Cyrodiil Performance Test and Double AP Event

Anti_Virus

No CP campaigns = Best thing in PVP.

-No more super high burst dmg
-no more infinite sustain
- People have to heavy attack
- Significantly less lagg ( fps drops still )
- requires more tactical analysis of people
- No destro ult trains
- no BOL spammers
- no block tanks

lllNutterlll

Just to clear my understanding of this test up... I believe it is to remove CP from all campaigns so they can have full servers to test across all platforms to see if the previous changes as well as clearing CP calculations made to the servers correct lag. I don't think it's just to push people to get used to no CP campaigns. I feel it's good to have diversity and I am glad so many people are finding no CP fun... We have a campaign for that after the test... Azura's Star lol. Just because it suits you and you enjoy it doesn't mean it's for everyone. I play both. Mainly no CP but I do enjoy the change up with CP. Test isn't for what we enjoy more... They already have that in the game, you as a player have to actually go there and not wait for them to force you there. The test is to help clear lag and from what I've heard it's not finished yet. We are only two days in and so far a third of people say it's equally bad or worse, a third say it's great and the other third just discovered you can PvP with no CP and feel ZOS should just wipe all CP cause that's what they like lol.

Fischblut

Trueflame EU PC. I didn't notice any Cyrodiil improvement after this patch, except increased AP gains for PvP objectives. Lag is absolutely the same. During weekend before patch, I was kicked to loading screen many times in different situations; lag was awful as usual. And few days ago I even saw 125 people in queue, so campaign was already overpopulated enough before double AP event.

After patch:

I was kicked to login screen few times in the middle of battle and in relatively calm situation.
When I was scouting empty home keep while there was huge battle at Ash, I lagged - on almost other side of map, with no other players around. Press "E" to open door and wait few seconds to actually enter the door. Press 'E" to mount and wait few seconds before mount appears
When I'm alone at distant resource fighting guards - pvp battles are far away from that place on map - lag is there too, especially awful in the evening. Just like in pvp fight, I'm CCd few seconds before game shows me it, until it me and guards are normally attacking each other (so it's not like FPS drops, game doesn't freeze or something). When I drop negate on flag guards, they break bree (!), attack me as if they are not standing in my negate sphere, almost kill me and... then suddenly they are finally negated
When in the evening I ride alone in the middle of Cyrodiilic nowhere, if I press "H" to dismount, nothing happens, so I press "H" few more times - then character finally dismounts... and mounts-dismounts again and again. Or if in the middle of battle I use light attacks few times, my character then becomes stuck light attacking, so I have to weapon swap or block cancel it. Lot of time I have no idea what's going on with my character in huge battles - negative effects show on my screen few seconds after I'm affected, I fight normally before I know I was, for example, knocked down.

Mayrael

ZOS colects his data, I will share my expetiences after CP removal.

1. No CP in PvP made it more balanced than any patch since implementing CPs.
2. I was kicked from Cyrodiil 2 times already (one time each day).
3. Ping spikes amplitude and frequency lowered (shorter spikes) BUT even with lower ping I have much much more issues with channeled and cast time abilities (bigger delays on launching and half of them misses target - puncturing sweeps)
4. Sometimes when in mist form, toon cant do anything except of moving. I cant roll or block to break the skill.

Cherryblossom

@ZOS_BrianWheeler

I believe your testing is flawed.

You are not comparing like for like, due to you putting double AP in the game, we now have a great many newbies in Cyrodiil, they are not playing in a similar way to those that normally frequent PVP.

So you are not getting the same results, as different skills will be used, different tactics will be used, Groups will be different and play differently.

For you to get a true comparison you do have to do this without the double AP, you need the normal frequenters of PVP playing how they always play to get a result that actually means something.

vamp_emily

Hakkane wrote: »

From a developer perspective, you are not going to obtain reliable big data about server performance, because this is not how PVP usually woks - people was not fighting against players, but only against NPCs.

This is a false statement. Maybe on your server things are like that, but I know the time I have played on TF everyone is fighting like normal. Huge groups of AD/EP attacking, Huge defenses to try and defend keeps.

I'm sure there are people just taking advantage of the AP gains, but trust me somewhere on some server ZOS is getting good numbers for their testing.

Joy_Division

This test is useless because people are reporting contradictory things.

I played primetime TF NA the past two nights.

Whoever says there are no destro trains either isn't paying attention or is RPing at the South Morrowind Gate. They work just fine:



If anything, I think my bomber is more effective since people do not as much stamina/resources to escape the destro ult.

Invisible siege is not fun. Half the coldfire either does not give the red circle indicator or the lag is so terrible, you're already hit or dead before it registers.

There is definitely lag/latency and I live a few hours from ZoS headquarters. My PC is less than a year old and my ISP works just fine for everything else I do. Sure, there are times when the game runs tolerably, but it also run tolerably at times with CP. With the faction stack comes lag/latency. It is what it is; maybe in NA AZ there aren't faction stacks or in EU PC Haderus people are too busy cheesing AP gains to notice, but on every faction stack in TF have come unresponsiveness, rubber-banding to meteors, buggy CC breaks, etc., and all the other headaches associated with poor server performance.

If you want to say you prefer no CP, fine, tell ZoS until the cows come home. But the performance on PC NA is nothing to celebrate and it goes down the toilet under the same conditions as it usually does with CP.

RinaldoGandolphi

This may be one of those cases with many different variables and many different outcomes.

None of us have access to the raw data logs that would show:

1. Total CPU usages over X Time frame compared to previous logs.
2. Packets vs dropped packets and Network Frame Buffer statistics.(Red ping is caused by packets that the servers simply can not service and dropped and TCP makes them be re-sent)
3. LOS check, damage calcs, etc

What im saying is to us it can "appear" to not be very different, BUT server load and logs could tell a completely different story.

Im not worried that they will remove CP right now, and folks needs to get over that fear. Thats not going to happen anytime soon. It won't happen unless its a last resort. ZOS will first try to re-factor some of the CP code and passives first and see how things go. I don't think they want to remove CP anymore then the players who like CP would. Since us that don't like CP have a no-cp server to play on, there is no reason for us to really push for that anyways.

Lets hope this test can allow them to figure out where they can squeeze more performance out of code changes to CP and make the game better overall for all parties.

It will be 18 months or more(and code re-factoring changes to CP not working) before ZOS would even consider removing CP....so just clam down, in a few more days things will go back to normal.

I could see them nerfing the tar out of the CP percentages with Morrowind,(and adjusting mobs to compensate) but that's an entirely different can of worms altogether.

MusekininKanchou

A lot more lag than last night though last nights opposition seemed better organized and had adjusted to the changes. I'm of the thinking that it's all the overlapping aoe and large number of effects going on in a small area and not so much the cp calcs themselves. Lag was still a pinch better than usual but not by much. As the big well organized groups continue to adapt TFs lag will be no better than before by Friday. Oh well, still double AP.

Crazy question, been seeing people talking about getting stuck in delve due to pop lock message and having to try several times to get out. Is it possible for a faction to cheat the pop lock then? Could you take a whole raid into a dungeon and wait 5 -10 min for the faction to fill to capacity again then come out of the delve and have an extra 20+ people in zone?

Taonnor

RinaldoGandolphi wrote: »

...
The Champion System is a very ambitious project from ZOS. I think they may have underestimated how much CPU horsepower you would need to do all those calculations. I myself just looking at everything it has to calculate just for one person per sec and then times that by server population....I don't think they could buy a server cluster large enough to do all that and still remain in business....you would almost need folks to donate CPU cycles to solve it...I'll even go one step farhter and say Microsoft's Azure Cloud(the largest Could computer cluster in the entire world) would not be able to claculate what ZOS is doing with the CP system.

You attack one person with Crushing Shock and you got

1. Base Damage - 50%
2. Spell Resistance - Spell Penetration = X
3. X- % in Elemental Defender = X
4. If DOT applies then X - Elemental Defender % - Thick Skinned %
5. If Also a Crit then Crit damage + Crit increase % - Crit Resistance
6. Damage taken = Y

Vs without CP you got

1. Base Damage - 50%
2. Spell Resistance - Spell Pentration = X
3. If X is a Crit then Crit damage modifier - Crit Resist = Damage taken = Y

thats twice as many calcs, and I may be missing some in the CP system that adds even more....such as the various passives that happen when certain conditions are true that also must be run through the same ring.

...

I think your right. I wrote down how much a simple calculation addition rise the calculation steps in my "Myth AoE Cap" thread. SEE HERE -> Myth AoE Cap

AJ_1988

vamp_emily wrote: »

Last night I was in a TF dungeon and could not get out, I kept receiving a message "Distination is full, your attempted jump failed.".

Later on in the night my zone chat looked like this:

Space invaders lol?

Eleusian

Played last night 3 hours on Haderus PS4 NA
- server pop locked all factions
- Massive keep warfare with no lag or D.C????wtf
- no deaths to invisible players from lag.
- Did not see any coordinated flipping , lots of battles happening.
- Was as fun as BWB but I have my developed character.

timidobserver

@ZOS_BrianWheeler @ZOS_RichLambert

So, do we get to know the results of your data collection? Many people, like myself, are seeing better performance. However, others are seeing no improvement. I am curious if disabling CPs is making a significant difference or not.

Edit:
Also, please fix the transitus\forward camp loading screens.

Zorgon_The_Revenged

I don't think I've seen the hordes so large. Horde runs toward you, half die and the other half die while running away.

As for performance...negligible change and three crashes/restarts in a row trying to port to bleakers and this could have been one of those nights like any other (ignoring the fact I had to wait in 120+ queues for both TF and Azura's, Haderus was close with a queue in the 90's).

I played on Azura's a lot when it was created and the performance was good until more than two alliances were pop locked and the steel tornado ball groups arrived, but that was a time when Trueflame had stack on the flag-meteor spam levels of lag.

The below lvl50/nonVet campaign(with cp) has been the best performing campaign I have played in so far, if I didn't need a bank full of armor for every few levels I might still be playing there, but I guess in the time I've been away and the changes that have happened means a player with proxy det isn't a rare occurrence and ambush spamming vicious death bomb groups could be a thing.....omg, snipe is the first bow skill so screw the non vet campaign.

vamp_emily

RinaldoGandolphi wrote: »

- snip -

Everything you say sounds logical, but don't you think that most the processing is done on the client side to take stress off the servers?

From my point of view, I have noticed a few things and I spend most my time in PvP:

1. I've played on 2 very nice computers ( Macbook Pro, and a PC gaming machine). Most the specs are the same, the connection to the internet was the same. One computer lagged so bad, I will never use it again for gaming. What I noticed when comparing the two computers was the one that lagged has a basic video card, the other gaming machine has a high end video card.

2. I've played in Non CP campaigns and CP campaigns. My play style is mostly fight in the middle of a zerg and pray I make it out a live. I'm always in the Zerg vs Zerg fights. I've lagged in both CP and Non CP campaigns.

3. I have been playing in TF for the last few weeks. I'm always in the large battles and population is always pop locked. I don't recall any lag. I had so much fun I made TF my home campaign.

4. No CP ( testing period ). I've noticed plenty of lag in TF, making it not enjoyable to play sometimes.

I know many players want to point the finger at CP for the cause of lag, but I don't think that is the cause.

Hakkane

vamp_emily wrote: »

Hakkane wrote: »

From a developer perspective, you are not going to obtain reliable big data about server performance, because this is not how PVP usually woks - people was not fighting against players, but only against NPCs.

This is a false statement. Maybe on your server things are like that, but I know the time I have played on TF everyone is fighting like normal. Huge groups of AD/EP attacking, Huge defenses to try and defend keeps.

I'm sure there are people just taking advantage of the AP gains, but trust me somewhere on some server ZOS is getting good numbers for their testing.

Hello @vamp_emily , if you carefully read my post again, you'll see my statement represents my experience on an specific server, different of yours: Xbox NA - Azura's Star. It is nice to hear that the prime PC server does not suffer the same vermin, but indicating that my statement is false because your experience is being different is... presumptuous.

The prime server of each platform might be working at expected at peak hours, but my experience in the rest of PVP servers on the Xbox NA megaserver (and not only AZ) is that they have become a AP grinding carnival. I haven't check at late night or mornings, but probably at those moments, when good PVPers are offline and population decays, even the prime server of Xbox might be suffering similar misbehaviors. And take in mind that many players (even experienced ones) don't like to play in the prime server, because:

- Xbox has been, by far, the platform where performance problems have been more severe (take a look at the general Bug Reporting forum). Traveling to the prime Xbox PVP server guarantees you will crash or stuck in an infinite loading screen as soon as you find a zerg, affect multiple players with an AoE or hit a random loading screen. So many players avoid that server.

- Even ignoring that problems, many players avoid super-populated servers because we don't like to merge into zergs and prefer going in small groups to do more tactic small-scale operations.

So, in result, what I said is correct: a) the game experience is being ruined this week for many PVPers, b) hundreds of dishonest players are ranking up in Alliance War (something that should be a recognition exclusively for veteran PVPers) and c) if Zenimax aggregates data from different servers and moments of the day, they will have an inaccurate picture of the servers performance and behavior.

This cancer I reported would be soooo easy to solve if they implemented a countdown timer to receive a full AP tick after retaking a keep/resource a second time...

EIGHTS

Stupid test.

We don't have CP and GET MORE LAG.
The players still don't take more damage and have high attack at the same time (because Macro).

I really don't know what's the meaning about this test.
The problem of Cyrodiil isn't CP.

Why doesn't ZOS understand?
I know the reason, because ZOS doesn't really play their game. XD
If ZOS ever actually plays the game, you already see what I saw.

Ilsabet

Ilsabet wrote: »

I ran into this multiple times last night (between 9:30pm - 1:00 am central US time).



The game still functioned after that popped up, but many of my skill animations didn't show up and I couldn't see enemy players.

Got this error again last night while stealing stuff in Riften. So I guess it's not just a Cyrodiil thing. Pretty annoying though, especially when it threw me into an endless load screen in the middle of the city and forced me to shut down.

bowmanz607

EIGHTS wrote: »

Stupid test.

We don't have CP and GET MORE LAG.
The players still don't take more damage and have high attack at the same time (because Macro).

I really don't know what's the meaning about this test.
The problem of Cyrodiil isn't CP.

Why doesn't ZOS understand?
I know the reason, because ZOS doesn't really play their game. XD
If ZOS ever actually plays the game, you already see what I saw.

I have had significantly less lag after playing on az, tf and had on pc name.

They did not say cp caused lag. They want to know if the calculations from cp contribute to lag etc.

Your experiences will be different from others. So don't think your play experi3nce is shared and is the view everyone shares.

Rickter

right but as others have stated: pvp had lag prior to the removal of CP. if the issue is number of calculations, maybe ZOS should look at how AP is calculated. its pretty in depth if my source is correct and when you span that across all players o na server, it probably bogs things down quite a bit

bowmanz607

To all,

Can we try to make a conscious effort to put platform played on, server, campaign and time of day with time zone please. At a minimum. That way a pc player is not yelling at an Xbox player saying they are wrong or something like that. Will go a long way.

It would also he nice to include pc specs and Internet speed etc. A player like sphere with a solid computer running with high end connection and located in Texas is going to have a much better experience than an Australian running with subpar specs and connection.

EIGHTS

bowmanz607 wrote: »

I have had significantly less lag after playing on az, tf and had on pc name.
They did not say cp caused lag. They want to know if the calculations from cp contribute to lag etc.
Your experiences will be different from others. So don't think your play experi3nce is shared and is the view everyone shares.

Do you know many people don't come here to share their experiences.
This forum is useless. It can't show the fact.

Not to mention there are lots of liars here.

Sureshawt

Amazing that players actually think their personal experiences have anything to do with this test or the collecting of data. They need the player load and that is all. Asking for feedback in mostly just being polite barring some major issue that affects everyone.

Player experience regarding lag at any given time is anecdotal to what ZoS is trying to accomplish. They are looking at internal server core/network metrics.

Player lag can be caused by other variables that they do not have any control over such as you home network, your ISP or the Internet itself http://www.internethealthreport.com

They are trying to see what is happening with everyone under the same rule sets inside the areas they do have control over so they can make adjustments. It is a process of isolation and elimination.

Armitas

I think there is just too many requests being made to the server. I have seen this game use 1mb/s in PvP. That is a lot of data, most of which was completely irrelevant to me on the far edges of a keep. In an hour thats three and a half gigs worth of data.

mook-eb16_ESO

played tonight again pc eu absolutely no improvement laggy as hell cant even do light attacks no animations even on light attacks.

GlassHalfFull

Does your @ZOS_BrianWHeeler analytics cover only statistics, or does it cover loading screens that dont end, crashes to login screen, and basically the things that place you back in the queue. Yesterday was great, today is aweful for at least half the people in my guild. We have not had lag, just crashes or laoding screens that never end.

Zaldan

@ZOS_BrianWheeler was AP needed for reward of the worthy doubled also, 130K AP earned in one session equals 5 rewards now?

sadownik

@timidobserver i logged in ESO for the first time in months to check the situation in PvP and i think people are talking about 2 different issues. I do think general performance is better, but honestly i never had much trouble fps wise. I have no doubt that lag is still here. While i didnt notice those huge lag spikes the responsiveness of skills is far from acceptable in many situations.

Red_Olander

Cherryblossom wrote: »

@ZOS_BrianWheeler

I believe your testing is flawed.

You are not comparing like for like, due to you putting double AP in the game, we now have a great many newbies in Cyrodiil, they are not playing in a similar way to those that normally frequent PVP.

So you are not getting the same results, as different skills will be used, different tactics will be used, Groups will be different and play differently.

For you to get a true comparison you do have to do this without the double AP, you need the normal frequenters of PVP playing how they always play to get a result that actually means something.

Also the No CP and Double AP has created faction wide zergs of 60+ players that were not present before this testing.

godfather902

I have been pvping over the last few days every night. I have a 50Mbps connection and my average latency anywhere in the game is around 90-100ms.

As others have said, the performance does not seem to be better.

During sieges or big battles across the map, the lag is bad. I'd press an ability like charge and it actually gets executed after a delay of around 1.5-2 seconds, but by then my target was already 4-5 meters away. Because of this lag the abilities become almost non-responsive.

One time due to the performance degrading, in a keep siege enemies looked like they were teleporting small distances instead of walking.

Latency during battles can reach 250-300ms and it will stay there and problems like mentioned above are then constant.

Thanks.