ZOS - We need a statement about servers

Casterial

As the title states,

Many of us that play in Cyrodiil on the daily are having horrendous issues and yet to hear any real feedback from any dev or even a mod...
Cyrodiil is on the verge of near unplayable, the servers are either disconnecting random players or the servers are just completely lag ridden. or Lag Ridden Thread(Main) Currently the lag is actually worse than our PING truly states.

-> Another server lag thread

Honestly its not just Cyrodiil at this point, this can be a general server thread about issues everywhere because even in Rawl my PING is sitting at 100, but it spikes to 120-130, sometimes 150.

I wont say anything needs to be done because that is the devs job to track down and fix issues. But will we be getting new servers, or will you be looking into the issue?

There are hundreds of PVP threads of people complaining about this issue and most, if not all of the threads "Z" responses are "We have removed..blabla...copy/paste" Instead of talking about the issue or taking part in the community.

Example:
175 ping - 1 second delay
200 ping - 2 second delay
250 ping - 2.5-3 second delay
etc... But sometimes this delay is multiplied by 3 or even 4 its horrible.

Before Summerset ping: 70-85, spikes to 120
After Summerset; average 100 even out of pvp.
I'm in California 350mb/s down, 30mb/s down internet speed.
My computer is hard wired, and my computer specs are no where near trash... Its to the point of where I can confirm its your end and not mine. I've even tried disabling addons to and played without addons... It did not help with the PING.


To those who will say "don't zerg" I don't zerg, I run on the side lines and often ahead of, or in different areas of the zerg but still get affected and pray to RNG that the other player gets the lag spike and not me so I can win. As a PVP player I really want to hear a response from ZOS about the recent increase in lag, not FPS but PING.




We have had a direct response related to the stuttering, which to be honest is no longer as present as the server issue.

ZOS_AlexTardif wrote:

Thanks everyone for the information! The stutter many of you are experiencing now is new with this patch. With the info and videos you have supplied, we've been able to track down the sources of these and are currently working on fixes that we'll get out as soon as possible. We've also discovered that if you have Game Mode turned on (Windows 10 users), it can significantly negatively impact the performance of the game with the Summerset patch, so it's worth double-checking if you have that enabled.

Additionally, when customer support recommends disabling your addons to help with framerate issues, that's not a blind recommendation. In practice through performance analysis...………………..

I'm sorry in all my years of playing this is one of the more unplayable states. I use to play when ping averaged 1k, but heck it was playable everything was on the client then!

Casterial

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Wrobel

Androconium

I don't even attempt cyrodiil play.
My ping is 417. I'd really like 250....

Finding it hard to see your problem.

Bam_Bam

The much-hyped server improvements - what happened to them? When Summerset went live there was a definite improvement but since the first patch performance has been worse than ever.

Bam_Bam

Androconium wrote: »

I don't even attempt cyrodiil play.
My ping is 417. I'd really like 250....

Finding it hard to see your problem.

Upgrade your gear or connection then.

Ectheliontnacil

2 months ago I spent over 90% of my in game time pvping in Cyrodiil. Now I've barely set foot in there since Summerset early access.

Performance for me has been awful. Screen freezes and truly horrendous latency. I don't enjoy BGs much since I don't like the map/gamemode design and I prefer to play solo. As a result I find myself doing trials and otherwise slowly quitting the game. If you take away pvp, I run out of content that I enjoy.

Gnozo

The current state of the pvp Performance is more then pathetic. I work until 5pm And can start playing at like 6pm. At this point cyro is unplayable if u try to be competetive. As soon as u face more then 2 players its pure Stress to fight cause ur biggest enemy is the delay in everything. Dodge roll cancel vigor Not Working, skills need 2-3 seconds longer to unlock after cc break or dodge roll, targets move out of skill range cause the server needs so long to calculate and while this time my target is out of range.

Even when u are in a 1v1 its just impossible. I was on my mdk and trying to flame lash my target. I tried this for 30 seconds and my char was just "dancing" trying to lash but then stop in the middle of the animation. I wasnt able to land 1 hit on him. This is completly pathetic and zenimax doesnt care. They just dont care. See the Updates we get. Only pve questing dungeons and stuff. They just dont care about pvp Performance/Latency/Balance . And this is really sad cause without this horrifying lag it would be easy the best pvp MMORPG out There.

Vapirko

I’d like to see the fixes come as much or more than the next person, but we’ve been asking for some hard info for years, and they’ve never, ever risen to the challenge. They have always made vague promises that, “they’re looking into it,” or whatever. Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t, but one thing for sure is it never really gets better, and we have to assume that at this point the effort they’ve put into it, and what’s amounted from that effort, is as good as it’s gonna get. That’s no consolation at all and it’s not meant to be, just the truth as derived from years of watching the patches go by with no real or lasting changes.

Bam_Bam

Vapirko wrote: »

I’d like to see the fixes come as much or more than the next person, but we’ve been asking for some hard info for years, and they’ve never, ever risen to the challenge. They have always made vague promises that, “they’re looking into it,” or whatever. Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t, but one thing for sure is it never really gets better, and we have to assume that at this point the effort they’ve put into it, and what’s amounted from that effort, is as good as it’s gonna get. That’s no consolation at all and it’s not meant to be, just the truth as derived from years of watching the patches go by with no real or lasting changes.

I honestly believe they don't know what they are doing. 4.5 years to figure out the problems and implement solutions? I'd be sacked if it took me that long to fix something in my own job.

Vapirko

Bam_Bam wrote: »

Vapirko wrote: »

I’d like to see the fixes come as much or more than the next person, but we’ve been asking for some hard info for years, and they’ve never, ever risen to the challenge. They have always made vague promises that, “they’re looking into it,” or whatever. Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t, but one thing for sure is it never really gets better, and we have to assume that at this point the effort they’ve put into it, and what’s amounted from that effort, is as good as it’s gonna get. That’s no consolation at all and it’s not meant to be, just the truth as derived from years of watching the patches go by with no real or lasting changes.

I honestly believe they don't know what they are doing. 4.5 years to figure out the problems and implement solutions? I'd be sacked if it took me that long to fix something in my own job.

Absolutely, it’s been smoke and mirrors for a long time.

Lifecode666

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Wrobel

This is the most important issue since release.
Thousands upon thousands of people left the game because of this.

This is why this game is not bigger than WOW, and now it is to late.

I have no words on how frustraiting this is.

It's like watching someone been given the key to success, but refuse to pick it up, because standing there watching seems like a better idea.

NORWAY, EU.

BaneOfBattler

Casterial wrote: »

As the title states,

Many of us that play in Cyrodiil on the daily are having horrendous issues and yet to hear any real feedback from any dev or even a mod...
Cyrodiil is on the verge of near unplayable, the servers are either disconnecting random players or the servers are just completely lag ridden. or Lag Ridden Thread(Main) Currently the lag is actually worse than our PING truly states.

-> Another server lag thread

Honestly its not just Cyrodiil at this point, this can be a general server thread about issues everywhere because even in Rawl my PING is sitting at 100, but it spikes to 120-130, sometimes 150.

I wont say anything needs to be done because that is the devs job to track down and fix issues. But will we be getting new servers, or will you be looking into the issue?

There are hundreds of PVP threads of people complaining about this issue and most, if not all of the threads "Z" responses are "We have removed..blabla...copy/paste" Instead of talking about the issue or taking part in the community.

Example:
175 ping - 1 second delay
200 ping - 2 second delay
250 ping - 2.5-3 second delay
etc... But sometimes this delay is multiplied by 3 or even 4 its horrible.

Before Summerset ping: 70-85, spikes to 120
After Summerset; average 100 even out of pvp.
I'm in California 350mb/s down, 30mb/s down internet speed.
My computer is hard wired, and my computer specs are no where near trash... Its to the point of where I can confirm its your end and not mine. I've even tried disabling addons to and played without addons... It did not help with the PING.


To those who will say "don't zerg" I don't zerg, I run on the side lines and often ahead of, or in different areas of the zerg but still get affected and pray to RNG that the other player gets the lag spike and not me so I can win. As a PVP player I really want to hear a response from ZOS about the recent increase in lag, not FPS but PING.




We have had a direct response related to the stuttering, which to be honest is no longer as present as the server issue.

ZOS_AlexTardif wrote:

Thanks everyone for the information! The stutter many of you are experiencing now is new with this patch. With the info and videos you have supplied, we've been able to track down the sources of these and are currently working on fixes that we'll get out as soon as possible. We've also discovered that if you have Game Mode turned on (Windows 10 users), it can significantly negatively impact the performance of the game with the Summerset patch, so it's worth double-checking if you have that enabled.

Additionally, when customer support recommends disabling your addons to help with framerate issues, that's not a blind recommendation. In practice through performance analysis...………………..

I'm sorry in all my years of playing this is one of the more unplayable states. I use to play when ping averaged 1k, but heck it was playable everything was on the client then!

have you tried turning it off and on?

Preyfar

Servers aren't supposed to have a lag of 100ms but act like it's 999+?

Jameliel

It's bad...crazy how they won't even acknowledge it.

Mayrael

Yeah the issue is real. In prime time when there are hundreds of players around its literally unplayable. Breaking out off CC in time is almost impossible. Roll dodging or shielding in time - impossible. When you play light/medium armour and you relay on speed, reflexes and timing not on high damage mitigation you're gonna be screwed.

Not to mention no animations for some skills - nothing happens, I get cc'ed out of nowhere, try to break free, nothing happens and suddenly dead. On death recap poison arrow, endless fury, frags and meteor.

And this freaking stagger from NPC guards. I get stunned, I break free but still my toon acts like it was drunk, untill I can do anything 2s passes.

LadyDestiny

Yeah it's a problem, but I am getting random disconnects everywhere. Used to be wrothgar, vivec, cyrodiil if course, but now it's anywhere. Standing in the middle of nowhere doing absolutely nothing.....dc. Changing characters.....dc. Loading....dc. well on and on.....Cyrodiil is just awful. This is why I hate when they tie up a particular item or resource for crafting in pvp. Force us to play the mess they can't fix because we need said item to research, craft or upgrade. Good going Zos.....

DanteYoda

Just left Greenshades and trying to enter Malabal Tor endless loading screen.. I must press my keyboard keys multiple times to get my skills to work funnily i get cooldowns but no skill goes off until i press my key three times..


This is all pve as well in NA server.. My ping says 268 but then jumps to 668...




Pretty much ready to give up tbh ever since this garbage Summerset chapter appeared my game is unplayable.. Its been weeks like this and i'm getting done.. if they can't even fix their garbage why should i throw money at them or even play..

Might go back to Battletech tbh.. Worst run game i've ever dealt with this is..

Casterial

Androconium wrote: »

I don't even attempt cyrodiil play.
My ping is 417. I'd really like 250....
Finding it hard to see your problem.

Either you're not near NA at all, or you have bad internet.

BaneOfBattler wrote: »

have you tried turning it off and on?

Man I've even uninstalled!D: Bloatware wont go away!

Jameliel wrote: »

It's bad...crazy how they won't even acknowledge it.

I completely agree, they just won't give us any anyswer or even agree its an issue. If anything they'll say its the zerging but Cyrodiil population has been cut from 750, to 500, to 150 or even less... Its not the zergs now.

Preyfar wrote: »

Servers aren't supposed to have a lag of 100ms but act like it's 999+?

Its bad because I feel like the ping is multiplied by x3-4 all the time now

Mayrael wrote: »

Yeah the issue is real. In prime time when there are hundreds of players around its literally unplayable. Breaking out off CC in time is almost impossible. Roll dodging or shielding in time - impossible. When you play light/medium armour and you relay on speed, reflexes and timing not on high damage mitigation you're gonna be screwed.
.

Agreed, this is a major issue. We can also talk about the double CC break from knock backs. For example I'll break Dizzying Swing mid-air and my character will just stand frozen until I break free again consuming double the stamina for one CC skill I just learned to basically sell my soul and play at night, and its funny because sometimes then its also unplayable. *Places siege*…..Ping 500.

Lifecode666 wrote: »

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Wrobel
I have no words on how frustraiting this is.

Its weird because ESO has been in the top 5 for PVP MMOs for 4 years running while its PVE has been eh. Honestly its time to focus on PVP because with ES6 coming out in 2-4 years no one will want to PVE... They have the real game for it. I don't know whats going through their mind but I do hope they take acknowledge to this issue and hopefully let us know they'll be pouring resources into fixing this, or even re-looking at their architecture. I recently read that its their own engine:

This Article is very nice on words from the devs before launch bragging about making their own engine...

Yet they have no power to fix this before it even gets worse?

Cities are dying down (even though theres phases, lets be honest they're dying look at zone chat.)

Ectheliontnacil wrote: »

2 months ago I spent over 90% of my in game time pvping in Cyrodiil. Now I've barely set foot in there since Summerset early access.

I came back recently expecting to have fun after a long break and was devastated by the state of the servers and I just want answers...I agree I actually started doing PVE content to avoid the lag, but sometimes even spike there lol.

Vapirko wrote: »

I’d like to see the fixes come as much or more than the next person, but we’ve been asking for some hard info for years, and they’ve never, ever risen to the challenge.

@Vapirko check out the article I linked above you'll laugh. They brag about having the power in their hand by making their own engine! Lol

Gnozo wrote: »

Even when u are in a 1v1 its just impossible. I was on my mdk and trying to flame lash my target. I tried this for 30 seconds and my char was just "dancing" trying to lash but then stop in the middle of the animation..

Oi, also don't forget sometimes it uses your resources but doesn't even go off now days!

Bam_Bam wrote: »

The much-hyped server improvements - what happened to them? When Summerset went live there was a definite improvement but since the first patch performance has been worse than ever.

I agree, they either should constantly, and I mean constantly over test their game to ensure these bugs don't go live... or just don't do them.. I doubt they even smoke tested the game or anything.. Maybe? I have no clue how their testing procedures are, but they don't read the player feedback on PTR? I don't know actually maybe they do, maybe they don't but player feedback is most important.

I want an official answer already...

Casterial

DanteYoda wrote: »

This is all pve as well in NA server.. My ping says 268 but then jumps to 668...

I just sometimes AFK in my OWN house and spike to 700+ lol...I don't understand anymore.

Vapirko

Casterial wrote: »

DanteYoda wrote: »

This is all pve as well in NA server.. My ping says 268 but then jumps to 668...

I just sometimes AFK in my OWN house and spike to 700+ lol...I don't understand anymore.

Question, where do you play from and on what server?

Casterial

Vapirko wrote: »

Casterial wrote: »

DanteYoda wrote: »

This is all pve as well in NA server.. My ping says 268 but then jumps to 668...

I just sometimes AFK in my OWN house and spike to 700+ lol...I don't understand anymore.

Question, where do you play from and on what server?

NA, California. Silicon Valley.

DanteYoda

Casterial wrote: »

DanteYoda wrote: »

This is all pve as well in NA server.. My ping says 268 but then jumps to 668...

I just sometimes AFK in my OWN house and spike to 700+ lol...I don't understand anymore.

I don't think its all ping, i think theres some sort of server side dsync as well, even in bad ping skills should fire.. mine are doing nothing and i'm still getting cooldowns.. so the server is sensing i'm pressing buttons just nothings happening.

I really think its got to do with what ever they changed with heavy and light attacking since summerset, ever since they "fixed" that the servers have been bananas...

Casterial

DanteYoda wrote: »

Casterial wrote: »

DanteYoda wrote: »

This is all pve as well in NA server.. My ping says 268 but then jumps to 668...

I just sometimes AFK in my OWN house and spike to 700+ lol...I don't understand anymore.

I don't think its all ping, i think theres some sort of server side dsync as well, even in bad ping skills should fire.. mine are doing nothing and i'm still getting cooldowns..

Agreed! The architecture is definitely having some server handling issues that's causing a desync or something.

Vapirko

Casterial wrote: »

Vapirko wrote: »

Casterial wrote: »

DanteYoda wrote: »

This is all pve as well in NA server.. My ping says 268 but then jumps to 668...

I just sometimes AFK in my OWN house and spike to 700+ lol...I don't understand anymore.

Question, where do you play from and on what server?

NA, California. Silicon Valley.

Oh damn, idk can’t help ya lol. There may be at least some optimization you can do on your end? I really don’t know but I play on NA from Thailand and normally don’t go past 350 ping. Bad days I get the 700-999 yes but it’s not normalz

Casterial

Vapirko wrote: »

Casterial wrote: »

Vapirko wrote: »

Casterial wrote: »

DanteYoda wrote: »

This is all pve as well in NA server.. My ping says 268 but then jumps to 668...

I just sometimes AFK in my OWN house and spike to 700+ lol...I don't understand anymore.

Question, where do you play from and on what server?

NA, California. Silicon Valley.

Oh damn, idk can’t help ya lol. There may be at least some optimization you can do on your end? I really don’t know but I play on NA from Thailand and normally don’t go past 350 ping. Bad days I get the 700-999 yes but it’s not normalz

M.2 250GB Drive(ESO here)
500GB SSD
2TB HDD
32GB 3200MHz RAM
1070
I7 6800k, 4GHz 6core
350MB/s Download, 30MB/S Upload....(Hardwired)

Theres nothing I can do.

I just added this forum to my signature to hope I get an answer from ZOS

Sweetare

Did only PvP from friday to sunday. Almost no issues, sometimes the usual "skills wont fire" lag. But I could actually enjoy Cyro.
Monday afternoon... log in with my friend to do some PvP... we had to quit 30 mins later. 100 ms latency always spiking to 500+ ms, skills constantly not firing, skills hitting you all at the same time, break free not working. It was like this for both of us and we live in different countries.
A lot of people complaining in guild chat that were having the same issues even outside Cyrodiil. Its been like this since Monday, gets worse at prime time.

On the other hand, they do seem to have fixed a lot of the FPS issues. The game runs pretty darn smooth now, even with lots of fighting going on.

Edit: I play from Germany, like 100km away from the Frankfurt servers. My friend plays from holland. EU/PC Server.

Casterial

Sweetare wrote: »

Monday afternoon... log in with my friend to do some PvP... we had to quit 30 mins later. 100 ms latency always spiking to ***500+ ms, skills constantly not firing, skills hitting you all at the same time, break free not working. It was like this for both of us and we live in different countries.
***On the other hand, they do seem to have fixed a lot of the FPS issues. The game runs pretty darn smooth now, even with lots of fighting going on.

These two points, yes! I noticed the performance is insanely good I never drop below 50FPS in large zerg v zerg fights now... However the ping is just... its awful. It can't be entirely ping.

DanteYoda

I'm brisbane Aus to PCNA

Core i5 2500 3.3ghz
16gb ram
GTX 1060 6gb

I just want to say before summerset my game ran very good considering i'm from AUS

shaielzafine

It's definitely not just Cyrodiil. After months of infinite loading screens, extreme skill lag, general lag, game crashes, it's worse in general in overland doing writs & pve as well - getting lag spikes during trials, dungeons & even maelstrom arena! This is all on top of the regular bugs that were there already

Bonzodog01

A LOT of the lag is being caused by the proc sets that ZOS keep on introducing to the game. Remove them and it will reduce the problem greatly. This incudes monster sets that work off procs. And that would reduce the lag by roughly half.

Part of the reason the game went multi-core was because of the dogged insistence by someone in upper management that they keep putting these sets in game, but the single thread engine was not going to be able to handle it.

The problem they are now facing is that the multi-thread is an adaption to the old single thread engine. A good multi-thread engine would need to be coded from the ground out, and even now, in the world of MMO's, multi-thread engines are like gold-dust.

jcm2606

While my connection to the servers in general is just bad (Australian, with *** internet, and a household full of "moderate" users to top it all off), I can definitely tell that the servers have gotten worse. 2 years ago when I first joined the game my ping was always around 250-300, closer to 250. Now it hovers around 300-350 on average, with ping spiking whenever entering combat (before anybody says "maybe it's your connection", my group/guild mates who live in North America even feel the lag setting in the exact moment I do, so unless it's something with Akami's network slowing everyone's traffic, it has to be the servers).

At this point I'm both concerned and convinced that it isn't as simple as adding more servers; rather, the server-sided engine just isn't equipped for what the game has become. Looking back at threads 3+ years ago, it seemed that a lot of the computation was performed on the player's client, which meant that the servers / server-sided engine didn't have to deal with much. But obviously this made hacking possible, so Zenimax slowly started moving a lot of the computation over to the servers, increasing the load on them and the server-sided engine. If this is the case, this probably won't be fixed by simply throwing more servers at the game, especially in group-oriented zones/instances like Cyrodiil. It would probably require outright rewriting, or worse, redesigning the entire engine, both client and server. Which would effectively kill the game.

This may be why Zenimax is so quiet. If this is the case, they probably already know that there's nothing they can do short of redesigning the engine, and so don't want to admit it. Even if that was the case, simply giving us something would be better than the effective silence we get now.

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Wrobel Maybe bring this up at some point? At least suggest that the team behind the engine itself, or wherever you guys think the think is, should let the community know what you guys think the problem is. Again, simply guessing on the cause, or outright stating the cause, is better than the effective silence we have now.

Also, for the record @Casterial, 150 ping isn't a 1 second delay. 1ms = 1/1000th of a second, so 150 ping is 0.15 seconds. I should know, I am forced to play the game at ~300 ping.