July 6 - Update on Recent Issues (Stability, Steam, Motifs, Daily Rewards)

TazESO

What do I think? I think the devs today are not the ones who wrote most of the code. Working on others’ code, especially poorly documented code, is very difficult for the novice. Good programmers are very expensive, despite what the CFOs think. The current devs keep breaking stuff not because they want to, it’s because they don’t know have a complete understanding of what the code does and/or it’s colliding with today’s devops mentality of pushing code to production without the QA we used to expect. It’s not going to get better, sadly.

Good luck ZOS,and we appreciate what you can do to help.

Oh, and much thanks Gina and Jessica, I’m sorry you are caught up in this, I know you are just doing your job.

And yes, I hope I’m wrong. I’m not. 30 years in IT, saddened at the current state. But we have gotten very good at making shiny, often useful things as long as they make $$$$$. Just don’t expect it to work right the first time it’s available in production.

BigBragg

I really hope these planned fixes help. Just spent an hour and a half in Cyrodiil. I signed up for DC thinking that was for Daggerfall Covenant... I was wrong, it was for the 4 disconnects I experienced in that short time.

Elsonso

TazESO wrote: »

What do I think? I think the devs today are not the ones who wrote most of the code. Working on others’ code, especially poorly documented code, is very difficult for the novice. Good programmers are very expensive, despite what the CFOs think. The current devs keep breaking stuff not because they want to, it’s because they don’t know have a complete understanding of what the code does and/or it’s colliding with today’s devops mentality of pushing code to production without the QA we used to expect. It’s not going to get better, sadly.

Good luck ZOS,and we appreciate what you can do to help.

Oh, and much thanks Gina and Jessica, I’m sorry you are caught up in this, I know you are just doing your job.

And yes, I hope I’m wrong. I’m not. 30 years in IT, saddened at the current state. But we have gotten very good at making shiny, often useful things as long as they make $$$$$. Just don’t expect it to work right the first time it’s available in production.

Hmmm. Yes. Mostly.

After this many years (10) it is a given that there will be turnover and new people will arrive to support existing code. Development of a game is much different, and sexier, than maintenance for some people. In the end, it is much as you say above regarding working on other people's stuff.

I know that they had a large QA department. Check the credits. I have no idea how many are still there, and working on ESO, but ESO is a massive game with multiple platforms and hardware that need to be tested. It cannot be exhaustively tested. Besides, you don't test in quality. The quality has to exist before it gets to test. For a project this large, measures must be in place to assure quality at every step prior to reaching QA and the customer. They have never really been strong with that, as we have seen over the years.

TazESO

lordrichter wrote: »

TazESO wrote: »

What do I think? I think the devs today are not the ones who wrote most of the code. Working on others’ code, especially poorly documented code, is very difficult for the novice. Good programmers are very expensive, despite what the CFOs think. The current devs keep breaking stuff not because they want to, it’s because they don’t know have a complete understanding of what the code does and/or it’s colliding with today’s devops mentality of pushing code to production without the QA we used to expect. It’s not going to get better, sadly.

Good luck ZOS,and we appreciate what you can do to help.

Oh, and much thanks Gina and Jessica, I’m sorry you are caught up in this, I know you are just doing your job.

And yes, I hope I’m wrong. I’m not. 30 years in IT, saddened at the current state. But we have gotten very good at making shiny, often useful things as long as they make $$$$$. Just don’t expect it to work right the first time it’s available in production.

Hmmm. Yes. Mostly.

After this many years (10) it is a given that there will be turnover and new people will arrive to support existing code. Development of a game is much different, and sexier, than maintenance for some people. In the end, it is much as you say above regarding working on other people's stuff.

I know that they had a large QA department. Check the credits. I have no idea how many are still there, and working on ESO, but ESO is a massive game with multiple platforms and hardware that need to be tested. It cannot be exhaustively tested. Besides, you don't test in quality. The quality has to exist before it gets to test. For a project this large, measures must be in place to assure quality at every step prior to reaching QA and the customer. They have never really been strong with that, as we have seen over the years.

Well said.

ZOS_JesC

Greetings, we've removed a few off topic and bashing comments. This is a friendly reminder to keep the comments on topic. Thank you for your understanding.

Hawco10

All the missed AP from d ticks and captures. Lost cold fires and cold stones. And for all that I get an experience scroll ?

Skall66

As I understand it, there will be 3 exp scrolls in compensation for the 3 missing daily rewards.
I have yet see no compensation for the 6 weeks of broken game, or have I missed something?

Vahrokh

yurimodin wrote: »

Gina thanks for finally addressing the customer base about these issues

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Steam Login Issues
We are fully aware of the intermittent issues with launching ESO from Steam reliably, and we have been working with Steam over the last few weeks to diagnose and fix the underlying problem. These efforts are ongoing and as soon as we have an update, we'll let everyone know.

....as I suspected, they probobly dont know. Here is a pro-tip, try wireshark and see what's going on network-wise first. If you guys need some help I am a Linux LAMP system admin(with API's too), former CCNA, and will work for crowns under NDA j/k

Junipus wrote: »

@ZOS_GinaBruno Can you have some communication from the dev team(s) as to why adding new content destabilises existing content?

It's understandable that new content has the potential to be buggy and glitchy, but new content that breaks the old unrelated content seems to indicate poor programming skills from the developers, or at the very least the common problem of not releasing memory at the end of functions.

Probobly not using a versioning control system(or a poorly implemented one)...

Login issues with Steam are usually caused by underlying API calls and possibly callbacks timeout. Not sure Wireshark would be the first tool to use here.

Also, regression issues are usually caused by a lack of proper unit testing. Having a version control won't help much here.

smacky

I also question why there is no mention of a fix for the grpahical issues which have been caused all over tamriel since the patch to fix graphic glitches in summerset.

This makes some dungeons literally unplayable since you can;t see where you have to walk.

smacky

lordrichter wrote: »

DreadKnight wrote: »

100% Experience Scroll?

Wot?

That's just an insult.

Not at all.

It kind of is to people who are max cp

Elsonso

smacky wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

DreadKnight wrote: »

100% Experience Scroll?

Wot?

That's just an insult.

Not at all.

It kind of is to people who are max cp

I would be inclined to agree, except that no one is at the absolute CP cap of 3600. Yet. The most I have seen is 2756. Those CP don't come cheap.

EvilAutoTech

Xbox one, original, usually NA. Yesterday, July 7, was the first time I have been in Cyrodiil since the 3 days of maintenance. I had zero freezing, stuttering or disconnects. I spent about 3 hours in Kyne and another 2 in Vivec. The only problem I saw was random load screens, many of which I came back from to find I had died. Some I was already fighting but some I was just trying to get to the fight.

Another issue I noticed this morning is text chat issues. I could not send whispers and a guildie I was grouped with could not even access group chat. I never saw that before the recent "fixes".

DeadlyPhoenix

Cannot wait for my free XP scrolls. I'll finally be able to get enough CP for the CP increase with DLC in 2022...

Twohothardware

This game is amazing. I freeze for the millionth time in Cyrodiil, completely close the game, log back on, and the SECOND I get back in while I'm dead on the ground I freeze again. How is it even possible to develop a patch this broken?

davidj8291

Still waiting til the incremental patch. It’s nice to see that no one cares about the customers. Sounds typical at this point though.

Every other game can get emergency patches but ZOS can’t!

I’d like to know why we repeatedly come last?

Makes no sense. I’d love for us to come first but at this point, it’s better to uninstall. It was a good ride Zenimax, but it really wasn’t. Thanks for nothing.

Meanwhile, another patch will come out a month after this “maybe fix” drops, and will break it again.

Shadowmaster

I absolutely love these little "state of the union" posts and would love to see them anytime we have several issue at once.

Thanks to @ZOS_GinaBruno for putting this out and having to manage all of us maniacs on this forum!

KharnTheUndying

Sage toad on ps4 na lost his emp because he couln't defend anything, his game kept freezing which forced him to keep restarting,happened like 9 times until he got dethroned.

soldierofzion82

ESO+ for two years. Great game. Pre-ordered Summerset. Have played very little in 6+ weeks. I will keep my ESO+ for a few more months hoping the game gets fixed eventually. Don't buy through Steam if you're a new player. I won't be playing for a while. Not looking for new content. Can't complete old content if the game is broken. Sigh.

XoxHANNIBALxoX

Wow if they're giving away experience scrolls for the inconvenience of the (free) daily rewards *** up, can you imagine the goodies we're gonna get when they finally sort out the absolute abomination that is Cyrodiil? I can't wait, the give aways for that are gonna be immense

sean.plackerb14_ESO

UnseenCat wrote: »

To be fair, a lot of the performance, graphic, and gameplay issues happened (or came back) after multithreading was introduced with Summerset. Multithreading in games may be desirable, but it's also difficult to implement well unless the game and its engine is built new from the ground-up.

Re-engineering an existing game to multi-threaded operation isn't a simple affair at all. And making it work on a multi-platform game is going to be even harder.
...

Looking through the game files I noticed something that was added 6/27/2018 (summerset release time) called "Intel threading building blocks library".



https://threadingbuildingblocks.org/

https://software.intel.com/en-us/node/506042#introducing_main

I guess this is a major part of what they are using to make the engine more multi threaded. As a dev do you have any familiarity with it? Just curious what thoughts on it are from those that know about these things The website for it says it supports Windows and OSX (and linux) and a ton of different compilers https://raw.githubusercontent.com/01org/tbb/tbb_2018/doc/Release_Notes.txt . It's also Apache 2.0 license and is open source with a github page.

Skall66

No maintenance scheduled this week?
Wasn't a stability patch promised in less than two weeks? (as of july 6)
(Yes, I know, one week and a half is less than two, but... )

Somber97866

This is awesome and i personally appreciette the heads up. This is good news and will now wait patently for the fixes. Please continue to keep us updated and thank you for not dropping mid-year mayhem until game is running well enough to support the event.

Elsonso

Skall66 wrote: »

No maintenance scheduled this week?
Wasn't a stability patch promised in less than two weeks? (as of july 6)
(Yes, I know, one week and a half is less than two, but... )

Next week, I guess. With the holiday week last week, plus PTS, I don't think they were able to do both. Don't shoot me. I'm just the person with the hazy crystal ball trying to scry what they are doing.

ZOS_GinaBruno

Hey guys, just want to mention the list on the first page isn't everything we're working on, just a handful of the major recent issues from the past couple weeks. For example, we're also working on fixing the Sprint bug and the invisible walls/structures that were called out in this thread.

Koolio

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Hey guys, just want to mention the list on the first page isn't everything we're working on, just a handful of the major recent issues from the past couple weeks. For example, we're also working on fixing the Sprint bug and the invisible walls/structures that were called out in this thread.

Thank you

mav1234

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Hey guys, just want to mention the list on the first page isn't everything we're working on, just a handful of the major recent issues from the past couple weeks. For example, we're also working on fixing the Sprint bug and the invisible walls/structures that were called out in this thread.

Thanks for the update, Gina. Much appreciated - especially acknowledging of the bugs is a huge thing for us. I appreciate that.

valeriiya

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Hey guys, just want to mention the list on the first page isn't everything we're working on, just a handful of the major recent issues from the past couple weeks. For example, we're also working on fixing the Sprint bug and the invisible walls/structures that were called out in this thread.

why does it take weeks or months for this response? just give us a clue that you guys are actually working on anything related to game performance and not just the crown store.

DuskMarine

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Hey guys, just want to mention the list on the first page isn't everything we're working on, just a handful of the major recent issues from the past couple weeks. For example, we're also working on fixing the Sprint bug and the invisible walls/structures that were called out in this thread.

bank bug too??? cause that bug is a serious one that keeps making gold litterally just disappear instead of going into our guild banks.

Aeslief

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Hey guys, just want to mention the list on the first page isn't everything we're working on, just a handful of the major recent issues from the past couple weeks. For example, we're also working on fixing the Sprint bug and the invisible walls/structures that were called out in this thread.

Thanks for the update! How about Outfit 1 overwriting your selected appearance? Disappearing guild bank deposits? Unusable crafting stations in homes?

Skorol007

Hey @ZOS_GinaBruno

i know it's off-topic but I did not get the 5 ouroboros crates from watching the ESO stream on Friday (i was logged in with my twitch account and all, even wrote in chat)