Activity Finder & Server Performance Update

Veles · December 2019

I want to say about EU server. There is a saying: "Do you want to do something good for a person? First do something bad for him, and then return it as it was." So, perhaps for me it really worked out that way and I am mistaken in my conclusions.

And yet, for the last event, server stability satisfies me. The server did not fall in the second hour after the start of the event. Even the activity finder is imperfect, but it works. BG and Cyrodiil are not counted. Or maybe just a lot of players left the game and the load on the server fell. Or maybe the rewards for the quests of the event are so scarce that you can’t make a decent profit from it and thereby discourage the desire to participate in it, as it was before. In any case, I hope for further improvements in server stability, and I want to wish creators and developers success in the New Year

ForzaRammer · December 2019

Just get rid of random dungeon and simplify the stupid logic. Move the exp to pledges. No one does random because they need it, they just want the xp.

Mancombe_Nosehair · December 2019

ForzaRammer wrote: »

Just get rid of random dungeon and simplify the stupid logic. Move the exp to pledges. No one does random because they need it, they just want the xp.

What about those of us who are levelling characters; random normals are a great way to level up. I can't see a level 10 character doing a pledge for dc2 or a dlc.

keto3000 · December 2019

luton0watford4 wrote: »

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ForzaRammer wrote: »

Just get rid of random dungeon and simplify the stupid logic. Move the exp to pledges. No one does random because they need it, they just want the xp.

What about those of us who are levelling characters; random normals are a great way to level up. I can't see a level 10 character doing a pledge for dc2 or a dlc.

I completely agree! I have quite a number of friends and new players who hit level 10 and love jumping right in to random dungeons. In my guild, we encourage members to group 2, 3, 4 and get in to regular random dungeons. Great way to feel and experience the game's mechanics.

LoneStar2911 · December 2019

keto3000 wrote: »

I completely agree! I have quite a number of friends and new players who hit level 10 and love jumping right in to random dungeons. In my guild we encourage members to group 2, 3, 4 and get in to regular random dungeons. Great way to feel and experience the game's mechanics.
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luton0watford4 wrote: »

ForzaRammer wrote: »

Just get rid of random dungeon and simplify the stupid logic. Move the exp to pledges. No one does random because they need it, they just want the xp.

What about those of us who are levelling characters; random normals are a great way to level up. I can't see a level 10 character doing a pledge for dc2 or a dlc.

I completely agree! I have quite a number of friends and new players who hit level 10 and love jumping right in to random dungeons. In my guild, we encourage members to group 2, 3, 4 and get in to regular random dungeons. Great way to feel and experience the game's mechanics.

Did the keto diet give you short-term memory loss? 😉

CleymenZero · December 2019

codierussell wrote: »

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Jabbs_Giggity wrote: »

Figured, since there has been no official update from @ZOS_RichLambert in a while...Here are some of my current issues I am experiencing.

Console statistics: XBox One X NA Server
Internet statistics: 185 mb/s D/L, 18-25 mb/s U/L, 35-55 ms Latency, 0% Packet Loss (Not that this matters because everyone knows the issues are server side...)

Issue # 1: Logins. I have been experiencing more login issues since Dragonhold patch. Logging in to characters is a 50/50 chance of getting an Infinite Load Screen and/or game crash where game crashes on Load Screen and need to reboot.
This leads me to the next login issue of "Account already logged in" error populating 5-6 times before resetting and can login again.

Issue # 2: Battleground queues and issues. Battleground queues well exceed 15-20 minutes per attempt to queue before getting into a game. Once queue-popped I experience one of two issues, either I get an infinite load screen going into BG and have to reboot the game (also getting a deserter penalty upon logging back in) or I get an infinite load screen coming out of a finished BG.

The following issues are related to PVP in Cyrodiil (Kaal Campaign):
Issue # 3: Dodge-roll locks all skills on ability bar for 1-2 seconds after completing a Dodge-roll. This is detrimental to PVP gameplay, as it prevents you from using defensive skills and healing after dodging enemy attacks.

Issue # 4: Skills do not register. At this point, at any given time in PVP (whether in large-scale or small-scale combat) skills do not register with the Server one of two, or both, ways. Either skills require the press of the button 3-4 times to actually fire off, or they fire-off and do nothing.

Issue # 5: Gameplay Latency is so bad in Cyrodiil that often you are trekking an opponent who is 2-3 seconds (or frames) ahead of you in real time, causing you to be able to target a player but nothing happens because their instance is really not there. A prime example is is CCing an opponent then using Biting Jabs, where every - all four Jabs will miss the opponent because the server cannot keep up with the fact they have already CC broken and moved out of the area you are targeting. Similar experiences with Surprise Attack. Meanwhile, I can be 20-30m away from an opponent, in game, and still get spammed with Sap Essence.

Issue # 6: In Combat Bug - still not fixed. Nothing needs to be said about this.

Issue # 7: LAG. This is so bad now that the game is becoming unplayable without exaggeration...I was killed by a zerg at Chalman, blood spawned at North Gate ran to quest signs to turn in quests and was immediately rubber-banded back to falling off of Chalman wall...

Issue # 8: Health Desyncs. Working in tandem with Issue # 5, 5/10 fights result in two opponents rotating combos on each other with zero effect. No health bars move, no skills register. Then, a minute or two later one person dies instantly from presumably 100% health. It's a coin flip on who dies.

All of these issues are my personal experience. Most have been happening since before Dragonhold, but ALL have become increasingly worse with Dragonhold.

**The new run/gallop feels nice!

I have the same experience on PS4 NA. PVP is unplayable most days and BGs don't work, I have a picture of 12 people loaded into a BG on one team. PVE is not a whole lot better. My group has figured out that most trials seem to have memory leaks and the disconnects increase the older the instance is, to the point we have avoided progging vMOL hm because if you don't one pull each boss the disconnects make it difficult to get a single pull in.

Have a similar experience on pc.

Huyen · December 2019

Groupfinder broken again, on PC-EU. Stayed in queue after completing a dungeon. Cant requeue after being to late to accept (didnt hear the popup on the outfitting station). Got a message saying "Failed: Missing text" in my screen.
@ZOS_GinaBruno

eso_lags · December 2019

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

It’s time for the November update to our performance improvements roadmap. Before giving the update, we wanted to shed some more light on the recent issues related to the new Activity Finder so that you all have a better understanding of why these issues are happening. Note that completely replacing the old Activity Finder was something we had to do. It was not able to be easily updated and could not handle the load we see on the live servers.

Before launching the new Activity Finder, the team tried to put the system to as much internal load testing as possible by using automated bots. Even though bots cannot truly simulate player behavior, they are a good tool for identifying basic load problems, and we were able to get significantly more testing bots into the system than players on the live servers and still have the system run smoothly. This gave us confidence to push it to PTS for Update 24. On PTS, new problems were discovered and fixed, but we never saw player concurrencies on PTS as compared to Live. Once the system hit Live, well, we all know that what happened wasn’t good.

The core issue we’ve been having with the new Activity Finder is that it shares many of the same system resources as the rest of the game. This means that when the Activity Finder gets overloaded, everything else on the server starts to bog down – which is why players experience long loading times, timeouts/disconnects, and sluggish server response at these times. It’s been a challenge for us to identify and fix these issues as each time we go through a cycle of overload, we fix that particular problem, but then discover a new one as new concurrency levels are hit. It is very important to note that almost all of the server issues encountered over the last month were caused by the Activity Finder – it is not a hardware issue or a more widespread problem. The reason why this seems to happen the most on the PC EU server is because it’s our most populated server where people generally all play during the same core hours.

So, when the most recent Undaunted event started, we started to see server performance issues, even though we had already found and fixed Activity Finder problems during the Witches Festival event. We found and fixed issue after issue during the Undaunted event, but new ones kept cropping up. So we postponed the event and are taking our time now to ensure that we resolve this problem once and for all. We are testing a new build internally, and we fully expect to have this issue resolved.

I, along with everyone else, appreciate the irony of stating just last year that we wouldn’t have another in-game event focused on the Activity Finder until we were “100% sure” it would work. With the new Activity Finder, we were a lot more confident than with the old one. Obviously, we were wrong.

Even though it is a small consolation, I do want to make sure everyone understands that the issues you have been seeing are caused by one system going haywire and not a deep systemic or hardware problem. This Activity Finder issue has been plaguing us for over a year now and it is long past time that we fix it.

We all appreciate everyone’s patience on this, and hopefully we are approaching the end of this process. We haven’t exactly covered ourselves in glory--we know it, and we are doing everything we can to make it better.

After reading this again im curious, are you guys saying the group finder is impacting pvp performance as well? Like the list of issues that are mentioned are core pvp issues that have been happening, and been getting progressively worse, for years.

Im sure I probably asked this before, probably in this same thread, but with how bad console pvp performance has gotten it just blows my mind that this doesn't seem to be a top issue. I dont see pvp or cyrodil mentioned at all in this post, nothing but pve performance issues. Pvp is where performance is at its worst, and it truly shines on console.

Its so sad that its too much to ask to just get a game that functions as intended, especially after all these years. Again it blows my mind. There is no reason 4 of us in a group, fighting 10 people in a dead sewer campaign, should be lagging like we do. And its not just specific people, its different people I play with every day who have the same issues. And the 30 day is disgusting and unplayable.

Its all just unacceptable and sad. Im sure EU is awful, probably worse than console, but EU can at least have hope that it will be fixed, even if its just a shred of hope. But I dont think I've ever seen anything from you all at zos talking about the severe state of performance on console, mainly console pvp. And whatever "Q4 performance fixes" that were supposed to help lower end PCs and consoles did not help at all. At least in cyrodil.

itsfatbass · December 2019

This whole "database" idea for automatically delegating groups needs to be scrapped ZOS. Just allow players to enable an "LFG" tag and form their own groups by searching for other LFG players. This would of course require a database of its own but the idea is that the groups can be fully filled and then Activity finder is used simply for entering your destination and not tied to the entire rest of the megaserver with this current very broken database.

JJBoomer · December 2019

apparently it was revealed in a ZOS twitch stream that addons will be banned to increase the performance of servers and AF. please confirm!

JPS · December 2019

JJBoomer wrote: »

apparently it was revealed in a ZOS twitch stream that addons will be banned to increase the performance of servers and AF. please confirm!

That would be typically Zos... 'Solving' a problem by limiting functionality.

TequilaFire · December 2019

I would just like to be able to play in a group of 12 without 6 of us blue screening every hour on PS4.

Nutta · December 2019

I was tempted to spend real world money .. yeah REAL WORLD money… on crowns. But then constant low pings the past three days (28-30.12.2019).

So no … you don't get my money.

Fix your MEGA-joke servers and I'll spend that money. Can you get what down with what I'm saying… or this somehow not contributing to your life-enrichment as per the hoodlums that infringe on all ours freedom of speech ..

Nough said. No money to pay for the hoodlums.

VoidCommander · December 2019

All I want is a heads up as to when I can expect combat ability changes. Many people like myself have almost entirely skipped update 24 waiting for a new combat update, but there is no roadmap, guideline, or even a release date for the patch notes.

Huyen · January 2020

Activity finder bugged on 01-01-2020. When queueing as group, even with a tank you can wait till you are dead. It wont pop.

Somewhere · January 2020

Yeah I have been finding that queuing up as a group doesn't work that well. The DD queue is usually pretty long, but I find that if I queue up for a random veteran dungeon that I can get it to pop at least within 20-30 minutes, usually 10-15. I have been trying to queue up with my friend to get him some monster sets as he's new to the game, both of us DD, and on three separate occasions we've sat in queue on random for 1+ hour with nothing ever popping. One of the times I actually left the queue and rejoined it to see if maybe it got stuck and we waited another hour without anything. I know DD queue is long but I find it a little hard to believe that I can wait in queue for 2 hours with 2 DD and get nothing on a friday evening, but then I can regularly queue myself up solo and get in quickly.

clocksstoppe · January 2020

Just delete the stupid and useless activity finder and be done with it. Back then when we didn't have it we were doing just fine. The fact that it doesn't have trial finder in 2020 is absolutely pathetic. We never needed help to assemble 4 man groups, trial lfg was the only real potential this garbage tool had.

Kel · January 2020

Must be extremely confident you guys at Zos have the group finder in working order, since Midyear Mayhem requires the group finder for battlegrounds and you're doing the undaunted event requiring the group finder for dungeons.

Two events running simultaneously that need the group finder to be in tip top condition?
This will either be a success or a unmitigated disaster that this current group finder fiasco will seem so tame in comparison.

Hoping for success, but would not be surprised if it's the opposite. And yes, you've earned the doubt.

Noxeee · January 2020

I have had no issues at all with the activity finder in PvE. The only issues I have encountered are with PvP when sometimes teams are unbalanced.

Umbro100 · January 2020

Noxeee wrote: »

I have had no issues at all with the activity finder in PvE. The only issues I have encountered are with PvP when sometimes teams are unbalanced.

EU server, Saturday evening -siiting in que for pledge as a healer for 29 min. Left que, started again. After 40 min a ready check. Yeah ! And ready check ... and ready check ... nothing happens for 10 min, the ready check stays visible on the screen. Then suddenly no ready check and I am no longer in que. I wont give up ! Qued instead for a random daily dungeon. As a healer again. Killed 5 - 6 dragons, sold the loot. Chatted with people in map. Closed the game.
Having a beer.
Is this normal, a game in this state and no one cares, the people responsible do nothing ? Is this how some people make money ? Baffling. I should be angry for the time I wasted. I am not !
Just deeply disgusted. Because I realized I don't even expect things to change any more.
Getting another beer.

Yormula · January 2020

As stated above, basically. Even now, outside of events, it just stops working at completely random moments, not tied to current load. Peak hours, calm mornings - sitting in a queue for a daily pledge (!) as a tank (!) for over an hour is a risk you always face. Basically, if you don't get a spot within a minute - might as well forget about dungeons and try again in a few hours.

Now, the nicest thing about it all - those last three years the problem manifests its way to consumers in exactly the same way. It may of course be true that there were completely different causes, that kept being solved yet new ones popped up as functionality got expanded, etc, etc - but on consumer's end all we see is exactly the same damn symptoms of this issue for over three years, with little (and never proactive) communication from the devs, and at the same time ample evidence the dev team has no clue what's going on (*hint*, undaunted events, *hint*).

grkkll · January 2020

I've been queuing for 2 pledges since 8:00 am this morning, off and on and giving up after 1n hour. Tried RN as well but exactly the same

Ramber · January 2020

CaffeinatedMayhem wrote: »

This is 100000000% the reality of any software developemnt! Thank you for an excellent summary.

OMG. Over 5 years to write a subsystem that's common to any number of games can't be done here and your saying that's just the way it is? OMG. 25 years in IT and that's NOT the way it goes.

zaria · January 2020

grkkll wrote: »

I've been queuing for 2 pledges since 8:00 am this morning, off and on and giving up after 1n hour. Tried RN as well but exactly the same

Yes, people in guild complained about it, impossible to get in queue even as tank.
A shame as I wanted to do some of the pledges as needed quest on an alt.

TheFM · January 2020

PC EU NO CP campaign is a joke atm, either i have 0 lag and my opponents are OBVIOUSLY LAGGING, or Im lagging so hard that they can just walk over me without any resistance, or we are both lagging and it becomes this futile fight that ends in both of us walking away frustrated.

Not to mention I have to reset the game once an hour to deal with the absurd memory leak.

ola.wilhelmssonb16_ESO · January 2020

PC EU CP Cyrodiil campaign is also a total and absolute lag-fest at prime time, at the moment. I gave up after 2 disconnects in an hour, or so. The latest server fix does not seem to help at all, but perhaps it won't have effect until after the next update, or something. If this lack of server stability persist, Mid-year mayhem will utterly unplayable on PC EU.

Blacknight841 · January 2020

Maybe the group finder would work and the lag would improve if you actually did something about the bots in the game.

grkkll · January 2020

Group Finder has been goosed since Sunday. I queued off and on from 07:00 till 19:00 without a single success, as a DD. Same yesterday though I gave up after 2 hours. Tried quitting and re-queuing which did nothing at all. Been queuing as a tank on alt account this morning, usually success within a minute but nothing after 15. Trying for a battleground now which appears to have the same problem. Something has changed since Saturday 4th Jan, haven't got a clue what but something has been changed...or is it just me?

JPS · January 2020

The dungeon finder works pretty simple: You queue for 2 minutes. If it doesn't trigger within 2 minutes, requeue. Within 5 times you will find it will instantly get you into group all of a sudden.

Wich means that no, it does NOT work as it should. It's just more conceiled for the people that patiently wait in queue.

But sure, keep claiming 'improvements' are made and 'it works'....

/facepalm.

grkkll · January 2020

JPS wrote: »

The dungeon finder works pretty simple: You queue for 2 minutes. If it doesn't trigger within 2 minutes, requeue. Within 5 times you will find it will instantly get you into group all of a sudden.

was this a wind up? Maybe that worked for you but it doesn't for me