Official Discussion Thread for "ESO's Performance Improvements Plan"

Tommy_The_Gun

Huh. I never thought I will see this...
Better late than never, I guess...

merevie

LFG system will hopefully remove the experience I just had -56 mins in pledge queue in the middle of the night. It is great to see the overall plan -hope is nice.

Varana

SugaComa wrote: »

What happens To inactive players guild spots ... Are they auto removed from guilds or do they retain their placement

Aliyavana wrote: »

Is there a chance that those with inactive accounts will have their character names released for use for active players? With warning emails sent out in advance ofc.

These inactive players are not removed from the game, or anything like that. The accounts will still remain accessible to their players like every other regularly active account. As such, their names are of course still blocked, and they will remain in guilds unless they're actively kicked by someone. Because the account is just like any other account.

The only difference is that they get shoveled to some form of separate instance for log-in purposes.

Most of the stuff in that timeline is background optimisation like this.

Rittings

Reverb wrote: »

Zero criticism. Glad to see an acknowledgement of the issue and communication of a longer term strategic plan for dealing with it. Even if this doesn’t solve all of the problems you lost nothing, it gained a great deal of respect, for clear communication on the matter. Thank you for this.

I don't share this "zero criticism" mentality. I support this concept of fixing the game - but we've been telling you for 4 years to fix it... If a child leaves their bedroom uncleaned for that long and all the crap builds up, you don't just praise them for tidying it up one time in four years - you encourage the idea that regular cleaning would be better since it wouldn't get so out of control... and who knows that deep rooted problems all that mess might have caused to the structure underneath...

So, I encourage you to start using some of the money you make from us to keep the game in full working order in the future. A visit to the dentist once per year can go much smoother if you brush your teeth twice per day.

That aside, thank you for FINALLY showing a modicum of transparency and admitting you have a problem, that's the first step to recovery.... here are some underlying problems that we face that really need addressing asap...

• Blue screening in battlegrounds when you use an execute and get the first kill of the round - kicking you from the BG with no chance to return, and a 15 minute penalty.
• Broken wayshrines (especially Rimmen, Anvil and Vivec) that freeze upon trying to load in
• Same crash/freeze as above when travelling to a player in a trial
• Aetherian Archive 8 simultaneous blue screens for players that go on the left/right portal pads.
• Invisible enemies due to the incredibly slow load times of NPCs (heightened each time you do maintenance to make it even worse)
• Load screens randomly as you move through different cells in zones. Resulting in invisible NPCs killing you and nothing you an do about it. Costing you gold for repairs, and soul gems galore.
• Running on the spot - which is the same as above... a mini load screen without the load screen appearing. Also resulting a lot of just watching your character die to invisible enemies and rendered useless to defend yourself. Literally like watching your gold ripped away from you.
• Immense lag in Cyrodiil. IMMENSE lag at times - with load screens galore, many of which result in the load screen freeze... and left dead upon your return.

FINALLY - BOT FARMERS!! We need action taken upon these. They have moved beyond the starter zones and are now present in many places in Tamriel. They farm the nodes so efficiently that no nodes are available for genuine players. We are in desperate need of action taken against them - and I fully believe if you track to whom they are directly selling their mats to (which on PS4 most of us know who the few of them are, but we aren't allowed to name and shame against your TOS) then I think you'd cut off the supply of gold to them, and thus discourage any future "trade spammers" to risk being banned from the game. As a strong deterrent, I'd suggest Gamemasters be patrolling the most known areas and instantly banning bots to stem the tide of these robotically farmed nodes hitting the marketplace too.

KerinKor

SantieClaws wrote: »

This one would just like to suggest that, during the month of everyone download again, that you might want to make the daily login rewards reflect that, for some travellers, they may lose several days on the downloading and installing again.

If that makes any sense ...

Yours with paws
Santie Claws

The entitlement is strong in this one.

Nairinhe

KerinKor wrote: »

SantieClaws wrote: »

This one would just like to suggest that, during the month of everyone download again, that you might want to make the daily login rewards reflect that, for some travellers, they may lose several days on the downloading and installing again.

If that makes any sense ...

Yours with paws
Santie Claws

The entitlement is strong in this one.

How is asking for daily rewards adjustments for MANY OTHER players is entitlement?

SantieClaws

KerinKor wrote: »

SantieClaws wrote: »

This one would just like to suggest that, during the month of everyone download again, that you might want to make the daily login rewards reflect that, for some travellers, they may lose several days on the downloading and installing again.

If that makes any sense ...

Yours with paws
Santie Claws

The entitlement is strong in this one.

Actually for this one personally it will not take too long so this one is unlikely to miss out much, depending of course on the load of us all trying to download from the same place at the same time …

However even among her own guild kittens and friends she knows there are those who will really struggle with a large download again and for them it will take possibly a day or two.

Yours with paws
Santie Claws

Flips

Maybe the best update to this game since... launch.

Ye_Olde_Crowe

Nairinhe wrote: »

How is asking for daily rewards adjustments for MANY OTHER players is entitlement?

This.
Besides, moving the 'better' rewards more towards the middle of the month in question wouldn't take much effort (I assume), so there's no need to be afraid of the ZOS teams being diverted from other tasks.
Just imagine the sheer amount of 'ARRRGH YOU F***S!!!! I DIDN'T GET THE XXXX REWARD DUE TO XX PATCH DAYS!!!!!' threads if daily log-in rewards were not adjusted for the big patch&download month.

anitajoneb17_ESO

KerinKor wrote: »

SantieClaws wrote: »

This one would just like to suggest that, during the month of everyone download again, that you might want to make the daily login rewards reflect that, for some travellers, they may lose several days on the downloading and installing again.

If that makes any sense ...

Yours with paws
Santie Claws

The entitlement is strong in this one.

No, it's not entitlement, it's common sense. The "best" daily login rewards are often unique items that cannot be obtained any other way, so yes, making them available for EVERYONE by taking into account the imposed downloading time (can be days for some people) is the right thing to do or to ask for. It looks like people with super-high-speed internet forget quickly how it is to be on low-end DSL.

That being said, those "best" rewards are already quite ahead of the calendar every month (around day 20 or so) so it's, imho, already taken care of. The safety margin is already there.

KappaKid83

SirAxen wrote: »

KappaKid83 wrote: »

ArchMikem wrote: »

valeriiya wrote: »

Thank you, this is the kind of communication I wanted. I'm still skeptical that things will change based on your track record but I'm hopeful.

Some people just have the "never happy" mentality I guess.

This roadmap sounds pretty fantastic and makes the next six months sound exciting. It's also good to see these improvements planned to be done before the 2020 Holiday season. ESO is probably gonna be buttery smooth on the Xbox Scarlet.

People have a right to be skeptical, just like you have a right to be optimistic. When the games biggest PVE streamer is skeptical about the upgrades while reviewing them on his stream then I think that others within the community on this forum also have grounds to be skeptical. Also, these upgrades and improvements have been spoken about for years as going to happen without ever happening so you can probably understand some of the skepticism.

I personally am in the "believe it when I see it" boat but am also optimistic that the game will be smoother. An open letter to the community with updates is a great start and hopefully they can build from here.

To be fair, what some streamer has to say about something shouldn't have anything to do with one forming their own opinion.

Understandable, and also to be fair here Alcast has probably spent more time in game than most, if not all of us, in this thread. I respect his opinion from the standpoint of time served and his ability to understand the small nuances of this game that some of us will never grasp.

Sandman929

ArchMikem wrote: »

Sandman929 wrote: »

ArchMikem wrote: »

valeriiya wrote: »

Thank you, this is the kind of communication I wanted. I'm still skeptical that things will change based on your track record but I'm hopeful.

Some people just have the "never happy" mentality I guess.

This roadmap sounds pretty fantastic and makes the next six months sound exciting. It's also good to see these improvements planned to be done before the 2020 Holiday season. ESO is probably gonna be buttery smooth on the Xbox Scarlet.

That is some unbridled optimism right there.

We have two choices here. You either remain optimistic, or you stop playing and leave. I don't see the point for any in between.

I'm trying hard to jump on that optimism train with you. I love seeing a plan, but then I saw "target dates on some of the initiatives may shift as work progresses" and the cynic in me started pointing and laughing at the optimist in me as we both stared at the mechanism for excusable delays.

But at least this is something. This is slightly more than 10 seconds of insincere apologetic faces during ESO live before showing us a new outfit. I'm ready now to embrace the optimism!

vamp_emily

ESO April fools joke in July?

I believe performance is a ticking time bomb for ESO that is going to explode. A frequent in-game ( pvp ) topic of discussion is poor performance/user experience. More and more players are wishing/wanting/praying for another game to rise so they can leave ESO.

How can we trust someone that promised us fixes years ago but only produces degrading performance and poor user experience?

Of course I'm talking about PvP.

Elsonso

KappaKid83 wrote: »

I'm trying hard to jump on that optimism train with you. I love seeing a plan, but then I saw "target dates on some of the initiatives may shift as work progresses" and the cynic in me started pointing and laughing at the optimist in me as we both stared at the mechanism for excusable delays.

I don't really expect ZOS to keep to that schedule religiously. My reason for this is I think what they are doing has enough uncertainty in it that setting down a firm schedule a year in advance is pretty bold. I do expect them to release those items though.

I question whether the changes will be universally hailed as a positive improvement. I don't expect that everyone will see the same performance improvements, mainly because not everyone has the same performance problems.

Nitribit

dimensional wrote: »

Octopuss wrote: »

...and still not a single word about the Vulkan client. This is hopeless.

We know that ESO performance has degraded for some players

I feel like you're trying to insult the entire playerbase.
The game's peformance is pathetic from ANY and ALL points of view and has been for a LONG time.

100% incorrect. My performance has never been bad and hasn't really ever suffered after any patches. So, take your insulting attitude and leave it at the door.

Thank you. My performance is good too. If you ask people, that it might be the internet connection or maybe the 10 year old PC. NOOOOO. Everybody has a 5000 Dollar high-end PC and a super dooper connection. And if the game is unplayable for you for some reason.........just don't play it and stop annoying other peeps with your weekly complaints.

Sanguinor2

Nitribit wrote: »

Thank you. My performance is good too. If you ask people, that it might be the internet connection or maybe the 10 year old PC. NOOOOO. Everybody has a 5000 Dollar high-end PC and a super dooper connection. And if the game is unplayable for you for some reason.........just don't play it and stop annoying other peeps with your weekly complaints.

Yeah Im sure that all the People having Performance Problems just have an old Pc or bad Internet. Few weeks ago my whole raid Group me included disconnected at the very same second in the middle of a boss fight, must´ve been all our PCs spontaneously combusting or all our Internet Providers deciding to say *** you, cant possibly be on Zos side Right?

Also in other online games the highest Ping I get is 15, 15!
The lowest I get in Eso is around 60, thats 4 times higher than my worst ping in other games.
But cant possibly be on Zos end, must all be my fault.

I dont get why People like you come into Performance threads only to say "yeah Im fine, so who cares About everyone else so pls shut up and dont bother me with your Problems k thx bye", not very constructive, if it annoys you so much just dont look at it but dont tell People that they should not tell Zos About their Problems when they can very well be on Zos end.

vamp_emily

Nitribit wrote: »

Thank you. My performance is good too. If you ask people, that it might be the internet connection or maybe the 10 year old PC. NOOOOO. Everybody has a 5000 Dollar high-end PC and a super dooper connection. And if the game is unplayable for you for some reason.........just don't play it and stop annoying other peeps with your weekly complaints.

Can't really tell if your trolling. If you are not then maybe if ESO displayed a warning label on their game boxes then maybe people would stop posting annoying performance issues.

Kind of like this:


I know I don't have a $5,000.00 computer but I did pay $2,547.00 in 2015 and I do have the most expensive high speed internet packages in our area. The computer works great except sometimes when I play ESO.

KMarble

Thank you for the update. Just a small thing I wanted to point out.

from article wrote:

This is the first of an ongoing initiative to rewrite some of the more consumptive combat abilities to lesson server load

Should be lessen.

merevie wrote: »

LFG system will hopefully remove the experience I just had -56 mins in pledge queue in the middle of the night. It is great to see the overall plan -hope is nice.

I've seen a few people with a similar complaint. Could it be that the problem in this case has more to do with the fact that there were less players at the time (middle of the night) and very few were queuing for dungeons?

When the LFG tool is activated, the player is forced to wait for 3 other people to be willing and able to do that content.

Mind you, I'm not claiming there aren't problems with the group finder, but in cases like yours, it might come down to not having enough players who want to do the same type of content.

Rittings

It's not your PC's and internet y'all... all these problems co-exist on consoles too - and we all have pretty much the same specs on those.

I had unhrottled 1 GB internet with a latency ping of 1ms... and I still had all the issues I previously had. So it's not internet either...

Plus, other games run just perfectly fine ... so that leaves the only other common factor in all of this... Zenimax.

So stop bickering and making excuses for them. They need to fix this game as a priority - I'm not a fan of the time frames either. 6 months to wait for potentially seeing the fixes of invisible enemies is enough for me to suspend my ESO+ and return if and when I see improvements.

warrenr

Olauron wrote: »

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Behind-the-scenes combat ability improvements phase 1
This is the first of an ongoing initiative to rewrite some of the more consumptive combat abilities to lesson server load
User Experience: This is the first of many behind-the-scenes combat optimizations and may not have a huge impact, but over time this will lessen the server load and allow smoother and more responsive combat with larger groups

Some proposals:
1. Consider decreasing the amount of DoT abilities working simultaneously. Make it so only one DoT from one (player) character could influence any enemy creature (or (enemy) player character) at a given time. If you cast another DoT skill on the same enemy it will remove previously cast DoT. This will not only increase server performance, it will decrease maximum obtainable DPS (that you are now decreasing through nerfs) and also decrease the gap of DPS between novice and top players.
2. Consider removing light attack weaving. Even introducing auto-attack instead weaving will increase server performance as you will decrease player input up to two times.

OP... While these would help the servers greatly, I do not think that specifically targeting things that would simultaneously lower the skill gap is a good idea. Players spend hours upon hours perfecting rotations and carefully crafting builds, this change would not only destroy many builds but also destroy many sets in the game, such as deadly strikes or even entire classes such as the single target DOT heavy stamina DK. There are many ways to improve connection without decimating the extra skill required to reach end game DPS and for many players the pursuit of this skill is what makes up a substantial part of their desire to play the game.

Setu

Re-download the game client:

"NOTE: Every ESO player, on every platform, will have to re-download the game client when this change happens, probably with the launch of Update 25."

Please keep in mind the players on metered connections. With data CAPS, not even data throttles!
Implement a mechanism to control this.

Ideally the player could pre-load the client in packages. First half before the end of the month. Second half in the next month. While being able to play the un-patched game.
Then the big switch-over day comes when all the patch data has to be present (plus some late minute changes to download).

Using the standard patching procedure of 'just download twice your monthly allowance now or stop playing' will lead to many people unable to play the game for months!

Shadowdream

Yay! Good to see some updates!

Is there a chance with the art compression/load time improvement that we might see a higher item limit in housing? I'm really hoping for this. All the larger houses are very difficult to fill at the current limits and I have such big ideas for a couple that I have!

Minyassa

Shadowdream wrote: »

Yay! Good to see some updates!

Is there a chance with the art compression/load time improvement that we might see a higher item limit in housing? I'm really hoping for this. All the larger houses are very difficult to fill at the current limits and I have such big ideas for a couple that I have!

I too really hope that improved performance and a lighter load on the whole game in general will finally open the door to higher housing item limits. Besides, after nerfing us into the ground this year it would be a badly needed morale boost.

Sephyr

KerinKor wrote: »

SantieClaws wrote: »

This one would just like to suggest that, during the month of everyone download again, that you might want to make the daily login rewards reflect that, for some travellers, they may lose several days on the downloading and installing again.

If that makes any sense ...

Yours with paws
Santie Claws

The entitlement is strong in this one.

Asking for a day or two is not entitlement. It's common sense when you're having to redownload the ENTIRE game. It's not rocket science.

demerdecanswrath

Since this "roadmap" is regularly updated, can we have an ETA on improvements for the Mac as well?

ZOS_JessicaFolsom

Hi everyone,

We've gathered up some of the most commonly asked questions about the planned game performance improvements, both from here on the forums and on our social media channels, and provided answers below. Thanks!


Will you take into account Daily Rewards during the month when everyone will need to re-download the game?
Yes, we will take into consideration the time needed to re-download when planning out the Daily Rewards for that month.

As part of the performance improvements, would you consider changing the load prioritization order for NPCs versus player characters so that NPCs load first?
The core problem is complex and requires a larger change than simply re-ordering or re-prioritizing which art assets load first. We’re tackling this in Update 25 in Q1 2020 by moving to faster/newer/better compression libraries for art fixtures and character loading, the two of the most “expensive” loading tasks. The expected user experience after this goes live is better load times, fewer “shadow” player silhouettes, and ultimately minimized wait time for NPCs to load in.

Players in some regions have monthly internet bandwidth limits, making re-downloading a large game like ESO extremely challenging. Is there anything you can do to help alleviate those challenges?
For the patch overhaul we’re performing with Update 25 in Q1 2020, we are completely changing how we compress out data. As such, we can’t simply convert or reuse data that is already on the live client. Our patcher also doesn’t support data pre-staging.

We understand that this will be a more significant challenge for players who live in regions with monthly internet bandwidth limits. We’re exploring options, though some of the suggestions we’ve gotten are not possible.

Before you roll out the Q2 “cold storage” of inactive accounts, will you communicate the cut off dates for inactive accounts and what amount of time results in an account being considered inactive?
Yes, we will communicate to our players what constitutes an inactive account when we get a little closer to rolling out this system.

What will happen to inactive players’ guild spots? Are they auto removed from guilds or do they retain their placement? What about friends lists and ignore lists?
We’re still working on the exact details of what an inactive account will look like to active players in-game, but it’s important to note that being moved to “cold storage” does not mean the account is deleted from the game. Rather, it’s simply offloaded to a backup database to improve performance on the active database.

Will there be a way for players to identify that they are being moved from “cold storage” to active, so they understand why they are experiencing a longer-than-usual initial load time?
Yes, while the exact details are still in discussion, players will know that they are being moved from “inactive” status to active.

Do you have any current plans to expand upon the Activity Finder so that players can queue up for specific Trials and harder dungeon achievements/objections?
At this time, we are focusing on improving the Activity Finder’s reliability and speed, especially when it’s experiencing heavy traffic. While these are great ideas, we aren’t adding any additional functionality to the Activity Finder at this time.

Are there any current plans to change the way extra languages and voice-over files are handled for players who only want/use 1 language? For example, if I only intend to use the English voiceovers, do I need to re-download the French and German files on certain platforms?
We don’t have any details to share at this time, but this is something we’re looking into.

Will the mentioned performance improvements help Mac-based players?
Yes, the performance improvements we’re rolling out over the next few updates affect all platforms. Consoles and lower-spec machines will see the most significant positive impact.

Will the upcoming performance improvements fix the rendering speeds of better textures and players appearing as shadows?
Yes, this is coming with Update 25 in Q1 2020, and is noted in the second bullet as “faster-loading art fixtures and characters” under that section in the performance improvements plan here.

Will the upcoming performance improvements make it so there’s no more stuttering in the field when loading in from a Wayshrine or into the game?
Yes, that’s the goal!

Are issues related to PC/Mac EU server capacity somewhere on the game performance improvements roadmap?
Yes, the fifth bullet in the Update 25 section specifically calls out server optimization and stability, especially in “intense or high bandwidth situations.” You can check out the full write-up here.

saf227_ESO

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Hi everyone,
...
Before you roll out the Q2 “cold storage” of inactive accounts, will you communicate the cut off dates for inactive accounts and what amount of time results in an account being considered inactive?
Yes, we will communicate to our players what constitutes an inactive account when we get a little closer to rolling out this system.
...

24 hours. If you haven't logged in in the last 24 hours you're going into "cold storage." Also, if you sell me a skunk butt rug that I bury my grandmama in, you're going into "cold storage".

TheRealPotoroo

As usual, not a word about the Zenimax caused performance problems with the Akamai routing that's causing so much grief for Antipodean players. But you'll still take our money, eh?

No_Division

TheRealPotoroo wrote: »

As usual, not a word about the Zenimax caused performance problems with the Akamai routing that's causing so much grief for Antipodean players. But you'll still take our money, eh?

agreed. Akamai is a real pain lol.

VaranisArano

Thank you for the FAQ followup!

That is a great way to continue to engage with the community as we grapple with these sorts of announcements.

I'd love to see more of these FAQ-style posts!