Lag caused by Animation Canceling

Eldarth

Congratulations. Animation Csnceling, macroing, and action weaving cause lag.

You've at least tripled or note the network traffic to and from the server to every player in the area.

Got lag? ...how surprising.

Obscure

ZOS loves to embrace their design flaws:

- Block casting? FEATURE
- Animation Cancelling that doesn't also cancel the action? FEATURE
- Infinite horse sprinting? FEATURE
- Cyrodiil bonuses from a campaign you never play in? FEATURE
- Zoning to Cyrodiil from anywhere to avoid paying to wayshrine directly? FEATURE
- Suicide rushing a resource camp the fastest method to travel in Cyrodiil? FEATURE

One man's buggy design oversight, is another man's FEATURE.

Davadin

Eldarth wrote: »

Congratulations. Animation Csnceling, macroing, and action weaving cause lag.

You've at least tripled or note the network traffic to and from the server to every player in the area.

Got lag? ...how surprising.

Interesting. Any proof of concept? Or any proof at all?

How does macro-ing works? Is macro-ing simply automating animation cancelling?

What's action weaving?

Huckdabuck

Lord Xanhorn

Obscure wrote: »

ZOS loves to embrace their design flaws:

- Block casting? FEATURE
- Animation Cancelling that doesn't also cancel the action? FEATURE
- Infinite horse sprinting? FEATURE
- Cyrodiil bonuses from a campaign you never play in? FEATURE
- Zoning to Cyrodiil from anywhere to avoid paying to wayshrine directly? FEATURE
- Suicide rushing a resource camp the fastest method to travel in Cyrodiil? FEATURE

One man's buggy design oversight, is another man's FEATURE.

Disgruntled player base? FEATURE

Armitas

I thought the lag was caused by EP, are you sure?

Robbmrp

Eldarth wrote: »

Congratulations. Animation Csnceling, macroing, and action weaving cause lag.

You've at least tripled or note the network traffic to and from the server to every player in the area.

Got lag? ...how surprising.

Speaking of lag......

So Cyrodil hardly has any deer and from what I've heard they had to remove them and torch bugs to help prevent lag there. If that's true, then why the H#LL did ZOS put frigging Pets in the Crown Store. Not only have you just added another lag causing item to the game people have their pets out constantly. So with a Sorc, they have 3 followers now instead of 2. Just how exactly is that helping?????

Khivas_Carrick

Because they don't know what they're doing and are really bad at hiding it.

eventide03b14a_ESO

Robbmrp wrote: »

Eldarth wrote: »

Congratulations. Animation Csnceling, macroing, and action weaving cause lag.

You've at least tripled or note the network traffic to and from the server to every player in the area.

Got lag? ...how surprising.

Speaking of lag......

So Cyrodil hardly has any deer and from what I've heard they had to remove them and torch bugs to help prevent lag there. If that's true, then why the H#LL did ZOS put frigging Pets in the Crown Store. Not only have you just added another lag causing item to the game people have their pets out constantly. So with a Sorc, they have 3 followers now instead of 2. Just how exactly is that helping?????

You can't have cosmetic pets in Cyrodiil...

Robbmrp

eventide03b14a_ESO wrote: »

Robbmrp wrote: »

Eldarth wrote: »

Congratulations. Animation Csnceling, macroing, and action weaving cause lag.

You've at least tripled or note the network traffic to and from the server to every player in the area.

Got lag? ...how surprising.

Speaking of lag......

So Cyrodil hardly has any deer and from what I've heard they had to remove them and torch bugs to help prevent lag there. If that's true, then why the H#LL did ZOS put frigging Pets in the Crown Store. Not only have you just added another lag causing item to the game people have their pets out constantly. So with a Sorc, they have 3 followers now instead of 2. Just how exactly is that helping?????

You can't have cosmetic pets in Cyrodiil...

I wasn't saying there were. Merely pointing out that they took some core things out of the game to try and improve lag. Then they go an add in something that every player could get that could possibly increase lag. They really need to look at cause and effect as they are killing their own game.

Eldarth

Davadin wrote: »

Interesting. Any proof of concept? Or any proof at all?
How does macro-ing works? Is macro-ing simply automating animation cancelling?
What's action weaving?

40 years software development experience.
35 years communication and networking.
35 years low-level hardware, I/O expert.
34 years Arpanet/Internet experience
30 years client/server and three-tier expert
25 years software architect
Professional developer in 10+ different computer languages
Member of Mensa
Will that do?

It's pretty obvious - for animation canceling, the client computer has to send 1)initial action/target, 2) Canceled/New action/target, 3) animation cancellation all affected clients, 4) damage update for (1), 5) damage update for (2).

That's at least 3-5 network interactions between ALL affected clients and servers in the space that should (without animation cancelling) take 1-2 network interactions. Pretty obvious you've at the very least doubled your network overhead for every player within the combat range.

Macro-ing is setting up a single key or mouse button to issue the initial action, perhaps followed by a few microseconds of delay followed by the animation canceling attack action.

Action weaving is setting up macro sequences to maximize animation-canceling actions thereby increasing DPS.

Animation canceling is an exploit regardless of ZOS "acceptance" of it.

Imagine you're in a boxing ring and you know your opponent slight dips his left shoulder whenever he throws a right punch. Now, imagine you're in that same ring and you don't see your opponent move at all -- you simply spontaneously get a bloody nose and a headache.

Or perhaps I move my hand a tiny bit -- and suddenly you're hit by a critical fire spell.

If there is no animation to telegraph what combat action or spell someone is casting then there is no way you can cast an interrupt or block what you can't see.


I'm pretty confident that animation canceling is a major contributor to lag in Cyrodil. If you want proof - gather a couple guilds together on opposite sides and try having a battle without anyone doing any animation cancelling. I'll bet the lag is significatnly reduced.

Prove me wrong @ZOS_Eric, @ZOS_ChrisStrasz

Triddle

Eldarth wrote: »

Davadin wrote: »

Interesting. Any proof of concept? Or any proof at all?
How does macro-ing works? Is macro-ing simply automating animation cancelling?
What's action weaving?

40 years software development experience.
35 years communication and networking.
35 years low-level hardware, I/O expert.
34 years Arpanet/Internet experience
30 years client/server and three-tier expert
25 years software architect
Professional developer in 10+ different computer languages
Member of Mensa
Will that do?

That's really good proof there. The popular proof technique 'appeal irrelevantly to perceived authority' is employed perfectly.

Eldarth

Triddle wrote: »

That's really good proof there. The popular proof technique 'appeal irrelevantly to perceived authority' is employed perfectly.

Kind of hard to prove something from this side of the wall.
If you'd like to decipher their undoubtedly encrypted network protocol packets so we can gather the actual statistics without being employed by ZOS, let me know when you have them and I'll analyze the networking traffic.

Or, if you can provide two guilds on opposite sides to "prove" it by not using animation canceling let me know that too.

Otherwise, I can only rely on decades of experience.
Which is also why I challenged ZOS developers to prove the assertion incorrect.

Forumer-in-Prison

eventide03b14a_ESO wrote: »

Armitas wrote: »

I thought the lag was caused by EP, are you sure?

It's the ultimate from our hidden skill tree. Only EP gets access to it.

This made me LOL so hard, my boss noticed I was here in the forums instead of working. Even IRL EP is trolling me LOL

Ravalox

Eldarth wrote: »

Triddle wrote: »

That's really good proof there. The popular proof technique 'appeal irrelevantly to perceived authority' is employed perfectly.

Kind of hard to prove something from this side of the wall.
If you'd like to decipher their undoubtedly encrypted network protocol packets so we can gather the actual statistics without being employed by ZOS, let me know when you have them and I'll analyze the networking traffic.

Or, if you can provide two guilds on opposite sides to "prove" it by not using animation canceling let me know that too.

Otherwise, I can only rely on decades of experience.
Which is also why I challenged ZOS developers to prove the assertion incorrect.

Whether the packets are encrypted or not does not matter (and of course they are); as per your assertion , the number of packets would increase by using this canceling technique. So, to acquire empirical data you would only need to go on with some of your friends, with a sniffer running on each PC then test with and without. Then *you* can provide us and ZOS the data proving your theory without cracking their crypto package.

Eldarth

Ravalox wrote: »

Whether the packets are encrypted or not does not matter (and of course they are); as per your assertion , the number of packets would increase by using this canceling technique. So, to acquire empirical data you would only need to go on with some of your friends, with a sniffer running on each PC then test with and without. Then *you* can provide us and ZOS the data proving your theory without cracking their crypto package.

I'd pretty much agree with that. Hmm. Only issues remaing would be only friends are in EP and I'd be the only one that knows how to run a packet sniffer. I suppose I could at least sniff from my side and try and get some data relative to no combat, pve combat, minor pvp combat (hopefully finding some non-canceling combats) and some large scale pvp. Then we could at least have some packet traffic/congestion statistics.

Maybe this weekend I'll play around with some sniffers active.

tiamak

Eldarth wrote: »

Kind of hard to prove something from this side of the wall.
If you'd like to decipher their undoubtedly encrypted network protocol packets so we can gather the actual statistics without being employed by ZOS, let me know when you have them and I'll analyze the networking traffic.

Or, if you can provide two guilds on opposite sides to "prove" it by not using animation canceling let me know that too.

Otherwise, I can only rely on decades of experience.
Which is also why I challenged ZOS developers to prove the assertion incorrect.

You did employ a rather interesting strategy there: I can't prove that I'm right, so it's your task to prove me wrong. That is exactly the way to engage in a constructive discussion.

Fun fact: the forums say that the lag started somewhere around 1.2.3 while all those things you mentioned were there before 1.2.3. So, I guess the burden of proof really lies on you.

Don't get me wrong: I would be happy to hear that the lag issue had a clear cause that could at least conceptually be isolated. Yet, I doubt that there is. Recently, I've read about a shift from client-side calculations to server-side calculations that came with 1.2.3 due to heavy cheating. Honestly, that does make much more sense and, additionally, fits well with the chronology.

Zsymon

So they need to upgrade their servers for the lag to stop? Or move calculations back to clients so people can play without lag, albeit with cheaters, a difficult decision. To be honest I rather have no lag and a few cheaters, but I guess both problems make pvp pretty much unplayable.

I bet investing in stronger servers would be worth it, since much more people would play then.

Rune_Relic

Zsymon wrote: »

So they need to upgrade their servers for the lag to stop? Or move calculations back to clients so people can play without lag, albeit with cheaters, a difficult decision. To be honest I rather have no lag and a few cheaters, but I guess both problems make pvp pretty much unplayable.

I bet investing in stronger servers would be worth it, since much more people would play then.

If its a cluster they are throttled by the local network/speed capacity...more than the servers.
Then you have to worry about packet load management too.
It would be more appropriate to remove any bottle necks in the cluster operation.

Is it better to have a rapid server with no parallel network (no network latency/protocol issues/orders of magnitude quicker)
Is it better to have multiple slower servers running in parallel (spread the load and add redundancy and distribute clients).

They probably have a good balance between server power and cluster size to maximise efficiency.
So its probably a saturation issue that's is network hardware limited anyway.
Hence "better servers wont help" comment

Give them the benefit of the doubt the cluster is singing.
The only option is to drop packets or reduce packet size (damage data).
Does packet size increase in a large scale battle with lots of AoE ?
I'll get the wireshark out and have a play at some point.
That would make it a transient network load problem waiting for incoming packets

Are those packets bottlenecked in the server/ the cluster / the client network / the client

Zsymon

They ought to hire you.

Kragorn

Eldarth wrote: »

Davadin wrote: »

Interesting. Any proof of concept? Or any proof at all?
How does macro-ing works? Is macro-ing simply automating animation cancelling?
What's action weaving?

<lots of speculation about software the poster clearly can have no knowledge of>

I'm pretty confident that animation canceling is a major contributor to lag in Cyrodil. If you want proof - gather a couple guilds together on opposite sides and try having a battle without anyone doing any animation cancelling. I'll bet the lag is significatnly reduced.

Prove me wrong @ZOS_Eric, @ZOS_ChrisStrasz

TL;DR - I've umpteen years of alleged software development, I have no idea of ZOS' server design and so "I'm pretty confident I know what I'm talking about".

OK.

Robbmrp

Eldarth wrote: »

Ravalox wrote: »

Whether the packets are encrypted or not does not matter (and of course they are); as per your assertion , the number of packets would increase by using this canceling technique. So, to acquire empirical data you would only need to go on with some of your friends, with a sniffer running on each PC then test with and without. Then *you* can provide us and ZOS the data proving your theory without cracking their crypto package.

I'd pretty much agree with that. Hmm. Only issues remaing would be only friends are in EP and I'd be the only one that knows how to run a packet sniffer. I suppose I could at least sniff from my side and try and get some data relative to no combat, pve combat, minor pvp combat (hopefully finding some non-canceling combats) and some large scale pvp. Then we could at least have some packet traffic/congestion statistics.

Maybe this weekend I'll play around with some sniffers active.

From the sounds of it, you both would make an excellent team trying to help ZOS debug this. Why not test it together? You could always create characters of an opposing faction if you didn't have them already and basically go duel each other in Cyro. Hopefully your both on the same server....

ZOS_BradL

In order to consolidate feedback concerning Cyrodiil performance, we are closing this thread. Please feel free to continue the discussion related to this topic at the following:

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/157157/update-on-cyrodiil-performance/

Additionally, while we know the issue can be frustrating, and conversations can often become heated, in order to maintain a fun, welcoming and safe environment for all players, we encourage everyone to keep our forum Code of Conduct in mind when posting.