Update on Cyrodiil Performance

Morvul

reposting my comment from another thread here (as it very much fits the discussion here):

well, to be entirely honest: 1.6 lagging (much) more then 1.5 should not come as a surprise...

The changes in the way AoE damage is handled sounds (to me) significantly more calculation intensive, while at the same time the actuall increase in AoE damage over 1.5 is not enough to discourage players from clumping up.

When I and others were lobbying to remove AoE caps as a (potential) solution to the "clumping up" gameplay and acompanying lag, we were suggesting to simply apply full damage to everything within range of the AoE. What was actually implemented requires an additional "range-sorting" step of all the targets within an AoEs range, and then another calculation pass to apply the appropriate damage reductions (50% for targets 7-30, 75% for targets 31-60).
Moreover - it is my impression that the "damage reduction" from the reworked AoE-caps stacks with other sources of damage reduction - thereby resulting in almost negligable damage to every target beyond the first 6.

Which, obviously, results in increased calculation overhead for AoE damage skills, while not allowing said AoE skills to discurage players from stacking on crown anymore then they did in 1.5 ...

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

helltiger wrote: »

Remove AoE from game(pvp) and we get that battle, what we see on this video https://youtu.be/MQFxE4AESn4?t=50s. AoE can be present in pvp only a: siege machines, healing, disabling(without any damage: mass stun with AoE cap, negate, etc). Also meele>>range, single>aoe.

Would be interesting to see how this would work out.

stefan.gustavsonb16_ESO

Sacadon wrote: »

If not already, please consider using designs other non-gaming organizations have used successfully for a long time now. I'm thinking that budget is your constraint though versus talent or technology.

Think of how many calcs/sec apps like Soundhound and Shazaam have to do on HPC systems in order to recognize a song in 2-5 secs. There are many companies that already use massively parallel high-performance cloud computing systems across the globe to do these things.

Another extremely parallel system design that has been in place for a long time is high-frequency electronic trading. Yes there's arbitrage to take advantage of delays but a gaming system could just write off such delays. I bet TradeStation would give you some ideas without giving you their IP. A friend of mine is a developer on their core system and I could make a connection for ZOS, but expect that you'd not need one too.

One thing is for sure, achieving a highly distributed client-to-server design that performs well is within reach and has been for the past 5 years. So this is ZOS's opportunity otherwise someone else is going to eventually.

This is perfectly sound advice, but consider the fact that the game client has serious load balancing issues, and it sounds reasonable to suspect that massively parallel high performance solutions may not be on their roadmap. Their current server load balancing is based on spatial partitioning (zones) and grouping (phases). Redesigning it to use parallel threads to share the workload for a particularly busy area is very likely beyond their reach, if not in skill so at least in time and money.

Sacadon

stefan.gustavsonb16_ESO wrote: »

Sacadon wrote: »

If not already, please consider using designs other non-gaming organizations have used successfully for a long time now. I'm thinking that budget is your constraint though versus talent or technology.

Think of how many calcs/sec apps like Soundhound and Shazaam have to do on HPC systems in order to recognize a song in 2-5 secs. There are many companies that already use massively parallel high-performance cloud computing systems across the globe to do these things.

Another extremely parallel system design that has been in place for a long time is high-frequency electronic trading. Yes there's arbitrage to take advantage of delays but a gaming system could just write off such delays. I bet TradeStation would give you some ideas without giving you their IP. A friend of mine is a developer on their core system and I could make a connection for ZOS, but expect that you'd not need one too.

One thing is for sure, achieving a highly distributed client-to-server design that performs well is within reach and has been for the past 5 years. So this is ZOS's opportunity otherwise someone else is going to eventually.

This is perfectly sound advice, but consider the fact that the game client has serious load balancing issues, and it sounds reasonable to suspect that massively parallel high performance solutions may not be on their roadmap. Their current server load balancing is based on spatial partitioning (zones) and grouping (phases). Redesigning it to use parallel threads to share the workload for a particularly busy area is very likely beyond their reach, if not in skill so at least in time and money.

Agreed, sadly. Edit: I was surprised they only wrote the client in 32-bit but thought they'd port it eventually. Sure wish they had more $.

eventide03b14a_ESO

EskimoBrother wrote: »

ZOS_PaulSage wrote: »

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.

No. In fact, the features you added in 1.6 seem to have made the lag much worse(much like every previous patch). It seems like it takes a lot less players for the server to start lagging now. Those "LARGE SCALE BATTLES" your game can supposedly handle are a thing of the past. We've been very patient as players paying for an unfinished product, it's been a year now. Time for you to start showing some results.

[Moderator Note: Edited per our rules on Flaming]

It's even bad in PvE. I get huge lag spikes even in the Cadwell's Gold areas where there is nobody around. And yet I will have no problem in my own factions main city. It's seems completely random.

glak

Sacadon wrote: »

stefan.gustavsonb16_ESO wrote: »

Sacadon wrote: »

If not already, please consider using designs other non-gaming organizations have used successfully for a long time now. I'm thinking that budget is your constraint though versus talent or technology.

Think of how many calcs/sec apps like Soundhound and Shazaam have to do on HPC systems in order to recognize a song in 2-5 secs. There are many companies that already use massively parallel high-performance cloud computing systems across the globe to do these things.

Another extremely parallel system design that has been in place for a long time is high-frequency electronic trading. Yes there's arbitrage to take advantage of delays but a gaming system could just write off such delays. I bet TradeStation would give you some ideas without giving you their IP. A friend of mine is a developer on their core system and I could make a connection for ZOS, but expect that you'd not need one too.

One thing is for sure, achieving a highly distributed client-to-server design that performs well is within reach and has been for the past 5 years. So this is ZOS's opportunity otherwise someone else is going to eventually.

This is perfectly sound advice, but consider the fact that the game client has serious load balancing issues, and it sounds reasonable to suspect that massively parallel high performance solutions may not be on their roadmap. Their current server load balancing is based on spatial partitioning (zones) and grouping (phases). Redesigning it to use parallel threads to share the workload for a particularly busy area is very likely beyond their reach, if not in skill so at least in time and money.

Agreed, sadly. Edit: I was surprised they only wrote the client in 32-bit but thought they'd port it eventually. Sure wish they had more $.

At least the console clients are 64-bit.

glak

Bashev wrote: »

Fizzlewizzle wrote: »

helltiger wrote: »

Remove AoE from game(pvp) and we get that battle, what we see on this video https://youtu.be/MQFxE4AESn4?t=50s. AoE can be present in pvp only a: siege machines, healing, disabling(without any damage: mass stun with AoE cap, negate, etc). Also meele>>range, single>aoe.

This isn't the worst idea, it would give a whole different feel when going to PvP.
Lets all be honest, the battles against a group of people that are "disorganized" and try to take out 1 person at the time are much more fun (and lasting) then the ones where some zerk group rolls over the field and just wipes everything.

If you're in a 1 X Many fight it wont matter if you can or can't aoe, since most will just bombard the single player with spells and skills until he dies. Group gameplay would become a lot more fun and interesting.

I proposed this idea back in June --> http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/114541/can-we-have-a-campaign-where-all-aoe-dps-skills-are-disabled
Most players didn't like it.

Worth a try on the PTS. All they have to do is make a debuff in the open areas of Cyrodiil that sets the AoE cap to 0 and disables caltrops. Lore perspective: above ground outside of the city, Molag Bal removed AoE damage to make us suffer.

Rune_Relic

glak wrote: »

Bashev wrote: »

Fizzlewizzle wrote: »

helltiger wrote: »

Remove AoE from game(pvp) and we get that battle, what we see on this video https://youtu.be/MQFxE4AESn4?t=50s. AoE can be present in pvp only a: siege machines, healing, disabling(without any damage: mass stun with AoE cap, negate, etc). Also meele>>range, single>aoe.

This isn't the worst idea, it would give a whole different feel when going to PvP.
Lets all be honest, the battles against a group of people that are "disorganized" and try to take out 1 person at the time are much more fun (and lasting) then the ones where some zerk group rolls over the field and just wipes everything.

If you're in a 1 X Many fight it wont matter if you can or can't aoe, since most will just bombard the single player with spells and skills until he dies. Group gameplay would become a lot more fun and interesting.

I proposed this idea back in June --> http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/114541/can-we-have-a-campaign-where-all-aoe-dps-skills-are-disabled
Most players didn't like it.

Worth a try on the PTS. All they have to do is make a debuff in the open areas of Cyrodiil that sets the AoE cap to 0 and disables caltrops. Lore perspective: above ground outside of the city, Molag Bal removed AoE damage to make us suffer.

I would 2nd aoe disabled on the PTS and encourage a 100v100+ fight to see how much of a difference it makes to performance. I am sure a few guilds can stump up the bodies to hit the same place at the same time with 3 factions if ZOS gave them time and place.

blackweb

Reposted from PvP forum:

First, my world PvP credentials so that you will understand that I know what I am talking about. I lead the following multi-gaming community

http://phoenixbattalion.guildlaunch.com/

Our ESO recruiting message

<Phoenix Battalion> is recruiting! We are a multi-gaming community with over 2000 members. We play Guild Wars 2, SWTOR, WoW and PlanetSide 2. We specialize in large-scale PvP. We have experienced leadership, Teamspeak 3 and a website. /w to join

Our PlanetSide 2 outfit:

http://www.planetside-universe.com/outfit-37509488620618229.php

which has 2349 members, the largest on Emerald-NC.

I have been leading world pvp for more than 10 years, since Planetside 1 in 2003.

How to fix ESO Cyrodiil World PvP:

1. Cyrodiil buffs work in Cyrodiil only - this will eliminate one faction camping one campaign for buffs.
2. Reset all campaigns every 24 hours - set all keeps to neutral guarded by strong imperial guards or divide them equally among all 3 factions.
3. Friendly fire for all abilities, especially AE abilities - this will eliminate lagsploit overnight.
4. Decaying grief system for friendly fire with ability lock - lock player abilities in Cyrodil for excessive friendly fire, starting with 2 minute ability lock and increasing penalties.
5. Relax emporer requirements to holding 50%+ of territory/keeps/outposts and 2 enemy scrolls.
6. Reset emperor when campaign is reset every 24 hours.
7. 2 types of campaigns - veteran and non veteran.

These changes will have the following beneficial effects.

1. Stop campaign camping by one faction
2. End lagsploit.
3. Stop hundreds of players from stacking on top of each other and spamming AE abilities.
4. Incentivize players to play more than one campaign.
5. Make emperor more attainable.
6. Make combat more dynamic and balanced between factions.

How do I know this will work? A system very much like this works great in PlanetSide 2 where no one faction dominates all the time and combat is very dynamic and fluid. PS2 has many ae damage abilities such as grenades and an effective grief system. If you dont want to get weapons lock, dont hit friendlies.

Problem solved, enjoy Cyrodiil pvp.

ghengis_dhan

Sacadon wrote: »

• Increase number of ownable/siegable resources

If you look at the traffic flow that players need to follow, you see choke points all around the Imperial City. This almost forces players to bunch up.

If a Pact player wants their faction to have an emperor, they take all the keeps around the Imperial City. If they want to push all the way to the Dominion gates, they need to take some inner-ring keeps along the way. (Any other route involves a long boring horse ride.) If they want to fight Covenant, same story.

I suggest adding six outposts along the edge of the map, two on each side. Give the players an alternate route that bypasses the inner-ring keeps. If you replace the outer bridge and mile gates with one of these outposts, their importance will certainly cause some players to rush to their defense, but since the inner keeps are still very important, it should draw just enough to spread out the player base.

Darklord_Tiberius

PeggymoeXD wrote: »

The very first time my friend and I 2-manned an outpost and killed an AD during the cap, I felt like a beast. But the AP reward was literally like killing two v1's. There is almost no incentive to break off and play offensively because defense gives insane amounts of AP in comparison to takes, especially with no resistance. I understand most people will call this PvDooring. But if the goal here is to split people up, taking an outpost to cut reinforcements or just capping a keep's resources to cut its transitus, needs to reward more AP. As of now people only want to do what gets them more AP, and that will ALWAYS be defense.

YOU ARE A BEAST. SO HAIRY! jk. But yea, they need a change in Cyrodiil or else people will just continue to complain about the lag. I hope they come up with something creative for 2.1 and hope it is a heavy PvP patch because it is sorely needed. I think removing the "PvP servers" and going to a Cyrodiil map that is cut into 4 pieces would do better. They could tie each zone together with battle objectives and also have the zones affect the overall alliance zones players are PvEing in.

glak

blackweb wrote: »

Reposted from PvP forum:

First, my world PvP credentials so that you will understand that I know what I am talking about. I lead the following multi-gaming community

http://phoenixbattalion.guildlaunch.com/

Our ESO recruiting message

<Phoenix Battalion> is recruiting! We are a multi-gaming community with over 2000 members. We play Guild Wars 2, SWTOR, WoW and PlanetSide 2. We specialize in large-scale PvP. We have experienced leadership, Teamspeak 3 and a website. /w to join

Our PlanetSide 2 outfit:

http://www.planetside-universe.com/outfit-37509488620618229.php

which has 2349 members, the largest on Emerald-NC.

I have been leading world pvp for more than 10 years, since Planetside 1 in 2003.

How to fix ESO Cyrodiil World PvP:

1. Cyrodiil buffs work in Cyrodiil only - this will eliminate one faction camping one campaign for buffs.
2. Reset all campaigns every 24 hours - set all keeps to neutral guarded by strong imperial guards or divide them equally among all 3 factions.
3. Friendly fire for all abilities, especially AE abilities - this will eliminate lagsploit overnight.
4. Decaying grief system for friendly fire with ability lock - lock player abilities in Cyrodil for excessive friendly fire, starting with 2 minute ability lock and increasing penalties.
5. Relax emporer requirements to holding 50%+ of territory/keeps/outposts and 2 enemy scrolls.
6. Reset emperor when campaign is reset every 24 hours.
7. 2 types of campaigns - veteran and non veteran.

These changes will have the following beneficial effects.

1. Stop campaign camping by one faction
2. End lagsploit.
3. Stop hundreds of players from stacking on top of each other and spamming AE abilities.
4. Incentivize players to play more than one campaign.
5. Make emperor more attainable.
6. Make combat more dynamic and balanced between factions.

How do I know this will work? A system very much like this works great in PlanetSide 2 where no one faction dominates all the time and combat is very dynamic and fluid. PS2 has many ae damage abilities such as grenades and an effective grief system. If you dont want to get weapons lock, dont hit friendlies.

Problem solved, enjoy Cyrodiil pvp.

I agree with all of this but seems to allow the emperor to be flipped much easier. Please address this for our education?

Orchish

Before you removed camps we actually had some guilds/groups that would split off from the main battles. We would have groups/guilds travel far behind enemy lines and place a camp then siege a back keep, this drew many defenders of that alliance back to that keep, splitting up their forces to defend on multiple fronts against one alliance not just two.

Since the removal of camps what we now have for example is EP will push Bleakers from Chalman, DC will defend and kill all EP and push onto Chalman. EP will rez kill all DC and push on to Bleakers, DC then all rez at Bleakers kill all EP and push onto Chalman. You get the point?

Sure, the argument before was that camps didn't help because they allowed for infinite players to repsawn at a keep keeping the fight going for ever. This is where you implement the suggested changes to camps. Changes such as only those who die within the camp radius can re-spawn at it. Introduce guild camps, in which only members of that guild can use.

Truth is, camps or no camps players spreading out or bunching up isn't going to help. Your game engine or your servers i don't know which cannot handle the absolute spam created by so many players at one time.

Right now, 1 group of players can simply spam meteor and completely lag out the server. This is just one group who could be at Ash, and i will still experience this lag at Bleakers, i do not see how spreading us out is going to help at all. It will only help for FPS performance issues. Latency which is the major issue here isn't going to improve.

WebBull

Get rid of spell effects. They are way over the top and while nice, they are not needed.

blackweb

glak wrote: »

blackweb wrote: »

Reposted from PvP forum:

First, my world PvP credentials so that you will understand that I know what I am talking about. I lead the following multi-gaming community

http://phoenixbattalion.guildlaunch.com/

Our ESO recruiting message

<Phoenix Battalion> is recruiting! We are a multi-gaming community with over 2000 members. We play Guild Wars 2, SWTOR, WoW and PlanetSide 2. We specialize in large-scale PvP. We have experienced leadership, Teamspeak 3 and a website. /w to join

Our PlanetSide 2 outfit:

http://www.planetside-universe.com/outfit-37509488620618229.php

which has 2349 members, the largest on Emerald-NC.

I have been leading world pvp for more than 10 years, since Planetside 1 in 2003.

How to fix ESO Cyrodiil World PvP:

1. Cyrodiil buffs work in Cyrodiil only - this will eliminate one faction camping one campaign for buffs.
2. Reset all campaigns every 24 hours - set all keeps to neutral guarded by strong imperial guards or divide them equally among all 3 factions.
3. Friendly fire for all abilities, especially AE abilities - this will eliminate lagsploit overnight.
4. Decaying grief system for friendly fire with ability lock - lock player abilities in Cyrodil for excessive friendly fire, starting with 2 minute ability lock and increasing penalties.
5. Relax emporer requirements to holding 50%+ of territory/keeps/outposts and 2 enemy scrolls.
6. Reset emperor when campaign is reset every 24 hours.
7. 2 types of campaigns - veteran and non veteran.

These changes will have the following beneficial effects.

1. Stop campaign camping by one faction
2. End lagsploit.
3. Stop hundreds of players from stacking on top of each other and spamming AE abilities.
4. Incentivize players to play more than one campaign.
5. Make emperor more attainable.
6. Make combat more dynamic and balanced between factions.

How do I know this will work? A system very much like this works great in PlanetSide 2 where no one faction dominates all the time and combat is very dynamic and fluid. PS2 has many ae damage abilities such as grenades and an effective grief system. If you dont want to get weapons lock, dont hit friendlies.

Problem solved, enjoy Cyrodiil pvp.

I agree with all of this but seems to allow the emperor to be flipped much easier. Please address this for our education?

More opportunities to make emporer seems like a good thing.

NukeAllTheThings

**warning wall-o-text inbound**

There have been a lot of god suggestion here that I hope @ZOS_PaulSage and team will do more than look into. I would like to offer a different kind of suggestion. What you guys are doing isn't working from a technical or operational standpoint. You might be limited in what you can do technically due to budget and time constraints. But you can definitely do something different in the way you guys operate.

The first step is communication. As you can see, just about everyone appreciates you communicating with us in this thread. It might not be what we want to hear, but at least we hear something. Open communication is vital and it helps to develop a relationship with your customer. There is only 1 guarantee in selling a products....something will break. How a company handles the situation what it does break helps determine how loyal a customer will be. Personally, I will forgive a lot of mistakes and things breaking if the company I buy the product from communicates with me and works to provide a resolution. The problem might be fixed in an hour or it might take months, but if they are communicating and telling me what is going on during the process then I support their efforts.

The next step is testing. I know you guys test everything internally and then you try and test it on the PTS. The problem is this process is not working. Something is missing because the end result is more bugs and degrading performance. It is pretty much impossible for you to replicate the stress of the live game internally and it is obvious you can't replicate it on the PTS without it melting down completely. You can't replicate the load and you can't replicate player behavior. The way you expect the masses to play is rarely how they will play. Even if many do, you will have others that do something completely different and find new ways to affect performance of the whole zone.

My wish is to see you guys start testing on a live server. It is time to get creative and really try out new ideas and fixes in a live environment. I would love to see you create a separate campaign that you guys can turn on at varying times to test new stuff you are trying to do. You can make it a true community event that your devs can attend and play with us (like you did with the PTS event except you get a full live server that is less likely to melt). Test out new strategic objectives, test out lighting impact or the impact deer have, test out reduced effects for spells, test out buffed up siege. Test whatever you want, but test it where it will eventually be played by the people who will play it.

I had another recommendation but I forgot it now. But these are desperate times for your game from a PVP perspective and you have an opportunity to do some really good things. Most of us on these forums have played this game for hundreds and thousands of hours. We may be loud, we may demanding and we complain a lot......but we are still here. We have been here since before day 1 and we have shown we are at least dedicated to keep playing. For the most part we love this game and are willing to spend thousands more hours playing it, we just ask that you communicate with us and allow us to help you with a true test of the changes you want to implement.

Thanks

blackweb

There are three things we know about my suggestions:

1. BY THEIR OWN ADMISSION, ALL OF ZOS EFFORTS TO REDUCE LAG IN CYRODIIL HAVE FAILED.
2. All of my suggestions are based on experience and have been APPLIED SUCCESSFULLY IN OTHER GAMES.
2. NOTHING WILL STOP AE SPAM AND ASSOCIATED LAG FASTER THAN FRIENDLY FIRE.

Suggestions for mitigating friendly fire in Cyroidiil PvP:

1. Flak Armor - mitigates explosive or ae damage.
2. Kinetic Armor - mitigates projectile damage.

Both will not mitigate 100% but they help. These armor buffs could be applied through the Alliance War skill line.

wraith808

blackweb wrote: »

glak wrote: »

blackweb wrote: »

Reposted from PvP forum:

First, my world PvP credentials so that you will understand that I know what I am talking about. I lead the following multi-gaming community

http://phoenixbattalion.guildlaunch.com/

Our ESO recruiting message

<Phoenix Battalion> is recruiting! We are a multi-gaming community with over 2000 members. We play Guild Wars 2, SWTOR, WoW and PlanetSide 2. We specialize in large-scale PvP. We have experienced leadership, Teamspeak 3 and a website. /w to join

Our PlanetSide 2 outfit:

http://www.planetside-universe.com/outfit-37509488620618229.php

which has 2349 members, the largest on Emerald-NC.

I have been leading world pvp for more than 10 years, since Planetside 1 in 2003.

How to fix ESO Cyrodiil World PvP:

1. Cyrodiil buffs work in Cyrodiil only - this will eliminate one faction camping one campaign for buffs.
2. Reset all campaigns every 24 hours - set all keeps to neutral guarded by strong imperial guards or divide them equally among all 3 factions.
3. Friendly fire for all abilities, especially AE abilities - this will eliminate lagsploit overnight.
4. Decaying grief system for friendly fire with ability lock - lock player abilities in Cyrodil for excessive friendly fire, starting with 2 minute ability lock and increasing penalties.
5. Relax emporer requirements to holding 50%+ of territory/keeps/outposts and 2 enemy scrolls.
6. Reset emperor when campaign is reset every 24 hours.
7. 2 types of campaigns - veteran and non veteran.

These changes will have the following beneficial effects.

1. Stop campaign camping by one faction
2. End lagsploit.
3. Stop hundreds of players from stacking on top of each other and spamming AE abilities.
4. Incentivize players to play more than one campaign.
5. Make emperor more attainable.
6. Make combat more dynamic and balanced between factions.

How do I know this will work? A system very much like this works great in PlanetSide 2 where no one faction dominates all the time and combat is very dynamic and fluid. PS2 has many ae damage abilities such as grenades and an effective grief system. If you dont want to get weapons lock, dont hit friendlies.

Problem solved, enjoy Cyrodiil pvp.

I agree with all of this but seems to allow the emperor to be flipped much easier. Please address this for our education?

More opportunities to make emporer seems like a good thing.

Not if it's unearned, and that's what he's referring to.

The_Death_Princess

Hmmmmm,

Why is it that no one is talking about the fact that large scale battles got WORSE with 1.6.
(We believe they built CP on an old client and didnt patch months of fixes)

Why is it that when Blue team on Yellow team fight the population can be maxed out, certainly much greater, in the area and the lag is tolerable?
(We believe red team is exploiting this)

Why is it that if large scale battle happen on other servers than Thornblade the lag is virtually nonexistant.
(We believe that it is two major guilds that use a Denial of Service attack during these battles)
(Which also correlates to lag is not bad when these guilds are not running).

Mr. Sage, are you really not seeing these things?

BigA

ZOS - It appears most agree that the main issue with respect to lag is in-fact spamming abilities within a tight knit zerg. We all know that anytime a faction is about to lose a strategic battle all they have to do is stack close together and spam. We have also experienced the ridiculous effect of certain ability combination spamming by zergs, and the impending/certain doom.

Without doubt, the single largest reason most players have left the game is because of these issues within Cyrodiil. I really want ESO to continue. Before you lose more of your customer base, please (finally) actually do something meaningful.

Playing less crowded campaigns sounds ok (just kidding,) unless you would rather fight the more meaningful battles on the most challenging/gratifying campaign (Thorn.) Who wants to 'settle' for second best? Furthermore, although the idea that you could enjoy other campaigns is enticing, almost all campaigns are controlled by one faction or the other (usually made up of zerg monkey guilds.) The problem is... once they get a notification that their PvE buff campaign has lost a keep, you are almost instantly zerged because they simply switch campaigns until the threat is eliminated. Why do you allow these notifications to happen when someone is not in that zone at that moment?

Btw - why are there PvE buffs for Emp????????????? Do you really assume people wouldn't play in Cyrodiil if they couldn't get a buff for PvE? Really???

Let's face it, you won't fix Cyrodiil until you mitigate the zerg component of lag. Zergs could remain for the sake of your 13 year old customers with no skill, just don't let them crash the server so easily.

Maybe the following ideas would help while also mitigating the 'need' to spread out and just wait to be zerged eventually:

1) Your developers control ability casting timing. It seems to me you could significantly decrease the spam lagging effect due to macros by simply controlling time between casts/attacks. Make it realistic, e.g. the time to cast sequential abilities/attacks being no sooner than the time it would take to say 'abracadabra' - maybe one second? In the real world I can't cast quicker than that or make two back-to-back swings/attacks against my foe any quicker. If you are serious about light weaving and animation canceling - eliminate them... you have the power to do so (it's called code.)

Also, your developers could (I assume) readily discern who is using macros just by monitoring time periods between actions. yes/no? You say you punish those who use exploits... show us. Here's an idea... if you use macros - you automatically die and are put into 'time out' by not being able to respawn for 15 minutes.

2) It seems to me that one of the hardware throughput issues would be the amount of particle density being displayed within a small area. What if you combined the graphic effects of the same ability when all cast nearly simultaneously within a square meter or some effective range. We really don't need to see impulse stacked 30 times wherever the zerg goes.

3) You know, or should be able to discern, which cross faction guilds are cheating by playing two factions simultaneously within the same campaign. What I mean by that is cross faction guilds will play one faction, and then switch to the other when it suits them (multiple accounts.) I assume you know this happens too often. And oh btw... they are the same guilds who only know how to zerg bats. Again, if you are serious, punish them. Your promise to mitigate cross faction PvP during the same campaign is a false promise. You, and only you, can fix this.

4) You should be concerned that a far too often perception is that your developers prefer to play vamps, or are EP, etc. I refuse to believe it, but it is too often openly stated to be ignored. Solution - all you have to do is make your GMs play PvP more often. It is hard for me to believe that your developers have a clue as to what really happens in Cyrodiil. In other MMO's GM's were often present in-game... I can't recall ever seeing one in Cyrodiil... am I wrong? A little 'patrolling' would go a long way, even if all they did was to announce in zone chat 'GM in the house.'

I have more ideas, but am going to log before I get so pissed off I kick the dog. I know I'm bitter, but hopefully you will see there are some ideas for improvement mingled with my [snip]

[edited for profanity bypass]

alexj4596b14_ESO

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.

Can we get a fix for pve lag too. forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/1635001#Comment_1635001 this is a link to the other post regarding that

Grim13

mikeandsharrahub17_ESO wrote: »

[snip]

Q F T

[edited to remove quote]

Roechacca

I don't recommend playing in Cyrodiil NA Thornblade after 9Pm ET . It just becomes unplayable and I'm running new gear that's very responsive .

Grim13

I've been 1-3 seconds behind almost all night.

I've repeatedly just keeled over dead... only to discover I'd been hit by 4 different people. Strange, I was in stealth and they were 15-20 feet away... guess not.

90% of the fights I've had all night have been sheer torture. There's literally nothing I could do most of the time... I mean, the lag was so *** awful, that it was like I was a practice dummy.

..And that's on you ZOS... playing your game makes me a dummy.


PS- Grim13 is super *** salty tonight.

Garion

Fundamentally this thread is simply not good enough. The lag in Cyrodiil is currently at a critical level and significant amounts of game time are spent experiencing gameplay that is far removed from a) what we were promised and b) what we have been paying for.

Any self respecting company would have looked at this issue and resolved it much sooner. A thread acknowledging the problem is okay and certainly a step in the right direction when we look at previous communication on issues within the game, but it it is still a long way from what I would consider 'acceptable'.

This isn't something you need to just "look into", ZoS. This is something that needs to be resolved ASAP. You are alienating a proportion of your player base who have already dealt with far more problems within PvP than could be considered reasonable.

In summary -- seriously, what the !@#? are you playing at??

IcyDeadPeople

The_Death_Princess wrote: »

Why is it that when Blue team on Yellow team fight the population can be maxed out, certainly much greater, in the area and the lag is tolerable?
(We believe red team is exploiting this)

Nobody is exploiting lag. When latency shoots up to 1000+ ping and we suddenly have turn based combat mechanics, it is happening for all the factions. There is not a situation where you can make other people lag without experiencing it on your own faction.

It is equally challenging to play with lag whether you are attempting to assault or defend a keep. Nobody wants it, nobody benefits from it, and when it persists for a while, we lose players from all three factions as people get disconnected or log off.

helltiger

blackweb wrote: »

2. All of my suggestions are based on experience and have been APPLIED SUCCESSFULLY IN OTHER GAMES.

keyword - "other games" this is ESO and friendly fire contradicts to RvR. Even if your raid will be in the same alliance with me, I can just wipe you from harm, running past.

blackweb wrote: »

3. NOTHING WILL STOP AE SPAM AND ASSOCIATED LAG FASTER THAN FRIENDLY FIRE.

Disabling aoe damage in pvp and switching on Collisions for preventing stacking players in one point.

"Bashev wrote: »

I proposed this idea back in June --> http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/114541/can-we-have-a-campaign-where-all-aoe-dps-skills-are-disabled
Most players didn't like it.

We must also propose solution for PvE without AoE.

Rune_Relic

helltiger wrote: »

blackweb wrote: »

2. All of my suggestions are based on experience and have been APPLIED SUCCESSFULLY IN OTHER GAMES.

keyword - "other games" this is ESO and friendly fire contradicts to RvR. Even if your raid will be in the same alliance with me, I can just wipe you from harm, running past.

blackweb wrote: »

3. NOTHING WILL STOP AE SPAM AND ASSOCIATED LAG FASTER THAN FRIENDLY FIRE.

Disabling aoe damage in pvp and switching on Collisions for preventing stacking players in one point.

"Bashev wrote: »

I proposed this idea back in June --> http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/114541/can-we-have-a-campaign-where-all-aoe-dps-skills-are-disabled
Most players didn't like it.

We must also propose solution for PvE without AoE.

Then you will be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
The solution is not to remove AoE.
The problem is to remove damage calculations when they get excessive by having too many people in combat at once.
Granted the bulk of those damage calcuations are caused by AoE.
20 people hitting one person is no different to 1 person hitting 20 people.

PeggymoeXD

I think magicka detonation damage should increase by the number of players withing the aoe. That would split people up. And a scattered zerg is a wipeable zerg.

Yasha

frozywozy wrote: »

As some people mentionned in this thread, I though that the first objective of Cyrodiil was to introduce large scale PvP. I understand that this could be only a temporary solution to try to split people appart while you guys figure out a better way to solve performance issues, but I don't think this is going in the right direction anyway.

I think that engineers spent more than enough time to try to figure out the way to fix the performance issues in Cyrodiil. It is now time to accept that it isn't going to get better and try to focus on different aspects of PvP that could bring alot of customers / subscribers back.

Yes, I am indeed reffering to Arenas and Battleground. Those small scales instances of PvP would be perfect to suite the desire of battle of many folks and would be lag free.

Before you lose even more players, I think it is time to start considering small scale instances of PvP and spend more time developping those than you spend to fix performance issues in Cyrodiil. I think most will agree that we waited long enough.

I think you have hit the nail on the head here Frozy. I basically left ESO a few months after launch because of continued terrible lag in pvp. If it hasn't been fixed in all this time, and by some accounts is actually getting worse, surely it is time to consider other forms of pvp- ones that we can actually reliably participate in.

Of course the goal should be to try and fix the lag in massive pvp, but I would like to play something functional while that is being looked at.