The Game is Absolutely Unplayable at the Moment

Imperial_Archmage

I am not even exaggerating, it's absolutely impossible to play. The game constantly freezes up, sometime for close to a minute, when doing virtually anything from running around collecting nodes and opening chests to doing dungeons and trials. The arenas are also absolutely unplayable even on normal mode. I thought I would go do some normal MA runs to get weapons for alts and I consistently got one of those freezing events every other boss encounter. Literally everything on the screen freezes and while my character can move he can't do anything else and that movement isn't even registered as I routinely rubber-band back to where I was when the game froze up. All I can do is sit there and watch as my health is depleted until I die and then I can't even rez or release. When that is not happening every single ability and light or heavy attack is delayed. Ground AoEs take multiple casts to trigger and seem to be desynced. Doing a light or heavy attack causes your character to lock up in the most absurd positions (especially if you use a destro staff light attack). Abilities with a cast time can go on forever without going off. And don't even get me started on the bar swapping...

I've been playing this game since it initially released and for the first time ever I brought up the in-game latency interface to see what the hell was going on and while it's hopelessly inaccurate and slow to update it's obvious that when these freezing events happen the indicator goes in the red and shows values of 999+ whereas when the aforementioned stuttering of attacks and abilities happens it is in the 400-600 range (I believe normal values should be in the low to mid 2 digit numbers). I will be the first to admit that I have no idea how games like these work on the back end or how the technology works but I know for a fact that the issue is not on my end. I play on a state of the art (albeit ridiculously overpriced) gaming laptop and I have the best internet speed money can buy which I routine check when these freezing events happen. I also play a number of other online games with far greater requirements on the highest possible setting with no such issues.

I've been playing online games long enough to expect an episode like this to happen after a major content release and so I purposely busied myself with the Antiquities System, playing it at the slowest speed humanly possible (which btw was no walk in the park either because it was also released buggy af) but it's been weeks now and it seems these technical issues are only getting worse not better. And of course we can't forget that all this is happening in the context of the game supposedly undergoing much needed and very overdue performance updates on the back end which I have yet to see.

I don't know what it is exactly that the developers broke recently but they really need to fix it because the game is absolutely unplayable in this state.

P.S. If anyone has any ideas or recommendations on what I can do to at least work around these issues until they are hopefully fixed, I would be very grateful.

volkeswagon

i play on ps4. It froze on me once last night but other than that it's been fine.

Diabolus1989

On Xbox EU. I've just travelled to Western Skyrim for the first time. Was met with no sound whatsoever apart from mine and my pet's footsteps, then an invisible enemy started attacking me, then I hit an 'unusually long load time'. I'm still in said load screen, awaiting being booted out.

Edit: I grew tired and closed the game and reloaded. Only to be told that I can't load my game because I'm already logged in.

Soulshine

I have been playing every day since Graymoor released and honestly have not had many issues except for an occasional bit of lag when inside the Blue Palace in Solitude, and a rubber bandy kinda thing here-there on landscape. No hitches with 4man vet dungeons yet. Sometimes loading screens do get stuck a long time come to think of it, but that is about it.

The Blue Place thing is a bit odd in that everything runs very slowly in there for me for some reason for the first few minutes I load in there; people look like they are moving through molasses; but once I type /reloadui it goes away. I have a very old system I play this game on, but have a fast internet connection (600mgb download speed), so maybe that is helping I don't know. I do run it on Windows 10 Pro and have recently installed the May 2020 features update.

All of the following may be redundant for you, so forgive if so:

I would do the usual checks of verifying your connection isn't dropping/disconnecting you, because I did have that happen a few years ago when I was on a different ISP. Had same computer as now, no issues with any other online MMO games at all either, just constant drops with ESO. Switched providers and haven't had it happen since.

Are you hard wired or on wifi?
Are you running antivirus in game mode when in game?
Do you have Update Orchestrator Service shut off when playing?
Windows Compatibility Telemetry shut off when playing?

Sometimes Windows 10 decides to download various updates in the background, start up Telemetry, and other systems functions that eat up CPU and also bandwidth. Depending on your connection, no matter the speed, you may still noticeably feel it when it's running. In my case, I shut those off when I game because I can instantly tell the second they start up due to the temperature increase in my CPU between running the game and that going on... old system, so I keep close eye on that.

Not sure if any of this was helpful but maybe it might resolve some of what is going on. On general I think the game seems to be more problematic on newer configurations, which definitely points to problems on their side not yours, because have seem a lot of posts like this.

PrayingSeraph

I'm on Xbox NA and everytime I initiate a killing attack on a npc, I get a stutter. I hear others are getting it too

Anotherone773

They have improved it quite a bit on PC since release. But i still get desyncs, random( but more rare) lag spikes, textures not loading( blurry ground) and other such issues. In open world/story play these are not to terrible to deal with. But in group content, where timing is important, its quite frustrating.

Eifleber

For me, since Greymoor the performance has become only slightly worse: now I occasionally have screen freeze when i try to load characters. Very annoying when you want to do horse training and writs on all your characters, which never happens without at least one freeze. Costs me at least 5-10 extra minutes a day = 2-3 hours a month of wasted time. Especially when you want to reconnect and the game says you are already logged in.

For the rest performance hasn' t really changed a lot. It still happens that bankers take a lot of time to load (why does the game load all the players first and only after the NPC's? Can' t they code it so that it's reversed in PvE areas?). Dungeons still run smooth. I still get occasional disconnects when I am opening storage boxes in my house. Very little problems with overland content.

gatekeeper13

The most unplayable area is Cyro. Performance is total trash. Entered no-cp campaign yesterday and at the first battle I got kicked from server.

Instant quit.

dhboy123

Since the Greymoor release it's all gone downhill.

fiender66

I do not go to Cyrodiil, and do PVP only in BG.
That said, I and my guild mates have no problem in playing. We make random, normal and vet and trials, WB everywhere

MJallday

Only 2 issues here on Xbox

1) sound cuts out
2) excavation on gold is bugged

Apart from that spot on

Grandchamp1989

One thing I've noticed is loading screens taking 3-4x as long...
Also got 10-15 less fps in most zones.

Xarraca

On PC I get server lag in the evening and this really anyone FPS stutter every time I get XP.
I wouldn't call it unplayable but I do play a LOT less ever since these issues popped up.
I don't mind the lag so much but these stutters totally kill it for me.
Incoming unsub if this doesn't get fixed real fast.

Stealthk80

I'm having a few issues on xbox eu

Around 50% of the the time when I log out, the game hangs and I have to shut it down and restart - new issue with greymoor

Last night the instance servers seemed to have major issues. I did 3 runs of vma and 3 or 4 times I had 6 or 7 secs of complete freeze/lag - obviously I died every time, once on last boss as I had just come from upstairs, I had already died once due to another 7 sec lag spike so no rage happened!!

RefLiberty

Awful optimization too.

As documented with this screenshot, FPS drops (micro-stutter and drops below 60) while hardware is not utilized at all, CPU is practically idling, and GPU not much over 50%



Awful is this new expansion.

Nirntrotter

Hm, it's significantly more stable for me post-Greymoor than pre-Greymoor

gatekeeper13

RefLiberty wrote: »

Awful optimization too.

As documented with this screenshot, FPS drops (micro-stutter and drops below 60) while hardware is not utilized at all, CPU is practically idling, and GPU not much over 50%



Awful is this new expansion.

It doesn't matter what your total CPU usage is in ESO since game is based mostly on single threading performance. ZOS claims they added multi-threading support but that's only a joke. Game still runs as it did 5 years ago in most areas. Badly written code and totally outdated.

RefLiberty

gatekeeper13 wrote: »

RefLiberty wrote: »

Awful optimization too.

As documented with this screenshot, FPS drops (micro-stutter and drops below 60) while hardware is not utilized at all, CPU is practically idling, and GPU not much over 50%



Awful is this new expansion.

It doesn't matter what your total CPU usage is in ESO since game is based mostly on single threading performance. ZOS claims they added multi-threading support but that's only a joke. Game still runs as it did 5 years ago in most areas. Badly written code and totally outdated.

So yeah, in more details:




I'm extremely disappointed how it works.

Values says all, this is not working properly.

I don't know do they even test this stuff at all.

Celephantsylvius_Bornasfinmo

Cyro is still a huge mess.

PrimusNephilim

So now my rotation consist of hitting the same button 3 or 4 times before getting a reaction...cool

vamp_emily

I haven't played since Greymoor release, my time is so much worth more than logging in hitting a button 3 or 4 times and then dying. I now have no problems.

Anyways, if you are on PC don't forget to update your addon's if you have them. I also would try restarting your router and modem to see if that helps any.

Good Luck.

shaielzafine

It is quite bad. I removed all add-ons and did a fresh reinstall on PC but there's really nothing to do on my end anymore. They could just improve their servers and performance and fix a lot of the bugs, like they promised. I'm just playing FF14 and other games because it's so much hassle with ESO stutters, crashes, desyncs, double CCs and bugs.