Servers lagging really bad for almost everyone, what's going on?

ecru

Everyone in my raid is at 200-250ms (from NA) and spiking to 600, what's going on ZOS?

kromegas

I was wondering the same thing. That was last week on my Xbox one sl wireless connection. The lag was terrible! Here is what I have done in the past week and now experience very limited/ no lag.

1. Upgrade to an Xbox one X. Even with this change, I was still experiencing issues.
2. Upgraded to an SSD on the Xbox one X. Gave me faster loading times, but still experiened some lag.
3. Ran a 100 foot Ethernet cord across the house and found a way to hide it so the wife didn't notice- this was the holy grail of ending lag.

I know your situation may be completely different, and i am not here advocating for you to go out any buy anew system- but was more so advocating for the WIRED connection. This, in my opinion is the biggest thing you can do to limit your lag.

Rohamad_Ali

New patch = more returning players = more server load on already weak servers . It's the same on all platforms for a few weeks or more . ZoS needs stronger megaservers . The game didn't start with 2 million active players . Time to upgrade .

Avrael

Time to upgrade since release. They wont upgrade, ever. If they wanted to, they would have done it, they already had 200 chances.

Thogard

server spends a lot of resources telling your client what other people's characters look like.

Now every character has like 2x or 3x more appearances that have to load.

server strain.. increased.

Rohamad_Ali

Avrael wrote: »

Time to upgrade since release. They wont upgrade, ever. If they wanted to, they would have done it, they already had 200 chances.

They did replace the Xbox megaservers once after it broke lol . But you are still correct , they've had millions of complaints and nothing note worthy accomplished yet .

ecru

Looks like the lag was related to the raid instance my guild was in, switching to a different trial fixed the lag for everyone. Hope this isn't something that can be expected int the future.

Rohamad_Ali

ecru wrote: »

Looks like the lag was related to the raid instance my guild was in, switching to a different trial fixed the lag for everyone. Hope this isn't something that can be expected int the future.

The megaservers use instances that are like mini servers in a server to control server load . You can always try logging out or entering a new dungeon to be moved into a less strained instance . Sometimes it works , sometimes it's crowded everywhere . Pvp suffers the most because everyone has to be in the same instance to engage one another .

ecru

Rohamad_Ali wrote: »

ecru wrote: »

Looks like the lag was related to the raid instance my guild was in, switching to a different trial fixed the lag for everyone. Hope this isn't something that can be expected int the future.

The megaservers use instances that are like mini servers in a server to control server load . You can always try logging out or entering a new dungeon to be moved into a less strained instance . Sometimes it works , sometimes it's crowded everywhere . Pvp suffers the most because everyone has to be in the same instance to engage one another .

Yeah I have "fond" memories of resetting instances and reforming raids constantly to get one that doesn't lag really bad in another game, this is the first time in ESO though.

Tasear

It's the patch... but it's not even be weekend yet

XiDiabolismiX

I really don't think the lag on consoles is necessarily all ZOS's fault. PC doesn't see lag hardly at all unless it's on users end. The only thing separating pc from console is the gateway to the servers.

Pc's can connect straight through to ZOS servers without hardly being rerouted at all. I think it's Sony and Microsofts fault, throttling and bottle-necking the flow of traffic to the servers. Everything you do on console goes through certain gateways in place from the manufacturers.

A combination of the above and the power of the consoles not being able to keep up with the processes of this massive game create this horrible lag.

Anotherone773

XiDiabolismiX wrote: »

I really don't think the lag on consoles is necessarily all ZOS's fault. PC doesn't see lag hardly at all unless it's on users end. The only thing separating pc from console is the gateway to the servers.

Pc's can connect straight through to ZOS servers without hardly being rerouted at all. I think it's Sony and Microsofts fault, throttling and bottle-necking the flow of traffic to the servers. Everything you do on console goes through certain gateways in place from the manufacturers.

A combination of the above and the power of the consoles not being able to keep up with the processes of this massive game create this horrible lag.

You would be incorrect. Since im on PC, i can diagnose where the problems are. it definitely on their end. Im in the Midwest US. I ping 30-35 ms to the east coast and 35-40 ms to the west coast. I ping to ZOS servers at 115-150 ms when all is good. I get random lag spikes even off peak( dead of night US time) ranging from 250 ms to 600 ms. Sometimes it exceeds 999. It may be this way for a few seconds or a few minutes. I noticed the problem sometime in mid to end of january.

At the same time i started getting random FPS drops. Previously i was running 80-100 FPS in most places and 60-80 under heavy loads. I rarely go above 90 now unless im standing in the middle of nowhere doing nothing. Average now is 70-90 under normal loads and 50-70 under heavy loads but i had to turn down my graphics to get these numbers. They were far worse at my old settings. Additionally, i get random FPS drops that go below 30 regularly. Sometimes it will drop into the single digits briefly. It does this even when the graphics load is light .

Thogard

PC has been lagging really bad.

Ping stays low as usual.

Lag is in server processing, not data transfer

XiDiabolismiX

Anotherone773 wrote: »

XiDiabolismiX wrote: »

I really don't think the lag on consoles is necessarily all ZOS's fault. PC doesn't see lag hardly at all unless it's on users end. The only thing separating pc from console is the gateway to the servers.

Pc's can connect straight through to ZOS servers without hardly being rerouted at all. I think it's Sony and Microsofts fault, throttling and bottle-necking the flow of traffic to the servers. Everything you do on console goes through certain gateways in place from the manufacturers.

A combination of the above and the power of the consoles not being able to keep up with the processes of this massive game create this horrible lag.

You would be incorrect. Since im on PC, i can diagnose where the problems are. it definitely on their end. Im in the Midwest US. I ping 30-35 ms to the east coast and 35-40 ms to the west coast. I ping to ZOS servers at 115-150 ms when all is good. I get random lag spikes even off peak( dead of night US time) ranging from 250 ms to 600 ms. Sometimes it exceeds 999. It may be this way for a few seconds or a few minutes. I noticed the problem sometime in mid to end of january.

At the same time i started getting random FPS drops. Previously i was running 80-100 FPS in most places and 60-80 under heavy loads. I rarely go above 90 now unless im standing in the middle of nowhere doing nothing. Average now is 70-90 under normal loads and 50-70 under heavy loads but i had to turn down my graphics to get these numbers. They were far worse at my old settings. Additionally, i get random FPS drops that go below 30 regularly. Sometimes it will drop into the single digits briefly. It does this even when the graphics load is light .

Lol, that sounds like a dream for console players. I've watched the videos of pc play and it's smooth as butter compared to the crap consoles players go through.

You don't know true lag until you've had to recast a skill 5 times in a row because it doesn't register while playing at the lowest possible settings. Lag to pc players is minor fps drops, lag to consoles is death.

Palidon

Whats going on. Ask the professionals at ZOS.

greylox

The bar swap lag is killing me, long load screens I can live with cos it gives me time to roll a doob or get a beer.

runagate

Palidon wrote: »

Whats going on. Ask the professionals at ZOS.

https://www.glassdoor.com/job-listing/server-engineer-zenimax-media-JV_IC1139761_KO0,15_KE16,29.htm?jl=2551861717

UnseenCat

Just a thought... perhaps the servers have been patched for the Spectre/Meltdown bug. There's plenty of conclusive proof that performance of servers of all kinds is heavily impacted by the necessary patches (lots more so than desktop computers, due to the kind of work that servers do vs. desktops). Server admins everywhere have to decide if security or performance is more important -- and more and more often, security is the only choice. So you take the performance hit until you can add more servers to make up for the permanent performance loss. Unfortunately, adding servers isn't as simple as just plugging them in and loading software -- especially with custom applications.

So, if ZOS has patched for Spectre/Meltdown (which is probably advisable, because we players would be rather peeved if the bug were ever exploited and our information was compromised...) the servers will take a performance hit, and adding servers to compensate will take time to ensure that the server-side application is configured to utilize them properly. Adding server capacity is a non-trivial task. Buying and installing server hardware is easy. Configuring an application to run on all of them and add them seamlessly to the existing cluster is a good bit trickier.

The conspiracy theorist in me wonders if the recent Steam logon problem could be related. My wife had the problem, and was talking to me while she was actively engaged with ZOS support in the Twitter stream during troubleshooting. From what she described to me, it sounded like problems routing the login/authentication traffic and they were pinning down where it went off the rails. One potential problem could be with routing failing to update if the server cluster changed in any way, depending on the architecture. (In server ops and networking, even a simple change for the better can go terribly wrong and wreck your day...) On the other hand, it could just as easily be totally unrelated. (Kudos to ZOS though, she said they were very helpful and communicated will with her and others as they gathered configuration and log information to work on the problem.)

Vahrokh

XiDiabolismiX wrote: »

Pc's can connect straight through to ZOS servers without hardly being rerouted at all. I think it's Sony and Microsofts fault, throttling and bottle-necking the flow of traffic to the servers. Everything you do on console goes through certain gateways in place from the manufacturers.

A combination of the above and the power of the consoles not being able to keep up with the processes of this massive game create this horrible lag.

It's not Sony or Microsoft fault if they have to throttle badly designed, abusively abundant network traffic that overloads what's an healthy bandwidth quota for other games.