The REAL cause of the lag in Vivec(NA PC).

Prince_of_all_Pugs

I'm going to address the elephant in the room by stating that most of our lag comes from our communities SERIOUS ADDICTION to faction zerging. This is the cause of the lag, No matter what Zos has implemented over the years, people have ALWAYS chose to faction zerg over anything else. Its not even a matter of guilds anymore, all players from PuG's to Zerglings, to 1vXers, ALL STACK together regardless and cause critical lag. What the 1vXers and small man and class leads dont see is that Most people in Vivec (and in other serversl) NEED to zerg just to play the game (this is why so few play on Shor.)Until this is properly addressed NO CHANGE will occur and there will just be more lag. The only way we can Fix this is lag is if we MOBILIZE as a community and Spread ourselves out across the servers. The easiest way to do this is to get ALL guilds larger then 12 to go play on Shor for a season (this is the easiest way to cause the population to disperse the fastest). I know this is a tall order, but its the only way we can realistically reduce the lag, If ZOS could have fixed the lag they would have done it already.

sharquez

You ain't wrong but as you said it's a tall order. People want to go where the action is.

Sanctum74

The lag is caused from poor coding, not zerging. Which is why the performance gets worse with each patch despite the population decreasing. Considering you can have bad lag in a 1v1 alone in a field in a 1-2 bar campaign, spreading out will do absolutely nothing to address the problem.

I personally enjoy pvp, not pvdooring, pve, or fighting the same 10 people over and over. If I'm going to be forced to spread out then it's going to be in a different game entirely.

Sorry, but the problem is on Zos's end and no amount of spreading out will fix that.

imredneckson

The main problem with the lag is just that ZOS hasn't worked on fixing it and if they have they have only worked on adding a bandage. I know ZOS could if they fulling wanted to but that would involve taking away resources from PvE and probably the next update to focus on something they really just don't care about.

Delsskia

The cause of the lag is the fact that ZOS chose an outdated and inappropriate game engine to build their game on. Then shortly after release, they fired almost all of their programmers, including the most experienced of them. They've hired intern/entry level programmers to write every DLC since and then promptly fired them. And those coders have been exceedingly lax with their documentation so that each new batch of coders didn't know exactly how the previous ones accomplished their desired goals. This has resulted in a mish mash of spaghetti code that conflicts with earlier coding rather than enhancing it and introducing more bugs than can be managed with bandaid fixes.

It's a train wreck and the train was carrying burning dumpsters on a track that didn't fit the train.

The most immediate thing that ZOS can do to alleviate the strain on the game engine and servers, is to use Battle Spirit to disable all proc sets in Cyrodiil. That would be an enormous reduction in calculations and return immediate results, making the game, at least, playable again.

Unfortunately, the only way to truly fix the game is to hire experienced programmers who document everything they do to rewrite, streamline and optimize the code and build it on top of a game engine that can actually handle large scale combat. ZOS has the resources to do that, but I doubt very seriously that they have the will. I honestly believe that ZOS' only long term plans for the game are how to best monetize it as it slowly dies.

Crispen_Longbow

Prince_of_all_Pugs wrote: »

I'm going to address the elephant in the room by stating that most of our lag comes from our communities SERIOUS ADDICTION to faction zerging. This is the cause of the lag, No matter what Zos has implemented over the years, people have ALWAYS chose to faction zerg over anything else. Its not even a matter of guilds anymore, all players from PuG's to Zerglings, to 1vXers, ALL STACK together regardless and cause critical lag. What the 1vXers and small man and class leads dont see is that Most people in Vivec (and in other serversl) NEED to zerg just to play the game (this is why so few play on Shor.)Until this is properly addressed NO CHANGE will occur and there will just be more lag. The only way we can Fix this is lag is if we MOBILIZE as a community and Spread ourselves out across the servers. The easiest way to do this is to get ALL guilds larger then 12 to go play on Shor for a season (this is the easiest way to cause the population to disperse the fastest). I know this is a tall order, but its the only way we can realistically reduce the lag, If ZOS could have fixed the lag they would have done it already.

I'm all for helping reduce the lag where we can, as we know ZOS will never do it. The Lag is the worst during Prime-time. The problem is there aren't that many Prime-time( Medium to Large) Guilds left that run. There are only like 1 or 2 that run on any given night.

Omni plays 2 times a week (Tuesdays and Thursdays). Fantasia Plays two times a week (Wednesday's and Saturdays If I remember right). Even ones listed below are a stretch to call them medium scale like Phalanx they get like 6-8.


DC Prime-time Guilds

• Vivec = Iron Legion (IL)
• Vivec = Guardians of Daggerfall (GOD)
• Vivec = Blood of Daggerfall (BoD)
• Vivec = Best Laid Plans (BLP)
• Vivec = Nightswatch (NW)
• Vivec = Cry Havoc
• Vivec = Phalanx
  
  
• Sotha = Legion of Mordor (LoM)
• Sotha = Nocturnal
• Sotha = Rough Riders
  
  
• Shor = Vanquish

AD Prime-time Guilds

• Vivec = Omni
• Vivec = Fantasia
• Vivec = Golden Gryphons (GG)
• Vivec = The Dancing Bears (TDB)
• Vivec = Ruin
• Vivec = Total Domination (TD)
• Vivec = Dominion Imperial Guard (DiG)
• Vivec = Dominant Dominion (DD)
  
  
• Sotha = Homicide Inc
• Sotha = War Bunnies
  
  
• Shor = Dominion Special Forces

EP Prime-time Guilds

• Vivec = Drac
• Vivec = Allegiance
• Vivec = Tear
• Vivec = Phoenix Rising
• Vivec = Vokundein
• Vivec = Army of The Pact
• Vivec = Justice League
• Vivec = Specters of the Phoenix
• Vivec = Darkest Requiem
• Vivec = Moist sensation
  
  
• Sotha = Cobra Kai
• Sotha = Animosity
• Sotha = Fishing Pact
  
  
• Shor = Dreadlords

Not included in the above lists as they don't really play in Prime Time Lag.

• Knights of Ni (NI)
• Panda Force (PF)
• The Kelly Gang (TKG)
• Lolizerg
• Vivace
• Wormhole
• RAM
• ZDM
• EP Hit Squad
• IA

Draxys

Sanctum74 wrote: »

The lag is caused from poor coding, not zerging. Which is why the performance gets worse with each patch despite the population decreasing. Considering you can have bad lag in a 1v1 alone in a field in a 1-2 bar campaign, spreading out will do absolutely nothing to address the problem.

I personally enjoy pvp, not pvdooring, pve, or fighting the same 10 people over and over. If I'm going to be forced to spread out then it's going to be in a different game entirely.

Sorry, but the problem is on Zos's end and no amount of spreading out will fix that.

This is the actual answer, not the OP. Spaghetti code and anti-cheat measures. Game ran amazingly before that, then got even worse with the introduction of CP and copious amounts of proc sets.

disintegr8

So there it's our fault we have lag... thank god for that.

OK, limit group sizes to 4 and alliance populations to 25. Good luck finding someone to fight but at least you won't have ant lag.

Recremen

There was a time period only a few months ago where we had primetime guilds willing to try to break up the zergs and avoid the stacks where possible. There was still lag, but it was categorically less of a problem. Those were good times, but now certain *** are doing the exact opposite, and intentionally stack as much of the faction in one place as possible because they can't compete any other way and don't want the actual valuable leaders on their faction to outdo them. So instead we see groups of 60+ actual confirmed players all riding to the same objective. They lose half their map, of course, but they can't be damned to split up for whatever reason. It looks like pure cowardice.

I'm not saying we shouldn't also pressure ZOS to do what they can to improve performance, but the PvP community ought to expect better of our leadership, unless we want to see every faction take the 3 Full Raids approach and really bring everything to a screeching halt.

Telel

It gets even better when the softest of the soft resort to using multiple factions to do even the most basic of things.

The last couple of months this one has noticed it getting exceptionally bad with team purple. So bad that we've literally seen them bring multiple raids to take an oupost. Raids that then time their sieges to the point where one side will stop until the other half catches up.

The best part was the fact they still lose despite the numbers. Recently this one even caught it on stream for a half dozen lucky viewers.

Incidentally this was during the early afternoon when there's barely any Dumbminion on. Khajiit can only imagine the elfed up state of the server once the 'skilled' lag blobs show up to 'find good fights'.

Sadly so long as they can just squeal a quick 'lol RP spaiz r legit, lag blobs r skill plai. Zos says git gud' it's just going to get even worse. Especially since reporting the most abusive zone trolls and faction saboteurs isn't going to stop it.

At least not until the big Z treats them the way they treated those AP traders on EU and console. Or they deincentivize purposely abusing populations and lag inducing tactics.

idk

It is clearly not due to faction Zerging. Yes, it is easy to say Zergs (when really meaning large groups of players) are the culprit, but it ignores the real issue. As long as the real issue is ignored it will not get fixed.

For starters, anyone who understands server performance understands the design of the software being run plays a huge role in efficiency vs bottlenecks causing issues. So we can pretend it is as simple as to many people grouping in a given area and slap more Band-Aids on the system, as OP is suggesting, or continue to push Zos to do their job and find the issue. Considering the population of Vivec is a small fraction or what it was at launch we know population reduction is not the solution.

Zos management should hire a team to develop the solution since they clearly lack the talent themselves.

Further, even if large groups were the issue, players out across campaigns does not prevent large groups from forming either as one actual group or organically because one location is the best place to be at a given time.

It is also a poor idea to try to force fewer people to come to a given area as it requires them to run around and count who they can see and cannot see to decide if they should help take or defend this keep.

Again, push Zos to find the real issue and real solution instead of guessing at what it might be.

Prince_of_all_Pugs

Yes we know that the real cause is the terribad code and outdated server's. However we cannot fix any of that and neither will Zos. This is the only way.

VaranisArano

That's because faction zerging is exactly what Cyrodiil's campaign objectives is designed to create.

Let's take one situation. PC/NA Vivec. Castle Roebeck has an EP scroll and is the last keep necessary to dethrone an AD emperor.

How exactly do you propose to stop players, whether in guilds or not, from stacking up on that important objective? We can't. Faction zerging, or at least lots of players fighting for important objectives, is exactly what Cyrodiil is designed to create. Asking players not to do this is counter to the game design, which is why ZOS keeps failing to get us to spread out no matter how many extra objectives they add.



As for your actual suggestion of shifting the guilds over, this only works if enough guilds shift over to Shor that you actually get competitive fights. Every time my guild went over to Shor, we took the map pretty easily, which isn't fun for the regular Shor players and wasn't much competition for us. No offense to the regulars of Shor - a full raid used to fighting Vivec's guilds tends to cut through Shor like a hot knife through butter. So we went back to Vivec, where its laggy, but at least we could find decent matchups.

So if the whole community doesn't go along with it - and good luck getting that sort of cross-faction guild cooperation - just going to Shor doesn't work long-term.

Arkangeloski

Once somebody told me type your name on the guild roster search to ease the lag in cyrodiil, I did and it worked I mean is not a magical cure but could tell the diference. This happens because the server update the guild roster constantly on our client so causes a little bit of strain on the servers when you type your name it takes a brake from updating your client, So that made me think, if that causes problems then what kind of problems would cause the server updating and processing information in a 30 day campaigns with 3 alliances? I don't know I might be wrong but it makes a lot of sense to me...

Anrose

Why would I ride all the way to an empty keep, try to siege, then get zerged down by a group looking for a d-tick when I could just go to an inner keep like everyone else where I know there will be a fight with more equal numbers?

Answer that question to realize why it happens and only then can you fix it.

Elong

Stop blaming the players ffs

cbro72

The poor performance is zos’s fault. And some guild intentually make it worse.

Stridig

The population in Cyrodiil is 1/3 what it was 3 years ago. It's not zergs.1 full group is considered a zerg these days. That's nothing compared to what we used to have.

Delsskia

I wish ZOS would finally just own up to the truth, they are a manufacturing company who's staple products are bottlenecks and bugs.

technohic

Crispen_Longbow wrote: »

Prince_of_all_Pugs wrote: »

I'm going to address the elephant in the room by stating that most of our lag comes from our communities SERIOUS ADDICTION to faction zerging. This is the cause of the lag, No matter what Zos has implemented over the years, people have ALWAYS chose to faction zerg over anything else. Its not even a matter of guilds anymore, all players from PuG's to Zerglings, to 1vXers, ALL STACK together regardless and cause critical lag. What the 1vXers and small man and class leads dont see is that Most people in Vivec (and in other serversl) NEED to zerg just to play the game (this is why so few play on Shor.)Until this is properly addressed NO CHANGE will occur and there will just be more lag. The only way we can Fix this is lag is if we MOBILIZE as a community and Spread ourselves out across the servers. The easiest way to do this is to get ALL guilds larger then 12 to go play on Shor for a season (this is the easiest way to cause the population to disperse the fastest). I know this is a tall order, but its the only way we can realistically reduce the lag, If ZOS could have fixed the lag they would have done it already.

I'm all for helping reduce the lag where we can, as we know ZOS will never do it. The Lag is the worst during Prime-time. The problem is there aren't that many Prime-time( Medium to Large) Guilds left that run. There are only like 1 or 2 that run on any given night.

Omni plays 2 times a week (Tuesdays and Thursdays). Fantasia Plays two times a week (Wednesday's and Saturdays If I remember right). Even ones listed below are a stretch to call them medium scale like Phalanx they get like 6-8.


DC Prime-time Guilds

• Vivec = Iron Legion (IL)
• Vivec = Guardians of Daggerfall (GOD)
• Vivec = Blood of Daggerfall (BoD)
• Vivec = Best Laid Plans (BLP)
• Vivec = Nightswatch (NW)
• Vivec = Cry Havoc
• Vivec = Phalanx
  
  
• Sotha = Legion of Mordor (LoM)
• Sotha = Nocturnal
• Sotha = Rough Riders
  
  
• Shor = Vanquish

AD Prime-time Guilds

• Vivec = Omni
• Vivec = Fantasia
• Vivec = Golden Gryphons (GG)
• Vivec = The Dancing Bears (TDB)
• Vivec = Ruin
• Vivec = Total Domination (TD)
• Vivec = Dominion Imperial Guard (DiG)
• Vivec = Dominant Dominion (DD)
  
  
• Sotha = Homicide Inc
• Sotha = War Bunnies
  
  
• Shor = Dominion Special Forces

EP Prime-time Guilds

• Vivec = Drac
• Vivec = Allegiance
• Vivec = Tear
• Vivec = Phoenix Rising
• Vivec = Vokundein
• Vivec = Army of The Pact
• Vivec = Justice League
• Vivec = Specters of the Phoenix
• Vivec = Darkest Requiem
• Vivec = Moist sensation
  
  
• Sotha = Cobra Kai
• Sotha = Animosity
• Sotha = Fishing Pact
  
  
• Shor = Dreadlords

Not included in the above lists as they don't really play in Prime Time Lag.

• Knights of Ni (NI)
• Panda Force (PF)
• The Kelly Gang (TKG)
• Lolizerg
• Vivace
• Wormhole
• RAM
• ZDM
• EP Hit Squad
• IA

Vanquish only does Shor on Friday night AFAIK. Rest of the week, its maybe 8 people in Vivec

Problem is finding small to mediim fights that aren't zergs as there's so many people just stealthing around. Getting pretty annoying. Then if not, its resource farmers moving from resource to resource trying to avoid fights save for the few that want to tower farm. Either way, not the best gameplay.

Rudyard

If OP had been around the first year he would have seen much larger stacks with much less lag. It started when they updated to stop the gold farmers that first year and has gotten worse and worse every year.

zyk

Rudyard wrote: »

If OP had been around the first year he would have seen much larger stacks with much less lag. It started when they updated to stop the gold farmers that first year and has gotten worse and worse every year.

This is a myth. Performance was better early because characters were low level and almost no one knew how to play.

The alleged 'anti-bot' code is a theory that doesn't make sense because ESO is still afflicted by the most simple bots possible.

The main difference in the early days was the hype and potential.





It's always been broken.

Beardimus

Prince_of_all_Pugs wrote: »

I'm going to address the elephant in the room by stating that most of our lag comes from our communities SERIOUS ADDICTION to faction zerging. This is the cause of the lag, No matter what Zos has implemented over the years, people have ALWAYS chose to faction zerg over anything else. Its not even a matter of guilds anymore, all players from PuG's to Zerglings, to 1vXers, ALL STACK together regardless and cause critical lag. What the 1vXers and small man and class leads dont see is that Most people in Vivec (and in other serversl) NEED to zerg just to play the game (this is why so few play on Shor.)Until this is properly addressed NO CHANGE will occur and there will just be more lag. The only way we can Fix this is lag is if we MOBILIZE as a community and Spread ourselves out across the servers. The easiest way to do this is to get ALL guilds larger then 12 to go play on Shor for a season (this is the easiest way to cause the population to disperse the fastest). I know this is a tall order, but its the only way we can realistically reduce the lag, If ZOS could have fixed the lag they would have done it already.

I've been saying this for an age. Shor and Sotha are where the quality play is. However people like to get in a zerg and be in Sotha and that's it.
Look at the complaints about this extra PvP event which is a cool thing, people are moaning Vivec is going to have big queues and lag rather than thinking now's a good time to e joy the less pop camapogns while they have more people.

BUT don't get me wrong whilst i think people should spread out (and ZOS should incentivise that more) i also don't want guilds to sweep thru shor etc zerging the decent play Down, so its a catch 22.

Kadoin

Players zerging cause lag? I don't know...

In One Tamriel and the patches before that, there was lots of zerging and I didn't have lag besides poor client performance. Rarely did I ever see the server lag like it does now. And those were times when 100+ man groups would push for scrolls...

I started noticing terrible server performance during Homestead and definitely after Morrowind.

frozywozy

Delsskia wrote: »

The cause of the lag is the fact that ZOS chose an outdated and inappropriate game engine to build their game on. Then shortly after release, they fired almost all of their programmers, including the most experienced of them. They've hired intern/entry level programmers to write every DLC since and then promptly fired them. And those coders have been exceedingly lax with their documentation so that each new batch of coders didn't know exactly how the previous ones accomplished their desired goals. This has resulted in a mish mash of spaghetti code that conflicts with earlier coding rather than enhancing it and introducing more bugs than can be managed with bandaid fixes.

It's a train wreck and the train was carrying burning dumpsters on a track that didn't fit the train.

The most immediate thing that ZOS can do to alleviate the strain on the game engine and servers, is to use Battle Spirit to disable all proc sets in Cyrodiil. That would be an enormous reduction in calculations and return immediate results, making the game, at least, playable again.

Unfortunately, the only way to truly fix the game is to hire experienced programmers who document everything they do to rewrite, streamline and optimize the code and build it on top of a game engine that can actually handle large scale combat. ZOS has the resources to do that, but I doubt very seriously that they have the will. I honestly believe that ZOS' only long term plans for the game are how to best monetize it as it slowly dies.

That and guilds running 24players+ stacked together at primetime and thinking the blame is on ZOS.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

@zyk anti bot code is just referring to the lighting patch where they supposedly also added this bot code. The fact that bots are still so prevalent and cheat engine blew up in the way it did on NA says more about the success of any zos code rather than the fact it wasn't added. I would stand by the fact that this patch significantly adversely affected performance and the excuse that "oh players just hit max then" is a very poor one. Speaking as someone who played back then and lost over 50% of the guild I played with due to that patch.

zyk

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

@zyk anti bot code is just referring to the lighting patch where they supposedly also added this bot code. The fact that bots are still so prevalent and cheat engine blew up in the way it did on NA says more about the success of any zos code rather than the fact it wasn't added. I would stand by the fact that this patch significantly adversely affected performance and the excuse that "oh players just hit max then" is a very poor one. Speaking as someone who played back then and lost over 50% of the guild I played with due to that patch.

My screenshots show is that there were already widespread complaints about Cyrodiil performance months before the Lighting patch which was Update 2 (1.2.3) that went live, I believe, on June 23, 2014.

Google search for the terms lag, cyrodiil prior to June 23, 2014

Brian Wheeler has explained that performance gradually became worse over the first spring/summer as players leveled. In other posts, he's explained the difference in performance between non-vet and vet campaigns were passives.

Console launch players also recall good server performance early on in the same conditions: low levels, new players.

Zazeergate (CE) in 2016 and ongoing bot issues suggest no security functions were added in 2014.

If I'm wrong and there's actually evidence that security functions decreased performance, I'd be happy for that to be proven. But as far as I can tell, it's pure speculation that's become player lore presented as fact.

idk

zyk wrote: »

Rudyard wrote: »

If OP had been around the first year he would have seen much larger stacks with much less lag. It started when they updated to stop the gold farmers that first year and has gotten worse and worse every year.

This is a myth. Performance was better early because characters were low level and almost no one knew how to play.

The alleged 'anti-bot' code is a theory that doesn't make sense because ESO is still afflicted by the most simple bots possible.

The main difference in the early days was the hype and potential.

It's always been broken.

There seems to be some incorrect information here. ESO started out with a heavily trusted client. After the CE issue blew up in Zos' face they did move a lot of checks server side which has had a big impact. This change is well known.

Also, while performance in Cyrodiil was far from perfect at launch the issues have changed. I am assuming you were not hear in that first year, especially first few months since one had to find threads complaining about the performance.

Heck, iirc, it was you that has posted some great quotes from Rich about the causes of lag and as such I would have thought it would be clear Zos has made things much worse based on the info Rich provided.

zyk

idk wrote: »

There seems to be some incorrect information here. ESO started out with a heavily trusted client. After the CE issue blew up in Zos' face they did move a lot of checks server side which has had a big impact. This change is well known.

Also, while performance in Cyrodiil was far from perfect at launch the issues have changed. I am assuming you were not hear in that first year, especially first few months since one had to find threads complaining about the performance.

This is all speculation. First of all, the client is still trusted and vulnerable to memory hacking. Secondly, you don't just move functions from client to server. The game would have needed to be re-engineered and there is no evidence of that at all. But let's not go there. We don't need to.

Zazeergate happened in 2016, roughly around 2.4 I think. Server performance had already been garbage for almost 2 years and did not degrade after. The worst performing patch of 2016 was, without a doubt, 2.3 (TG).

I was most definitely there the first year. I have provided google results of forum posts complaining about the same things we complain about today :


Performance deteriorated over the first summer and was as bad as it is today in big fights by 1.3. Lag manifested in slightly different ways then, but it was just as dysfunctional.

Brian Wheeler has talked about optimizing some checks that were done on both the client and the server, but always in the context of improving performance.

The way in which ZOS has hurt Cyrodiil performance since launch, objectively, is by continuing to add things they've explained cause performance issues: passives, procs and CP.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

People always complain about performance in any large fights. You will ofc find posts. However as someone who played back then I know the difference between it being a bit laggy vs we're all standing still and 60 banners are on the floor cause it's not registering the ulti drop.

Patch 1.2 brought serious fps drops due to healing springs also. This was admitted by zos and partially fixed. The reason for the bot code being added was due to people hacking into scroll gates and stealing the scrolls etc

Everyone who played back then would agree performance got worse after this "lighting patch"

zyk

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Patch 1.2 brought serious fps drops due to healing springs also. This was admitted by zos and partially fixed. The reason for the bot code being added was due to people hacking into scroll gates and stealing the scrolls etc

I believe you are incorrect. The exploit to get to the enemy gates and scrolls was 'tunneling' and to be addressed in update 5 as explained in this Guild Summit update from Oct 2014:

sean.plackerb14_ESO wrote:

Coming up in Update 5

Minimum rank requirement to purchase Forward Camps
Buffs will be local to the campaign only for PvP only, they are still considering how to handle buffs for PvE
Anti-tunneling boundaries and ways to block exploits where players wiggle through terrain objects and get underneath the world.

Memory hacking would have also allowed for access to scrolls and enemy gates, but whether you agree ESO remains vulnerable to memory hacking, it *definitely* was not fixed in 2014.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Everyone who played back then would agree performance got worse after this "lighting patch"

Right, but the main thing the Lighting patch is known for is the brutal client bugs that it added. The lighting patch bug would drop framerates down 1-5 FPS. It took ZOS weeks to correct this bug.

The FPS bug was annoying in overland PVE, but not critical because it was less common and one could relog to correct it. In Cyrodiil, it was quickly triggered and no one wanted to relog because of queues.

I recall Brian Wheeler specifically saying that he confirmed with the coders that security code was not added and that performance was better early because the average character was a low level.

This is extremely relevant because ESO had only been live for 3 months when the lighting patch was introduced. So by the time the bug was fixed, the game had been live approximately 20-25% longer and of course, significantly more players had reached max level by then; and, crucially, had 20-25% more time to learn the game.

But again, I am happy to be wrong about these things. I have no horse in this race. My goal is for our community to have as accurate an understanding of the state of the game as possible. Of course we can't assume security code sabotaged performance without evidence, so if this is more than player speculation, please show me.