A letter to Zenimax regarding terrible experience on the PS4 version (High Unstable Latency)

Tent

I'm a big fan of the game. Played for a long while, on and off since the PC beta days. Playing on the PC was exactly what was to be expected; Low stable latency, high fps, higher graphic fidelity. However, recently I made the decision to ditch PC gaming and consolidate all my gaming onto the PS4 console. This meant buying ESO again but I was happy to do so because of the great experience I had had with it on PC.

I could not have been more disappointed or utterly confused.

Things like a lower graphic fidelity and occasional hitches in framerate were to be expected but were things I was prepared for and honestly don't bother me much. What I wasn't expecting was the horrific non-stop unstable latency. This didn't make any sense. It was the exact same internet my PC was utilizing yet the latency difference was night and day. I checked my PS4 and I was getting the exact speeds I expected, yet the connection to the ESO NA Megaserver was so unstable that it was near unplayable at all times. A rotation or priority system was out the window since everything had a 1.5-5 second lag. I couldn't avoid telegraphed attacks because by the time I saw them winding up the server side had already carried out the attack thus I would get hit instantly by one shot attacks. Simple tasks became a button smashing mini-game since the game would respond so slowly to looting, interacting with NPC's, even opening a menu would be lagged. Flabbergasted by this I waited. I had not experienced latency like this for years in any game. I thought maybe perhaps there was another issue. I checked all my other online games. No issues whatsoever, 30 or thereabouts ms on every game but Elder Scrolls Online which was hovering around a constant 300+ and shooting into the 1000's range and sometimes resulting in a sudden disconnect. After waiting the issue didn't abate, but only seemed to get worse.

Now I've been around the mmo world for over 11 years. I know the things to check when latency like this happens. But everything has been done that can be done on my end and all the evidence of connecting to other games and having no problems further leads me to believe that it's not my issue, but the servers issue. I know the steps Zenimax would tell me to take. Cycle the router, start troubleshooting connections on the PS4, open up ports, talk to my ISP...but according to the evidence I've gathered it's not my issue. Frankly I'm tired of the song and dance CS teams give when I know for a fact the issue is on their end. I'm not going to let you run me around for a month trying everything under the sun, staying on hold with my ISP to get some guy who tells me everything is perfect on my end and there's nothing they can do. I am so devastated that this is the experience that was waiting for me on the PS4 version of ESO. And apparently this isn't a new issue looking at the forums. This is something that has been around a long time but has been constantly deflected by Zenimax back at the player, insisting that the horrendous latency is somehow their fault, treating them like idiots.

So here's my answer to YOUR problem Zenimax. See what I did there? That $40 I was thinking of spending on Guilds and Glory--that's going directly to your competitor Square Enix and I'm buying Stormblood. And the extra $15 that might have gone to ESO+, that's going towards a subscription to Final Fantasy 14. You know why? Because that game has zero latency issues for me. You need to FIX your server issue. It IS your problem. You NEED to take steps into getting better hardware. And you know what, I'm willing to bet I'm not the first or the last that has been or will be driven directly to your competitor because of your inability to admit your own hardware issues.

Here's to hoping someday you get it together. Until then, Stormblood here I come.

-Tent

PS4_ZeColmeia

Can I have your stuff?

Rohamad_Ali

They just replaced a bad server recently . Not sure if it was Xbox or ps4 but I remember reading so they update hardware . I'm thinking it's something in their network code .

xb1LL_mr_sir_LL

fact: Zos doesn't care about it's customers. back when i had customers and my paycheck was dependant on those customers being happy, id bend over backwards to make it happen. Zos slapped the elder scrolls name on a pile of
$#!+ and us stupid pigs just eat it up. im ashamed to be a paying customer of eso.

DaveMoeDee

Why is a letter to Zenimax here in the public forum? Customer service has its own email address.

xb1LL_mr_sir_LL wrote: »

fact: Zos doesn't care about it's customers. back when i had customers and my paycheck was dependant on those customers being happy, id bend over backwards to make it happen. Zos slapped the elder scrolls name on a pile of
$#!+ and us stupid pigs just eat it up. im ashamed to be a paying customer of eso.

Then you know that some customers are impossible to please and not worth the hassle.

And if it is a "pile of $#!+", why are you still here? Go play something else that is better. There is no shortage of games.

Edit: just to be clear, the complaints of the OP are quite valid and reasonable. Not all complaints have been that way.

BigBragg

Idylliqe

I honestly have no encountered the issues that you are having. I have the same problems as others, such as battlegrounds and activity finder being broken, and occasional issues with text chat... but I can play easily. Not sure what I'm missing here.

Tent

Idylliqe wrote: »

I honestly have no encountered the issues that you are having. I have the same problems as others, such as battlegrounds and activity finder being broken, and occasional issues with text chat... but I can play easily. Not sure what I'm missing here.

Well then I'm happy for you. I wish I could enjoy the game without awful lag at all times. I must admit at first I gave Zos the benefit of the doubt and concluded it must be my fault but after just a little forum digging it was very clear I was not alone with these issues. It seems to be a widespread and long standing issue that has gotten shockingly little attention from the developers.

Imhotep71

Is it the code or the load the servers are under? I think the population has risen dramatically since Morrowind. There are people everywhere, constantly now.

NA PS4 for reference

Dredlord

I get terrible server lag on ps4.

Used to only be in pvp, but now in pve too.

Dredlord

They need some server upgrades

Tent

Imhotep71 wrote: »

Is it the code or the load the servers are under? I think the population has risen dramatically since Morrowind. There are people everywhere, constantly now.

NA PS4 for reference

That could account for a minor slowdown in areas like cities or dolmens but not alone in the wilderness which is where I'm experiencing the lag. It's game wide no matter where you are.

Drogo50

Not for me, so I assume it is not widespread.

TheCaptainJosh

Sounds like similar issues I have been having the past few days on Xbox NA

Drachenfier

I'm having the same issue on PC. As of today, and so far, all day

Sanctum74

Its been real bad for me lately as well with disconnects, inability to use skills, potions, no cc immunity from cc or pots, blue screens, mount slowdowns, and terrible frame rates.

This is mostly from a pvp perspective, but even doing writs around sparsely populated towns the framerate is real choppy, mount slowdowns, with the occasional rubber banding effect.

Not an enjoyable experience, hoping they do something to fix it.

MarzAttakz

PS4_ZeColmeia wrote: »

Can I have your stuff?

Can you find a new meme, be semi-original (I can haz ur stuffz?) or get mommy to take you to school?

To the OP...

The latency ping-pong is a real issue across many platforms, note the large number of threads popping up. I agree fully with your post and share your sentiments exactly... eloquent and on the mark.

lagrue

I almost never have issues with lag - but the last few days even I have been having minor blips here and there - the best I can call it is frame skips... every now and then the game will freeze a moment and skip forward, only lasts a second, and only happens every hour or so, but I have been noticing it. Overall the gameplay is still rather stable and not affecting my rotations/DPS but I can imagine at critical times it would be bad to have happen.

I personally attributed this to Canada Day/Independance Day weekend, since the days surrounding these events tend to have more players off from work.

Morgul667

PC EU is bad too, there are posts everywhere about this. This is a true issue.

russelmmendoza

I play on pc and ps.
Both are suffering from latency and rubber bonding.
Delayed attack and skills.
And the occassional disconnects.

I thought it was great when I first played on the ps4.
No lag and latency. Then morrowind came.
The lagfest and latency started.

Well I live in asia so that must be it I guess.
We asian cant still buy morrowwind in the ps store.

Oh whelp.

LadyLethalla

Lag, disconnects and rubberbanding have been an issue on PS4 since... well, I know at least since April last year when I came back to EU. (I played on EU to start with, took a break to play Fallout 4, went to NA for 2 months and then back to EU.) I don't remember any lag at all on EU in the beginning or on NA, but then perhaps that was because I was a noob then and didn't know what I was doing anyway... xD

But yes, it's definitely gotten worse since Morrowind. Even getting disconnects in the lowbie Cyro campaign now, which never happened prior.

Vapirko

ZOS on fixing lag

tommalmm

I'm getting occasional lag spikes on PC/EU, but it's nothing game breaking (like jumping from 50 to 100 for a sec or two - barely noticeable). On PS4/EU, though, I'm getting constant high latency plus spikes every now and then that prevent me from bar swapping or using skill for a second or two. I've also been killed by aoe while standing waaaay outside of it quite many times. It's annoying, but managable, most of the time. Sometimes I'm not even sure whether it's the server or underpowered console (using PS4 Pro, which is even worse than a regular PS4 for ESO, as far as I've heard).

MasturCheef

Idylliqe wrote: »

I honestly have no encountered the issues that you are having. I have the same problems as others, such as battlegrounds and activity finder being broken, and occasional issues with text chat... but I can play easily. Not sure what I'm missing here.

100% this. Besides the usual complaining about battlegrounds/dungeon finder, everything else works pretty fine.

nine9six

Ping is ***, even on PC.

Tent

It seems to have gotten worse and is now affecting more people looking at the threads on the front page. I'd say faulty megaserver hardware but we still get the occasional "Everything is fine for me " people so it's hard to tell.

AnviOfVai

Something is happening with the servers on PS4, I have constantly got lag in PVP and have had it for the last 2 years, BUT I went back to play in the PVE world just for a little level boost, and I did not know which was more laggy. PVE or PVP. Never experienced the lag in ESO to this degree, I did report it to ESO Support, and they did reply and say they would look into it.

Vivic is just stupidly laggy you can't see each other, you can't attack each other, and when its zergging on both sides you are all running at each other and PAST each other because your both lagging so bad. Its funny but its not. Maps are not loading, textures are not loading, Cyrodiil now gives me a que to get into pvp of over 49 people. Granted I have been gone for a while and new players have appeared, however limiting the amount of campaigns did not help at all. The game is popular why limit the campaigns?!

Oh I ranted for a little excuse me, I must go drink tea and ponder.

AnviOfVai

theflawlessteabagger wrote: »

Tent wrote: »

I'm a big fan of the game. Played for a long while, on and off since the PC beta days. Playing on the PC was exactly what was to be expected; Low stable latency, high fps, higher graphic fidelity. However, recently I made the decision to ditch PC gaming and consolidate all my gaming onto the PS4 console. This meant buying ESO again but I was happy to do so because of the great experience I had had with it on PC.

I could not have been more disappointed or utterly confused.

Things like a lower graphic fidelity and occasional hitches in framerate were to be expected but were things I was prepared for and honestly don't bother me much. What I wasn't expecting was the horrific non-stop unstable latency. This didn't make any sense. It was the exact same internet my PC was utilizing yet the latency difference was night and day. I checked my PS4 and I was getting the exact speeds I expected, yet the connection to the ESO NA Megaserver was so unstable that it was near unplayable at all times. A rotation or priority system was out the window since everything had a 1.5-5 second lag. I couldn't avoid telegraphed attacks because by the time I saw them winding up the server side had already carried out the attack thus I would get hit instantly by one shot attacks. Simple tasks became a button smashing mini-game since the game would respond so slowly to looting, interacting with NPC's, even opening a menu would be lagged. Flabbergasted by this I waited. I had not experienced latency like this for years in any game. I thought maybe perhaps there was another issue. I checked all my other online games. No issues whatsoever, 30 or thereabouts ms on every game but Elder Scrolls Online which was hovering around a constant 300+ and shooting into the 1000's range and sometimes resulting in a sudden disconnect. After waiting the issue didn't abate, but only seemed to get worse.

Now I've been around the mmo world for over 11 years. I know the things to check when latency like this happens. But everything has been done that can be done on my end and all the evidence of connecting to other games and having no problems further leads me to believe that it's not my issue, but the servers issue. I know the steps Zenimax would tell me to take. Cycle the router, start troubleshooting connections on the PS4, open up ports, talk to my ISP...but according to the evidence I've gathered it's not my issue. Frankly I'm tired of the song and dance CS teams give when I know for a fact the issue is on their end. I'm not going to let you run me around for a month trying everything under the sun, staying on hold with my ISP to get some guy who tells me everything is perfect on my end and there's nothing they can do. I am so devastated that this is the experience that was waiting for me on the PS4 version of ESO. And apparently this isn't a new issue looking at the forums. This is something that has been around a long time but has been constantly deflected by Zenimax back at the player, insisting that the horrendous latency is somehow their fault, treating them like idiots.

So here's my answer to YOUR problem Zenimax. See what I did there? That $40 I was thinking of spending on Guilds and Glory--that's going directly to your competitor Square Enix and I'm buying Stormblood. And the extra $15 that might have gone to ESO+, that's going towards a subscription to Final Fantasy 14. You know why? Because that game has zero latency issues for me. You need to FIX your server issue. It IS your problem. You NEED to take steps into getting better hardware. And you know what, I'm willing to bet I'm not the first or the last that has been or will be driven directly to your competitor because of your inability to admit your own hardware issues.

Here's to hoping someday you get it together. Until then, Stormblood here I come.

-Tent

Another salty baby crying and greatly exaggerating on the forums ... whats new lol

I play eso daily and theres occasional lag but nothing to write about .

Grow up OP , theres more important issues for u to cry and moan about, like the state of the world . Rather than your highly exaggerated fable about console latency

randomkeyhits

Everyone treats the internet like its this one big well oiled machine that is normally smooth running.

The truth couldn't be further from the truth.

Its a chaotic hodge-podge of discrete interlinked networks where the word guaranteed is laughed at and "best endeavours" is considered the best you can hope for.

I'm not saying its the case but your ISP could be working perfectly, the hosting service ZOS uses could be working perfectly. One of the hops linking the two? not so much.

Tools like mtr on Linux or winping/winmtr for Windows can give you an idea of whether or not the routing for your connection is reasonable or if someone is playing silly beggars.

If I have problems I usually check I can reach other sites ok, use tools like mtr to see if I can reach the game servers ok and if all that checks out then I'll start blaming the game company.

Network routing issues are one of the main reasons why you get the big split between "I have no problems" compared to "can't connect for toffee" but you have to learn how to see them for what they are.

Tent

theflawlessteabagger wrote: »

Tent wrote: »

I'm a big fan of the game. Played for a long while, on and off since the PC beta days. Playing on the PC was exactly what was to be expected; Low stable latency, high fps, higher graphic fidelity. However, recently I made the decision to ditch PC gaming and consolidate all my gaming onto the PS4 console. This meant buying ESO again but I was happy to do so because of the great experience I had had with it on PC.

I could not have been more disappointed or utterly confused.

Things like a lower graphic fidelity and occasional hitches in framerate were to be expected but were things I was prepared for and honestly don't bother me much. What I wasn't expecting was the horrific non-stop unstable latency. This didn't make any sense. It was the exact same internet my PC was utilizing yet the latency difference was night and day. I checked my PS4 and I was getting the exact speeds I expected, yet the connection to the ESO NA Megaserver was so unstable that it was near unplayable at all times. A rotation or priority system was out the window since everything had a 1.5-5 second lag. I couldn't avoid telegraphed attacks because by the time I saw them winding up the server side had already carried out the attack thus I would get hit instantly by one shot attacks. Simple tasks became a button smashing mini-game since the game would respond so slowly to looting, interacting with NPC's, even opening a menu would be lagged. Flabbergasted by this I waited. I had not experienced latency like this for years in any game. I thought maybe perhaps there was another issue. I checked all my other online games. No issues whatsoever, 30 or thereabouts ms on every game but Elder Scrolls Online which was hovering around a constant 300+ and shooting into the 1000's range and sometimes resulting in a sudden disconnect. After waiting the issue didn't abate, but only seemed to get worse.

Now I've been around the mmo world for over 11 years. I know the things to check when latency like this happens. But everything has been done that can be done on my end and all the evidence of connecting to other games and having no problems further leads me to believe that it's not my issue, but the servers issue. I know the steps Zenimax would tell me to take. Cycle the router, start troubleshooting connections on the PS4, open up ports, talk to my ISP...but according to the evidence I've gathered it's not my issue. Frankly I'm tired of the song and dance CS teams give when I know for a fact the issue is on their end. I'm not going to let you run me around for a month trying everything under the sun, staying on hold with my ISP to get some guy who tells me everything is perfect on my end and there's nothing they can do. I am so devastated that this is the experience that was waiting for me on the PS4 version of ESO. And apparently this isn't a new issue looking at the forums. This is something that has been around a long time but has been constantly deflected by Zenimax back at the player, insisting that the horrendous latency is somehow their fault, treating them like idiots.

So here's my answer to YOUR problem Zenimax. See what I did there? That $40 I was thinking of spending on Guilds and Glory--that's going directly to your competitor Square Enix and I'm buying Stormblood. And the extra $15 that might have gone to ESO+, that's going towards a subscription to Final Fantasy 14. You know why? Because that game has zero latency issues for me. You need to FIX your server issue. It IS your problem. You NEED to take steps into getting better hardware. And you know what, I'm willing to bet I'm not the first or the last that has been or will be driven directly to your competitor because of your inability to admit your own hardware issues.

Here's to hoping someday you get it together. Until then, Stormblood here I come.

-Tent

Another salty baby crying and greatly exaggerating on the forums ... whats new lol

I play eso daily and theres occasional lag but nothing to write about .

Grow up OP , theres more important issues for u to cry and moan about, like the state of the world . Rather than your highly exaggerated fable about console latency

I'm curious as to what you think about the hundreds of other posts and multiple threads confirming my claim then.

I'm sure it's very insightful.