PS4 Performance & Stability (PvE)

Paha_Vaatturi · February 2018

Clockwork City patch (1.29) introduced performance improvements, but these were reverted in the next update (1.30). This happened ~2,5 months ago. I hope that Zenimax isn't saving the improvement for Chapter 2 for PR purposes.

Technical disclaimer: Our Trial groups are playing with both PS4's and PS4 Pro's, so these problems exist on both. Latency from Finland to Germany shouldn't be a problem either. Also, my PS4 has its own public ip address that is not shared with any other device (Open NAT.) Please do not tell us to restart our routers or do any other obvious fixes such as initializing the PS4. We have tried everything.

I know PvP has its problems, but I have to say that PvE isn't doing that great either. I've seen "Vivec-like" performance in a trial. I don't know how large percent of the player base is playing Veteran Trials, but I assume that poor performance doesn't help if an active trials community is in the interest of the developer/publisher...

Our guild has two Trial groups; one is finessing vMoL time and completing vHoF, another is made out of newcomers who are still learning how to master vAA and vHRC. The latter has already lost players because they can't cope with the intense lag and unstability. It took months to find enough patient players for the first group.

Low framerates. FPS is really, really low in some content e.g. Rakkhat.
Boss doesn't spawn after wipe This has only happened in vHRC, but makes it harder to practice, when you are not allowed to wipe.
Lag after wipe. This seems to be the worst in Twins, but also exists in vHoF. The command /reloadui doesn't help nor does travelling to another player in the trial; restarting the game does. Practicing to play a trial is pain in the youknowwhat when players have to constantly keep on restarting the game.
Random crashes. Trials tend to get a fair amount of crashes. We haven't found any pattern to this; this affects all players in our guild in random.
vDSA issues. Low framerate and random crashes seem to exist in vDSA too.
Ability does not activate. The lag can get so intense that one cannot change the ability bar, an ability doesn't activate when pressed, or light attack turns into heavy attack without asking. The heavy attack happens most often with the lightning staff.

What improvements would I want to see? Here are some suggestions:

Low graph mode. A toggle that would allow one to change the graphics quality to 'I may have seen this texture quality in 1990s'. If you are afraid of bad PR, then prevent streaming/recording when that mode is toggled on.
Option to transfer the account to PC. When I started ESO, I had only one PC in my household. Now me and my gf could play on PC; I just can't be bothered to do all the research, levelling, vMA farm, vDSA farm, crown crate mounts, trials farm etc. from scratch. I would instantly swap to PC if I could transfer my progress to that platform.
Update the game engine. PS4 Pro is a fairly powerful machine; why now use the power by optimizing the game slightly better? The CwC update was really promising (other than the unfortunate loading screen problem.)
Pots. This might seem a bit surprising addition to the list, but practicing trials drains the potion supplies. Cornflower is currently around 150k gold per stack, and the other two (Lady's Smock and Water Hyacinth) aren't cheap either, which causes than playing in a trial cost around 30k per hour as a magicka character. Stamina fellows have a similar but slightly lower hour price. Maybe increase the amount flowers gained by doing the crafting writs? Add more PvP campaigns so that farming Tel Var is a bit easier? Give more plunder skulls per boss? Scale the alchemy passives so that one click produces 8 or 16 potions? Add an undaunted merchant who will sell potions for undaunted keys? Add a merchant to Trial entrance that will sell cheap(ish) potions that can ONLY be used in vet trials? Or maybe the last boss on Vet mode would drop these potions? Even the slightest change to this would help. I want to spend more time playing/practicing challenging content than perform brainless farming/grinding.

Paha_Vaatturi · February 2018

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLv0d1Ww2y8

Some glitches on our vHoF run:

Couldn't move at some point
Was stuck at blocking at some point
Top-floor shock-laser-thingy was turning on and off
Got stuck doing heavy/medium attack constantly
Synergy mechanic didn't work
Boss couldn't be targeted
The add's steam ability didn't do damage
...and the team had to restart the game before even getting this far.
...and the voice chat was full of cursing.
...and no, we didn't want to continue.

It isn't always this bad; today the PC servers are having some issues which seems to reflect on the PS4 server performance. Nevertheless, this was just a waste of my potions and my time (as well as the other 11 players'.)

To stay positive.. at least the sounds were mostly working. They are just muted on the video (on purpose.)