Campaign Performance

WalkingLegacy

I've been gone a year or so. Has performance not really improved at all in that time frame?

Maybe the fix is Instanced battlegrounds come June?

waitwhat

@ZOS_BrianWheeler,

Thanks for the update Brian. But as you mentioned earlier, regardless of all of the calculation stuff, there's still an issue of reaching a critical amount of players in one area. While deferring or segregating some calculations may hopefully help, isn't it more of a band-aid type fix? It also sounds like a pretty technical band-aid that could pretty easily break some things inadvertently.

For instance it looks like on the PTS build you've relegated CC's to this type of differential server process, and they all appear to be pretty significantly broken. It sounds like the fix you're talking about is akin to adding something like an express lane on a freeway. These help in certain situations, but they also can cause more accidents and calamity. It also doesn't address the bottleneck of translating information from the server to the client, which leads us back to the critical mass of players type issue.

I love that you're trying to think of technical ways to address this, but I'm worried this may miss the mark. You can keep putting someone down for open heart surgery to perform bypasses, but if the person is still cramming triple cheeseburgers down their gullet multiple times a day and clogging their arteries, does it really help? Would it not be more helpful to work towards changing the individual's behavior?

Create incentives for people to spread out.

As @BigES suggested in another thread, a creative disincentive to running in huge blobs is make individual keeps more important to the overall success of factions in the alliance war. Make factions need to be concerned about the status of all of their keeps, so they can't just zerg from one to another.

Another suggestion is to implement diminishing returns on healing. Basically, make healing less effective if you have a a ton of people around you, like greater than 12 for instance. This allows the change to be implemented easily, without impacting trials. You heal for a normal value until you have more than 12 people within your active radius, then decrease the effectiveness of healing done for each person over that threshold. This insures that people are more conscious of their surroundings and have less incentive to rely on herd protection. You can still run in large groups effectively if you want, you just have to build for it thus imposing a penalty on those larger groups.

Just a couple ideas. Hopefully battlegrounds are close and implemented properly, so the majority of the player base concerned with performance and enjoyable, competitive PVP will never have to enter Cyrodiil again. But I think you all could get really close to solving a lot of these overarching performance issues through some creative tweaks to the base game without having to devote a lot of time and resources.

They've been creating incentives for people to spread out. Town capture, new resource AP rewards, and the slow and steady realization by Trueflame players that resource sneaking is becoming an increasingly important part of the campaign victory condition.

As far as "express lanes" and "freeways" go, I'd trust the professional engineers to know what they're doing on that. The change is doubtless coming from a steady process of code refinement and based on verifiable performance metrics that we players can only guess at, but which are super obvious and informative to the actual engineers. Also, sometimes a change in a system is objectively good by every measure with no real downside. If you're familiar with programming at all, look at the difference in performance for single-object referencing between a Map and an Array data structure. The Map requires more memory to work properly, but memory is, as a rule, way less expensive than processing time, and so Maps perform better, period, in all cases for that specific task.

The only thing I'm worried about is what appears to be the steadily declining ability to make a lot of AP in a group setting. I hope that as these performance changes and incentives continue to get refined, they don't forget about the arduous AP grind to Grand Overlord!

You're asserting that the increased AP gains will spread people out? Let's look at the facts as they are now. It is not uncommon to see a zerg of literally 100 yellows in Scourge on Xbox One. I watch streamers on PC, and quite often see zergs of similar size. Zergs are currently, and have been for quite some time, incredibly prevalent. The nature of their massive group means that they get virtually no AP from anything they do. They may split a defensive tick, but they'll be splitting it 100 ways. Then you look at the Campaign forums where you see these folks say that they do not care about AP, which is demonstrated by their in game actions. They care about winning, by any means necessary. So if they have to call 100 to dislodge a group of 8 from an outpost, they will. No concern is given to quality PVP or AP or fair fights.

The change being proposed is to provide higher base values of AP. Is this going to change that behavior? Heck no. If anything I am willing to make the bold prediction that it will make things far worse. It'll be even more worthwhile for them to take those 100 people to get their resource back.

Glad to hear Xbox and PC AD has it together, but...

On PS4 NA we have had to move PLANETS to get them off the bridge and to get them to act tactically. Making the greens yellow again takes a lot of slogging it out on your own to prove the campaign is actually winnable.

Also, with the new changes, many locations are now going to be worth a lot of AP, so they won't have to zerg down one place.

And finally, this is important: zergs are called zergs because they're mindless. Zergs lose campaigns by zerging the wrong place at the wrong time. Witness holding Arrius whilst DC has us gated.

If they're smart enough to always appear at the right places just in the nick of time, it's not a zerg. It's several groups with leaders who talk to one another.

TreeHugger1

Since homestead my latency became much lower! from 999+ to 200 in the afternoon though after yesterday patch it's terrible again...

jasann

I found PvP a lot better when the grouping was bugged and everyone went solo and the lag was a lot better from thAt

csparks1

good luck

rayban

Curragraigue wrote: »

Keep up the good work Brian. Would love to be able to play in a lag free Cyrodiil.

Hasn't been any lag in PS4 scourge since the drop in feb 20th, has been awesome. I was dc'n 3 times an hour before the patch.

Liley

Haderus is THE WORST! Got kicked out and can't get back into the game. Thanks ZOS.

Botak

Deleted - wrong thread

mukiovatai

Appreciate the efforts being made!

Kirsch9

I think campaign performance would greatly improve if:

Change the Trueflame campaign level requirement:
- Make Trueflame only allow players that are above half of ESO's current CP max. The current CP max is 600 so, no player under 300 would be allowed into Trueflame. When the next update comes and the max is increased to 630, the new minimum would then be 315.

-THEN-

Add a new campaign for lower CP players:
- To compensate for the change to Trueflame, make a new campaign that's for lower CP players. This campaign would only only players that are lower than half of ESO's current CP max. The current CP max is 600 so, no player above 299 could enter. When the new update comes and the max is increased to 630, the new maximum level would be 314.

This would spread the campaign population out which would help with the lag and would also make the battlefield a bit more equal as well.

I also think the idea about making all the quest hubs capturable locations is a great one, not only for spreading people out but also because the way it is now, Vlast is in a very unfair position to AD. The other two, Cropsford and Bruma, are appropriately and strategically placed so that they can be equally beneficial or problematic to factions on both sides of them (but that's beside the point). Even adding in new Outposts to the inner ring so that there would be one between every keep. Basically, making more locations to take, and not just places to take for AP, but strategic places that groups would want to take and hold.

Another thing that would help performance would be to force people away from the current meta of ultimate stacking or "bombing". We all know doing this is very taxing on the server and everytime it happens, whether it was you or them, everybody feels the lag. Why do we do it? Because it works, not only does it work, it works too well in fact. You could stop this kind of play style by reducing the damage of overlapping ultimates by a certain amount per overlapping ultimate. This would add yet another thing to the server's to do list in big fights, but it would be a "for the greater good" kind of thing because the "bomb" groups would have to time their ultimates one by one instead of all at once.

Anyways, thanks for reading

t3hdubzy

Its probably because every charachter in the campaign has 30 plus buffs on their charachter sheet. Witchmothers brew has 5 buffs attached to it.

Not to mentioned the million hour buffs bugs and glitches.

Also any gap closing ability can send you into a loading screen which shoots you 1000 meters into the sky when it ends.

mullins07

I left this game over a year ago because of the lag and DCs in Cyrodiil.

I returned this week and I am sorry to say that those issues still persist and not only that but now you get loading screens that last for several minutes when porting. Sometimes they last indefinitely and you need to force close the client and log back in.

At peak times there will be long queues when you do have to log back in. On EU DC 30 day standard campaign at least.

For now I would advise any players considering returning that although the Alliance Wars are still a lot of fun, you will still have to contend with the frustrating performance issues that dogged the game since launch.

Zaldan

every patch performance gets worse, how the hell you people have got the nerve to charge for this game is beyond me, I feel sorry any new players when they find out how bad the servers run

LadyLethalla

The lag has now hit Blackwater Blade so badly on EU (PS4) that the other night defending Aleswell with a small group of DC against a yellow zerg of maybe 50, I put down two oil pots and could not use them. Which is to say, I could press "x" to use, but could not activate them (R2) at all, nor stow them either so I lost them. Totally ridiculous. In all the hours I've played in BWB that was the worst lag I've seen... though I do have to say I'm glad I didn't get disconnected (or if I was it was only once).

Cydone

I left this game in Aug of 2016.....mainly due to the lag/performance issues in Cyrodiil. Something that has been a major issue with pretty much the entire PVP playerbase since this game launched. Hell, even in the beta there was massive performance issues in Cyrodiil. When are you guys going to be making some serious inroads into improving the performance of your main PVP attraction?? This game has some of the best pvp combat I have experienced in an MMO.....but it's constantly being ruined because it seems like these "Mega servers" are being run on a Core Two Duo at times.

Agrippa_Invisus

Groups running the new Warden ults en masse have not been helping the lag on PC/NA Vivec. As soon as the push happens, nothing works properly, even if you're not in front of the pain train.

Satiar

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

Groups running the new Warden ults en masse have not been helping the lag on PC/NA Vivec. As soon as the push happens, nothing works properly, even if you're not in front of the pain train.

Not rly any different from Destro. Last patch the game would hard stutter every time VD went off.

Agrippa_Invisus

Satiar wrote: »

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

Groups running the new Warden ults en masse have not been helping the lag on PC/NA Vivec. As soon as the push happens, nothing works properly, even if you're not in front of the pain train.

Not rly any different from Destro. Last patch the game would hard stutter every time VD went off.

I think they haven't finished (or maybe even started) optimizing the client for the level of detail that's in the Healing/Tree ulti animation.

Also, those permafrost ultis are utterly infuriating. The inability to stop the animation on breaking is BS and needs to be removed. There's almost no way to break, move, and not have been bowled over and AoE'd to death due to the animation refusing to end and taking its full duration. (Animation cancelling or not cancelling has been a bane for this game forever -- did you know that with certain Personalities such as Heroic, your character can cancel whatever non-combat action you're taking... placing siege, repairing a wall, etc... to do their random idle stuff? Yeah.... that can be VERY annoying when time is of the essence).

All this with the usual 'large group push lag' that happens when any 24 man plows into another large group ends with your character being completely unresponsive.

Satiar

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

Satiar wrote: »

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

Groups running the new Warden ults en masse have not been helping the lag on PC/NA Vivec. As soon as the push happens, nothing works properly, even if you're not in front of the pain train.

Not rly any different from Destro. Last patch the game would hard stutter every time VD went off.

I think they haven't finished (or maybe even started) optimizing the client for the level of detail that's in the Healing/Tree ulti animation.

Also, those permafrost ultis are utterly infuriating. The inability to stop the animation on breaking is BS and needs to be removed. There's almost no way to break, move, and not have been bowled over and AoE'd to death due to the animation refusing to end and taking its full duration. (Animation cancelling or not cancelling has been a bane for this game forever -- did you know that with certain Personalities such as Heroic, your character can cancel whatever non-combat action you're taking... placing siege, repairing a wall, etc... to do their random idle stuff? Yeah.... that can be VERY annoying when time is of the essence).

All this with the usual 'large group push lag' that happens when any 24 man plows into another large group ends with your character being completely unresponsive.

The permafrost stun is BS. It stuns you before it stuns you with a long animation you can't stop THEN it stuns you and you can break it. It's like being in Phoenix but you can take huge damage the whole time

Vapirko

I'm relatively new to pvp, it's crazy to look back on these threads and see how long the same stupid issues have been around for.

NACtron

Satiar wrote: »

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

Satiar wrote: »

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

Groups running the new Warden ults en masse have not been helping the lag on PC/NA Vivec. As soon as the push happens, nothing works properly, even if you're not in front of the pain train.

Not rly any different from Destro. Last patch the game would hard stutter every time VD went off.

I think they haven't finished (or maybe even started) optimizing the client for the level of detail that's in the Healing/Tree ulti animation.

Also, those permafrost ultis are utterly infuriating. The inability to stop the animation on breaking is BS and needs to be removed. There's almost no way to break, move, and not have been bowled over and AoE'd to death due to the animation refusing to end and taking its full duration. (Animation cancelling or not cancelling has been a bane for this game forever -- did you know that with certain Personalities such as Heroic, your character can cancel whatever non-combat action you're taking... placing siege, repairing a wall, etc... to do their random idle stuff? Yeah.... that can be VERY annoying when time is of the essence).

All this with the usual 'large group push lag' that happens when any 24 man plows into another large group ends with your character being completely unresponsive.

The permafrost stun is BS. It stuns you before it stuns you with a long animation you can't stop THEN it stuns you and you can break it. It's like being in Phoenix but you can take huge damage the whole time

Rapids do little to mitigate the effects of that ulti too and it's not easy to avoid the snare like with the frost ult. As it is moving with the player.

Ghost-Shot

Vapirko wrote: »

I'm relatively new to pvp, it's crazy to look back on these threads and see how long the same stupid issues have been around for.

Lol this one is nothing, we are still dealing with the effects of the lighting patch from 1.2 in like June 2014.

Lord_Etrigan

A Dream

So here’s the thing.

I recently got this stupid idea in my head that I want to become Emperor and respected my main High Elf Sorcerer to PVP.

So

Step 1: Learn about PVP as much as possible to prepare myself for the journey …Checked!
Step 2: Grind gear…..checked.
Step 3: Enter CP campaign and buy as much wall and door repair kits as possible and observe the battle on the map… checked!

Right let the fun begin.

I charge off on my very expensive Elk pumping out rapid maneuverer whilst the wind rushes through my long silver hair as imagining myself to be Thranduil from the Hobbit in the direction of the nearest keep, were the ***** hit the you know what.
As I’m about to enter the keep through the broken down doors I shout in the voice of Scarface “ YOU ***** COCKROACH!!!!” (Much to the disapproving look from my wife who though we are being burgled or something)

Just as I go through the doors I see complete chaos as siege weapons are firing at doors with ultimate’s lightning up the already bright skies.
Yess!! I think to myself as I dismount in the middle of a gallop and slam hands together forming a hardened ward but….then nothing!!!, No really ….nothing!! Everybody is standing still like they were frozen in time.

I press block and my Elf just runs around holding block…like WTF?????

I’m pressing every dam button on my ps4 in the hopes that this curse will end but this last for 2 min then get booted out of the game with the message “ No internet access, please check that you are connected”

Really??? I’m in chat with a guild mate on the other side of the world so how to hell do I not have internet access?

Ok small glitch, nothing serious. I start the game again and run to grab a beer for the fight that’s about to take place as soon as I have logged in.

2min later: “U are experiencing a long load time”
3min later: “U are experiencing a long load time”
5min later “ U are exper…….”
Ok wait I’m in “Yes!!!”

Harden ward and observe surrounding. Wait why is it so quiet? Zoom map out. The keep belongs to us and the fight is at another keep now.

I look at my AP…NOTHING, NADA, ZERO!

Okay!!!

Rush of to the next keep, get there and “BOOM” same thing happens again. Ohh and don’t forget the log out and long wait.

Yes!!!, I’m back but no AP again. By now my beer is half and my patience thin. Rush of to the next keep and same thing again.

My question to the devs.

How in the sweet mother of Hades am I supposed to get anywhere in Cyrodiil if I’m going to spend half my gaming life in the twilight zone staring at a frozen screen and the other half trying to get back into the game!

Mm mm looks like the dream of becoming an Emperor is just that. A Dream…

gp1680

Lord_Etrigan wrote: »

A Dream

So here’s the thing.

I recently got this stupid idea in my head that I want to become Emperor and respected my main High Elf Sorcerer to PVP.

So

Step 1: Learn about PVP as much as possible to prepare myself for the journey …Checked!
Step 2: Grind gear…..checked.
Step 3: Enter CP campaign and buy as much wall and door repair kits as possible and observe the battle on the map… checked!

Right let the fun begin.

I charge off on my very expensive Elk pumping out rapid maneuverer whilst the wind rushes through my long silver hair as imagining myself to be Thranduil from the Hobbit in the direction of the nearest keep, were the ***** hit the you know what.
As I’m about to enter the keep through the broken down doors I shout in the voice of Scarface “ YOU ***** COCKROACH!!!!” (Much to the disapproving look from my wife who though we are being burgled or something)

Just as I go through the doors I see complete chaos as siege weapons are firing at doors with ultimate’s lightning up the already bright skies.
Yess!! I think to myself as I dismount in the middle of a gallop and slam hands together forming a hardened ward but….then nothing!!!, No really ….nothing!! Everybody is standing still like they were frozen in time.

I press block and my Elf just runs around holding block…like WTF?????

I’m pressing every dam button on my ps4 in the hopes that this curse will end but this last for 2 min then get booted out of the game with the message “ No internet access, please check that you are connected”

Really??? I’m in chat with a guild mate on the other side of the world so how to hell do I not have internet access?

Ok small glitch, nothing serious. I start the game again and run to grab a beer for the fight that’s about to take place as soon as I have logged in.

2min later: “U are experiencing a long load time”
3min later: “U are experiencing a long load time”
5min later “ U are exper…….”
Ok wait I’m in “Yes!!!”

Harden ward and observe surrounding. Wait why is it so quiet? Zoom map out. The keep belongs to us and the fight is at another keep now.

I look at my AP…NOTHING, NADA, ZERO!

Okay!!!

Rush of to the next keep, get there and “BOOM” same thing happens again. Ohh and don’t forget the log out and long wait.

Yes!!!, I’m back but no AP again. By now my beer is half and my patience thin. Rush of to the next keep and same thing again.

My question to the devs.

How in the sweet mother of Hades am I supposed to get anywhere in Cyrodiil if I’m going to spend half my gaming life in the twilight zone staring at a frozen screen and the other half trying to get back into the game!

Mm mm looks like the dream of becoming an Emperor is just that. A Dream…

<begin sarcasm> Have NO FEAR!! Since June of 2016, zos devs informed us that they were aware of the issues with lag, disconnects, and loading screens in Cyrodiil and their engineers are tirelessly working to solve these issues. Just wait ONE more year and they will make your dreams of being Emperor a reality!!! While you wait, please enjoy the new mounts, hairstyles, costumes, and houses. Also, please enjoy the all new battlegrounds where you can queue in with all your friends for added PVP enjoyment...oh wait...that's not working either . Oh hell... <end sarcasm>

FlyLionel

gp1680 wrote: »

Lord_Etrigan wrote: »

A Dream

So here’s the thing.

I recently got this stupid idea in my head that I want to become Emperor and respected my main High Elf Sorcerer to PVP.

So

Step 1: Learn about PVP as much as possible to prepare myself for the journey …Checked!
Step 2: Grind gear…..checked.
Step 3: Enter CP campaign and buy as much wall and door repair kits as possible and observe the battle on the map… checked!

Right let the fun begin.

I charge off on my very expensive Elk pumping out rapid maneuverer whilst the wind rushes through my long silver hair as imagining myself to be Thranduil from the Hobbit in the direction of the nearest keep, were the ***** hit the you know what.
As I’m about to enter the keep through the broken down doors I shout in the voice of Scarface “ YOU ***** COCKROACH!!!!” (Much to the disapproving look from my wife who though we are being burgled or something)

Just as I go through the doors I see complete chaos as siege weapons are firing at doors with ultimate’s lightning up the already bright skies.
Yess!! I think to myself as I dismount in the middle of a gallop and slam hands together forming a hardened ward but….then nothing!!!, No really ….nothing!! Everybody is standing still like they were frozen in time.

I press block and my Elf just runs around holding block…like WTF?????

I’m pressing every dam button on my ps4 in the hopes that this curse will end but this last for 2 min then get booted out of the game with the message “ No internet access, please check that you are connected”

Really??? I’m in chat with a guild mate on the other side of the world so how to hell do I not have internet access?

Ok small glitch, nothing serious. I start the game again and run to grab a beer for the fight that’s about to take place as soon as I have logged in.

2min later: “U are experiencing a long load time”
3min later: “U are experiencing a long load time”
5min later “ U are exper…….”
Ok wait I’m in “Yes!!!”

Harden ward and observe surrounding. Wait why is it so quiet? Zoom map out. The keep belongs to us and the fight is at another keep now.

I look at my AP…NOTHING, NADA, ZERO!

Okay!!!

Rush of to the next keep, get there and “BOOM” same thing happens again. Ohh and don’t forget the log out and long wait.

Yes!!!, I’m back but no AP again. By now my beer is half and my patience thin. Rush of to the next keep and same thing again.

My question to the devs.

How in the sweet mother of Hades am I supposed to get anywhere in Cyrodiil if I’m going to spend half my gaming life in the twilight zone staring at a frozen screen and the other half trying to get back into the game!

Mm mm looks like the dream of becoming an Emperor is just that. A Dream…

<begin sarcasm> Have NO FEAR!! Since June of 2016, zos devs informed us that they were aware of the issues with lag, disconnects, and loading screens in Cyrodiil and their engineers are tirelessly working to solve these issues. Just wait ONE more year and they will make your dreams of being Emperor a reality!!! While you wait, please enjoy the new mounts, hairstyles, costumes, and houses. Also, please enjoy the all new battlegrounds where you can queue in with all your friends for added PVP enjoyment...oh wait...that's not working either . Oh hell... <end sarcasm>

Soon.

Cydone

IDK why the hell this post isn't pinned anymore, but we need to keep bumping this damn thread! Don't let them win!

Jamascus

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Lighting would effect your client and not the server, and that's what these changes are focused on.

It was the botting "fix" from that patch.....

Yuke

dude they won 15 months ago


reduce *** grp sizes and obliterate those *** ground target spammable abilities like healing springs and purge.

Elsonso

Jamascus wrote: »

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Lighting would effect your client and not the server, and that's what these changes are focused on.

It was the botting "fix" from that patch.....

They have never publicly admitted to any botting fix in that update. At least, not that I have seen.

LegacyDM

Why is this not stickied anymore?! @ZOS_GinaBruno