I can sympathize with those that do.

LegacyDM

Zos makes no sense. You guys removed torchbugs and deer but fixed Jesus beam so everyone and their grandma is using it thus putting more load and strain on the server. Why remove something to put another thing more intensive in its place?! Ridiculous. All the lag is due to the aoe spam and Jesus beams stackings!

GorraShatan

Spamming meteor/shooting star seems to lag the server on command.

GorraShatan

I don't normally buy into these conspiracy theories but it really does seem like on guild is deliberately spamming skills that they know cause lag. In this case meteor and its morphs.

Rasimir

A lot of people are asking for more anti-zerg skills. How would that help in situations where no skill works? Yesterday we fought against a group at a flag for at least 15 minutes. Nobody died on either side, skills just didn't do any damage, most of the time my magicka didn't get reduced. There are enough videos of such fights around.

More skill damage isn't helpful in these cases. Lag capture of flags and scrolls will not stop that way.

Perhaps the server should infect players with a deadly disease when too many people stack at one place tor too long. Just kick then from that place when the server notices performance going down. It people risk waking up at the gates, they may avoid such crowds.

KeplerMG

joshdm2001_ESO wrote: »

Zos makes no sense. You guys removed torchbugs and deer but fixed Jesus beam so everyone and their grandma is using it thus putting more load and strain on the server. Why remove something to put another thing more intensive in its place?! Ridiculous. All the lag is due to the aoe spam and Jesus beams stackings!

What proof do you have that the new templar ability is causing a problem? As a templar myself, I would gladly trade the new ability it in for a playable and working Cyrodiil. If only it were that simple. But we all know its not.

Tyvarra

Just give the players the option to turn off the lighting effects. Most of us dont like all that shining and sparkling anyway. You are going blind from that in large battles and I could imagine that the light effects take a lot of ressources.

Don't mind me when I'm wrong here...

KeplerMG

Tyvarra wrote: »

Just give the players the option to turn off the lighting effects. Most of us dont like all that shining and sparkling anyway. You are going blind from that in large battles and I could imagine that the light effects take a lot of ressources.

Don't mind me when I'm wrong here...

Some players have said that disabling sound helps with the lag. I'm going to (beta) test that out tomorrow. Sound has been a really wonky thing in this game since day one. And the limited sound options are appalling. Where are the options to limit the amount of sounds that can play at once? Control sound quality? Limit the variations in sound?

They should just disable all the fluff in Cyrodiil, including the lighting update, facial expressions update, and they need to simplify the sound. No one is every standing in one place or looking at one thing long enough in Cyrodiil for any of these to matter...

SLy_Kyti

o_0 wrote: »

Thank you, not for the info....but open, honest communication with the players. I'd rather have information told to me bluntly then be told nothing at all, or have it be sugar coated or lacking info. To me, and I think a lot of players, this is all we really want. If you keep this kind of open communication up, I will support you, and this game to the bitter end.

timidobserver wrote: »

I like it when Paul Sage posts stuff. I appreciate an real response teling us what is really going on, even if it isn't what we want to hear, rather than the usual canned stuff that we get from other ZOS staff.

Agree with these posts ^ ^

I want to also thank @ZOS_PaulSage for not only letting us know what is going on but also updating and clarifying his post. AnND the players that have given thoughtful options to fix the problems. Its great to see the passion we all have for PvP/RvR inspire change and hope....whether it works or not.

stonescorsa

@ZOS_PaulSage im sorry mate but this is a terrible response as everyone has said a million times before patch 1.2 was way more stable so you should check what you have done since then and maybe revert changes. I have played pvp since i was lvl 10 over 1800hrs as a pvp player. This response you give is rediculous the fighting you currently see now was the same back when i lead raids 11months ago. I practically use the exact same skill bar i use to use apart from immovable.

This game has some great potential BUT you cannot blame the pvp situation on us. Our guild has fought the big guilds on the other factions for as long as iv been playing the lag wasnt there before. I play this game because it has the largest pvp i have ever seen and that whats drawn me to it. I dont care about pve i dont care about your small groups i like big combat, big fights, guild vs guild open world brawls and mass destruction, whoever gets the 1st attack or the 1st ultimate down and a quick response wins. This is why i play and so does my guild.

Removing forward camps and oil pots deffo helped alot i will say that maybe a few graphics need to be addressed as metoer is now the go to skill maybe make it a smaller graphic would help and some others to.

Pvp is ment to be pvp get rid of all pve **it out of it turn bruma into a keep etc. i really dont want quests in pvp i will never do them they suck. Take out all the trolls dolmens tigers goblins and stuff that technically serve no purpose to our pvp. Player vs player is not player vs environment.

Dont deteriorate the large group combat because most of the top guilds dont want that. Small gorilla squads now have things to do seing as people have to ride from keep to keep and a few at the back are not with the group get taken out thats the small group stuff. I dont want pvp to turn small that is the most silliest come back answer ever. Make an arena for these whiney people.

I think @ZOS_PaulSage the best way to tackle this is to put a timer to say 10secs on the time you can rez if you die its because you were doing something wrong so make them have a penalty In the parameter of the keep walls. If they get rezzed then instant get up.

There is alot more things you guys can do then say we give up now we leave pvp in your hands and soread out. I dont want to send a full raid group to take keeps with no meaning i dont want my group to go to rayles and take it i want to take a keep meaningful with people firing down on my group with siege and explosions and make my grouo become stronger and if we fail we remind ourselves why we failed and get better.

Zos please fix your current situation dont blame the players. We have beta tested for you for a year revert changes make new changes dont give up else we all give up on YOU!!

Galalin

You want to spread ppl out in cyrodiil...get rid if that trash can in the middle of it and put a massive emperor keep with huge open rooms that act as flags not a tiny little circle ppl stack on then get rid of all the gate (choke point) need all 6 outer keeps before the inner keep is able to take damage.... that will help speread things out and add tons to the PvP aspect compared to what has been done.

Scratch the 6 keep thing... 4 inner keeps... the 6th keep always creates such massive lad

Added: then maybe throw some elite PvP vendor's in there with new gear, pots etc.... the longer you hold it the more items unlock for available purchase in order of rarity

DK SCRUB OUT

NadiusMaximus

Only real way of fixing it just dawned on me.

Reduce the skills we take into Cyrodil to two per bar and no ultimate.
Make battles be fought with weapons , light and heavy attacks.
One damage ability and one heal, or two damage, or two heals. That's it.


I'll lol myself for that one, but might be how they handle it vs. Fixing it for real before next year.

Galalin

NadiusMaximus wrote: »

Only real way of fixing it just dawned on me.

Reduce the skills we take into Cyrodil to two per bar and no ultimate.
Make battles be fought with weapons , light and heavy attacks.
One damage ability and one heal, or two damage, or two heals. That's it.

I would rather play Tetris

Vahrokh

I hope @ZOS_PaulSage won't get "scared" by some harsh responses (I am guilty like everybody else, here).

We massively appreciate the rare times a relevant ZoS person speaks and tells the truth, even if it's bitter for us.

Actually, by having spoken, you probably are going to retain some players that were already with their feet through the exit door.

However I hope you understand we got advertised "the new DAoC". Sadly for ZOS marketeers, we DID play the real DAoC / Warhammer Online so we know what "being like DAoC" really means.

I can also understand that - like for other games like Horizons - there has to be had some massive "personnel related" issue at the root of ESO issues. In that game it was massive infigthing between stakeholders and various "mid levels" in that company.
In ZOS I can't exactly imagine what happened, but it's clear that ESO would have had to:

- not have VR zones, something ugly happened that stalled development a lot so you had to put in this "feature".
- gradually implement more and more regions / game mechanics / end game content. Something ugly happened that stalled that too.
- functional PvP. The fact you had to deeply rework the whole system (leading to the current PVP zones etc.) means it was not tested in a realistic manner, not by competent people.

These 3 factors alone (plus many more everyone knows, useless to write them again and again) decreted ESO's partial failure.

I hope one day we'll get to know the whole story. You knew ESO was not going the right direction so it's not an incident. Spending months to implement the various B2P mechanics means you knew the game would tank.

Just another "could've been awesome" AAA MMO ruined by who knows what external human / money factors.