FPS Problem

zarnon_akoni

i'll look at the video later tonight. Wow though that is unbelievable though.

Yes the game is garbage now. Last night i died while soloing in Stonefalls to enemies that had not fully loaded so I could not see them. I was dead and they still didn't load.

I tried a group dungeon and ported in dead. No one knew why, no one could see anything happening. Best guess is i had been attacked and died while the dungeon was loading and porting me.

I don't sub but agree that if I did I would be cancelling and demanding a refund this is a joke. If you are all by your self and solo in very low traffic areas and never spring or use a mount and don't mind long delays interacting with banks, merchants, and crafting stations and are careful engaging enemies and dont PVP or do any group activity the game is playable. But that is not quite the point of the game....

HowTaoBrownCow

JJBoomer wrote: »

to any of the people who are reporting that the issue is "solved" or "mostly solved"...

any reports that the mac client has been fixed by tuesday's patch, is actually just statistical error. 90+% of mac users are still unable to play, and nothing has been fixed. those whose performance improved ever so slightly, are just outliers and should not be counted.

also, I can't believe they laughed at the mac user base during a live stream. I mean, I can believe it. but the unprofessionalism, not to mention how crappy thats makes them as people. Wow.

can someone post that part of the livestream so we can have it for posterity if they try to deny that? maybe we can report them to BBB?

I really don’t think they were laughing at Mac users in that. It strikes me as the sort of embarrassed laugh that acknowledges how bad the performance issues are. That’s how I saw it when I watched it live, and how it seems to me rewatching it. There’s no malice or mocking in there.

But, regardless, I think I’d prefer you weren’t attempting to discount the experiences of those of us who have gotten small or large gains from this patch (and mine were small), for a couple of reasons. First, because tossing out data points that you don’t like because they don’t match your own experience or your model isn’t good science. And, second, because they’re useful diagnostic data. *Some* people had improvements. Why them? What in their systems interacted well with the changes, while others saw no effect. The posts of people’s system specs can be tied to those comments, and the developers can see, perhaps, that people with earlier or later model Macs, or specific graphics cards, or gobs of RAM, or SSD drives had better results than those with other configurations. That may give them useful info for their continued work on the problem.

For anyone who finds the game unplayable, I wholeheartedly support escalating, dropping subs, playing other games, posting bad reviews on Amazon or Steam warning off other Mac users, etc. There’s no point in suffering through it, and it adds pressure to ZOS to get something done, and it’s rather more useful than saying to other users, “Your experiences don’t matter.” Just saying. :-)

agegarton

Spent an evening in Cyrodiil being killed a lot. Incessant screen lock-ups, often for several seconds at a time, plus crashes and skill freezes. It's the same anywhere I go. Also, as others have reported, I cannot close the game down without it crashing out.

So, yeah, that's obviously fixed then.

Very disappointing return from a week away with work

SukeyRH

JJBoomer wrote: »

to any of the people who are reporting that the issue is "solved" or "mostly solved"...

any reports that the mac client has been fixed by tuesday's patch, is actually just statistical error. 90+% of mac users are still unable to play, and nothing has been fixed. those whose performance improved ever so slightly, are just outliers and should not be counted.

also, I can't believe they laughed at the mac user base during a live stream. I mean, I can believe it. but the unprofessionalism, not to mention how crappy thats makes them as people. Wow.

can someone post that part of the livestream so we can have it for posterity if they try to deny that? maybe we can report them to BBB?

I'm not sure they were laughing at Mac users, but it did seem unprofessional and disrespectful to giggle while discussing problems some of their customers are having.

Wodinn

HowTaoBrownCow wrote: »

JJBoomer wrote: »

to any of the people who are reporting that the issue is "solved" or "mostly solved"...

any reports that the mac client has been fixed by tuesday's patch, is actually just statistical error. 90+% of mac users are still unable to play, and nothing has been fixed. those whose performance improved ever so slightly, are just outliers and should not be counted.

also, I can't believe they laughed at the mac user base during a live stream. I mean, I can believe it. but the unprofessionalism, not to mention how crappy thats makes them as people. Wow.

can someone post that part of the livestream so we can have it for posterity if they try to deny that? maybe we can report them to BBB?

I really don’t think they were laughing at Mac users in that. It strikes me as the sort of embarrassed laugh that acknowledges how bad the performance issues are. That’s how I saw it when I watched it live, and how it seems to me rewatching it. There’s no malice or mocking in there.

But, regardless, I think I’d prefer you weren’t attempting to discount the experiences of those of us who have gotten small or large gains from this patch (and mine were small), for a couple of reasons. First, because tossing out data points that you don’t like because they don’t match your own experience or your model isn’t good science. And, second, because they’re useful diagnostic data. *Some* people had improvements. Why them? What in their systems interacted well with the changes, while others saw no effect. The posts of people’s system specs can be tied to those comments, and the developers can see, perhaps, that people with earlier or later model Macs, or specific graphics cards, or gobs of RAM, or SSD drives had better results than those with other configurations. That may give them useful info for their continued work on the problem.

For anyone who finds the game unplayable, I wholeheartedly support escalating, dropping subs, playing other games, posting bad reviews on Amazon or Steam warning off other Mac users, etc. There’s no point in suffering through it, and it adds pressure to ZOS to get something done, and it’s rather more useful than saying to other users, “Your experiences don’t matter.” Just saying. :-)

This is exactly why I even mentioned the fact that I noticed a different setting for ambient occlusion in my graphics settings. It says it costs a lot more resources, but makes for much more realistic effects. And it seems to have no affect at all on my fps. Though I have yet to play for more than 15 for obvious reasons.

Morgha_Kul

I'm not on Mac, and my fps had been really bad, but it's now more or less back to normal. However, what I AM getting is random flashes of textures (eg. tree leaves), randomly as I turn or move. It's only there for a moment, and it's not all the time, so it's not crippling, but it's not something I've had to endure before.

Don't know if it's related, but I thought I'd mention it.

nathan_bri

Wodinn wrote: »

dm_critic wrote: »

I'm checking out Guild Wars 2 today. I like what I see so far, though I'm not thrilled about starting a new game from scratch. But it runs great under macOS and I'm digging the aesthetics.

My ESO+ renews on the 27th, so I'm going to take the next week or so to decide if it's worth continuing and having to boot into Windows whenever I want to play or cancel renewal and switch over to GW2. I've also tried out WoW, but it seems like maybe GW2 has less baggage. Plus it looks less mid-2000s.

I'm guessing at this point ZOS won't do anything logical like move back to OpenGL until the MoltenVK client is actually usable because ... particles are more important than playability? And we have no indication if this is an iterative fix or if they're declaring "mission accomplished" and moving on.

I have a biased against wow. It's a waste of money. However as a fellow gamer I do recommend trying GW2. I was playing it on Mac before ZoS ever released eso. I still play it now. I personally have let my + membership laps. So I don't blame you for that one. But I do still feel like ZoS will get the game working better on OS. They just don't seem to be concerned with giving us any sort of time frame whatsoever. The lack of communication is unacceptable.

Both GW2 and WoW are fun games to play and there’s no good reason to not play either. You are not marrying the game, you are not committing the rest of your life to it... it's just a game. You can play GW2 for free and WoW gives you free gameplay until level 20. Try both and see which one clicks for you.

nathan_bri

I cancelled my subscription and received the full $84 back, even though I was only halfway through it. Good on Zeni for that. I was fine with losing the 9000 Crowns sitting there doing nothing. If more people vote with their wallets like that, Zeni will need to be more careful about how they make these changes, instead allowing players a fallback position that is proven to work until the new release has all its most critical bugs fixed.

All that said, today's update from logging in to grab the daily reward and hireling emails and then doing a Clockwork daily (along with a dungeon quest I never did):

A. Oh look... crafting materials are now in my inventory. But that was expected.

B. As I travel around in fullscreen mode, the game consistently does two things: 1. The game will hiccup and stop redrawing the 3D world for about one quarter of a second about every 15–30 seconds and 2. The split-second random-placement polygon issue will reappear for a moment as I move to new places then disappear.

C. This humorous exchange:

moonio

Is ESO the only Bethesda game supported on Mac?
Maybe it's too costly to continue support?

Montie

moonio wrote: »

Is ESO the only Bethesda game supported on Mac?
Maybe it's too costly to continue support?

It isn't a Bethesda game, it is a ZeniMax Online Studios game. Although it is all kind of a bit confusing and I am not sure how much interaction there is between studios.

I think ESO is ZeniMax Online Studios only game.

From Wikipedia:
ZeniMax Media Inc. is an American video game holding company based in Rockville, Maryland. The company owns id Software (developer of the Doom and Quake series, and Rage), Arkane Studios (developer of Dishonored and Prey), MachineGames (developer of Wolfenstein: The New Order),[2] Tango Gameworks (developer of The Evil Within),[3] publisher Bethesda Softworks with its Bethesda Game Studios (developer of The Elder Scrolls and Fallout series) and ZeniMax Online Studios (developer of The Elder Scrolls Online).

moonio

Are any of ZeniMax's other games supported on Mac?

Montie

moonio wrote: »

Are any of ZeniMax's other games supported on Mac?

I don't believe so, but not 100% sure.

Wodinn

nathan_bri wrote: »

Wodinn wrote: »

dm_critic wrote: »

I'm checking out Guild Wars 2 today. I like what I see so far, though I'm not thrilled about starting a new game from scratch. But it runs great under macOS and I'm digging the aesthetics.

My ESO+ renews on the 27th, so I'm going to take the next week or so to decide if it's worth continuing and having to boot into Windows whenever I want to play or cancel renewal and switch over to GW2. I've also tried out WoW, but it seems like maybe GW2 has less baggage. Plus it looks less mid-2000s.

I'm guessing at this point ZOS won't do anything logical like move back to OpenGL until the MoltenVK client is actually usable because ... particles are more important than playability? And we have no indication if this is an iterative fix or if they're declaring "mission accomplished" and moving on.

I have a biased against wow. It's a waste of money. However as a fellow gamer I do recommend trying GW2. I was playing it on Mac before ZoS ever released eso. I still play it now. I personally have let my + membership laps. So I don't blame you for that one. But I do still feel like ZoS will get the game working better on OS. They just don't seem to be concerned with giving us any sort of time frame whatsoever. The lack of communication is unacceptable.

Both GW2 and WoW are fun games to play and there’s no good reason to not play either. You are not marrying the game, you are not committing the rest of your life to it... it's just a game. You can play GW2 for free and WoW gives you free gameplay until level 20. Try both and see which one clicks for you.

lol, I've wasted enough time and money on wow. I'll never go back. Waste of money. Glad you were able to get your membership refund.

ethernut60

JJBoomer wrote: »

to any of the people who are reporting that the issue is "solved" or "mostly solved"...

...

also, I can't believe they laughed at the mac user base during a live stream. I mean, I can believe it. but the unprofessionalism, not to mention how crappy thats makes them as people. Wow.

can someone post that part of the livestream so we can have it for posterity if they try to deny that? maybe we can report them to BBB?

Wonder if she's laughing at the Mac user base or at the joke of ZOS claiming to be making things better when they actually made them worse,

moonio

I think she was laughing at her understatement of our problems as just 'poor performance'..
As in she knows that the problem is much bigger than that..

Jeth

The performance is better but I get random frozen screens that last for seconds sometimes. I can't vet 4-man/12-man heal or tank with this performance. Mac users are sent to the back of the queue yet again.

demonlurking

I've only been playing for a few weeks now, but I did start before the Mirkmire DSL was launched. I haven't seen any FPS hits, but with this latest patch I've witnessed massive flickering of various graphical elements. Sometime things like banners and foliage and trees will flash, sometimes it's water and grass, other times it's large rock formations and buildings, sometimes it's all of the above. It seems to be consistent each time the game is launched, but will change on a relaunch.

Now, I'll admit that I'm running on a newer AMD system running MacOS 10.14 Mojave and that my system is designed for Metal. I wonder how many of these FPS issues are with older systems that don't support Apple's Metal API as well. Especially systems that use Nvidia hardware.

I have a Support Ticket in for the flickering issue, but it has been "Waiting on Agent" for three days and I don't expect any movement on it any time soon at this point.

Dan8236

demonlurking wrote: »

Now, I'll admit that I'm running on a newer AMD system running MacOS 10.14 Mojave and that my system is designed for Metal. I wonder how many of these FPS issues are with older systems that don't support Apple's Metal API as well. Especially systems that use Nvidia hardware.

Pretty sure that they dropped support for GPU's that don't support metal/Vulkan. So they cant even load the game.

edit: missed the "as well"

Considering mine does (newer AMD) and the framerate is abysmal but the GPU is not fully being taxed I would imagine it would be about he same.

otab

demonlurking wrote: »

Now, I'll admit that I'm running on a newer AMD system running MacOS 10.14 Mojave and that my system is designed for Metal. I wonder how many of these FPS issues are with older systems that don't support Apple's Metal API as well. Especially systems that use Nvidia hardware..

My extreme FPS issues are on a brand-new, maxed-out 2018 MacBook Pro 15" with a BlackMagic eGPU, also running Mojave. Definitely not caused by older hardware in this case, as this is a fully-Metal-compatible setup.

Wodinn

otab wrote: »

demonlurking wrote: »

Now, I'll admit that I'm running on a newer AMD system running MacOS 10.14 Mojave and that my system is designed for Metal. I wonder how many of these FPS issues are with older systems that don't support Apple's Metal API as well. Especially systems that use Nvidia hardware..

My extreme FPS issues are on a brand-new, maxed-out 2018 MacBook Pro 15" with a BlackMagic eGPU, also running Mojave. Definitely not caused by older hardware in this case, as this is a fully-Metal-compatible setup.

I've mentioned this previously a few time. My extreme FPS and graphics issues are on a brand new, baseline, iMac Pro. This thing was basically built to play 3d games like this. That was half of the marketing behind it. So there is no way mine has anything to do with being either not capable, or too old.

Crusism

Still isn't fixed, huh?

Montie

Just got a response from support about my refund request on my sub. They said no with no reason given. I am so disappointed in the level of support that ZOS offers. I am guessing it is because I spent some of the crowns but tell me that and offer my some options.

Update: After some back and forth, I did get a full refund of my 6 month sub.

nathan_bri

Ramber wrote: »

Are you all doing video editing on them systems or something? 48GB RAM? 8gb added on with graphics card! You know having too much RAM can actually slow your access time as the OS has to access it all every time it needs to?

8-16GB is the suggested max these days on gaming systems. More then that your just showing off or maybe you got a sick deal on it idk but its too much ram man its just too much ram

This person is pathologically misinformed about how computers work. Never listen to their advice. More RAM can never make your computer run slower unless there is a major flaw in the operating system, which should not be a thing in 99.99% of cases, or unless the expansion DRAM chosen runs at a slower frequency (not likely). I write this with some authority as a programmer for the past 35 years.

Also, it’s “than,” not “then.”

agegarton

nathan_bri wrote: »

Ramber wrote: »

Are you all doing video editing on them systems or something? 48GB RAM? 8gb added on with graphics card! You know having too much RAM can actually slow your access time as the OS has to access it all every time it needs to?

8-16GB is the suggested max these days on gaming systems. More then that your just showing off or maybe you got a sick deal on it idk but its too much ram man its just too much ram

This person is pathologically misinformed about how computers work. Never listen to their advice. More RAM can never make your computer run slower unless there is a major flaw in the operating system, which should not be a thing in 99.99% of cases, or unless the expansion DRAM chosen runs at a slower frequency (not likely). I write this with some authority as a programmer for the past 35 years.

Also, it’s “than,” not “then.”

Glad you wrote that - was going to say something similar, but the flight crew were telling me to put my phone in Airplane mode and I forgot to come back to it. Some people really talk utter bollocks, don't they?

agegarton

OK, so in an effort to be constructive, here's where I got to after the last patch. This seems to sum up a lot of Mac user experiences:-

I'm playing on a 2017 Retina 5K iMac, 27" screen, 3.8 GHz Core i5 processor, 16GB of DDR4, with a Radeon Pro 580 8192MB GPU. I'm running Mojave. I also run a mid-2015 MacBook Pro with a 2.8 GHz Core i7, 16GB of DDR3 and a Radeon R9 M370X 2048MB - also on Mojave. Pre-Murkmire, both Macs ran fine, around 40-60 FPS on High settings but with no serious glitches, render issues, or DC problems. Now:

> FPS performance has improved since the last patch. On Medium settings I am generally somewhere between 50-60 FPS. High settings remain much weaker than pre-Murkmire.
> Graphics performance seems smoother overall compared to pre-Murkmire, same settings (Medium), when all things are running well.
> FPS performance is unpredictable. It drops to 10-20 FPS for extended periods (10 second to maybe 2 mins), which doesn't appear to be related to traffic in the area.
> Rendering is slow. In busy areas, such as Alinor, it can take several seconds to complete the render of walls, crafting stations, NPCs, other players, etc.
> By FAR the BIGGEST issue right now is that without warning, the screen will just freeze up. This can be for as little as a second, to maybe 5-10 seconds. This issue does appear to be traffic related, making Cyrodiil pretty much impossible. A 5 second freeze is a death sentence in PVP !

@ZOS_GinaBruno I hope this helps. Another update about now would be nice. I saw your post on the main General Forum about how you feel you/ZoS are not communicating enough with the player base at the moment. I would suggest that talking with your Mac user base should be a priority right now. I appreciate us Mac users are not your largest player base, but one look at the level of frustration here, and the size of the thread, should tell you everything you need to know.

Age. xx

Wodinn

agegarton wrote: »

OK, so in an effort to be constructive, here's where I got to after the last patch. This seems to sum up a lot of Mac user experiences:-

I'm playing on a 2017 Retina 5K iMac, 27" screen, 3.8 GHz Core i5 processor, 16GB of DDR4, with a Radeon Pro 580 8192MB GPU. I'm running Mojave. I also run a mid-2015 MacBook Pro with a 2.8 GHz Core i7, 16GB of DDR3 and a Radeon R9 M370X 2048MB - also on Mojave. Pre-Murkmire, both Macs ran fine, around 40-60 FPS on High settings but with no serious glitches, render issues, or DC problems. Now:

> FPS performance has improved since the last patch. On Medium settings I am generally somewhere between 50-60 FPS. High settings remain much weaker than pre-Murkmire.
> Graphics performance seems smoother overall compared to pre-Murkmire, same settings (Medium), when all things are running well.
> FPS performance is unpredictable. It drops to 10-20 FPS for extended periods (10 second to maybe 2 mins), which doesn't appear to be related to traffic in the area.
> Rendering is slow. In busy areas, such as Alinor, it can take several seconds to complete the render of walls, crafting stations, NPCs, other players, etc.
> By FAR the BIGGEST issue right now is that without warning, the screen will just freeze up. This can be for as little as a second, to maybe 5-10 seconds. This issue does appear to be traffic related, making Cyrodiil pretty much impossible. A 5 second freeze is a death sentence in PVP !

@ZOS_GinaBruno I hope this helps. Another update about now would be nice. I saw your post on the main General Forum about how you feel you/ZoS are not communicating enough with the player base at the moment. I would suggest that talking with your Mac user base should be a priority right now. I appreciate us Mac users are not your largest player base, but one look at the level of frustration here, and the size of the thread, should tell you everything you need to know.

Age. xx

Extremely well said. This is basically exactly what's happening. My comp specs should be in a screen shot below.

elgirth

elgirth wrote: »

otab wrote: »

I saw zero improvement this morning for frame rate. Still in the teens in Deshaan and Alinor, and stutters nauseatingly. I also get the horrible flicker in fullscreen, which is new.

And, now the client crashes every time I close the game.

Went from bad to worse, as far as I'm concerned.

Same here. No FPS improvement WHATSOEVER and the game actually got worse when I tried my pre Murkmire setting of Ultra High with full screen glitching/flickering out excessively. It is worse trying to play the game now than before. Absolutely terrible. Frame rate still a strong 1-20 and graphics seem like they got worse as well. Tried boot camping windows to see if that would help but of course boot camp seems to not be working for me either. Tried many supposed fixes but to no avail....FML

UPDATE: Alright SO after the first day of no improvements and screen flickers and glitches, it seems to be improving somewhat. There are definitely screen glitches/flickers but it seems to be happening less frequently but best of all the FPS has improved to about a steady 16-22fps in Vivec city. It's still poor BUT it is an improvement and running a lot smoother than previously where it was literally a constant 1-10fps. Everywhere else in the world minus the major cities is around 20-30fps and for some reason in delves i always get about 40-70 fps but I would get that in delves even before the latest patch. I can actually PvP now with about 16-25fps which is relatively manageable. Obviously there is still a lot of work that needs to be done to get back to pre murkmire but I have seen some improvement albeit minor. Specs again for reference;

Wodinn

elgirth wrote: »

elgirth wrote: »

otab wrote: »

I saw zero improvement this morning for frame rate. Still in the teens in Deshaan and Alinor, and stutters nauseatingly. I also get the horrible flicker in fullscreen, which is new.

And, now the client crashes every time I close the game.

Went from bad to worse, as far as I'm concerned.

Same here. No FPS improvement WHATSOEVER and the game actually got worse when I tried my pre Murkmire setting of Ultra High with full screen glitching/flickering out excessively. It is worse trying to play the game now than before. Absolutely terrible. Frame rate still a strong 1-20 and graphics seem like they got worse as well. Tried boot camping windows to see if that would help but of course boot camp seems to not be working for me either. Tried many supposed fixes but to no avail....FML

UPDATE: Alright SO after the first day of no improvements and screen flickers and glitches, it seems to be improving somewhat. There are definitely screen glitches/flickers but it seems to be happening less frequently but best of all the FPS has improved to about a steady 16-22fps in Vivec city. It's still poor BUT it is an improvement and running a lot smoother than previously where it was literally a constant 1-10fps. Everywhere else in the world minus the major cities is around 20-30fps and for some reason in delves i always get about 40-70 fps but I would get that in delves even before the latest patch. I can actually PvP now with about 16-25fps which is relatively manageable. Obviously there is still a lot of work that needs to be done to get back to pre murkmire but I have seen some improvement albeit minor. Specs again for reference;

Wow really? I wouldn't even attempt to do any pvp with how much my screen randomly freezes.

dm_critic

Has anyone seen any details about Monday's patch and whether it includes any further Mac client fixes?

elgirth

Wodinn wrote: »

elgirth wrote: »

elgirth wrote: »

otab wrote: »

I saw zero improvement this morning for frame rate. Still in the teens in Deshaan and Alinor, and stutters nauseatingly. I also get the horrible flicker in fullscreen, which is new.

And, now the client crashes every time I close the game.

Went from bad to worse, as far as I'm concerned.

Same here. No FPS improvement WHATSOEVER and the game actually got worse when I tried my pre Murkmire setting of Ultra High with full screen glitching/flickering out excessively. It is worse trying to play the game now than before. Absolutely terrible. Frame rate still a strong 1-20 and graphics seem like they got worse as well. Tried boot camping windows to see if that would help but of course boot camp seems to not be working for me either. Tried many supposed fixes but to no avail....FML

UPDATE: Alright SO after the first day of no improvements and screen flickers and glitches, it seems to be improving somewhat. There are definitely screen glitches/flickers but it seems to be happening less frequently but best of all the FPS has improved to about a steady 16-22fps in Vivec city. It's still poor BUT it is an improvement and running a lot smoother than previously where it was literally a constant 1-10fps. Everywhere else in the world minus the major cities is around 20-30fps and for some reason in delves i always get about 40-70 fps but I would get that in delves even before the latest patch. I can actually PvP now with about 16-25fps which is relatively manageable. Obviously there is still a lot of work that needs to be done to get back to pre murkmire but I have seen some improvement albeit minor. Specs again for reference;

Wow really? I wouldn't even attempt to do any pvp with how much my screen randomly freezes.

Ya I actually have not been having any screen freeze issues I was actually surprised as well that it's possible to pvp with 20 fps but its night and day compared to how it was before and I just didn't even bother until now. The game does crash though every time I quit which I forgot to mention.