*POSSIBLE* contributing source of lag/issues

Saucy_Jack

Now, after my previous thread suggesting that one possible contributor to the lag/issues was added server load due to everyone self-isolating, and the...spirited...responses I received, I realize I'm treading on relatively thin ice talking about this. Such is life in the trenches of the forums.

HOWEVER.

I sent my 2017 Sager gaming laptop in (an NP8157, for those interested in looking it up) for repairs since there were some things that needed fixing and it was juuuust about to go out of warranty. In addition to fixing the issues I emailed them about, they also updated the BIOS to the newest version. I had no issues with playing ESO prior to sending my computer in; now, I notice a TON of rubberbanding, even in non-PVP areas.

I put the upgraded BIOS thing out there as a SUGGESTION of a POSSIBLE lag/issue contributor, as I suspect the issues stem from multiple causes and therefore won't be solved with a single magic bullet. With that said, please don't devolve this thread into a seething pit of fire and froth and rage like that last one.

- SJ

technohic

I am thinking the self isolation theory doesnt hold as we have had this issue PC NA for 4 weeks and self isolation really didnt start until a week and a half ago. And in the worse places in the game (Cyrodiil) numbers of people there are clearly dropping off prime time due to the issues.

As far as machine performance goes; I'm glad you brought it up. I did start looking at my current PC. Its about 5 years old, I got it after the game came out, it is above the recommended specs for ESO, and is really similar to a PS4 Pro when looking at parts and performance benchmarks when ran at stock. I am due for another machine which is coming tomorrow so I got curious on where it stands even though the logic tells me that 2 months ago, I was fine; at least as far as ESO standards go.

I checked my CPU usage when in ESO yesterday and I was surprised to see all cores being utilized as they said they added the support just this past patch for specific things and I was running close to 90% of all cores. On average; eso was using about 46% and everything else was less than 2% each but when Im not sold on how the averages are taken as I do not see where it adds up to the nearly 90% I see when looking at it live.

Knowing I have a new PC on the way; I went ahead and overclocked a bit and got it to show more like 70% processors usage and tried. Issues were still there, and I knew they would as one of my friends had just got a really nice computer just a couple months ago and I know they have had issues as well, maybe mine were just a little more severe; but what I noticed is I had better FPS while struggling as you often see ping spikes, and you dont even want to get me started about pulling a cable, getting my ISP out here and bumping up to 450 M connection, but ESO only makes use of a fraction of that as there seems to be a bottleneck at their end (routing, server choking)

Im looking forward to the new PC as I am going from Intel to AMD so I should go from 8 thread architecture to 12. Thats another thing that tickles my curiosity as games typically dont use more than 8 and intel usually edges out the AMD in raw power slightly, but I am curious about other processes and ESO specifically. Maybe it will make another slight difference on my end, but again; I really feel like there is a bottle neck on the far end that is more devastating.

I you want my conspiracy theory on ZOS though; I am concerned that maybe their game system requirements should have been raised over the years to where a PS4 Pro and XBONE S would be really near minimum but they do not want to go that far and basically lose the market of the base PS4 and XBONE customers for cash flow, nor do they want to spend money on infrastructure. The devs have delivered endless content updates at a pace that is probably demanded by their suits to keep getting customers, not allowing for time, resources, or budget to sure things up as they go.

preevious

You are actually right.

Lots of people also overestimate their computer's performance. That was my case.
Problem is, complaining is easier and more gratifying than lowering one's settings

technohic wrote: »

I you want my conspiracy theory on ZOS though; I am concerned that maybe their game system requirements should have been raised over the years to where a PS4 Pro and XBONE S would be really near minimum but they do not want to go that far and basically lose the market of the base PS4 and XBONE customers for cash flow, nor do they want to spend money on infrastructure. The devs have delivered endless content updates at a pace that is probably demanded by their suits to keep getting customers, not allowing for time, resources, or budget to sure things up as they go.

Also, this .. this all the way. ESO has gotten fatter over the years. System requirements do not hold anymore

daemonios

There are probably myriads of contributing factors. But let me just point out that during midyear mayhem Cyrodiil suddenly was able to support permanently locked campaigns - particularly the one in early 2019, as this last Midyear Mayhem didn't go so smoothly. Performance degraded again as soon as the event ended, which to me indicates they added capacity to deal with the event and took it away afterwards.

Also, individual players' setups don't account for sudden disconnections of entire groups and other recurring issues.

oxygen_thief

technohic wrote: »

I am thinking the self isolation theory doesnt hold as we have had this issue PC NA for 4 weeks and self isolation really didnt start until a week and a half ago. And in the worse places in the game (Cyrodiil) numbers of people there are clearly dropping off prime time due to the issues.

theres no need to start the game and join cyro to check connection. its enough to run a traceroute utility for me to see that
my connection to pc eu is throttled and ping is much higher than usual.

tului78

Saucy_Jack wrote: »

Now, after my previous thread suggesting that one possible contributor to the lag/issues was added server load due to everyone self-isolating, and the...spirited...responses I received, I realize I'm treading on relatively thin ice talking about this. Such is life in the trenches of the forums.

HOWEVER.

I sent my 2017 Sager gaming laptop in (an NP8157, for those interested in looking it up) for repairs since there were some things that needed fixing and it was juuuust about to go out of warranty. In addition to fixing the issues I emailed them about, they also updated the BIOS to the newest version. I had no issues with playing ESO prior to sending my computer in; now, I notice a TON of rubberbanding, even in non-PVP areas.

I put the upgraded BIOS thing out there as a SUGGESTION of a POSSIBLE lag/issue contributor, as I suspect the issues stem from multiple causes and therefore won't be solved with a single magic bullet. With that said, please don't devolve this thread into a seething pit of fire and froth and rage like that last one.

- SJ

I'm on Xbox One X and in the preview program. OS and any "firmware" fixes hit me usually twice a month or more. Definitely not the issue for Xbox

oXI_Viper_IXo

That may be a contributing factor for a small percentage of people, but most people started experiencing the same issues at the same time.

Skill delay/input lag, not being able to break free, and not being able to bar swap started happening on console right after the Feb 5th patch and on PC with update 25.

This cannot be a coincidence that a lot of people started experiencing these exact same issues at the exact same time on their respective platforms.

precambria

There are not that many people playing, it's mostly just the same people who always play and have an extreme tolerance for unpleasant experiences.

technohic

Yeah I ran last night for a guild event for a decent amount of time. Everyone had issues. My PC on its last leg was worse for sure at getting abilities off and even beyond that I had a lot more issues with my NB soul tether than any other ability, and potions of all things.

We were winning fights but while it was bad for others, I might as well just rolled my face on my keys as there was no telling what would actually work. New PC is at the nearest sort facility now.

Gythral

Theory falls apart as the issue has been going on for a long time & getting worse 'every fix' in the last 2 years....

gatekeeper13

BIOS has nothing to do with a server with a badly coded engine that cant handle the load and causes lag to players.

The_Auror

Gotta find some other reason this game's performance sucks huh? Yes it must be everyone's computers. PCs are all made up of completely different pieces hardware but they all happen to have the exact same issues with this one game in particular.
These problems also exist on consoles and are even worse from what I hear.

How come every other game on my PC runs perfectly fine? Why does Doom Eternal, a brand new game, run at over 100 fps with ultra settings? Why does Destiny 2 never lag, rubberband or fail to perform the skill I just pressed?

I like this game. I wish it would work correctly. At some point you have to come to terms that the performance will never get better because no one knows how to fix it.

On the bright side if you aren't doing anything remotely competitive in game it seems to work fine.

mairwen85

I'm thinking it's all the calculations running over from the APM required to mudball large groups of RPers efficiently.

Kel

The_Auror wrote: »

Gotta find some other reason this game's performance sucks huh? Yes it must be everyone's computers. PCs are all made up of completely different pieces hardware but they all happen to have the exact same issues with this one game in particular.
These problems also exist on consoles and are even worse from what I hear.

How come every other game on my PC runs perfectly fine? Why does Doom Eternal, a brand new game, run at over 100 fps with ultra settings? Why does Destiny 2 never lag, rubberband or fail to perform the skill I just pressed?

I like this game. I wish it would work correctly. At some point you have to come to terms that the performance will never get better because no one knows how to fix it.

On the bright side if you aren't doing anything remotely competitive in game it seems to work fine.

Exactly this.

No one seems to explain how every other game works just fine, and only ESO has these issues consistently.
Must be our machines not being able to handle this one game, right?

danthemann5

I am running a top-of-the-line (or nearly so) PC. 9900k, RTX 2080 TI, etc. The lag, rubber banding, and skill delays make the game unplayable in Cyrodiil. My frame rate frequently drops into the high teens and low 20s out in the middle of nowhere.

This sort of lag and loss of frame rate doesn't occur with any other games or doing anything else.

My PC isn't the problem.

On a not unrelated note, we haven't seen an update from anyone at ZOS in quite awhile about these issues. Maybe they think we forgot.

ItsMeToo

It's the deer and fireflies missing in Cyrodiil I tell you. The code keeps trying to render them and times out. Then we get an "Unhandled Exception Error", and crash to desktop with that report window. I've told this to ZOS many years ago when they removed some of that code.

Also the memory leaks from using code that doesn't do a good job of cleaning up fragmented data and unused resources.

Fragments across segment boundries are also a problem when they are not cleaned up correctly.

Cadbury

I blame the slaughterfish.

karthrag_inak

This one also uses Sager laptops for all his digital needs (NP9877). Bravo!

Saucy_Jack

Oof, guys. Notice how I said "possible" contributing source, and even capitalized and put asterisks around "possible" in the title. As in, it was a hypothesis, not a conclusion I was making. And I even stated that I thought there were multiple causes to the lag/issues. Yet somehow at least some of you interpreted that as me saying that it's definitely peoples' computers that are the problem.

How do so many clarifying statements get lost in the mix?

NoodleESO

You might want to clarify what kind of lag @Saucy_Jack ESO experiences a lot of different kind of lag but I suspect you mean fps stability. Updating your PC will not get your skills to fire any better in server latency tho so I can see how people will disagree

Kadoin

I would guess the biggest problem stems from communication within the dev team, outside the dev team, and from up top. I say this because...

...

Oops, better stop talking before I get moderated.

technohic

Got the new PC. Looks like the game only uses 4 cores, and with the new PC; just really 1 at a time for the most part. So throw in un-optimal code; which I think is no secret and what they've been working on.

Synaki

Strange that your BIOS update made performance worse not only for yourself but for most other players as well...

TheFM

preevious wrote: »

You are actually right.

Lots of people also overestimate their computer's performance. That was my case.
Problem is, complaining is easier and more gratifying than lowering one's settings

technohic wrote: »

I you want my conspiracy theory on ZOS though; I am concerned that maybe their game system requirements should have been raised over the years to where a PS4 Pro and XBONE S would be really near minimum but they do not want to go that far and basically lose the market of the base PS4 and XBONE customers for cash flow, nor do they want to spend money on infrastructure. The devs have delivered endless content updates at a pace that is probably demanded by their suits to keep getting customers, not allowing for time, resources, or budget to sure things up as they go.

Also, this .. this all the way. ESO has gotten fatter over the years. System requirements do not hold anymore

So a 7700 k and 1080 ti and 32 gb of 3,2 k ram is not enough to run a six year old mmo? puh lease.

TheFM

technohic wrote: »

Got the new PC. Looks like the game only uses 4 cores, and with the new PC; just really 1 at a time for the most part. So throw in un-optimal code; which I think is no secret and what they've been working on.

Even with these so called performance updates I noticed this game stresses mainly one of my 8 cores. I dunno what they did to make it multi thread, but it doesnt really at all. Youre right.

technohic

TheFM wrote: »

technohic wrote: »

Got the new PC. Looks like the game only uses 4 cores, and with the new PC; just really 1 at a time for the most part. So throw in un-optimal code; which I think is no secret and what they've been working on.

Even with these so called performance updates I noticed this game stresses mainly one of my 8 cores. I dunno what they did to make it multi thread, but it doesnt really at all. Youre right.

Yeah, it was better in a test run, but its still not passable just like I figured. Im running a 450MB connection now, an R7 3700X overclocked to 4.4 GHZ, and a RTX 2070 Super.

So again, since people will see I said its better and think I am affirming that its end users end; but I'm not. I'm just saying that running this machine that is way more than their recommended settings and more than enough to reasonably expect a machine to have and way beyond what they have in the base consoles especially, with about the best connection I can get and that is not even stressed; performance is not acceptable nor even able to be brush aside like we frankly have done fore years here.

I entertained the theory and it comes up short.

Hippie4927

Saucy_Jack wrote: »

Oof, guys. Notice how I said "possible" contributing source, and even capitalized and put asterisks around "possible" in the title. As in, it was a hypothesis, not a conclusion I was making. And I even stated that I thought there were multiple causes to the lag/issues. Yet somehow at least some of you interpreted that as me saying that it's definitely peoples' computers that are the problem.

How do so many clarifying statements get lost in the mix?

People see what they want to see and disregard the rest.

Sylvermynx

Hippie4927 wrote: »

Saucy_Jack wrote: »

Oof, guys. Notice how I said "possible" contributing source, and even capitalized and put asterisks around "possible" in the title. As in, it was a hypothesis, not a conclusion I was making. And I even stated that I thought there were multiple causes to the lag/issues. Yet somehow at least some of you interpreted that as me saying that it's definitely peoples' computers that are the problem.

How do so many clarifying statements get lost in the mix?

People see what they want to see and disregards the rest.

Absolutely. Having read and posted in game forums since BG1, I can state with perfect truth that you are right.

Malkiv

technohic wrote: »

Im running a 450MB connection now

You have a 3+ Gigabit connection? From where? My Google Fiber is only rated at 1 Gigabit, and it's the fastest non-enterprise solution I could find!

Vaoh

daemonios wrote: »

There are probably myriads of contributing factors. But let me just point out that during midyear mayhem Cyrodiil suddenly was able to support permanently locked campaigns - particularly the one in early 2019, as this last Midyear Mayhem didn't go so smoothly. Performance degraded again as soon as the event ended, which to me indicates they added capacity to deal with the event and took it away afterwards.

Also, individual players' setups don't account for sudden disconnections of entire groups and other recurring issues.

No no, it must be your internet connection... have you tried restarting your router?

Sylvermynx

Malkiv wrote: »

technohic wrote: »

Im running a 450MB connection now

You have a 3+ Gigabit connection? From where? My Google Fiber is only rated at 1 Gigabit, and it's the fastest non-enterprise solution I could find!

Um. Who do I have to (redacted) to get one of those?