Cyrodiil Performance Test and Double AP Event

ZOS_BrianWheeler

Hey gang!

As you saw in Matt’s 2017 roadmap, we are making Cyrodiil performance evaluation and fixing a priority this year. We want to make sure that Cyrodiil is a great PvP experience for everyone. Over the last year, we’ve made some good strides towards refining server performance across all campaigns, and we will continue down that path.

When looking into Cyrodiil issues, we definitely see (both in-game and through monitoring) situations where client and server performance degrade significantly when under high load. The small incremental changes we’ve made over the last year have helped, but they alone are not enough. So, we’re going to change our strategy a bit – which is the point of this post.

Simply put, Azura’s Star (the non-Champion Point campaign) runs much better, more efficiently, and is overall a much better PvP experience than the standard campaigns such as Trueflame or Haderus. Now that we’ve had a significant population density in Azura’s Star, we strongly suspect what has been theorized for a long time: Champion Rank passives and abilities are causing too much server load, especially in situations like Keep battles where there are tons of players in one place.

Because of this, we are going to run a series of PvP performance tests, and because it is impossible to simulate PvP load on our internal test servers (or on PTS), we will do this on all live servers on the dates of February 27 – March 6. This is not something we take lightly, and it is important that we evaluate performance when the server is under real-world load situations.

Our first test will be set up as follows:

• For a period of one week, all Champion Points will be disabled on all Campaigns on all platforms and megaservers
• During this time, AP gains in all Campaigns will be doubled, both to compensate for lack of CP and also to incentivize players to PvP so we can record as much data as possible
• Campaign durations and leaderboards will not be adjusted during this week

We encourage all players to continue their PvP activities in their respective Home, Guest, and Friends campaigns – we will be taking feedback and monitoring data on a daily basis during this test, and look forward to reading your constructive posts about server performance during the time of the test.

The results of this test will determine the next course of action for refining Cyrodiil server performance. Thank you for your perseverance and patience – we thoroughly appreciate your time, efforts, and feedback!

Thanks again, and see you in Cyrodiil!

-Wheeler

MyNameIsElias

brian, are you aware of the outpost flipping people are doing to gain easy 6k ap?

ZOS_BrianWheeler

@MyNameIsElias We are aware of that behavior and will be adjusting values of Outposts, Resources and Keeps after the event.

JamieAubrey

Ooooh fancy, the double AP will be nice

jroc699_burr

sweeet

Koolio

I just spent 2 years getting as much CP as possible to play Pvp. I don't think removing them is a good way to go. Not a good idea.

Hexys

@ZOS_BrianWheeler MY HERO

ChandraNalaar

I will be interested to see how this turns out. On the one hand I worked really hard for me cp and I don't want it taken away. On the other hand Cyrodiil performance is so awful that it might be worth it to lose cp in order to play.

Yubarius

@ZOS_BrianWheeler Thank you so much for telling us this! I think this is a great step forward to fixing performance and am quite pleased at this information, keep up the good stuff ZOS!!

Derra

Well so one week of not pvping because i´m not going to craft a template for that bullcrap? Nice - do i get my subscription refunded for that time period?

Edit: Do you really think anyone who has a template balanced for CP is going to continue to play? That´s moronic.

Zohr

Great step towards improving Cyro performance. I can handle 1 week of no CP if it means you get the data you need.

Erondil

If you do such reduce battle spirit to ~25% during this period, please.

VycDarkshadow

Koolio wrote: »

I just spent 2 years getting as much CP as possible to play Pvp. I don't think removing them is a good way to go. Not a good idea.

It's only for a period of one week. This is not a permanent removal, just a week-long test.

Skulfur

Great news, but adjusting the amount of AP/Keepflip afterwards? That means 12k per flip over the course of a week? That sounds like everyone will just flip keeps over the course of a week instead of fighting, cause flipping keeps is gonna give more AP.

timidobserver

@ZOS_BrianWheeler Does this double AP stack with the boss AP bonus?

bikerangelo

Now everyone gets to feel how imbalanced poisons and siege are without CP.

Glory

I'm glad you decided to look into this. All the server calculations with CP must be brutal on the servers.

Are you willing to talk about the future implications of these tests/changes?

Bashev

Derra wrote: »

Well so one week of not pvping because i´m not going to craft a template for that bullcrap? Nice - do i get my subscription refunded for that time period?

Edit: Do you really think anyone who has a template balanced for CP is going to continue to play? That´s moronic.

Next step after the event will be: no more CP campaigns. Better performance and no difference in CPs. Is not this what we want for PvP?

PandaIsAPotato

Remove CP, return softcaps, k thx bai.

Derra

Bashev wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Well so one week of not pvping because i´m not going to craft a template for that bullcrap? Nice - do i get my subscription refunded for that time period?

Edit: Do you really think anyone who has a template balanced for CP is going to continue to play? That´s moronic.

Next step after the event will be: no more CP campaigns. Better performance and no difference in CPs. Is not this what we want for PvP?

Since the pvp without cp is absolutely terrible. At that poit it stop playing the game.

I´d give everyone 600 in cyro.

Koolio

VycDarkshadow wrote: »

Koolio wrote: »

I just spent 2 years getting as much CP as possible to play Pvp. I don't think removing them is a good way to go. Not a good idea.

It's only for a period of one week. This is not a permanent removal, just a week-long test.

One week of no Cp is an insult to my CP rank. It better not be permanent. 2 years of cp grind gone. I don't even PVE. Guess I'll go buy another game hopefully I won't like it and come back. Unless that change stays. Then I'll find something else

VycDarkshadow

Derra wrote: »

Well so one week of not pvping because i´m not going to craft a template for that bullcrap? Nice - do i get my subscription refunded for that time period?

Edit: Do you really think anyone who has a template balanced for CP is going to continue to play? That´s moronic.

Nope, but if you don't want to participate in helping fix PvP, then I see no reason for you to cry about not PvPing. Also, I've spoken to several of my streamer friends, and they're stoked for this! They don't mind a single week of no CP perks, if it means fixing PvP in the long run.

Besides, it's the CP procs that are under fire right now. I'm sure the static increased resistances/damage and the reduction costs are going to remain as they are.

Takllin

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

@MyNameIsElias We are aware of that behavior and will be adjusting values of Outposts, Resources and Keeps after the event.

Wait, why adjust it after? Why not with the event? Encourage us to test things other than 12k ticks.

Majeure

So effectively as an Azura's Star player, I get double AP for a week with nothing else changing? Good stuff, time to hit that server on the daily.

Takllin

Bashev wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Well so one week of not pvping because i´m not going to craft a template for that bullcrap? Nice - do i get my subscription refunded for that time period?

Edit: Do you really think anyone who has a template balanced for CP is going to continue to play? That´s moronic.

Next step after the event will be: no more CP campaigns. Better performance and no difference in CPs. Is not this what we want for PvP?

CP are the new Deer 4head

bubbygink

Glad they are doing some testing to improve performance, I can always get behind that. But man, 14.4k AP for taking keeps (assuming you're using the 20% blessing of war passive and it still works during this period) is some crazy overkill. 3.6k AP for resources. That would mean PvDooring a keep and taking its resources would be over 25k AP alone. Over 25k AP for flipping a single keep and its resources without having to do a shred of PvP. Yikes.

@ZOS_BrianWheeler Perhaps consider only doubling AP for kills and not for keep/resource capture.

Derra

Also what kind of nonscientific approach for the topic is that. You simply won´t get any worthwhile results @ZOS_BrianWheeler because people can not play the same way with CP compared to playing without.

They simply can´t use their skills in the same way.

Psilent

Awesome change Brian!!! Will spend this week testing a new build in Azura's Star!

Undaunted passive don't work in Azura's is that intended or a bug?

Decado

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

@MyNameIsElias We are aware of that behavior and will be adjusting values of Outposts, Resources and Keeps after the event.

so what your saying is because some people cant resist exploiting a loop hole the rest of us have to suffer? we can finally get AP for actually doing thing like taking keeps etc you know earning AP while actually playing the game.

you change it too much so they wont bother flipping it and then the only way to make any real AP will be to run around in circles mindlessly grinding noobs who endlessly follow them around, probably creating lag aswel.

i dont mind the no CP thing since i play on azura anyway to avoid said mindless AoE destro trains.

how about leaving the AP per capture the same as it is currently but adding a cool down on it? so endlessly flipping bleakers will net them nothing for a while after they first take it

Derra

VycDarkshadow wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Well so one week of not pvping because i´m not going to craft a template for that bullcrap? Nice - do i get my subscription refunded for that time period?

Edit: Do you really think anyone who has a template balanced for CP is going to continue to play? That´s moronic.

Nope, but if you don't want to participate in helping fix PvP, then I see no reason for you to cry about not PvPing. Also, I've spoken to several of my streamer friends, and they're stoked for this! They don't mind a single week of no CP perks, if it means fixing PvP in the long run.

Besides, it's the CP procs that are under fire right now. I'm sure the static increased resistances/damage and the reduction costs are going to remain as they are.

They will basically get no usable result because ppl just can´t play the same way.

The game works differently without CP (ie you can´t spam skills as easily). It´s a useless test.

Dagoth_Rac

Will there be some kind of Battle Spirit reduction to skill costs if you ever get rid of CP in all of PvP? The mitigation increases from red stars and the damage increases from blue stars kind of cancel each other out, but the resource management via the green stars is not really cancelled out in any way via CP. Resource management is much tougher on the non-CP campaigns. And it feels like, throughout the game, skill and resource costs have been based around assuming people will have certain levels of resource management via green CP stars. An across the board 16% increase in skill costs in PvP and 25% regen decrease in PvP is likely to just lead to people running out of resources quickly and dying. Which makes sense for certain builds decked out in "infinite resource" gear, but is just going to make TTK go way down for the typical PvP player in modest gear.

And are the stars you put the points in even the problem? Those ultimately feel no different than putting points in attributes or skills. Is the real problem the "passive" CP stars that kick in at 10, 30, 75, 120 CP? Many of those have conditional effects that may require constant server calculations to see if they should activate. Maybe disabling the CP passives in all PvP while keeping the star points invested would help performance a lot while still making long time, dedicated players feel like they have some tangible reward for time played over a brand new player who grinded to CP160 in a few days.