It is definitely time to fix the regular nightly kicks from the server EU/PC/Vivec

ilander

So, that's another kick.. the second one this evening. It is almost 100% clear that it is the ball groups that are causing this 90% of the time.. I've even watched the server crash as 2 of them clashed inside a keep on a couple of occasions. For those of you in the ZOS staff who are struggling to make the connection, to explain to you, a ball group will appear at a keep where the other 2 factions are fighting each other because it is the place they'll be able to farm the most AP. This means that there's a massively high concentration of players from 2 factions at this location already. Adding a 3rd faction with a ball group of 15-20 spamming skills all within about 8m of each other is clearly putting far far too much strain on your servers.

I'm guessing you have put some kind of failsafe kick/crash in place to stop the lag spreading to everywhere else in the game like it used to but kicking people because of this isn't really a fix. Sure you're only going to have a few hundred players at most even being bothered about this at a time because of the max populations but you've provided the game with a PvP server which it is not working and it is high time this changed. If this is the case, then you're basically discriminating against the PvP community because they're not part of your grand plan to take over the world using only the Crown Store

There are countless people who have given clear, intelligent ideas on how to remedy this problem, many of which are viable within current game mechanics and would most likely not be hard to implement but you don't seem to be listening at all. I've been in PvP for 3 years now and it is quite clear that your desire to do anything for the PvP community is based more on how much money you could make out of it rather than how much less buggy/broken you could make Cyrodiil.

Just make the AoE skills that these groups use damage friendlies and there will be no more ball groups even remotely similar to the way they exist now because they'd be killing themselves before they killed anyone else. Add at least 1000 other great ideas to this from the forums and you have a solution.

Hope you're listening for a change

Yuke

ilander wrote: »

So, that's another kick.. the second one this evening. It is almost 100% clear that it is the ball groups that are causing this 90% of the time.. I've even watched the server crash as 2 of them clashed inside a keep on a couple of occasions. For those of you in the ZOS staff who are struggling to make the connection, to explain to you, a ball group will appear at a keep where the other 2 factions are fighting each other because it is the place they'll be able to farm the most AP. This means that there's a massively high concentration of players from 2 factions at this location already. Adding a 3rd faction with a ball group of 15-20 spamming skills all within about 8m of each other is clearly putting far far too much strain on your servers.

we told devs many times which skills are responsible for this *** (because its clear as crystal if you are in the situation you described and observe)

They'll never change anything about it because those skills are mandatory for dealing with the pve raid content.

Lieblingsjunge

Let me ask you this: What is the different between a blob of 50 random pugs spamming all kinds of skills/utlimates fighting another 50 random pugs - and 15v15 bombtrains? Both should equally strain the servers. Of course -ballgroups are contributing to the server-strain, but so is the 100 pugs from each alliance clashing together on the last emp keep - without a ballgroup present. And do not tell me that last emp keep fights, at least on PC-EU/Vivec, never causes lag. (In fights where there have been multiple occasions of no ballgroups, just random pugs clashing together).

Everything strains the server. From the cp-calculations to the ballgroups to the 3 smallscalers dropping 3 meteors on the same target. Literally everything strains the server. So it's a "joint effort in crashing the server" from all parts involved.

Friendly fire sounds good. As long as every ability / siege also can hit friendlies, and is not limited to specific skills. Would be really cool to see how many people wanted that. (ooooooor how many people who would QQQQQ on forums about friendly fire, if it was implemented).

It was 3 full crashes tonight - but no real lag. Which usually tends to be the most annoying part. There's no consistency in how/When the server crashes. Sometimes it'll crash 4 times when it's 500 ping on average, other times it'll crash 3 times on 90 ping.

Maybe the hamsters need a day off / slacking day, so they have less hamsters some days than others?

ilander

Yeah @Lieblingsjunge you're correct but that's why i said 90% of the time, not all the time. Bearing in mind you're probably normally in the middle of one of these ball groups rather than watching from outside, you're bound to have a different insight into this Yes, the lag was minimal when it was happening tonight which is why i was saying there might be some kind of failsafe being used to stop it from spreading across the whole game like we've seen on many occasions before.

On the other hand, people can most definitely tell (as hundreds of people have said before) when there's a ball group on your subserver because performance immediately takes a different kind of nosedive rather than when there are a lot of people (like even 40vs40) spamming skills so there's a definite difference between the 2 kinds of pressure on the server that you're talking about and i have a feeling it has more to do with how the subservers are working/performing for each location as we got to see at Bleakers during the "RP week" in Haderus EU. Saying that these calculations putting a strain on the server is a joint effort is a good way of detracting from what the actual cause could be though and pushing the blame away from ball groups because servers are specifically designed to deal with a number of calculations for instances like 3 meteors on 1 person... i'm guessing it is more 15-20 people in a ball group spamming a range of aoe/hot/dot/dd really than a 3 meteor on 1 person scenario, even if these meteor situations are happening a lot of times across the game server.

Iyas

Am I the only one who thinks the game would be healthier without blobs?

ilander

Iyas wrote: »

Am I the only one who thinks the game would be healthier without blobs?

I don't have a problem with blobs.. i have a problem with the issues they cause in the game. You can't hold a blob responsible really when this is how an area of the game was designed and intended to be played although the people in these blobs almost definitely know that they're getting kills because of the lag issues they're causing to other players. (Yes, lag has been the cause of my death on as number of occasions to blob grps, nothing to do with lack of skill or being badly placed or anything, just the lag they're causing.)

Lieblingsjunge

ilander wrote: »

Yeah @Lieblingsjunge you're correct but that's why i said 90% of the time, not all the time. Bearing in mind you're probably normally in the middle of one of these ball groups rather than watching from outside, you're bound to have a different insight into this Yes, the lag was minimal when it was happening tonight which is why i was saying there might be some kind of failsafe being used to stop it from spreading across the whole game like we've seen on many occasions before.

On the other hand, people can most definitely tell (as hundreds of people have said before) when there's a ball group on your subserver because performance immediately takes a different kind of nosedive rather than when there are a lot of people (like even 40vs40) spamming skills so there's a definite difference between the 2 kinds of pressure on the server that you're talking about and i have a feeling it has more to do with how the subservers are working/performing for each location as we got to see at Bleakers during the "RP week" in Haderus EU. Saying that these calculations putting a strain on the server is a joint effort is a good way of detracting from what the actual cause could be though and pushing the blame away from ball groups because servers are specifically designed to deal with a number of calculations for instances like 3 meteors on 1 person... i'm guessing it is more 15-20 people in a ball group spamming a range of aoe/hot/dot/dd really than a 3 meteor on 1 person scenario, even if these meteor situations are happening a lot of times across the game server.

Yes, I do play in ballgroups these days but I had almost a year out of ballgroups(And back then I didn't know what a ballgroup was so...). And I do offer some other insight as I play in them - but imo, you shouldn't talk about stuff you haven't been a part of. That would be like me giving an opinion about the roleplay going on in an Inn -without actually being there and knowing the context.

I'm not saying that the ballgroups do *not* cause lag. Of course they do - of course we do. Everything, as I said, strains the server. Well - I have had Vivec being laggy for me at 17.00 on Saturday - and then there were no ballgroups running(to my knowledge at least). Since most ballgroups start at 19.30 / 20.00. And how do you explain that sotha Sil / Azura rarely had the same crashes - even though, I would say, there's more ballgroups there across all factions than on Vivec.(At least when I played there it was 4 on EP side at most, 5-6 on DC-side and 2 or 3 from AD-side). But it never suffered the same way Vivec does - how does that happen if ballgroups are the reason that "performance takes a different kind of nosedive"?

I'm not trying to defend ballgroups, attack zergs or whatever. I'm just pointing out other relevant phenomenons. And the "hundreds of people have said before"... it's a good suppression teqhnique to use to further enhance your argument, but, unfortunately it's very see-through.

Lieblingsjunge

Iyas wrote: »

Am I the only one who thinks the game would be healthier without blobs?

That's why BGs are a thing, you know? Supposed(!) to be fair matches and no blobs. Even though I've ran into 4 people running 1 healbot and 3 destro-ultimates there too. (Not that it works that well.. but hey).

murdomac101

crashing consistently for two nights now

ilander

I'll explain the way the non-cp campaigns don't have the same problem in the same way as "hundreds of people" have pointed out here on the forums before, thus backing up my argument to possibly slightly more opaque than 100% seethrough It has been quite clearly established that the non-cp campaign has a lot less calculations because there are no cp giving a cross section of players differing passives that require different calculations. We're discussing the cp campaign here, Vivec or previously Trueflame or whatever u want to call it so i don't think using the non-cp campaign with its lack of calculations (relatively speaking) is a good parallel for this situation. The fact that this non-cp server rarely had crashes just backs this point up rather than shoots it down.

Your analogy for the ball group is quite amusing though.. sure i would have to be part of one to see some sides of it but if you can watch rp'ers doing their rp;ing you'll see how rp'ing is done (most likely the most frightening part of this game!).. just the same as i watch ball groups every day doing the same thing .. exactly the same predictable thing. I'd say rp'ers probably have a lot more variety to their gaming than the one track groundhog day play that these groups do day in day out.

I'm actually a little worried about not being able to talk about stuff i've not been a part of as well I honestly shouldn't be allowed to comment on something that i have watched in pvp for hours and hours and hours? (and i mean that timescale 100% because i've got >300 days /played and probably 90% of this has been in cyro) This is pretty much the same as saying that i shouldn't be permitted to comment on Formula 1 because i've never driven a Formula 1 car before or that i can't comment on how parts of a computer work because i've never made a working computer????

I won't actually be joining a ball group any time soon because it is the sort of play that i personally deem to be the equivalent of a vr14 rampaging through a lvl30 dungeon thinking he/she is a tough guy or believing that they are doing something that is actually competitively productive rather than the way it actually is where 8 people are whipping a 75hp scamp to death then reaping the rewards of 9 gold amongst the 8 of them and quite possibly high 5'ing each other because of how amazingly well they've done.

I hope you're feeling mildly suppressed at least or i haven't done my job properly and will subsequently have to consult hundreds of people on the forums to get my suppression techniques back up to ball group level calibre

Lieblingsjunge

ilander wrote: »

I'll explain the way the non-cp campaigns don't have the same problem in the same way as "hundreds of people" have pointed out here on the forums before, thus backing up my argument to possibly slightly more opaque than 100% seethrough It has been quite clearly established that the non-cp campaign has a lot less calculations because there are no cp giving a cross section of players differing passives that require different calculations. We're discussing the cp campaign here, Vivec or previously Trueflame or whatever u want to call it so i don't think using the non-cp campaign with its lack of calculations (relatively speaking) is a good parallel for this situation. The fact that this non-cp server rarely had crashes just backs this point up rather than shoots it down.

Your analogy for the ball group is quite amusing though.. sure i would have to be part of one to see some sides of it but if you can watch rp'ers doing their rp;ing you'll see how rp'ing is done (most likely the most frightening part of this game!).. just the same as i watch ball groups every day doing the same thing .. exactly the same predictable thing. I'd say rp'ers probably have a lot more variety to their gaming than the one track groundhog day play that these groups do day in day out.

I'm actually a little worried about not being able to talk about stuff i've not been a part of as well I honestly shouldn't be allowed to comment on something that i have watched in pvp for hours and hours and hours? (and i mean that timescale 100% because i've got >300 days /played and probably 90% of this has been in cyro) This is pretty much the same as saying that i shouldn't be permitted to comment on Formula 1 because i've never driven a Formula 1 car before or that i can't comment on how parts of a computer work because i've never made a working computer????

I won't actually be joining a ball group any time soon because it is the sort of play that i personally deem to be the equivalent of a vr14 rampaging through a lvl30 dungeon thinking he/she is a tough guy or believing that they are doing something that is actually competitively productive rather than the way it actually is where 8 people are whipping a 75hp scamp to death then reaping the rewards of 9 gold amongst the 8 of them and quite possibly high 5'ing each other because of how amazingly well they've done.

I hope you're feeling mildly suppressed at least or i haven't done my job properly and will subsequently have to consult hundreds of people on the forums to get my suppression techniques back up to ball group level calibre

Ah. here we are onto something. Sadly most people like to state their opinion without knowing anything about the current topic. Your "hundreds of people" don't exist. That's what I meant - biased opinions is not a part of the "hundreds of people backing up my argument". And we all know how much people loooove to hate on the stuff that kills them, right? So your hundreds of people with biased opinions doesn't add more strength to your argument, imo.

So the CP is the problem, you're saying? Well - that makes another completely new argument that you did not factor in, in your first post. I completely agree with you that the CP-calculations are not helping the server-strain though. Don't get me wrong - a lot of what you're saying is definitely true. Humans are predictable by nature - and honestly, everything a person do in this game is predictable. At least if the player somewhat knows what's up. When you fight a stamina nightblade 1v1 it's predictable. When you fight a templar 1v2 you know exactly what the templar will do. When you fight a stamina DK you know exactly when it'll use it's take flight. Just as you mostly know when a ballgroup will push somewhere and drop their ultimates. But the fact that ballgroups are predictable, should make them easy targets, no?There's a difference between commenting on something and stating a biased opinion on something publicially. I'm assuming this is a thread meant for discussion and not for salt, am I correct? Meaning this thread should be hold to higher standards than throwing around arguments like "hundreds of people agree with me so I must be right".

I'll just repeat myself and await your response on the following: I have had Vivec being laggy for me at 17.00 on Saturday - and then there were no ballgroups running(to my knowledge at least), since ballgroups start at 19.30 / 20.00 most of the time.

If the ballgroups are, and I quote "It is almost 100% clear that it is the ball groups that are causing this 90% of the time".
How does that makes sense, then?

Sanct16

Iyas wrote: »

Am I the only one who thinks the game would be healthier without blobs?

@Iyas, I agree. Let's start a petition and force @Blobsky to quit the game!

#BlameBlobs

Turelus

Iyas wrote: »

Am I the only one who thinks the game would be healthier without blobs?

I'm assuming you're using other other game term for zergs, and not the DC player?

No, but many also joined the game specifically for blob warfare. We want huge scale battles, even trains as they're an interesting tactic.

We just need ZOS to invest in better servers or clean up the code more. There are other games that handle this many or more player actions being calculated, ZOS should be looking at why theirs can't.

NBrookus

We are having nightly mass-disconnects on PC NA in Vivec, too. Night before last I was nowhere near any blobs both times I got kicked.

Since the devs have stated that no CP week did not affect server performance, it's not CP itself. In no CP campaigns (at least on PC NA) there are certainly zergs -- if anything it's zergier but no lag. When we had Haderus, even when it pop-locked we had no lag. If it's not CP and it's no population; it's something to do with how people play. Get near a ball group and you are lucky if your skills even function at all.

I suspect the decrease in server performance and increase in disconnects since MW is simpler -- they've added 15 class skills and all those passives; it's just more calculations piled up on the server that was already struggling.

Etaniel

NBrookus wrote: »

We are having nightly mass-disconnects on PC NA in Vivec, too. Night before last I was nowhere near any blobs both times I got kicked.

Since the devs have stated that no CP week did not affect server performance, it's not CP itself. In no CP campaigns (at least on PC NA) there are certainly zergs -- if anything it's zergier but no lag. When we had Haderus, even when it pop-locked we had no lag. If it's not CP and it's no population; it's something to do with how people play. Get near a ball group and you are lucky if your skills even function at all.

I suspect the decrease in server performance and increase in disconnects since MW is simpler -- they've added 15 class skills and all those passives; it's just more calculations piled up on the server that was already struggling.

The "new class" argument doesn't make sense, any warden playing is another class not playing, there aren't more passive calculations than there were before... They are just different.

I think it's obvious that proximity and player concentration is a major factor in lag. Put 100 3v3 fights in Cyrodiil, spread out all over the map and I'm sure the server will handle it just fine. Put all those 3v3s around one keep and then the trouble starts.

Now, a ball group of about 15 people won't use much more skills/spells than 5 groups of 3 right? But the problem isn't there, it's that ball groups that are actually good don't die easily. Which means a lot of firepower has to be aimed at them. You've then got a situation where there is a high concentration of players in one spot, and abilities in that zone are fired in that same location.

Since we know Cyrodiil works in "grids" like Brian wheeler explained in an ESO live, ball groups force all calculations to happen in one grid all the time, where a spread out zerg will most likely impact multiple grids, spreading out calculations.

And I'm guessing that if one grid is taking time to update it's info , it affects all the grids on the map.

Kas

sure, it's blob groups. they live so much longer than smaller groups of pugs and attract the huge random zergs in the first place. the 50++ randoms only accumulate in a spot because 30 of them weren't able to kill the blob running around over their producing combat markers on the map.

tbf i'd like to see what happend if the range morph of impulse was totally over the top for a few weeks. i.e. spread-out random groups could significantly threaten ballgroups. ofc it wouldn't be a "solution" and using the skill for single target would then be effective and totally stupid.

still, i'd like to see how group play was gonna change. the biggest problem i have with ballgroups is that it's mostly about the leaders performance only and just following the individual roles takes comparatively very little individual skill. if your build is useful, you properly use your ultimate and your main spammable ability, you're like with 90% of perfect effectiveness as a normal member. as much as i'd like to play with guild/friends, this isn't really enough to keep me happy for months and months.

At least I am very happy with BGs and if we can eventually skip CTF or they adjust it to prevent cheese from being so effective, I'll be perfectly with what eso offers me for pvp and just ignore cyrodiil entirely

NBrookus

Etaniel wrote: »

NBrookus wrote: »

We are having nightly mass-disconnects on PC NA in Vivec, too. Night before last I was nowhere near any blobs both times I got kicked.

Since the devs have stated that no CP week did not affect server performance, it's not CP itself. In no CP campaigns (at least on PC NA) there are certainly zergs -- if anything it's zergier but no lag. When we had Haderus, even when it pop-locked we had no lag. If it's not CP and it's no population; it's something to do with how people play. Get near a ball group and you are lucky if your skills even function at all.

I suspect the decrease in server performance and increase in disconnects since MW is simpler -- they've added 15 class skills and all those passives; it's just more calculations piled up on the server that was already struggling.

The "new class" argument doesn't make sense, any warden playing is another class not playing, there aren't more passive calculations than there were before... They are just different.

It's not a number of players argument. It doesn't look like they raised pop caps. I was referring to the fact that various calculations now have additional criteria to check in code. Any inefficiencies in code are going to get compounded where there are more conditions (i.e. skills, passives, etc.) for the server to process through.

ilander

@Lieblingsjunge Sorry for the lack of clarity involved in me heading the thread PC/EU/Vivec. I should really have put 30 day CP campaign instead of Vivec to make it clear to people who live have lived in a cave in Khenarthi's Roost since launch and never left. Most definitely far from a new part to the argument seeing as the topic heading is the name of the cp server.

You're right, there are numerous holes in my argument and numerous things that you've agreed on as well but this was supposed to point to the CP campaign, seeing as i play on non-cp as well as cp campaigns and i've not seen the same level of thing happen there despite the ball groups that we've both evidently seen. Everyone on the planet has a biased opinion on any subject based on their personal experience of any subject matter to be honest so you're being just as biased as me in your comments.

Yes, it is most likely a lot less than hundreds of people and 90% of 100% certainty is probably a bad way to attempt to cover what i was talking about On the other hand, my personal opinion still stands that ball groups are causing a lot of the crashes just the same as my personal opinion is that Fernando Alonso is the best F1 driver in the world despite the fact that he's not really had a competitive race in years

Sorry for derailing my original thread sentiment by citing my personal opinions on the actions ball groups as well.. shouldn't have done it so i apologise.

Blobsky

Sanct16 wrote: »

Iyas wrote: »

Am I the only one who thinks the game would be healthier without blobs?

@Iyas, I agree. Let's start a petition and force @Blobsky to quit the game!

#BlameBlobs

@Sanct16 Feelsbadman, you wouldnt even have potions without your motif sales to me!

I'll sign the petition though if there are free cookies

dennissomb16_ESO

The issue remains the same since release. ZOS code and server technology struggles with large numbers. Doesn't matter who likes zergs, dislikes CP, or whatever portion of PvP we choose to argue over. There are games that have been able to support large scale PvP fights and ESO struggles with it. Dark Age of Camelot is 15 years old and ran large scale warfare with far larger numbers at a time and did not have close to the issues ESO has when 100 people end up in the same spot.

Fix the core issue not bits and pieces of the issue that we argue over

Mazbt

I was trying to pvp yesterday got kicked to log in screen at least 3 times. Or I am in a middle of a fight and then everyone but me stops....then next thing I know i'm dead.

Iyas

we left vivec because it was unplayble (typical 4 zergs up and randoms around). Its 10 pm, so pretty much primetime. Tried to queue for bgs now for 1 hr. Got one match.

PvP is fun

Sanct16

Regarding some post earlier: It's blatantly wrong to say lag is helping ballgroups more than the pugs they are fighting. I do agree that the lag is more bareable if you are playing a group compared to when you try to 1vX and the bigger the group the more bareable the lag gets, however in a ballgroup vs pug fight, it is way easier to win fights when it isn't lagging and the people you push just die in 1 second and aren't rubberbanding through your group not taking any damage while suddenly half your group gets rolled back 20 meters due to a meteor that hit you 10 seconds ago, while at the same time you have 10 sieges hitting you and you don't get maneuver because the guy that should cast it got stuck in a loading screen.

Blobsky wrote: »

Sanct16 wrote: »

Iyas wrote: »

Am I the only one who thinks the game would be healthier without blobs?

@Iyas, I agree. Let's start a petition and force @Blobsky to quit the game!

#BlameBlobs

@Sanct16 Feelsbadman, you wouldnt even have potions without your motif sales to me!

I'll sign the petition though if there are free cookies

I actually sold 6 necro rings before that so I could have bought pots anyway

Iyas

Sanct16 wrote: »

Regarding some post earlier: It's blatantly wrong to say lag is helping ballgroups more than the pugs they are fighting. I do agree that the lag is more bareable if you are playing a group compared to when you try to 1vX and the bigger the group the more bareable the lag gets, however in a ballgroup vs pug fight, it is way easier to win fights when it isn't lagging and the people you push just die in 1 second and aren't rubberbanding through your group not taking any damage while suddenly half your group gets rolled back 20 meters due to a meteor that hit you 10 seconds ago, while at the same time you have 10 sieges hitting you and you don't get maneuver because the guy that should cast it got stuck in a loading screen.

May I ask why you still continue to play then? If that would happen to me, ill simply log off.

Berenhir

Iyas wrote: »

Sanct16 wrote: »

Regarding some post earlier: It's blatantly wrong to say lag is helping ballgroups more than the pugs they are fighting. I do agree that the lag is more bareable if you are playing a group compared to when you try to 1vX and the bigger the group the more bareable the lag gets, however in a ballgroup vs pug fight, it is way easier to win fights when it isn't lagging and the people you push just die in 1 second and aren't rubberbanding through your group not taking any damage while suddenly half your group gets rolled back 20 meters due to a meteor that hit you 10 seconds ago, while at the same time you have 10 sieges hitting you and you don't get maneuver because the guy that should cast it got stuck in a loading screen.

May I ask why you still continue to play then? If that would happen to me, ill simply log off.

You can watch sanct rage-leading on YouTube - 3 min zerg squad auction house "WAKE UP GUYS!" should make it obvious he can't "simply log off".

runningtings

Last night was a joke for me, the lag was real and I kept getting kicked.
I am not sure if this is just the game or something to do with my ISP (Virgin Media) either way it makes it a waste of time.

It was so bad I even did some PVE.

MLRPZ

Kas wrote: »

still, i'd like to see how group play was gonna change. the biggest problem i have with ballgroups is that it's mostly about the leaders performance only and just following the individual roles takes comparatively very little individual skill. if your build is useful, you properly use your ultimate and your main spammable ability, you're like with 90% of perfect effectiveness as a normal member. as much as i'd like to play with guild/friends, this isn't really enough to keep me happy for months and months.

come take my spot for a 3h raid as a healer. I'll watch from the side and listen on teamspeak

Miruku

@Sanct16 @Blobsky @Etaniel

http://www.strawpoll.me/13195580

On it.

MLRPZ

Miruku wrote: »

@Sanct16 @Blobsky @Etaniel

http://www.strawpoll.me/13195580

On it.

reported for harrasment

Hexys

Iyas wrote: »

Am I the only one who thinks the game would be healthier without blobs?

Ye @Blobsky you should leave the game!

Miruku

MLRPZ wrote: »

Miruku wrote: »

@Sanct16 @Blobsky @Etaniel

http://www.strawpoll.me/13195580

On it.

reported for harrasment

Please no