3 DC’s in a row

JumpmanLane

Why is this game so unplayable. Logined in to cyrodill, DCed 3x in five minutes. Don’t worry ZOS. Im getting the message...

Maybe they should have a patch to fix the patch to fix the patch to fix the patch that needs fixing lol.

themaddaedra

Soon it's gonna be 3 threads in a row

starkerealm

themaddaedra wrote: »

Soon it's gonna be 3 threads in a row

A little disappointed I'm not looking at a third thread right now.

JumpmanLane

themaddaedra wrote: »

Soon it's gonna be 3 threads in a row

that might be funny if ZOS’s only response weren’t to close the other two and direct it to one thread they don’t bother responding to.

I ask myself more and more lately, “Do I really like Bethesda’s offerings or do I like Bethesda’s MODDED offerings...”

starkerealm

JumpmanLane wrote: »

themaddaedra wrote: »

Soon it's gonna be 3 threads in a row

that might be funny if ZOS’s only response weren’t to close the other two and direct it to one thread they don’t bother responding to.

I ask myself more and more lately, “Do I really like Bethesda’s offerings or do I like Bethesda’s MODDED offerings...”

If that's an F76 question... "yes?" But, ESO isn't developed by Bethesda Games Studios. It's ZOS, which is an entirely different team.

JumpmanLane

starkerealm wrote: »

themaddaedra wrote: »

Soon it's gonna be 3 threads in a row

A little disappointed I'm not looking at a third thread right now.

If the gamed WORKED we wouldn’t be in the forums, and I for one would miss out on your comedy skills...such as they are...

starkerealm

JumpmanLane wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

themaddaedra wrote: »

Soon it's gonna be 3 threads in a row

A little disappointed I'm not looking at a third thread right now.

If the gamed WORKED we wouldn’t be in the forums, and I for one would miss out on your comedy skills...such as they are...

I work with the material I've got. Also, it's not like I'm trying to light you up. It sucks, I know, but it also kinda suggests your internet may be a mess right now.

JumpmanLane

M

starkerealm wrote: »

JumpmanLane wrote: »

themaddaedra wrote: »

Soon it's gonna be 3 threads in a row

that might be funny if ZOS’s only response weren’t to close the other two and direct it to one thread they don’t bother responding to.

I ask myself more and more lately, “Do I really like Bethesda’s offerings or do I like Bethesda’s MODDED offerings...”

If that's an F76 question... "yes?" But, ESO isn't developed by Bethesda Games Studios. It's ZOS, which is an entirely different team.

Omg 😮 knee this was coming.

themaddaedra

Oh jee everyone is being offended for everything in these forums now. Dude it's a joke to tell you that u double posted, wtf? How does it even have to do anything with how game is performing now?

I think we'll soon need to sacrifice cheeses to uncle Sheo before making a joke on forums, just hoping someone won't be offended

JumpmanLane

starkerealm wrote: »

JumpmanLane wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

themaddaedra wrote: »

Soon it's gonna be 3 threads in a row

A little disappointed I'm not looking at a third thread right now.

If the gamed WORKED we wouldn’t be in the forums, and I for one would miss out on your comedy skills...such as they are...

I work with the material I've got. Also, it's not like I'm trying to light you up. It sucks, I know, but it also kinda suggests your internet may be a mess right now.

Maybe I am stuck in a blizzard. Lol

JumpmanLane

themaddaedra wrote: »

Oh jee everyone is being offended for everything in these forums now. Dude it's a joke to tell you that u double posted, wtf? What does it even have to do anything with how game is performing now?

I think we'll soon need to sacrifice cheeses to uncle Sheo before making a joke on forums, just hoping someone won't be offended

Everything is NOT funny. Like at ALL.

themaddaedra

JumpmanLane wrote: »

themaddaedra wrote: »

Oh jee everyone is being offended for everything in these forums now. Dude it's a joke to tell you that u double posted, wtf? What does it even have to do anything with how game is performing now?

I think we'll soon need to sacrifice cheeses to uncle Sheo before making a joke on forums, just hoping someone won't be offended

Everything is NOT funny. Like at ALL.

OKAY.

starkerealm

JumpmanLane wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

JumpmanLane wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

themaddaedra wrote: »

Soon it's gonna be 3 threads in a row

A little disappointed I'm not looking at a third thread right now.

If the gamed WORKED we wouldn’t be in the forums, and I for one would miss out on your comedy skills...such as they are...

I work with the material I've got. Also, it's not like I'm trying to light you up. It sucks, I know, but it also kinda suggests your internet may be a mess right now.

Maybe I am stuck in a blizzard. Lol

Yeah, that would do it.

Kram8ion

Only three? I will crash at least six times and then just play another game
Regularly recently

Davor

What's a DC? If people can't write correctly, they how do we expect any developers to be able to code properly. Not like this is the 90's and we need to pay for each character we use.

Sylvermynx

Disconnect Davor. I'net shorthand for.... um.... well, as long as I've been online - so since 1995 I guess.

Atreidus

Hi. IP v6 or v4?
If V6: try to set it to V4. This had fixed my problem.

zyk

Official ZOS position:

Sylvermynx

Atreidus wrote: »

Hi. IP v6 or v4?
If V6: try to set it to V4. This had fixed my problem.

Eh.... I don't have IP v6 available..... Good thought for those who do though!

starkerealm

zyk wrote: »

Official ZOS position:

I know how this happens. You write a joke, then make a mental note to trim it out before the post goes live. Or, you write it to mess with your proofreader. Then you forget, or the proof reader doesn't catch it, and the joke goes live. I've done it a few times with work.

So... yeah, that happened. The official position from ZOS is that there are some optimizations coming in U21 which should help.

EDIT: If the word filter will indulge me, there's always this famous story.

zyk

starkerealm wrote: »

zyk wrote: »

Official ZOS position:

I know how this happens. You write a joke, then make a mental note to trim it out before the post goes live. Or, you write it to mess with your proofreader. Then you forget, or the proof reader doesn't catch it, and the joke goes live. I've done it a few times with work.

So... yeah, that happened. The official position from ZOS is that there are some optimizations coming in U21 which should help.

EDIT: If the word filter will indulge me, there's always this famous story.

Who knows if it's true, but I heard from a credible source that it was put in the draft as a joke which she planned to remove but she was dared to post it and therefore had no choice but to...

I've worked for and with several companies with millions of customers and without exception there has always been an internal resentment towards some clients and customers as a natural response to hearing the same complaints over and over again. But you keep it internal at all costs. Most companies have a zero tolerance policy about this.

Regardless of her motive, I truly believe it is reflective of how ZOS feels towards gaming enthusiasts versus the overland casuals and crown store customers who have become their core audience. To me, it's further confirmation that gaming enthusiasts come second to ZOS and, frankly, they'd be happy if some of us -- especially AvA players -- just left because we've become so unimportant to their bottom line.

Even after her apology, the patch notes still haven't been edited, which tells me that not only was the apology insincere, it's important to them that the joke keeps going a while longer.

freespirit

DC's happen...…..

For me atm I have an issue where after being online for a few hours I'm 100% guaranteed to DC on porting anywhere.

I have tried so many things to sort this out I've literally given up!

My solution now is if I'm porting to a trial or dungeon I just warn the group leader I may DC but will be back asap.

Some days this never happens, other days it is a regular thing

Edit:- Funnily for me Cyrodiil is never an issue as far as DC's go

starkerealm

zyk wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

zyk wrote: »

Official ZOS position:

I know how this happens. You write a joke, then make a mental note to trim it out before the post goes live. Or, you write it to mess with your proofreader. Then you forget, or the proof reader doesn't catch it, and the joke goes live. I've done it a few times with work.

So... yeah, that happened. The official position from ZOS is that there are some optimizations coming in U21 which should help.

EDIT: If the word filter will indulge me, there's always this famous story.

Who knows if it's true, but I heard from a credible source that it was put in the draft as a joke which she planned to remove but she was dared to post it and therefore had no choice but to...

zyk wrote: »

I've worked for and with several companies with millions of customers and without exception there has always been an internal resentment towards some clients and customers as a natural response to hearing the same complaints over and over again. But you keep it internal at all costs. Most companies have a zero tolerance policy about this.

Regardless of her motive, I truly believe it is reflective of how ZOS feels towards gaming enthusiasts versus the overland casuals and crown store customers who have become their core audience. To me, it's further confirmation that gaming enthusiasts come second to ZOS and, frankly, they'd be happy if some of us -- especially AvA players -- just left because we've become so unimportant to their bottom line.

If you've worked with companies that manage millions of customers, and are vaguely sentient, you should be able to put this one together on the spot.

Unfortunately, this goes back to a basic cost-benefit analysis issue. Only 18% of players reach the rank of Recruit. Only 15% ever capture a resource in Cyrodiil. Clear Maelstrom (on normal or vet), that's less than 3% (and the vet completion rate is 0.83%.) Halls of Fabrication clears are at around 0.8%, Asylum is a little over 1%, and Cloudrest sits, exactly, at 1%. The DLC dungeons sit around 1-3% completion on normal. (Older DLCs have higher completion rates.)

The vast majority of players wander the open world, doing quests or whatever, and when the time comes to decide what gets priority...

Yep, you know it's not going to be the missing roof in Maelstrom.

While PvP and endgame progression are major players in the community, they're a tiny sliver of the game's overall population. When it comes to allocating resources towards fixes, you shouldn't be surprised that we're not exactly at the top of the pile here.

zyk wrote: »

Even after her apology, the patch notes still haven't been edited, which tells me that not only was the apology insincere, it's important to them that the joke keeps going a while longer.

There's no point in editing it out. It's been seen, people took their screenshots. At this point, pulling it out would just provide a new topic to stir the pot further. "It happened, don't draw attention to it, and people will get over it, eventually." At this point, given this is the internet, you can't really memory hole anything, now.

JumpmanLane

Well jokes gonna be on ZOS. ME personally, logged in 5 minutes yesterday, 5 minutes today. Interest wanes...

zyk

starkerealm wrote: »

If you've worked with companies that manage millions of customers, and are vaguely sentient, you should be able to put this one together on the spot.

Unfortunately, this goes back to a basic cost-benefit analysis issue. Only 18% of players reach the rank of Recruit. Only 15% ever capture a resource in Cyrodiil. Clear Maelstrom (on normal or vet), that's less than 3% (and the vet completion rate is 0.83%.) Halls of Fabrication clears are at around 0.8%, Asylum is a little over 1%, and Cloudrest sits, exactly, at 1%. The DLC dungeons sit around 1-3% completion on normal. (Older DLCs have higher completion rates.)

The vast majority of players wander the open world, doing quests or whatever, and when the time comes to decide what gets priority...

Yep, you know it's not going to be the missing roof in Maelstrom.

While PvP and endgame progression are major players in the community, they're a tiny sliver of the game's overall population. When it comes to allocating resources towards fixes, you shouldn't be surprised that we're not exactly at the top of the pile here.

I agree this is how ZOS looks at it and I've expressed that many times. It's completely unethical because they sold us a product that has never worked properly and have basically given up on fixing it despite having the resources to do so as a AAA publisher. AvA wasn't a minor feature at launch, it was a core part of the game.

starkerealm wrote: »

There's no point in editing it out. It's been seen, people took their screenshots. At this point, pulling it out would just provide a new topic to stir the pot further. "It happened, don't draw attention to it, and people will get over it, eventually." At this point, given this is the internet, you can't really memory hole anything, now.

Of course there's a point to editing it. She called it distasteful, insensitive and offensive. If she and ZOS really mean that, it should be edited to show that this isn't how ZOS feels about affected customers. It is true that they can't destroy all copies that have been made, but they can set the record straight in their official patch notes.

starkerealm

zyk wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

If you've worked with companies that manage millions of customers, and are vaguely sentient, you should be able to put this one together on the spot.

Unfortunately, this goes back to a basic cost-benefit analysis issue. Only 18% of players reach the rank of Recruit. Only 15% ever capture a resource in Cyrodiil. Clear Maelstrom (on normal or vet), that's less than 3% (and the vet completion rate is 0.83%.) Halls of Fabrication clears are at around 0.8%, Asylum is a little over 1%, and Cloudrest sits, exactly, at 1%. The DLC dungeons sit around 1-3% completion on normal. (Older DLCs have higher completion rates.)

The vast majority of players wander the open world, doing quests or whatever, and when the time comes to decide what gets priority...

Yep, you know it's not going to be the missing roof in Maelstrom.

While PvP and endgame progression are major players in the community, they're a tiny sliver of the game's overall population. When it comes to allocating resources towards fixes, you shouldn't be surprised that we're not exactly at the top of the pile here.

I agree this is how ZOS looks at it and I've expressed that many times. It's completely unethical because they sold us a product that has never worked properly and have basically given up on fixing it despite having the resources to do so as a AAA publisher. AvA wasn't a minor feature at launch, it was a core part of the game.

And the problem here is the hyperbole.

Show me one piece of bug-free commercial software. Just one.

And, no, that's not hyperbole; basically, any sufficiently complex software will have bugs. ESO is an extremely complex piece of software.

Also, AvA worked at launch. No, seriously, back in 2014? It worked. It was packed to the gills with players, it was fast, it was (mostly) lag free. It was amazing.

Then... someone realized, "wait a second, this game uses a trusted client architecture," and proceeded to fire up Cheat Engine.

**** that guy.

Suddenly, you couldn't tell if you'd started sucking at PvP overnight, or if you were getting steamrolled by someone who had infinite resources. At least with the Meteor spammers you could tell. So, then we got server side sanity checks... and lag. The sanity checks have gotten more complicated, and the lag has waffled, but there was a moment in time when it worked.

Granted, it was also imbalanced as hell. Remember when two vampires locked Covenant out of the server?

I would love to see Cyrodiil's lag dealt with, and I do think it's something we need to keep pressing for. However, the hyperbole does not help your case. It doesn't help any of us. And, calling people, "evil," (yes, I know the exact word you used was, "unethical.") does not help that position. I understand frustration, but ramping up the rhetoric only distracts from the actual issues.

Also worth remembering, if you're making personal attacks (even, non-directed ones), that will move you onto the ****-list of people who get tuned out.

zyk wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

There's no point in editing it out. It's been seen, people took their screenshots. At this point, pulling it out would just provide a new topic to stir the pot further. "It happened, don't draw attention to it, and people will get over it, eventually." At this point, given this is the internet, you can't really memory hole anything, now.

Of course there's a point to editing it. She called it distasteful, insensitive and offensive. If she and ZOS really mean that, it should be edited to show that this isn't how ZOS feels about affected customers. It is true that they can't destroy all copies that have been made, but they can set the record straight in their official patch notes.

At this moment, in this climate, they would be accused of trying to cover it up. It's a no-win situation, so better to weather the storm they have, than risk a new one. The forums have been very volatile since Mirkmire dropped. A lot of very angry people, with a fixed collection of grievances, who are now looking for more venues to rile people on.

zyk

starkerealm wrote: »

And the problem here is the hyperbole.

Show me one piece of bug-free commercial software. Just one.

Complaints about AvA are not close to hyperbole. It's true that all software, commercial or not, will have some issues, of course. However, ESO AvA has major issues that impact its ability to execute its designed functions. These issues have been present for more than 4 years. This is not normal for successful software. It is a characteristic almost exclusive to failed programs.

Also, AvA worked at launch. No, seriously, back in 2014? It worked. It was packed to the gills with players, it was fast, it was (mostly) lag free. It was amazing.

Then... someone realized, "wait a second, this game uses a trusted client architecture," and proceeded to fire up Cheat Engine.

**** that guy.

Suddenly, you couldn't tell if you'd started sucking at PvP overnight, or if you were getting steamrolled by someone who had infinite resources. At least with the Meteor spammers you could tell. So, then we got server side sanity checks... and lag. The sanity checks have gotten more complicated, and the lag has waffled, but there was a moment in time when it worked.

It worked when no one knew how to play. CE is merely a tool to make memory hacking easier. ESO was known to be vulnerable by some players in beta and ZOS *had* to know the entire time. Memory hacking is the oldest form of cheating in single player games and it has been well-understood by online game devs for more than 20 years. Devs know they should never trust the client, but do so to implement features that would either be impossible or much more difficult to do otherwise. Most popular games do this, but to compensate they add many layers of mitigation and limit cheating by having a zero-tolerance policy towards it to the point of lifetime bans.

ESO is vulnerable to memory hacking with no mitigations and has poor policy (everyone banned for cheating buys a new account) because ZOS was and is negligent. It's a choice they made.

It is a problem that has not been solved. Your theory doesn't work because crippling lag manifested over the summer of 2014, but memory hacking was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to still exist as late as 2016. Many highly technical users will tell you that it's still an issue, but it hasn't been widely proven via a spectacle recently -- which shouldn't be surprising because it took more than 2 years for the first spectacle to occur.

ZOS has explained that Cyrodiil performed well for the first couple of months because characters were very low level and lacked the ability to sufficiently load the server beyond its capabilities. If you watch videos from that period, most players are slow, generally immobile and mostly light and heavy attacking. They have flat out denied security functions aka 'bot patch' are the reasons why Cyrodiil has performed poorly for years.

But even if that was true, the onus remains on the dev to provide a secure, cheat-free environment that performs acceptably to the greatest degree possible.

I would love to see Cyrodiil's lag dealt with, and I do think it's something we need to keep pressing for. However, the hyperbole does not help your case. It doesn't help any of us. And, calling people, "evil," (yes, I know the exact word you used was, "unethical.") does not help that position. I understand frustration, but ramping up the rhetoric only distracts from the actual issues.

Uhhh... you're right, I didn't say evil and it is, in fact, unethical to sell customers a product that doesn't work properly. A small publisher or one that is struggling might have an excuse, but Zenimax is neither. There is no reason to believe that they don't have the resources to fix AvA if they chose to.

starkerealm wrote: »

At this moment, in this climate, they would be accused of trying to cover it up. It's a no-win situation, so better to weather the storm they have, than risk a new one. The forums have been very volatile since Mirkmire dropped. A lot of very angry people, with a fixed collection of grievances, who are now looking for more venues to rile people on.

No one would accuse ZOS of a coverup. The patch notes aren't an outlet for Gina's personal views. They are official ZOS documents. If her joke isn't reflective of ZOS as a whole, removing it is a correction.

It would only be a 'coverup' if ZOS attempted to remove from the internet all evidence the event happened.

starkerealm

zyk wrote: »

No one would accuse ZOS of a coverup.

Are you kidding? You read the same forums as I do, right?

zyk wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

And the problem here is the hyperbole.

Show me one piece of bug-free commercial software. Just one.

Complaints about AvA are not close to hyperbole.

Saying that the issues with Cyrodiil reach the level of an "unethically," defective product is hyperbole.

zyk wrote: »

It's true that all software, commercial or not, will have some issues, of course. However, ESO AvA has major issues that impact its ability to execute its designed functions.

You might have to be a little more specific. I mean, if you're talking about something like the, "stuck in combat" bug... yeah, that sucks, but that's not, "this product is defective," levels of broken.

zyk wrote: »

These issues have been present for more than 4 years. This is not normal for successful software. It is a characteristic almost exclusive to failed programs.

***, someone needs to tell Adobe and Microsoft, immediately, before they become failed programs...

Oh, right.

zyk wrote: »

Also, AvA worked at launch. No, seriously, back in 2014? It worked. It was packed to the gills with players, it was fast, it was (mostly) lag free. It was amazing.

Then... someone realized, "wait a second, this game uses a trusted client architecture," and proceeded to fire up Cheat Engine.

**** that guy.

Suddenly, you couldn't tell if you'd started sucking at PvP overnight, or if you were getting steamrolled by someone who had infinite resources. At least with the Meteor spammers you could tell. So, then we got server side sanity checks... and lag. The sanity checks have gotten more complicated, and the lag has waffled, but there was a moment in time when it worked.

It worked when no one knew how to play. CE is merely a tool to make memory hacking easier.

I'm fully aware. It's PEEK and POKE for the 21st century.

zyk wrote: »

ESO was known to be vulnerable by some players in beta and ZOS *had* to know the entire time. Memory hacking is the oldest form of cheating in single player games and it has been well-understood by online game devs for more than 20 years. Devs know they should never trust the client, but do so to implement features that would either be impossible or much more difficult to do otherwise. Most popular games do this, but to compensate they add many layers of mitigation and limit cheating by having a zero-tolerance policy towards it to the point of lifetime bans.

You're, actually, missing a major nuance here. Most console devs lean towards trusted client models.

The advantage to trusted clients is that you can afford to offload the processing onto the client systems. In theory, this allows for lag free experiences, particularly in cases where there are large numbers of players. The problem is, of course, on unsecured hardware, you have no control over what other processes may be running. While, on consoles, the hardware is locked down, so running unsigned code requires physical modification of the electronics, which puts it well outside the skillset of your average screamer.

zyk wrote: »

ESO is vulnerable to memory hacking with no mitigations and has poor policy (everyone banned for cheating buys a new account) because ZOS was and is negligent. It's a choice they made.

Honestly, banning an account is easy, banning an individual user is kinda a *****. Now, granted, my primary experience with tracking users has been in systems where you couldn't install software on their system. Generating unique hardware profiles and banning those would be a potential option. But, short of throwing Blizzard money at the problem, this one is way more of a pain in the ass than it's worth.

zyk wrote: »

It is a problem that has not been solved. Your theory doesn't work because crippling lag manifested over the summer of 2014, but memory hacking was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to still exist as late as 2016.

If patch notes are to be trusted, then the first anti-cheat systems went live in Summer 2014. This didn't depopulate Cyrodiil, but it did take the flying bots out at the kneecaps. So, marginal success.

zyk wrote: »

Many highly technical users will tell you that it's still an issue, but it hasn't been widely proven via a spectacle recently -- which shouldn't be surprising because it took more than 2 years for the first spectacle to occur.

From what I understand... and I'm not dumb enough to go poking around personally, memory values are now partially obfuscated, so, yes, there's absolutely still some CE users out there.

Honestly, what rankles me on this is, there is software out there that can analyze what's hooking into a process.

zyk wrote: »

ZOS has explained that Cyrodiil performed well for the first couple of months because characters were very low level and lacked the ability to sufficiently load the server beyond its capabilities. If you watch videos from that period, most players are slow, generally immobile and mostly light and heavy attacking. They have flat out denied security functions aka 'bot patch' are the reasons why Cyrodiil has performed poorly for years.

But even if that was true, the onus remains on the dev to provide a secure, cheat-free environment that performs acceptably to the greatest degree possible.

I agree. However, there's a huge jump from issues with PvP and, "it's unethical to sell this product."

zyk wrote: »

I would love to see Cyrodiil's lag dealt with, and I do think it's something we need to keep pressing for. However, the hyperbole does not help your case. It doesn't help any of us. And, calling people, "evil," (yes, I know the exact word you used was, "unethical.") does not help that position. I understand frustration, but ramping up the rhetoric only distracts from the actual issues.

Uhhh... you're right, I didn't say evil and it is, in fact, unethical to sell customers a product that doesn't work properly. A small publisher or one that is struggling might have an excuse, but Zenimax is neither. There is no reason to believe that they don't have the resources to fix AvA if they chose to.

The hilarious thing about this is, if you're the one coding your software, with maybe one or two other people peeking over your shoulder occasionally, bugs are less likely.

If you're looking at a major release, you could be dealing with over 100 programmers. At that point, errors aren't just inevitable, the ability to track down the cause can become deceptively difficult.

Now, Bethesda Softworks should throw more money at QA testing their titles, but saying, "oh, it's a AAA title, it needs to be bug free," or it's "unethical" is just "disconnected from reality."

JumpmanLane

starkerealm wrote: »

zyk wrote: »

No one would accuse ZOS of a coverup.

Are you kidding? You read the same forums as I do, right?

zyk wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

And the problem here is the hyperbole.

Show me one piece of bug-free commercial software. Just one.

Complaints about AvA are not close to hyperbole.

Saying that the issues with Cyrodiil reach the level of an "unethically," defective product is hyperbole.

zyk wrote: »

It's true that all software, commercial or not, will have some issues, of course. However, ESO AvA has major issues that impact its ability to execute its designed functions.

You might have to be a little more specific. I mean, if you're talking about something like the, "stuck in combat" bug... yeah, that sucks, but that's not, "this product is defective," levels of broken.

zyk wrote: »

These issues have been present for more than 4 years. This is not normal for successful software. It is a characteristic almost exclusive to failed programs.

***, someone needs to tell Adobe and Microsoft, immediately, before they become failed programs...

Oh, right.

zyk wrote: »

Also, AvA worked at launch. No, seriously, back in 2014? It worked. It was packed to the gills with players, it was fast, it was (mostly) lag free. It was amazing.

Then... someone realized, "wait a second, this game uses a trusted client architecture," and proceeded to fire up Cheat Engine.

**** that guy.

Suddenly, you couldn't tell if you'd started sucking at PvP overnight, or if you were getting steamrolled by someone who had infinite resources. At least with the Meteor spammers you could tell. So, then we got server side sanity checks... and lag. The sanity checks have gotten more complicated, and the lag has waffled, but there was a moment in time when it worked.

It worked when no one knew how to play. CE is merely a tool to make memory hacking easier.

I'm fully aware. It's PEEK and POKE for the 21st century.

zyk wrote: »

ESO was known to be vulnerable by some players in beta and ZOS *had* to know the entire time. Memory hacking is the oldest form of cheating in single player games and it has been well-understood by online game devs for more than 20 years. Devs know they should never trust the client, but do so to implement features that would either be impossible or much more difficult to do otherwise. Most popular games do this, but to compensate they add many layers of mitigation and limit cheating by having a zero-tolerance policy towards it to the point of lifetime bans.

You're, actually, missing a major nuance here. Most console devs lean towards trusted client models.

The advantage to trusted clients is that you can afford to offload the processing onto the client systems. In theory, this allows for lag free experiences, particularly in cases where there are large numbers of players. The problem is, of course, on unsecured hardware, you have no control over what other processes may be running. While, on consoles, the hardware is locked down, so running unsigned code requires physical modification of the electronics, which puts it well outside the skillset of your average screamer.

zyk wrote: »

ESO is vulnerable to memory hacking with no mitigations and has poor policy (everyone banned for cheating buys a new account) because ZOS was and is negligent. It's a choice they made.

Honestly, banning an account is easy, banning an individual user is kinda a *****. Now, granted, my primary experience with tracking users has been in systems where you couldn't install software on their system. Generating unique hardware profiles and banning those would be a potential option. But, short of throwing Blizzard money at the problem, this one is way more of a pain in the ass than it's worth.

zyk wrote: »

It is a problem that has not been solved. Your theory doesn't work because crippling lag manifested over the summer of 2014, but memory hacking was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to still exist as late as 2016.

If patch notes are to be trusted, then the first anti-cheat systems went live in Summer 2014. This didn't depopulate Cyrodiil, but it did take the flying bots out at the kneecaps. So, marginal success.

zyk wrote: »

Many highly technical users will tell you that it's still an issue, but it hasn't been widely proven via a spectacle recently -- which shouldn't be surprising because it took more than 2 years for the first spectacle to occur.

From what I understand... and I'm not dumb enough to go poking around personally, memory values are now partially obfuscated, so, yes, there's absolutely still some CE users out there.

Honestly, what rankles me on this is, there is software out there that can analyze what's hooking into a process.

zyk wrote: »

ZOS has explained that Cyrodiil performed well for the first couple of months because characters were very low level and lacked the ability to sufficiently load the server beyond its capabilities. If you watch videos from that period, most players are slow, generally immobile and mostly light and heavy attacking. They have flat out denied security functions aka 'bot patch' are the reasons why Cyrodiil has performed poorly for years.

But even if that was true, the onus remains on the dev to provide a secure, cheat-free environment that performs acceptably to the greatest degree possible.

I agree. However, there's a huge jump from issues with PvP and, "it's unethical to sell this product."

zyk wrote: »

I would love to see Cyrodiil's lag dealt with, and I do think it's something we need to keep pressing for. However, the hyperbole does not help your case. It doesn't help any of us. And, calling people, "evil," (yes, I know the exact word you used was, "unethical.") does not help that position. I understand frustration, but ramping up the rhetoric only distracts from the actual issues.

Uhhh... you're right, I didn't say evil and it is, in fact, unethical to sell customers a product that doesn't work properly. A small publisher or one that is struggling might have an excuse, but Zenimax is neither. There is no reason to believe that they don't have the resources to fix AvA if they chose to.

The hilarious thing about this is, if you're the one coding your software, with maybe one or two other people peeking over your shoulder occasionally, bugs are less likely.

If you're looking at a major release, you could be dealing with over 100 programmers. At that point, errors aren't just inevitable, the ability to track down the cause can become deceptively difficult.

Now, Bethesda Softworks should throw more money at QA testing their titles, but saying, "oh, it's a AAA title, it needs to be bug free," or it's "unethical" is just "disconnected from reality."

How can you defend this drek? The combination of bugs makes the game unplayable much of the time. The truly sad part is that the game becomes unplayable right after a patch...patch after patch, that joke in the patch notes adds INSULT to injury. I played 5 minutes and crashed. Logged on 5 hours later, played an hour logged off, doing more interesting things. I’ll see if I want to play at all tomorrow...

Elwendryll

starkerealm wrote: »

Unfortunately, this goes back to a basic cost-benefit analysis issue. Only 18% of players reach the rank of Recruit. Only 15% ever capture a resource in Cyrodiil. Clear Maelstrom (on normal or vet), that's less than 3% (and the vet completion rate is 0.83%.) Halls of Fabrication clears are at around 0.8%, Asylum is a little over 1%, and Cloudrest sits, exactly, at 1%. The DLC dungeons sit around 1-3% completion on normal. (Older DLCs have higher completion rates.)

Please, where did you get these data, and when?