Campaign Performance

BigES

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Remember to get a defense tick, you need to kill a player in the area, and that is distributed across the players in the area, not a flat bonus. That 1500 refers to the value of the player put into the pool when it comes to a defense tick, assuming that player is worth full value, so my apologies if that came out wrong.

Brian -

Is the in combat / out of combat cool down adjustment (6 seconds) you guys did on the PTS going to help speed up receiving these ticks? Currently people will stealth in and around keeps to prevent defensive ticks from happening (extending your timer since the amount of defenders and offensive players has changed, requiring redistribution), which is pretty annoying.

Also - Is there a lag between performing the calculation on how much AP is in the pool, and assigning that across the people in the area? Its really annoying when people show up at the last minute to receive a tick that they had no part in defending / taking.

Also - I'm worried your AP adjustments will just incentivize people to run to a "flagged" areas to get these new increased AP ticks, since they wouldn't otherwise have been able to take that resource. I could be wrong and I hope I am.

Also - What restrictions are there in place to prevent people from passing resources in low population campaigns to gain easy / cheap AP?

NBrookus

SwaminoNowlino wrote: »

Not sure I like the increased AP for defense though. It'll be that much more incentive for a zerg to watch the map for a keep to be flagged and run over their with their huge group. Think this may have the exact opposite effect they were going for.

I like that objectives are worth more, but I think resources should split their (new higher) AP among those on the flag AND were in combat. Otherwise we're likely see larger groups zerging down resources one by one to get the extra AP, instead of encouraging people to spread out. And because larger groups can flip the flags so quickly, solo/small groups can't keep up the pace of objectives unless they also form larger groups.

Junipus

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

As a sneak peak to patch notes coming in a later version of PTS, we are increasing the value of base AP for capturing & defending resources and keeps to 1,500 per resource and 6,000 per keep.

This means there are 54 locations that can give much AP as a single kill for flipping it, or killing a player in defense of it, that most (if not all players) can solo. This should/could entice battles to occur in other locations besides the usual areas of Chalman mine, Alessia Bridge, Nikel fields, etc.

We are aware the capture/defense patterns that can occur with a change like this, and will be monitoring the campaign trends carefully.

Remove the AP value of players, after being killed, for 5 minutes. That'll solve one major problem with player crowding.
Reintroduce the notion of bloodporting with the old style forward camps. That'll solve another major problem with player crowding.
Increase damage caps so the first 12 people get 100% of the damage, with another 24 getting 75% of the damage. That'll solve another major problem with player crowding.

It might appear to favour farming groups, but removing the AP value of players would reduce the impact of farming groups on the campaigns.

Enodoc

Junipus wrote: »

Reintroduce the notion of bloodporting with the old style forward camps. That'll solve another major problem with player crowding.

Boo, bloodporting is bad. Death should not have any beneficial results that cannot be achieved with Transitus porting. Death is supposed to be a bad thing. But hold on, horse simulator is bad too. Getting into a battle half way across the map is impractical if you can't get at least part of the way towards it.

The solution is to introduce a new player-controlled, alliance-based, travel mechanic. Detailed post coming soon!

runagate

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

As a sneak peak to patch notes coming in a later version of PTS, we are increasing the value of base AP for capturing & defending resources and keeps to 1,500 per resource and 6,000 per keep.

This means there are 54 locations that can give much AP as a single kill for flipping it, or killing a player in defense of it, that most (if not all players) can solo. This should/could entice battles to occur in other locations besides the usual areas of Chalman mine, Alessia Bridge, Nikel fields, etc.

We are aware the capture/defense patterns that can occur with a change like this, and will be monitoring the campaign trends carefully.

I think there ought to be something that makes it more obvious to new players which places give a d tick and how to know you're in such a location. People like me have memorized the subzone boundaries for, say, a resource or a keep or gate, but the subzone name indicator in the upper right hand side above the active quest listing is something that even experienced players overlook. Perhaps an in-game book at the spawn area?

Agalloch

How this could happen before?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfeMROJhXSY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vmmQVheKOk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpdzKphlHWQ

And now with lower population there are so many problems?


Zerging is a part of every war..so I don't want to disappear from ESO




English is not my native language.

Armitas

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Lowering population will not resolve client or server performance as you can still hit a critical amount of players in an area which would results in lower performance for either the client or the server. This is evident in cases where populations are equal, if not higher than regular campaigns, such as Black Water Blade on Xbox, and perform just fine.

We have some changes going into the next update to help with server performance regarding how much the server needs to keep track of in a given area that we will be monitoring. As Rich has also noted, we are looking into Client performance issues regarding FPS/client lag. This is not just an issue in PvP but also in PvE zones where you may have noticed some FPS drops where many, many, many players are gathered.

A lot of us discovered for the first time just how much our client is tracking when the miat addon came out. Who knew my client was listening to skills they cast that don't affect me. So there seems to an enormous amount of data passing through my machine that is entirely irrelevant to me. You can see just how far that irrelevant data is when you pass by a zerged keep. You can be almost to the resources and still run into that data lag and your ping spikes to 400. I have seen this game use nearly 1mbs of data in a large fight. Is there any way we can set our listen distance to a lower value or remove all this data clutter that makes no difference to us as a player? 1mbs is an insane amount of data, that is an entire Gig every 17minutes of PvPing! 11Hrs of PvPing and it's like you download this entire game.

I have also seen this game not take advantage of loading stationary objects in the world ahead of time. Even with the 64 client it never trys to use more than 4gigs of memory. So stuff is loading in right in front of me sometimes while i'm trying to fight. There are aslo weird game seams where the client doesn't properly load ahead. You can see one seam when you go to the wood workbench in deshaan and fall through the world consistently and reappear (hasn't happened since a very recent maintenance). You also see some weird information like when a keep wall magically rebuilds itself stone by stone or when the keep flags turn red/blue/yellow depending on the angle of your camera. Other places you load into have tons of irrelevant and contradictory layers that become hidden by the final layer. There just seems to be so much bulk clutter that is running through everyones system.

cschwingeb14_ESO

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

As a sneak peak to patch notes coming in a later version of PTS, we are increasing the value of base AP for capturing & defending resources and keeps to 1,500 per resource and 6,000 per keep.

@ZOS_BrianWheeler please tell me that the increased AP is divided by all of the people getting the tick.

Currently the 25 base AP is awarded to all people capping. That's fine. If you start awarding 1500 AP to every member of a 20 man zerg for taking a resource, that is just going to encourage zerging and resource trading.

4 people taking a resource should get more of a reward than 20

Crispen_Longbow

cschwingeb14_ESO wrote: »

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

As a sneak peak to patch notes coming in a later version of PTS, we are increasing the value of base AP for capturing & defending resources and keeps to 1,500 per resource and 6,000 per keep.

@ZOS_BrianWheeler please tell me that the increased AP is divided by all of the people getting the tick.

Currently the 25 base AP is awarded to all people capping. That's fine. If you start awarding 1500 AP to every member of a 20 man zerg for taking a resource, that is just going to encourage zerging and resource trading.

4 people taking a resource should get more of a reward than 20

Why?

Taking a resource is not PVP its PVE. You are just killing guards. You only need 1 person to take a resource and it's not challenging in the slightest. So for 1 person to take it versus 20 people taking it how do you measure "Super Easy" against "Super Super Easy". It's just PVE.

cschwingeb14_ESO

We seem to be in agreement here. I'm trying to make sure that the reward for resource/keep capping is split between the participants (just like a PvP kill is). Because if the system awards an extra 1500 AP to every person that caps, then that's a huge AP reward for PvE.

It will also be a reason to zerg down resources, which will go counter to the idea of splitting up populations for better server performance.

In fact, because flag cap are so much faster with 10 people than with 1-2, if the reward is not divided then zerging down resource flags will get each and every member of a zerg more AP/hour than a solo guy doing it himself.

JamilaRaj

Joy_Division wrote: »

But can we stop with the "we're checking this," "we're working on that," "we're making some server adjustments," routine?.

But I think Brian should continue observing better performance in BWB. He is very good at it. He has been observing it for years and had time to hone his BWB observing skills. If he stopped his routine now, all the effort would go out of the window.

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

As a sneak peak to patch notes coming in a later version of PTS, we are increasing the value of base AP for capturing & defending resources and keeps to 1,500 per resource and 6,000 per keep.

This means there are 54 locations that can give much AP as a single kill for flipping it, or killing a player in defense of it, that most (if not all players) can solo. This should/could entice battles to occur in other locations besides the usual areas of Chalman mine, Alessia Bridge, Nikel fields, etc.

How about making resources of some value and impossible to solo instead? I mean, putting "REWARD" sign on resources might do, players are as braindead as ever, but more of flipping something of no value that already almost flips itself the moment a player looks at it and therefore is even less valuable, over and over, does not seem to be terribly entertaining.

Neoakropolis

JamilaRaj wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

But can we stop with the "we're checking this," "we're working on that," "we're making some server adjustments," routine?.

But I think Brian should continue observing better performance in BWB. He is very good at it. He has been observing it for years and had time to hone his BWB observing skills. If he stopped his routine now, all the effort would go out of the window.

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

As a sneak peak to patch notes coming in a later version of PTS, we are increasing the value of base AP for capturing & defending resources and keeps to 1,500 per resource and 6,000 per keep.

This means there are 54 locations that can give much AP as a single kill for flipping it, or killing a player in defense of it, that most (if not all players) can solo. This should/could entice battles to occur in other locations besides the usual areas of Chalman mine, Alessia Bridge, Nikel fields, etc.

How about making resources of some value and impossible to solo instead? I mean, putting "REWARD" sign on resources might do, players are as braindead as ever, but more of flipping something of no value that already almost flips itself the moment a player looks at it and therefore is even less valuable, over and over, does not seem to be terribly entertaining.

Yup.. Resources right now are a joke/nuisance more than a benefit. Yea they offer transit but other than that, they are just a place for proctards to farm lower cp/newer players. #makeresourcesgreatagain

themdogesbite

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

As a sneak peak to patch notes coming in a later version of PTS, we are increasing the value of base AP for capturing & defending resources and keeps to 1,500 per resource and 6,000 per keep.

This means there are 54 locations that can give much AP as a single kill for flipping it, or killing a player in defense of it, that most (if not all players) can solo. This should/could entice battles to occur in other locations besides the usual areas of Chalman mine, Alessia Bridge, Nikel fields, etc.

We are aware the capture/defense patterns that can occur with a change like this, and will be monitoring the campaign trends carefully.

This is a bit worrying to me but i truly hope you do take a very close look at how this ends up playing out, the numbers to me are a bit to big and i do believe they need to be tweaked down slightly.

Bislobo

I don't know if this is already told before, but the performance is better in Azura's... Significantly. Don't know if that is due to lower populations or something ralated to the CP system, but i do notice that.

SanTii.92

Just to confirm, soloing any resource flag / Ic grants 1.5k Ap, even if there is no enemy player around.

This is pretty huge honestly, and as a small scaler i absolutely love it.

Neoakropolis

Bislobo wrote: »

I don't know if this is already told before, but the performance is better in Azura's... Significantly. Don't know if that is due to lower populations or something ralated to the CP system, but i do notice that.

No CP = less calculations the server has to do = easier fps/stability

ZOS_BrianWheeler

@Neoakropolis is correct in that the less CP you have, the less passives you have, therefore the less the server needs to calculate per combat action. This can also be said about armor set procs, player passives and active abilities that have to hit multiple players or sort through multiple players before firing off their abilities to a specific or sub-set of targets.

As far as the AP changes go; we have been going through the numbers are comfortable with how they shape up vs. the potential farming/exploiting cases that already exist and hypothetically exist. As stated, we'll be monitoring player behavior patterns and AP gains not only from the numbers stand point, but also by playing out there in Cyrodiil with you guys and gals.

LegacyDM

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Lowering population will not resolve client or server performance as you can still hit a critical amount of players in an area which would results in lower performance for either the client or the server. This is evident in cases where populations are equal, if not higher than regular campaigns, such as Black Water Blade on Xbox, and perform just fine.

We have some changes going into the next update to help with server performance regarding how much the server needs to keep track of in a given area that we will be monitoring. As Rich has also noted, we are looking into Client performance issues regarding FPS/client lag. This is not just an issue in PvP but also in PvE zones where you may have noticed some FPS drops where many, many, many players are gathered.

Hey Brian. Great job on the communication. This level of involvement is really good!

I've been a big proponent of lowering population numbers but I see you say it wouldn't help. However, I do notice huge performance differences during non peak hours versus peak on weekends. On week days during the middle of the night performance is even better. If it's not a population issue with more calculation needed stressing the servers what could account for such drastic performance drops during peak and non peak hours? Wouldn't logic dictate that more people = more calculations the server needs to account for in any given quadrant and as a server as a whole? More people allowed to enter cyrodil increases more server stress and likely more people will be balled up at Alyssa bridge, any other given quadrant, or wherever the action is at. There has got to be a balance between server pop, and calculations, but to discredit server pop as a problem seems off. I'm not an expert and don't have access to your data but it seems there are more people on the server than the server can handle during peak hours...else we would get the same performance during non peak hours.

ZOS_BrianWheeler

More players means more server calculations; that is 100% correct. However the key variable in all these scenarios is how much information is being calculated on a character by character basis depending on abilities being used, passives, armor sets, etc. This is why population is not as big a factor compared to what's being calculated on a character by character basis within that population. Let's take an example of a typical armor setup now a days.

A player wearing Viper, Velidreth, and Red Mountain doing a single heavy attack costs the server 3 times as much as a player doing Heavy attack without those sets because of calculating whether to proc those 3 sets or not. Even when a proc is on cooldown, the server needs to check per attack if the cooldown is done yet, which means every attack it checks whether it can fire or not based on either percentage, cooldown, or other situations. Factor in Champion Point passives, class passives, weapon passives and whatever temporary passive bonuses from potions, and you add to those calculations per attack/being attacked. In campaigns like Blackwater Blade and Azura, there are simply less things to calculate even when they have higher population than Trueflame.

LegacyDM

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

More players means more server calculations; that is 100% correct. However the key variable in all these scenarios is how much information is being calculated on a character by character basis depending on abilities being used, passives, armor sets, etc. This is why population is not as big a factor compared to what's being calculated on a character by character basis within that population. Let's take an example of a typical armor setup now a days.

A player wearing Viper, Velidreth, and Red Mountain doing a single heavy attack costs the server 3 times as much as a player doing Heavy attack without those sets because of calculating whether to proc those 3 sets or not. Even when a proc is on cooldown, the server needs to check per attack if the cooldown is done yet, which means every attack it checks whether it can fire or not based on either percentage, cooldown, or other situations. Factor in Champion Point passives, class passives, weapon passives and whatever temporary passive bonuses from potions, and you add to those calculations per attack/being attacked. In campaigns like Blackwater Blade and Azura, there are simply less things to calculate even when they have higher population than Trueflame.

Thanks Brian great explanation

silky_soft

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

More players means more server calculations; that is 100% correct. However the key variable in all these scenarios is how much information is being calculated on a character by character basis depending on abilities being used, passives, armor sets, etc. This is why population is not as big a factor compared to what's being calculated on a character by character basis within that population. Let's take an example of a typical armor setup now a days.

A player wearing Viper, Velidreth, and Red Mountain doing a single heavy attack costs the server 3 times as much as a player doing Heavy attack without those sets because of calculating whether to proc those 3 sets or not. Even when a proc is on cooldown, the server needs to check per attack if the cooldown is done yet, which means every attack it checks whether it can fire or not based on either percentage, cooldown, or other situations. Factor in Champion Point passives, class passives, weapon passives and whatever temporary passive bonuses from potions, and you add to those calculations per attack/being attacked. In campaigns like Blackwater Blade and Azura, there are simply less things to calculate even when they have higher population than Trueflame.

Nerf procs sets to a global cooldown then

silky_soft

So my questions to you mr @ZOS_BrianWheeler ,
Why is there no gcd for damage procs sets to prevent stacking and reduce server load?
Why would you introduce poisons if they have to roll a dice, make 2-3 extra calculations and check a gdc?
What about debuff sets like Durok's Bane, Fasalla sharing a gdc?
Should constitution and resource sets like Desert Rose share a gdc?
So everytime a sorc does lightening or physical damage the server checks their hp then rolls a dice? Should this then be only on direct damage skills?
Does that mean you should remove/halve block cost internal cool down to help speed things up?

Komma

So basically, we know what the problem is, we know what it would take to fix the problem. We're just not gonna do it.

GreenSoup2HoT

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

. Let's take an example of a typical armor setup now a days. A player wearing Viper, Velidreth, and Red Mountain.

I like how they know stacking procs is a typical armor setup.

Birdovic

GreenSoup2HoT wrote: »

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

. Let's take an example of a typical armor setup now a days. A player wearing Viper, Velidreth, and Red Mountain.

I like how they know stacking procs is a typical armor setup.

Wrobel's Favourite

ssewallb14_ESO

I'm guessing prox det is pretty expensive as well. Especially when coordinated with 24 people and stacked with buffs, pbdots, pbaoes, etc.

arkansas_ESO

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

A player wearing Viper, Velidreth, and Red Mountain doing a single heavy attack costs the server 3 times as much as a player doing Heavy attack without those sets because of calculating whether to proc those 3 sets or not. Even when a proc is on cooldown, the server needs to check per attack if the cooldown is done yet, which means every attack it checks whether it can fire or not based on either percentage, cooldown, or other situations.

Even more reason to remove/rework proc sets, then

Docmandu

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

A player wearing Viper, Velidreth, and Red Mountain doing a single heavy attack costs the server 3 times as much

Well there's your problem, right there...

So basically what you're saying, you hate Wrobel just as much as we do

Recremen

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

More players means more server calculations; that is 100% correct. However the key variable in all these scenarios is how much information is being calculated on a character by character basis depending on abilities being used, passives, armor sets, etc. This is why population is not as big a factor compared to what's being calculated on a character by character basis within that population. Let's take an example of a typical armor setup now a days.

A player wearing Viper, Velidreth, and Red Mountain doing a single heavy attack costs the server 3 times as much as a player doing Heavy attack without those sets because of calculating whether to proc those 3 sets or not. Even when a proc is on cooldown, the server needs to check per attack if the cooldown is done yet, which means every attack it checks whether it can fire or not based on either percentage, cooldown, or other situations. Factor in Champion Point passives, class passives, weapon passives and whatever temporary passive bonuses from potions, and you add to those calculations per attack/being attacked. In campaigns like Blackwater Blade and Azura, there are simply less things to calculate even when they have higher population than Trueflame.

@ZOS_BrianWheeler not to delve too far into the technical details, as I have no idea what your code looks like and don't want to be a presumptuous buttmunster, but is it possible to group some of the more permanent bonuses, such as from class and champion points, into a single precalculated profile that gets checked once? Or does the additive/multiplicative bonus difference and other factors make that untenable?

kyle.wilson

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

More players means more server calculations; that is 100% correct. However the key variable in all these scenarios is how much information is being calculated on a character by character basis depending on abilities being used, passives, armor sets, etc. This is why population is not as big a factor compared to what's being calculated on a character by character basis within that population. Let's take an example of a typical armor setup now a days.

A player wearing Viper, Velidreth, and Red Mountain doing a single heavy attack costs the server 3 times as much as a player doing Heavy attack without those sets because of calculating whether to proc those 3 sets or not. Even when a proc is on cooldown, the server needs to check per attack if the cooldown is done yet, which means every attack it checks whether it can fire or not based on either percentage, cooldown, or other situations. Factor in Champion Point passives, class passives, weapon passives and whatever temporary passive bonuses from potions, and you add to those calculations per attack/being attacked. In campaigns like Blackwater Blade and Azura, there are simply less things to calculate even when they have higher population than Trueflame.

So, what about the lag in Azura Star before all this stuff existed.
Or, the programmers added all this without regards for system integrity. Which makes me doubt their competency.