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

idk

zyk wrote: »

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.

Clearly I did not suggest there were no performance issues during the first year. Heck, there were clear performance issues before the game launched. MattF has got to be the worst manager of a major MMORPG launch there has ever been.

However, we know that fights at keeps could easily be many time larger than what can even possibly occur today because of population caps. We saw those fights at times defending scrolls and attempting or preventing an Emperor cap. The lag did not affect us like it does today considering the numbers involved.

I seem to find it odd that you share Rich's comments acknowledging issues with server performance but seem to suggest it is better than it has ever been. Idk (obviously), maybe I am missing something you are attempting to say.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

zyk wrote: »

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.

Yes I mentioned the fps bug in my post. Also from what I remember Brian never actually addressed the security code issue only the visual "improvements". If you know different please post the links.

As ZoS have never accepted that this patch caused these performance issues ofc there isn't going to be a link of them saying it did. (Aside from the fps springs bug) idk if you played then or not.

If you want a link about the api changes you can start here:https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/115222/v1-2-3-api-patch-notes-change-log

zyk

idk wrote: »

Clearly I did not suggest there were no performance issues during the first year. Heck, there were clear performance issues before the game launched. MattF has got to be the worst manager of a major MMORPG launch there has ever been.

However, we know that fights at keeps could easily be many time larger than what can even possibly occur today because of population caps. We saw those fights at times defending scrolls and attempting or preventing an Emperor cap. The lag did not affect us like it does today considering the numbers involved.

I seem to find it odd that you share Rich's comments acknowledging issues with server performance but seem to suggest it is better than it has ever been. Idk (obviously), maybe I am missing something you are attempting to say.

I've been quoting some old posts from Brian Wheeler recently. They are things I've read to verify my own recollections.

The performance issues the first year were just as bad, yes. By 1.3, during prime time, if there were multiple raids at a keep fight, most attacks wouldn't register for minutes. There were multiple server crashes every weekend in 1.3 and 1.4. There were widespread complaints that certain raids were intentionally crashing the server with healing springs spam.

I do not think the raw capabilities of the server have been decreased, no. There's no reason to believe that. ZOS has made multiple changes to improve server performance over the years. Unfortunately, those improvements are always offset by factors that make lag worse like new passives, proc sets, power creep and, most importantly, more experienced players who push the server harder than they did in 2014. The heavy armor meta doesn't help either because the longer it takes players to die, the worse lag will be.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Yes I mentioned the fps bug in my post. Also from what I remember Brian never actually addressed the security code issue only the visual "improvements". If you know different please post the links.

I'll try to find the source. I'm certain that he said the performance degradation was from players advancing in levels though. And that makes sense. We saw the same on BWB on PC/NA when it was popular and on the Console campaigns when they were new.

Edit: On ESO Live from Dec 4, 2015 @ 53:03 Brian Wheeler addresses the lighting patch. He says they looked at the server and did not see a discernible difference.

He goes on to say what they did discover was that around that time characters happened to become better developed in terms of level and gear. This is reasonable as the game was only 3 months old. He references armor proc sets as an issue. He says it's completely coincidental that performance seemed to get worse around that time.

Also, the actual FPS drop client bug caused by the lighting patch really muddied the waters.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

zyk wrote: »

idk wrote: »

Clearly I did not suggest there were no performance issues during the first year. Heck, there were clear performance issues before the game launched. MattF has got to be the worst manager of a major MMORPG launch there has ever been.

However, we know that fights at keeps could easily be many time larger than what can even possibly occur today because of population caps. We saw those fights at times defending scrolls and attempting or preventing an Emperor cap. The lag did not affect us like it does today considering the numbers involved.

I seem to find it odd that you share Rich's comments acknowledging issues with server performance but seem to suggest it is better than it has ever been. Idk (obviously), maybe I am missing something you are attempting to say.

I've been quoting some old posts from Brian Wheeler recently. They are things I've read to verify my own recollections.

The performance issues the first year were just as bad, yes. By 1.3, during prime time, if there were multiple raids at a keep fight, most attacks wouldn't register for minutes. There were multiple server crashes every weekend in 1.3 and 1.4. There were widespread complaints that certain raids were intentionally crashing the server with healing springs spam.

I do not think the raw capabilities of the server have been decreased, no. There's no reason to believe that. ZOS has made multiple changes to improve server performance over the years. Unfortunately, those improvements are always offset by factors that make lag worse like new passives, proc sets, power creep and, most importantly, more experienced players who push the server harder than they did in 2014. The heavy armor meta doesn't help either because the longer it takes players to die, the worse lag will be.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Yes I mentioned the fps bug in my post. Also from what I remember Brian never actually addressed the security code issue only the visual "improvements". If you know different please post the links.

I'll try to find the source. I'm certain that he said the performance degradation was from players advancing in levels though. And that makes sense. We saw the same on BWB on PC/NA when it was popular and on the Console campaigns when they were new.

Edit: On ESO Live from Dec 4, 2015 @ 53:03 Brian Wheeler addresses the lighting patch. He says they looked at the server and did not see a discernible difference.

He goes on to say what they did discover was that around that time characters happened to become better developed in terms of level and gear. This is reasonable as the game was only 3 months old. He references armor proc sets as an issue. He says it's completely coincidental that performance seemed to get worse around that time.

Also, the actual FPS drop client bug caused by the lighting patch really muddied the waters.

Yes I remember the eso live but he didn't make reference to any underlying api or client /server protection changes only said "it's not the lighting"

zyk

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

[
Yes I remember the eso live but he didn't make reference to any underlying api or client /server protection changes only said "it's not the lighting"

I don't think he was choosing his words to deceive us. To me, it's pretty clear he's saying the server wasn't changed in a way that affects performance that update and provides his explanation for the decrease in performance players noticed around that time. The question was obviously in the context of server performance and that particular update.

His explanation is reasonable, especially considering there was a build-up of lag-related posts to the point of exasperation in the forums prior to the lighting patch and the same pattern was observed on the console platforms that launched a year later and on PC/NA when BWB was popular in 2015.

On the other hand, no discernible security was added. The game is vulnerable to the most basic bots in 2019 and memory hacking was last shown to exist beyond a reasonable doubt in 2016 -- and IMO remains an issue today, but I would prefer not to debate that.

What about the addon API do you think made server lag worse?

Rudyard

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.

It very clearly did affect lag, I remember it getting worse after that specific update. And bots were much worse that first summer. They were in almost every delve farming the bosses interrupting zone quests. Yes we've seen a return of the farming bots several years ago, but they are nothing like the annoyances we had that first summer. People were leaving the game in droves because of them. Maybe their current anti-bot system sucks, but lag noticeably increased with that update and at the same time almost all those bots disappeared at that time. I'll concede that maybe it's coincidence, but the pvp noticeably got laggier. It was also the "lighting update" and perhaps those graphical changes affected lag.

Sure there were less skilled players, but there was plenty of spamming of healing springs, bat (vamp dk's were almost godmode at the beginning), spin to win, and impulse/pulsar spam was particularly bad. Maybe not quite as complex as today, but there was plenty of spam going on that first year, the learning curve accelerated quickly, moreso for some groups than others.

People were playing the game like crack those first few months, we'd been chomping at beta (and some at alpha) for so long, now that the real thing was here in April and we binged.People (and more importantly, groups) began finding the skillful advantages within those first 30-45 days. Groups like Alacrity and that EP goblin squad come to mind.

SirAndy

Delsskia wrote: »

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

@Delsskia

It's a business opportunity: Sell advertising space on the loading screens!

SirAndy

zyk wrote: »

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.

You keep saying that yet you have both your facts and your timeline wrong.

The current bot situation is *nothing* compared to the bot rampage we had at PC launch.

By June of 2014 (your alleged "evidence" date), the first round of anti-bot code had already been implemented. And it was quite effective in holding back the bot tsunami, but it also turned the game into a lag-fest.
Again, the bot problem today is nothing compared to the bot problem at PC launch.

Your argument is flawed on so many levels ...

OtarTheMad

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.

I remember when a guild I ran with (RAG) was in Chyrsamere during the very first campaign cycle sometimes guilds that ran in Auriels Bow or Wabbajack would come in and always say the same thing: “wow, good fights and no lag”. Lag has always been around.

EDIT- the bot/gold farmer system causing the lag is not a myth, it did hurt PvP a lot but lag did exist before it. Just wasn’t as bad

OtarTheMad

SirAndy wrote: »

zyk wrote: »

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.

You keep saying that yet you have both your facts and your timeline wrong.

The current bot situation is *nothing* compared to the bot rampage we had at PC launch.

By June of 2014 (your alleged "evidence" date), the first round of anti-bot code had already been implemented. And it was quite effective in holding back the bot tsunami, but it also turned the game into a lag-fest.
Again, the bot problem today is nothing compared to the bot problem at PC launch.

Your argument is flawed on so many levels ...

EDIT- After much thinking I do remember that the lag experienced got worse after the bot system was introduced. 2014 was a long time ago, my bad. Lag did exist before that though but only in those heavily populated campaigns, it just got worse after the bot/gold farmer system went in