Cyrodiil Performance - Group Size and Heals

lpw

I'm guessing this has been mentioned a few times but Fengrush was talking about performance on his stream the other night and I would totally agree with him that the following should be put in place in Cyrodiil.

With factions and whole groups stacking together on a keep every smart heal has to go through maybe 100 people to find the guy who has the lowest health. Think about hundreds of people then spamming heals every second. The same would go for bringing back harder AOE caps.

The suggestions of group size being dropped by around 50% in PVP and heals only being able to target those in your group and the return of AOE caps should really be looked into.

Surely, doing these changes would lower the required calculations by half or more? Thus improving performance?

The_Art_of_Paw

I wouldn't be happy with these changes (please explain why)

lpw wrote: »

Surely, doing these changes would lower the required calculations by half or more? Thus improving performance?

I would be betting that the volume of calculations occurring in pvp land is so insane that a few hundred by the heal portion would be insignificantly small to worry about. Computers can do a bazillion more things then our brains can

maxjapank

I think they’ve already cut down on calculations with the Healing Springs nerf. You don’t really see that anymore. And purge only effecting group members also cut down on it, too.

darkblue5

YES! I'd be happy to reduce group size, bring back AOE caps and heal only those in my group

Probably the bigger deal would be a few more people dying and reducing the performance strain that way.

alainjbrennanb16_ESO

Just fix dots bro!

group size would have no impact say if taken to 12, all that would happen is 2 groups running together

lpw

YES! I'd be happy to reduce group size, bring back AOE caps and heal only those in my group

alainjbrennanb16_ESO wrote: »

group size would have no impact say if taken to 12, all that would happen is 2 groups running together

You could have 5 groups running together. The point would be that your smart heals could only target 12 people, instead of 60.

The_Art_of_Paw wrote: »

the heal portion would be insignificantly small to worry about

Apart from direct attacks etc only target one or a few guys. Smart heals etc would be so much more intensive as they have to work through a huge list of people in range, then work out who is lowest, then heal them. I'd love see some figures but due to large groups and zergs spamming mutagen, I'd say the heals would be a pretty large part.

LoreToo

Just fix dots bro!

Group size never cause you lag, same as number of skills they use. Faction zerg 1000000ppl in 1 keep-yes.
You can easy check it just by making 24ppl group in some abandoned zone like Hew's bane and spam skills. Performance will be ok.
Other side: check dolmen farmers in alikr.
Idk whatsup on NA, but on EU its mess, in primetime its even worth then cyrodiil fights 50v50v12ppl group.
So groupsize means nothing, stacking is a problem

InvitationNotFound

I wouldn't be happy with these changes (please explain why)

AoE caps are bs. It doesn't matter if it applies to damage or healing.

The current smart healing mechanics should be reworked as they are pretty bad currently.
(e.g. you will heal guards instead of players, random players are getting healed before group members, only the same players get the healing (HoT) if everyone is at full health)

I doubt that there will be a significant performance impact (if at all) when reducing the group size. If player stack (faction stacks) lag will be there (the hammer was a really great idea in this regard...).

lpw

YES! I'd be happy to reduce group size, bring back AOE caps and heal only those in my group

LoreToo wrote: »

Group size never cause you lag, same as number of skills they use. Faction zerg 1000000ppl in 1 keep-yes

Yes, 24 in a group isn't all bad but all of those people can heal OUTSIDE of their group. So say your zerg of 100000pl in a keep in close proximity can ALL be targeted by everyone else skills. So if you cast, the game makes a list of all those people and chooses, then I cast and the same happens and so on and so on... Then you have the amounts to heal for and crit rates, crit dmg etc on top.

Say there are 200 people and 75 of these have mutugen, this is 75 lists of 200 potentially every second, compared to 75 lists of 12 (if group only and group size was 12).

I guess I should have said the group size thing would come after a change to group only.

GhostofDatthaw

LoreToo wrote: »

Group size never cause you lag, same as number of skills they use. Faction zerg 1000000ppl in 1 keep-yes.
You can easy check it just by making 24ppl group in some abandoned zone like Hew's bane and spam skills. Performance will be ok.
Other side: check dolmen farmers in alikr.
Idk whatsup on NA, but on EU its mess, in primetime its even worth then cyrodiil fights 50v50v12ppl group.
So groupsize means nothing, stacking is a problem

This is where the hammer missedits mark, it was supposed to split pop and help spread fights. It just turns into a massive lagfest
e

BoraxFlux

I wouldn't be happy with these changes (please explain why)

I like to place heals where it will benefit our alliance & hurt the most for the enemy alliance.
Most often it is in front lines( e.g charging up the stairs in a keep, throwing repentance) with randoms as well, I'd like to be able to heal those too.

maddiniiLuna

Just fix dots bro!

Limiting the group size does nothing but create more groups, besides that people who don't want to play in groups won't get the heal needed or can't heal when needed.

I don't really want to be forced into a group just so I can heal or even purge. If that is the case I'd just play damage dealer only.

zaria

I wouldn't be happy with these changes (please explain why)

BoraxFlux wrote: »

I like to place heals where it will benefit our alliance & hurt the most for the enemy alliance.
Most often it is in front lines( e.g charging up the stairs in a keep, throwing repentance) with randoms as well, I'd like to be able to heal those too.

Yes if you only healed group it would be impossible to play in cyrodil outside ball groups.

Grianasteri

lpw wrote: »

I'm guessing this has been mentioned a few times but Fengrush was talking about performance on his stream the other night and I would totally agree with him that the following should be put in place in Cyrodiil.

With factions and whole groups stacking together on a keep every smart heal has to go through maybe 100 people to find the guy who has the lowest health. Think about hundreds of people then spamming heals every second. The same would go for bringing back harder AOE caps.

The suggestions of group size being dropped by around 50% in PVP and heals only being able to target those in your group and the return of AOE caps should really be looked into.

Surely, doing these changes would lower the required calculations by half or more? Thus improving performance?

I dont play much pvp in Cyrodiil, but when I do, I am often a healer for my guilds... Id be concerned about not being able to heal folk who are not in my group. Thats kinda not in the spirit of things. Its all hands on deck when defending/attacking and very often its not just folk in my group doing so.

fastolfv_ESO

I wouldn't be happy with these changes (please explain why)

destroying healing springs to the point where nobody will ever use it again did nothing to save the servers, they are worse than they were and have ever been without all the springs calculations. At the end of the day they need to roll back the changes that caused the extra delay on everything caused with elsweyr and fix the engine, no amount of changes to group size and healing can help cyro performance

idk

1. The poll is biased because of OPs statements but also the choices are clearly and purposely biased. Zos would not pay attention to such obvious dribbler.

2. If you have 100 people outside of a keep there is a lot more going on adding to lag. Even Zos has said when you get a ton of people in the same area all spamming light attacks you will get server lag. So this little idea is not a miracle fix and I am pretty sure Fengrush is smart enough to see that.

3. Limiting healing to only be able to heal those in groups means you are forcing players into groups. I expect this does not need any explanation of how it is such a bad idea.

VaranisArano

AOE caps - we didnt have them, we did have them, then they were removed again. Performance? Still sucks.

Heals targeting only your group - if you wanted to make one change that will ensure the dominance of organized raids over everyone else, this is it. Also, congratulations, you've singlehandedly revitalized the PUG raid and killed off the zergsurfer. Worse, it doesnt do anything to prevent the whole "multiple groups show up at the same important objective" thing that Cyrodiil is designed to create (and also that Cyrodiil performance can't handle.) So in addition to ensuring a new glorious era of large scale ball group v PUG raid battles....the performance problems with large battles haven't been fixed.

lpw

YES! I'd be happy to reduce group size, bring back AOE caps and heal only those in my group

idk wrote: »

3. Limiting healing to only be able to heal those in groups means you are forcing players into groups. I expect this does not need any explanation of how it is such a bad idea.

Of course you'd still have to be able to heal anyone if you're outside of a group. I don't see why it would be forcing people to play in groups?! Even if it was, what's so wrong about that?

I didn't write the poll to try and be biased also, it basically has "agree", "disagree" and "don't care" as options.

Qbiken

YES! I'd be happy to reduce group size, bring back AOE caps and heal only those in my group

Group size should definelty be reduced to 12

idk

lpw wrote: »

idk wrote: »

3. Limiting healing to only be able to heal those in groups means you are forcing players into groups. I expect this does not need any explanation of how it is such a bad idea.

Of course you'd still have to be able to heal anyone if you're outside of a group. I don't see why it would be forcing people to play in groups?! Even if it was, what's so wrong about that?

I didn't write the poll to try and be biased also, it basically has "agree", "disagree" and "don't care" as options.

That is clearly not an "of course" In fact it makes no sense that some outside of the group can heal someone inside of a group but the reverse is blocked. Think about that for a moment. It makes no sense and would also add to the server load because the server now needs to check if it is a target you are permitted to heal.

Regardless, Zos already stated very clearly they did not want skills to perform differently in PvP vs PvE and you are actually asking for them to perform differently depending if you are grouped or not. That isn't gonna happen.

I do like how you ignored the first two points.

Kadoin

PvP doesn't even really happen in real-time, so exactly what would this change?

Also, any proof of his claims? They have already cut calculations down and it has not resulted in any measurable improvement, though it has cut down buggy states at least.

The client itself seems to have issues that contribute largely to the lag players experience, how can anyone know exactly how much load the server is taking when the client itself is a source of lag? (the proof is in the performances improvements that got scaled back: the time the audio bugged and the crashing client Both times lag seemed to be improved, suggesting lag is also related to graphical load as well as poor memory management when it comes to keeping objects and models. Also note that lag worsened after the outfit system. Coincidence?)

TLDR: No. First client improvements and work from there.

Iskiab

I wouldn't be happy with these changes (please explain why)

lpw wrote: »

I'm guessing this has been mentioned a few times but Fengrush was talking about performance on his stream the other night and I would totally agree with him that the following should be put in place in Cyrodiil.

With factions and whole groups stacking together on a keep every smart heal has to go through maybe 100 people to find the guy who has the lowest health. Think about hundreds of people then spamming heals every second. The same would go for bringing back harder AOE caps.

The suggestions of group size being dropped by around 50% in PVP and heals only being able to target those in your group and the return of AOE caps should really be looked into.

Surely, doing these changes would lower the required calculations by half or more? Thus improving performance?

So wait, the guy who runs around with 12 people wants group size reduced to 12 and mechanics to favour groups of 12?

I can’t say I’m surprised.

When fengrush logs on people follow him. He has their names and guild tags turned off so it looks like there’s only his group but there can be up to 80 of them.

Maybe he’s sick of the extra lag it causes. Can’t say I blame him, but the people who follow him pay the bills.

LoreToo

Just fix dots bro!

lpw wrote: »

LoreToo wrote: »

Group size never cause you lag, same as number of skills they use. Faction zerg 1000000ppl in 1 keep-yes

Yes, 24 in a group isn't all bad but all of those people can heal OUTSIDE of their group. So say your zerg of 100000pl in a keep in close proximity can ALL be targeted by everyone else skills. So if you cast, the game makes a list of all those people and chooses, then I cast and the same happens and so on and so on... Then you have the amounts to heal for and crit rates, crit dmg etc on top.

Say there are 200 people and 75 of these have mutugen, this is 75 lists of 200 potentially every second, compared to 75 lists of 12 (if group only and group size was 12).

I guess I should have said the group size thing would come after a change to group only.

The possible solution here is to make healing only "group prior", so you will not heal some1 else outside your group if you are in it(fe springs will heal only your group members and their godamn useless pets, not green ppl). Same as buffs working right now(fe rapid will be applied only to your group members, meritorious buff, ect......). However, solo players will be able to heal every1 around.

mague

Quite some assuming that the CPU cycles are the source of lag.

Every player has its own latency. The server has to sync them all and the slowest rules Cyrodiil.
You can see that when a player is approaching you with his mount PvE overland and your fps drops because you have to sync with him.

This isnt eSports with a dedicated server and every player has exactly 10m cable to the server and the same ping as everyone. It is not a LAN party. You cant take online PvP to serious.

Jeremy

lpw wrote: »

I'm guessing this has been mentioned a few times but Fengrush was talking about performance on his stream the other night and I would totally agree with him that the following should be put in place in Cyrodiil.

With factions and whole groups stacking together on a keep every smart heal has to go through maybe 100 people to find the guy who has the lowest health. Think about hundreds of people then spamming heals every second. The same would go for bringing back harder AOE caps.

The suggestions of group size being dropped by around 50% in PVP and heals only being able to target those in your group and the return of AOE caps should really be looked into.

Surely, doing these changes would lower the required calculations by half or more? Thus improving performance?

That's ironic... that guy talking about performance. Because if anything is responsible for performance problems in Cyrodil it's his massive zergs that render Cyrodil unplayable and pretty much ruins the place. I lost count how many times I've seen people say to hell with this and just leave the area after he shows up with his monstrous zergs that turn PvP into torture.

There is also no amount of tweaking the combat or cutting down on calculations that is going to fix it either. ZoS's servers simply cannot handle the load.

A better solution is for that individual and his many....I'll be civil and say followers to stop flooding Cyrodil with their lame zergfests.

jcm2606

YES! I'd be happy to reduce group size, bring back AOE caps and heal only those in my group

Anybody who knows even the tiniest of things about coding knows how big of an impact something like this will have on Cyrodiil performance, especially when multiple faction-wide clumps clash in a single keep. Limiting AoE heals to groups will allow the servers to immediately cut out 80+% of all players in an area very cheaply, before those players touch the more expensive parts of the AoE application code, such as the line of sight check, sorting, etc.

jcm2606

YES! I'd be happy to reduce group size, bring back AOE caps and heal only those in my group

mague wrote: »

Quite some assuming that the CPU cycles are the source of lag.

Every player has its own latency. The server has to sync them all and the slowest rules Cyrodiil.
You can see that when a player is approaching you with his mount PvE overland and your fps drops because you have to sync with him.

This isnt eSports with a dedicated server and every player has exactly 10m cable to the server and the same ping as everyone. It is not a LAN party. You cant take online PvP to serious.

That's not how it works, at all. I can guarantee that's not how it works, because I can sit in a Discord call with a friend, and I can have a massive ping spike well above 1k, while my friend is perfectly fine. Similarly, I can have a gigantic ping spike of 30k+ in Cyrodiil, kicking me back to the main menu, and yet the rest of Cyrodiil is fine with the typical Cyrodiil lag.

If the servers matched individual player's pings, you'd know it, because you wouldn't even be able to log in -- there's very likely a person on the servers now with ping spiking well above 1k+, and yet everybody else is fine.

IndianaJames7

I wouldn't be happy with these changes (please explain why)

Couple things:
1. This would kind of suck for genuine healers don’t you think? The only way they could be of any use is by joining with a group of people they might not want to run with.
2. This would also give a greater advantage to ballzergs than they currently have, as even after splitting group size in half they could still run 2-4 groups stacked on top of each other, but now the outnumbered pugs they face won’t be able to heal each other.

As someone who is in a group less than 10% of the time in cyro, anything that requires you to be in a group for something to work I’m not a fan of.

Jeremy

jcm2606 wrote: »

Anybody who knows even the tiniest of things about coding knows how big of an impact something like this will have on Cyrodiil performance, especially when multiple faction-wide clumps clash in a single keep. Limiting AoE heals to groups will allow the servers to immediately cut out 80+% of all players in an area very cheaply, before those players touch the more expensive parts of the AoE application code, such as the line of sight check, sorting, etc.

It wouldn't make much difference because they are still having to calculate what is the biggest factor - and that is the massive zerg flooding the screen. So long as that's the case - you're still going to get serious lag and trimming some of the fat around the edges is not going to make a significant difference. You could remove AoE entirely and you would still get tons of lag.

You have two solutions here:

1: Wait for ZoS to upgrade their servers.

2. Stop with the massive zergs.

Major_Lag

I wouldn't be happy with these changes (please explain why)

Yet another of those idiotic "reduce Cyro group size and nerf heals" threads.

Cyrodiil is a LARGESCALE war zone.
Sure, solo/smallscale is a thing. So is largescale - deal with it.

Reducing group size will do absolutely nothing to prevent faction stacking - if anyone still seriously believes that BS, then I don't know what to tell you.

Katahdin

I wouldn't be happy with these changes (please explain why)

Reducing group size is not going to solve the performance problems.

My guild runs 2 groups on some nights so instead we will run 4 and still be all at the some place sometimes.

This just seems like someone that doesn't like 24 man groups and is trying to find a way to get rid of them.