Think any of the new changes will inadvertently improve performance?

Thevampirenight

I know they said in the livestream that this update won't do much to improve performance but given the changes they have made think some of those changes will help with performance? Yes or no what are your thoughts?

DJfriede

I believe most of the healing changes (1 orb, 1 mutagen, 1 spring at a time) is not because the devs thought this through gameplay-wise, but because their servers can't handle all the healing stacks in trials.

kpittsniperb14_ESO

I don't think there's anything inadvertent about it imho, looks like the changes are driven primarily to improve performance as opposed to balance.

jcm2606

Other

All the AOE heal nerfs will probably help performance to varying degrees, especially in Cyrodiil. AOE effects in general tend to be pretty slow, as the game needs to fetch all players within a certain radius around a position or a certain area, trim that list of players based on line of sight or other targeting rules, then further trim that list based on the AOE cap. AOE healing is even slower, on top of that, as it would need to also trim that list based on which players are at max health (between the targeting trim and the cap trim).

Imagine all this happening within like a 30v50v80 siege or something, with potentially a hundred or so players in the area. Imagine how much work the servers have to do to figure out who can receive the heals, as well as who should receive the heals.

Similar problem with AOE heals in trials, but the problem is scaled way way down, which is why I chose "other". It's a limited subset of changes improving performance in a limited subset of the game.

fletchunit

Other

Yeah hopefully alot of people will leave then i might be able to play on my console again and get more than 1 fps when in combat yay!

Rake

Yes

many will quit so less ppl on server = less lag

Yellow_Monolith

No

Better chance of winning the lotto than getting ESO performance increase.

Sanguinor2

Yes

The more People quit the less strain there will be on groupfinder etc.

daemonios

DJfriede wrote: »

I believe most of the healing changes (1 orb, 1 mutagen, 1 spring at a time) is not because the devs thought this through gameplay-wise, but because their servers can't handle all the healing stacks in trials.

You could say the same about stacked bleeds, or stacked dots, or stacked anything. I seriously doubt this is what's degrading performance.

If you were talking about the amount of modifiers, though... Max stats, CP, gear, food, passive and active buffs and debuffs, all modifying skills and having to be checked and calculated server-side to prevent cheating... That must have a far higher toll than 2 or 3 of the same skill or effect.

Gythral

Yes

The servers will recover when they are empty!

Kadoin

No

No. Speculation, based only on observations, but...

A. They would need to improve how the game interacts between network and graphics on the client side. From observation, it appears that graphics always must load first before any more network data is processed. That is assumed to be the case because you only lag out in situations where graphical effects either load in large amounts. It was also stated by ZOS in a recent patch that they removed certain model reloading in Cyrodiil to improve performance (towers, keep infinite graphical update bug). Personally, that has resulted in less disconnections when approaching a keep with a huge ball group; no more of that stupid keep reloading over and over from a distance and then disconnect.

B. They would need to improve how the client reacts to differing transmission speeds (Windows scaling, auto-tuning, your ISP throttling, if you use cable or other non-static speed (read "up to X Mbps" or "up to X Gbps"), wi-fi signal strength fluctuation, cables crossing your internet line, interference with cell tower transmission if you tether, etc.) -- its a bunch of crap that causes it and a vast majority of players probably don't have a static speed.

They could accomplish this by transmitting more data more often in smaller units than they do now, but I have no idea how ZOS server is setup. I do know for certain based on observation that they don't allow retransmission of data and their server must be setup in an extremely strict way (and probably why most people get disconnected when there is lag). If ZOS has a network engineer then they should start collecting statistics on whether or not that policy is too strict and see if they can relax it. It may be a terrible or buggy implementation of a security feature...

C. ZOS server side actions they would need to take for Cyrodiil.

If ZOS really does process all calculations on their server, then ZOS should look into reducing floating point wherever possible. One place it seems uses floating point is positioning, whoever is responsible for that part of the game (physics) might want to look into simplifying it, if that is in their control. Right now the implementation is buggy and we saw the "speed meta" expose it. It's still buggy now, in fact you can avoid all damage if you know how to use the "holes" (places where apparently the floating point math either is too slow to process or truncates). It's a terrible thing to leave in a competitive game, and luckily not many people know how to use or take advantage of these types of bugs yet.

There are other cases where even the damage formula starts to bug out, again, because of truncation and some people have been exploiting this (ex. getting hit by uppercut for exactly your max hp and it won't show on recap, you just dead), neither dead or alive status, untargetable player bugs, and the list goes on - all floating point based from the looks of it. Again, all based on observation since I can only see and speculate, but anyone at ZOS that reads this knows if its true or not.

Listen I can go on about this, but the fact of the matter is ZOS needs to evaluate not just class balance, but also some of the very core systems in the game because their bugginess might actually be the true cause of lag in the first place.

Raudgrani

No

This game is very "10 years old" when it comes to graphics and all, just look at what kind of extremely heavy and demanding games we have now, with little to no lag, and a fraction of all the bugs and glitches we have. There's no way changing a few things will make any real difference. No chance in **** this game is "too demanding for a console/computer" to handle, it's bad game design. Period.

In my naive mind, I'm thinking like this:
- Give new content an extra 3-6 months rest
- Stop messing around with "balancing", and don't be completely autistic when adding new sets/classes/skill lines (be down to earth and sensible from start insyead, what's the use of making new stuff super-mega-whacky.OP, when you'll have to change it anyway?), give the whole "game balance" idea a rest. Don't mess with everything all the time.
- Set up a commission to deal with the base core of the game. When you start from the bottom and work your way upwards, the "upwards" bugs will be fewer and fewer the more you did at the bottom. Now you are merely treating symptoms, not the cause of all this.

it would be expensive, of course. And you would not be making as much money for a while. But if you do, there's a good another 4-5 years of life in this game, and you might actually get some of the dozen plus people I know who cancelled ESO+ to actually subscribe again. ZOS shouldn't be so short sighted.

People are waiting. And if you love something, you are ready to wait. But even as the most loving wife wait for her MIA husband to return, she will look elsewhere if he doesn't seem to come back. People like this game, but there are other games you know. People move on to new games. Nobody enjoys a game with 5 seconds lag in PVE in the long run - especially since it gets worse all the time. You are putting this game into an early grave, by all wrong priorities...

VinayExile

No

Nothing will change preformance, it will only get worse and has been getting worse since beta.

Anyone who actually believes zos has less IQ then trump

randomkeyhits

No

Sadly no,

Given various behaviours I've seen I think a chunk of performance problem is down to texture management now we have so, so many more to have to deal with.

It certainly feels like there are some renders blocking until the necessary textures load but the only way that can be confirmed is for the devs to look and say yay or nay.

frostz417

No

VinayExile wrote: »

Nothing will change preformance, it will only get worse and has been getting worse since beta.

Anyone who actually believes zos has less IQ then trump

You had me till you pulled some dumb ignorant edgy unemployed liberal “DRUMPH BAD” comment. Like grow up

Jaimeh

Yes

I think part of this 'standardization of skills' direction for balance they're taking could be to help with performance in small ways too... it's ZOS, their solution to performance issues could very well be having all classes homogenized and being able to throw one skill at a time