Group Member Disappearing Bug – Community Feedback Requested

ZOS_RyanRuzich

Greetings everyone!

We fixed an issue in patch 2.0.4 where player characters within groups would sometimes disappear when zoning or going through doors. To clarify, the bug would manifest as a member of your group being "Invisible", but the indicator above their head (either a crown for group leader or the carrot for group member) would be visible and moving around.

This bug is what we call a heisenbug. A heisenbug is a bug that does not occur when you attach a debugger or other measuring program to the game. This makes it very hard to find the root cause (it's difficult to kill a bug you cannot create on demand), and more difficult to say that the bug is fixed. The eventual reproduction steps involved hours of jumping into and out of Del's Claim to cause it to happen once.



We've been monitoring the forums daily, and haven't noticed anyone complaining anymore about this particular bug. Due to the low frequency of the bug originally (it was very annoying, but happened very sporadically), We wanted to ask: Is anyone still experiencing it?

Weberda

Come to think of it I haven't seen that problem in quite some time. I used to see it maybe once a day with a group member. It was thought that the problem was on his end and he needed to relog. Good job. And I think you may have just given us the "word of the month" - Heisenbug". Bet that comes up in zone chat tonight in Cyro.

xMovingTarget

Most frequent I remember this bug happening in vet DSA on the last stage. When the group whipes and revives at wayshrine. When ppl zone back in, it's likely for 1 player to be invisible. But not for everybody.

To conclude, this heisenbug is still around.

Dank meme btw

Mujuro

This tends to happen frequently at the last boss of vCoA after crossing the bridge, particularly if the group isn't "together" when crossing.

Fissh

Happened last night.

We first grouped for AA, and everything went fine. After we finished, we ported over to HelRa without regrouping to knock it out.
About five minutes with the majority of group in HelRa, and EVERYONE got a black screen and was kicked to desktop. I mean everyone, all 12 people. No, we did not regroup, but one person comeback with the above effects. There spot in group was empty. I believe they were in group 2, second spot. This was only for certain people however. Around 4 people in group could not see the person in the group window, and only could see the chevron not the toon on the screen. These 4 people did a relog and the issues fixed itself.

The whole experience of complete group black screen was new to us and first time we have seen it. The missing group person but moving chevron seemed to be an after effect of it, but only for ~4 people.

Hope that helps you narrow it down a bit.

No screen shots, but I can get you maybe the majority of people name in group at the time, the guild doing it, and the approximate time of the incident if you need.

Darlgon

Funny.. what are carrots for group members? Have not seen them since back in Januaryish....

And,, twice last night, I had to have my large group of six (!!!!) disband because we lost group leader.

Maybe we have just accepted that these components of grouping will never work, so we stopped posting in large quantities.

Also.. sorry, but we would all blame what you described as "a phasing issue due to different places in the story". ..

Garion

We get it all the time. I'll report next time I see it. For us it's always in PvP (but we only ever PvP so...)

glak

Why do I get the feeling that their debugging never simulates network latency?

http://facebook.github.io/augmented-traffic-control/

http://serverfault.com/questions/507658/limit-incoming-and-outgoing-bandwidth-and-latency-in-linux

Fecius

Still got the "You must be a group leader to invite" groupleader bug after inviting one person in a party. And sometimes u still unable to load in the raid with an infinite loading screen. Just for u to know. Cause I haven't belive in the fact that it was fixed. It was a year of those bugs take place )) But it's ok, they are still with us

udju77b16_ESO

hi,
i just bought the game after the "welcome back event" for former betatesters. i was very disappointed to encounter yesterday this same bug that we had already in beta. i was in group with a friend trying to do the "through the ashes" quest where you have to go to that cave in the end. after we left the cave we could not see each other anymore, but the groupmembers marker was still to be seen on the map (but mostly not on screen). i turned the quest in at the NPC La... (dont remember his name) but my friend was apperently at a different stage of the quest and had to do it alone, rescuing the soldiers and then the cave again. when i try to go with him to the cave from the college wayshrine, where we saw each other, near the cave he suddenly dissapeared again. relogging, sharing the quest etc did not help. i thought maybe it is because the surroundings in that village change after you turn the quest in, all mobs and enemies are gone, but for him they still were there. no idea what to to.

CaptainObvious

The common reproduce steps that I've run into for this heisenbug is leaving a dungeon. First out of the dungeon leaves and heads out back to town/whereever. One of the people currently still in the teleporting mode gets to the boundary of near/far (character name is/is not lit) When the person gets out and catches up they will just show up as a chevron/crown floating in mid air.

Basically it is going to be loading screen triggered. So for PvP, Keep repairs that trigger a loading screen when repaired beyond a certain point, etc. would have a similar effect.

Fissh

Still happening daily.
The typical time it happens: when I invite ONE person and they immediately take the invite.

The work around: invite TWO people and ask the first person not to take invite until you have sent the second invite out. For me, once the first person takes invite....I lose leader, then second person takes theirs and I get leader back.

CaptainObvious

So that is the no group leader bug. This is the bug where a person in your group just does not draw. If they have a chevron over their head you can track them and walk around/through the floating chevron.

Additional note, I have had this heisenbug appear while I am teleporting and am the last one out. If my party members just head off without me while I am waiting on loading screens then there is a chance of this happening. Obvious suspicion would be the near/far indicator. Assume that character draw is not performed when at a "far" state. Thus the render template for that actor is empty and does not get refreshed.

newtinmpls

Still happening a lot. When I and my husband play it usually takes 2 or 3 tries to get a crown to show up. Most often there is no "leader".

krashwire_ESO

This happens at least once a day when I am grouping. Usually to the Leader.

LaughingJack

i do not remember the OP issue coming up lately.
however i do have a problem with group a member/leader icon dissappearing from the 3dScreen and from the CompassBar, every now and then, very random (but still showing on the Map). we can be phased-in together but the Tags do not show up. this seems to fix itself, like the phasing problems, when entering or exiting a Local Zone(limit) such as a dungeon or town. last night, doing undaunted it was a group member, not the leader, and i think from memory it corrected after we disbanded and rebuilt the group.

snackrat

Now... say my name.
H... Heisenbug.
You'̵r͏e̡ go҉͏́r̨͡r̨a̛m̨҉ r̵̕͟i̸̡̢g͘͠h̀҉͞t҉͝.̷́͞


...to be useful, I can confirm that I have not seen it. Most of my grouping - the ones that involved zone changes anyway - have been in the more recent months.
That doesn't mean it isn't there though, it may just be very rare. :c

[Moderator Note: Edited per our rules on Cursing & Profanity]
EDIT: Sorry, didn't realise a word that mild counted. Swapped for more friendly Firefly version

ZOS_RyanRuzich

Good News Everyone!

We've found another way to cause similar symptoms to the group member's being invisible bug. The change needed to fix it will be in a major patch, as we're going to bundle the fix with group changes in the works. Thank you everyone for the help. We were able to figure out what could be causing the bug based upon the feedback in this thread, and the guilds that answered the call for help email.

On the separate issue of the group leader bug (group leader disappearing, etc) we've got a fix inbound for at least one cause of that bug as well, currently slated for a future incremental.

Dominoid

ZOS_RyanRuzich wrote: »

The change needed to fix it will be in a major patch, as we're going to bundle the fix with group changes in the works.

Tease. ;-)

A little hint please?

LtCrunch

Dominoid wrote: »

ZOS_RyanRuzich wrote: »

The change needed to fix it will be in a major patch, as we're going to bundle the fix with group changes in the works.

Tease. ;-)

A little hint please?

My thoughts exactly! So much tease xD

Dominoid

Brandalf wrote: »

Dominoid wrote: »

ZOS_RyanRuzich wrote: »

The change needed to fix it will be in a major patch, as we're going to bundle the fix with group changes in the works.

Tease. ;-)

A little hint please?

My thoughts exactly! So much tease xD

Let's wildly speculate - based upon some previous statements.

CROSS-FACTION GROUPING FOR GROUP CONTENT CONFIRMED!

CrazyDave75

I had the opposit of this, i could see my group member but his carrot did not show, after going through a door he got his carrot back.
This was on PS4

ZakuBeta

I had this happen to me a couple nights ago. He had to rejoin my game to reappear near me. I am on the Xbox one. We were the only two in our group at the time.

I also had last night where there were invisible opponents for me. I died 6-8 times from things I couldn't see. I got a work around from another player, which involved quitting the game and restarting the Xbox, it did work....so far.

Rosebee

This bug happened to me & a group member last night on PS4 NA megaserver.

Danny231

I have seen this happen a lot in PvP. I think it happens there more just to let you know.

kunjiro88

It would be nice to see this bug also include how when in a party and doing a quest would make it so each player would fall out of phase with each other. For example when killing a boss that is needed for a quest only one player would get the reward for killing it while the other would phase out and not get the reward for killing the boss.

I haven't really seen anything about this issue, it would be nice to see it fixed allowing the multiplayer experience to be more enjoyable and more of an adventure with friends and not just some single player duty. Also yes disappearing party members is something that needs to be taken care of.

Klanock

My friend and I experienced a bug similar to this on 7/5/15. We were in Greenshade (XB One NA) and had just left Marbruk on the way to Gurzag's Mine while collecting skyshards when we lost sight of each other. I couldn't see the symbol over my friend's head, but it was moving around on the compass. When we entered the mine, we could see each other again. After getting the shard and leaving the mine, we were back to wondering where the other person was. We headed to a wayshrine and once there, I went to my friend's list, selected my friend and "traveled" to him. That seemed to fix the issue and we had no further problems after that. It almost seems as if we had been placed on different servers except that the location symbols were on the compass.

Thresser

Something I have noticed recently as in just yesterday, and I think it might pertain to this thread is that being in groups I have noticed that all manner of personal location tags (group tag above head) is randomly disappearing on certain group members or all group members at random times in random locations (above ground and below ground, main world and loaded instances or dungeons, and the only temporary fix is to reform the group which doesn't always work. I am unsure what causes this as it happens very random yet frequent and have heard several other members in my guild have the same issue. This is on the Xbox One version, North American Server.

LunaRae

Not sure if you're still looking into this bug but I experienced it first hand for my first time a few days ago, didn't think much of it.

Basically it went like this

Before Group Started
1. I had the daily undaunted quest for Wayrest sewers (non-vet)
2. I had the regular dungeon quest from a previous run of Wayrest (didn't finish it)
3. LFG in zone, found some ppl

With Group
1. Ported into Wayrest (I was first one in)
2. Two others followed shortly after, I could see them fine (can't confirm if they had the regular wayrest quest or not)
3. Last member ported in, no one could see this player and that player could not see us (the rest of the group).
4. Requested he leave dungeon and come back in, when he did he said it was all fine now. Except I could not see him still, and my party add-ons (using LUI right now) showed him as being out of range. However all of my healing worked fine on him as a target, so we were able to complete dungeon without having to think anymore of it.

Elektrakosh

I had that problem happen to me last night 7:00 pm GMT
Joined a group. I was completely invisible and no one could hear me over group or party chat. Tried logging out and joining in and apparently did not solve it. Tried area chat and again no one heard me no icon appeared when talking on the bottom right of the screen but saw others.I Could not hear them.

Possibly a different bug. Just thought to let you know.

478874

Happen twice last night, once in vet spindleclutch and once in vet wayrest sewers. also the two bosses at the end of wayrest sewers were either inside the floor or invisible for half of the fight after morphing into those bat creatures. we managed to defeat them anyway but definitely caused some issues not being able to tell what was going on.