Sounds like you found the root of the problem! Well done! I'm happy to see you communicate clearly about how to move forward from this point, and I hope it will bring us to a solution (:
H o w e v e r
The constant loading screen issue also exists in Craglorn, where it is arguably even worse (sometimes can't even catch a breather to teleport OUT of there). There are no issues with skill casting, as I doubt there are that many AOEs being spammed there, but obviously I don't have the numbers. The issue sometimes even persists in Craglorn trials, mostly in Aetherian Archive (from anecdotal experience). What I would like to ask is if you could look into that zone as well please?
Thank you for trying to make this a better game with good performance!
CaffeinatedMayhem wrote: »Interesting, but maybe look at limiting casting in groups? How about 3 Eye of the Storm/Magicka Detonation per group? Maybe stop Hiti’s Hearth from stacking at all? Killing solo play isn’t going to fix the real issue: ball groups.
RodneyRegis wrote: »WombatNipples65 wrote: »Sorry but do you play your own game? These changes are absurd, half of the classes won't be bale to work.
Templar - Jabs THEIR SPAMMABLE is AoE so you can't jab for 3 seconds or a ramping cost on your spammable. I don't need to explain how stupid this is.
Warden - Sub assault used once every 3 seconds - ramping cost for 5 seconds you might as well give it a 5 second time before it goes off.
Smallscale PvP dies if these go live. There is no skill in running around in big groups, I could run around in a 24 man group with no gear if these changes go through and not have a single issue.
Why do you hate Small Scalers?
How is sub assault affected? If you are casting SA more than every 3 seconds then you're doing it wrong...
LeifErickson wrote: »
If any of those 4 ends up being permanent everyone will quit except people like Dwemer Paleontologist.
I'm glad there's an initiative to improve performance but something isn't adding up. Im sure everyone who participates in pvp noticed that during Midyear Mayhem, the performance on pop locked servers was much better than the performance outside the event with 1 or 2 bars of population across all alliances. How is it that the performance is so bad when Cyrodiil is dead compared to when Cyrodiil is populated during an event?
MurderMostFoul wrote: »If drastically changing AOEs is what it takes to improve performance in Cyrodiil, so be it.
However, it will require a drastic overhaul of soooo many different abilities. To make these AOE changes work, ZOS will need way more ability changes that it has ever done in any prior balancing pass.
People crying about Jabs? Obviously this will be one of the abilities that sees major changes. What should worry you more is whether or not ZOS can pull off such a massive re-balancing. Everyone, not just Templars, are going to need to be prepared to rethink their entire builds if ZOS makes these AOE changes and performs the necessary universal skill rework. It will be a massive undertaking and I'm worried ZOS won't pull it off.
AOE changes could be fine, especially if they fix performance, but only if ZOS gets the skill overhaul right. Otherwise, they could fundamentally break combat beyond repair.
MurderMostFoul wrote: »If drastically changing AOEs is what it takes to improve performance in Cyrodiil, so be it.
However, it will require a drastic overhaul of soooo many different abilities. To make these AOE changes work, ZOS will need way more ability changes that it has ever done in any prior balancing pass.
People crying about Jabs? Obviously this will be one of the abilities that sees major changes. What should worry you more is whether or not ZOS can pull off such a massive re-balancing. Everyone, not just Templars, are going to need to be prepared to rethink their entire builds if ZOS makes these AOE changes and performs the necessary universal skill rework. It will be a massive undertaking and I'm worried ZOS won't pull it off.
AOE changes could be fine, especially if they fix performance, but only if ZOS gets the skill overhaul right. Otherwise, they could fundamentally break combat beyond repair.
ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »As part of our ongoing performance optimizations, we have been spending a lot of time analyzing and addressing problems in Cyrodiil. I'm going to give a summary of what has happened over the years, what we have been doing to alleviate the problems, and our future plans.
When talking about ESO server performance, it is important to understand that all abilities in the game (with some exceptions) have a "soft" limit on the number of times they can be executed. An example of a "hard" limit on an ability is an ability that can be executed one time every two seconds, enforced by the server. ESO doesn't have many of those. Instead, we designed the game to have soft limits, which mean you can execute as many abilities as you want as long as you have the resources - Stamina or Magicka - to cast them. There is a global "cool down" timer on all abilities, which is set to 1000 milliseconds.
The design goal of soft limits in any game is to allow players to create builds that let them execute abilities more often depending on build choices made, and not to have hard ceilings on damage or healing per second. This gives a lot of control to the player, which makes for a really fun and interesting system, but it can lead to situations where players cast too many abilities too quickly (and continuously) if strict limits on resources are not enforced.
Over the years, player power has grown considerably. With the addition of the Champion System, various armor/weapons sets, and changes to abilities, we have reached the stage where players - with the right build - can cast near-infinite numbers of abilities. If you add in a properly managed group, with some focused on damage and some focused on healing and regen boosts, you have a perpetually running never-ending stream of abilities.
With that in mind, consider how Area of Effect (AOE) abilities work: when cast, they look at a specific target area - almost always the area directly around the caster - find targets, and perform the ability. Each of those steps requires server calculations.
At launch, Cyrodiil’s processes were able to keep up with the number of AOEs cast, because most players couldn’t cast that many of them: they ran out of Magicka or Stamina, so they had to use AOEs judiciously. Over time, as player knowledge grew and regen builds grew in power, more players could cast more and more AOEs before running out of resources.
During these years, we found and fixed many performance issues in Cyrodiil, and we continue to do so. We've fixed significant issues, uncovered more, and continue to find and fix with every Update.
However, one foundational issue remains. At some point, we crossed a threshold where most players in PvP were able to cast endless AOE abilities, without ever running out of resources. This is done through player knowledge, builds and group mechanics – resulting in a constant stream of AOEs with many players never using any other type of ability.
This is not what we intended, but part of the fun of Elder Scrolls games is designing a build that has unexpected and powerful results, and we allowed it. However, as this behavior grew more prevalent, we reached a point where casting so many continuous AOE abilities in such a small area started to overwhelm the server process for that area, leading to situations where the "lag meter" spikes and the server becomes unresponsive for a period of time.
Our initial response to this problem – starting with Update 22 – was to find (and fix) more than a few problems with AOE ability calculations and make them more performant - and we stayed (mostly) ahead of the problem. But as more players reached maximum Champion Level and more players started utilizing this particular method of "AOE spamming", we have reached the point where we cannot fix this issue around the edges: we need to address the core problem, which we will be starting with Update 27.
To do this, we will need to first do some analysis, and we can only do this on the live servers. As much as we try to avoid running tests on live servers, they are the only place where the combination of player behavior, specific builds, and mass battles happen. So, starting the week of August 24, we will be running a series of tests on the live PC servers – both NA & EU, only in Cyrodiil. Please note that we will not be running these tests on any Console servers. Each test should take about a week, but if needed, we will extend the testing time.
The first round of tests we are planning will focus on Area of Effect (AOE) abilities in Cyrodiil and will make it more difficult for AOE abilities to be the only abilities used, adjusting cooldown, cost and regen values of all AOEs (damage and healing).
Specific details on the tests we will be running in Cyrodiil are as follows:During the times that any of these tests are active, we will be awarding double Alliance Points for anyone active in Cyrodiil.
- Test 1 – Shared global AOE cooldown - 3 second timer. This test adds a global 3 second shared cooldown to any AOE ability. This means that when you cast an AOE, you will not be able to cast another for 3 seconds. For example, as a Templar, if I cast Ritual of Retribution, I wouldn’t be able to cast Puncturing Sweep for 3 seconds.
- Test 2 – Individual AOE cooldown - 3 second timer. This test adds an individual AOE cooldown to each AOE ability. This means that when you cast an AOE, you will not be able to cast that same AOE ability for 3 seconds. For example – as a Templar, if I cast Puncturing Sweep, I wouldn’t be able to cast Puncturing Sweep again for 3 seconds.
- Test 3 – No cooldown, global ramping AOE cost. This test adds a global ramping AOE cost for each AOE cast. Similar to how streak or roll dodge works, where when you cast an AOE you receive a debuff for 5 seconds, each stack of the debuff increases the cost of any AOE cast.
- Test 4 – Individual AOE cooldown – 3 second timer, global ramping AOE cost. This test adds an individual AOE cooldown to each ability as in test 2, but also combines that with a global ramping cost from test 3.
After we complete the above tests, we may try other combinations of cooldown, cost, and regen values on AOE abilities. However, we need to run these tests first and then assess the data. We will then let everyone know what we found and how we will move forward. We will be very upfront, but please be aware that if these tests confirm our hypothesis, then chain-casting AOE abilities will no longer form the core of the ESO PvP experience in the way it has for the last few years. We would then go through each class and ensure that there are viable builds for each and make adjustments as necessary.
The code for these changes will be going into today’s PTS patch, and we will be running some basic tests throughout the day on Tuesday in Cyrodiil to ensure we’re able to make the above changes without requiring any maintenance or downtime. Once we launch Update 27 for PC on August 24, we will announce when one of the tests are beginning through an in-game announcement and will have a forum thread detailing which test is currently being performed. Remember, these tests will be limited to Cyrodiil, so AOE abilities in other PVP spaces (Imperial City and Battlegrounds) and will remain unchanged for now. We will evaluate how these tests go, and let everyone know next steps.
Thanks for being patient and understanding with these tests. They are extremely important for the team and will help us work towards improving Cyrodiil performance.
RodneyRegis wrote: »WombatNipples65 wrote: »Sorry but do you play your own game? These changes are absurd, half of the classes won't be bale to work.
Templar - Jabs THEIR SPAMMABLE is AoE so you can't jab for 3 seconds or a ramping cost on your spammable. I don't need to explain how stupid this is.
Warden - Sub assault used once every 3 seconds - ramping cost for 5 seconds you might as well give it a 5 second time before it goes off.
Smallscale PvP dies if these go live. There is no skill in running around in big groups, I could run around in a 24 man group with no gear if these changes go through and not have a single issue.
Why do you hate Small Scalers?
How is sub assault affected? If you are casting SA more than every 3 seconds then you're doing it wrong...
It says that you can't cast it for 3 seconds, meaning that you can't recast it if a person moves before the 3 seconds without a penalty or outright "CD" despite the skill only doing damage after 3 seconds anyway.
It's why blanket changes are always a BAD IDEA. They decided to make "rule breakers" and "special cases" and now use a blanket change to debuff the special cases and rule-breakers, destroying things that aren't, similar to the heal changes.
this change would kill both pve stam and mag templar builds that use jabs so good job zos
gatekeeper13 wrote: »Best news I ve heard in a long time for this game.
If these changes indeed take place, we will see not only a significant improvement in performance but also the end of the abomination called "ball groups".
It won't affect ballgroups nearly as much as you think. Individual cooldowns will be affected but a ballgroup of 20+ people is still going to be able to spam AoEs and cross heal as a group which is still a butt load of calculations. This is another case of individual players being nerfed while groups remain mostly unaffected.
blendertoes wrote: »Wow, just wow. Whoever thought that it was a good idea to "test" by deleting an entire class deserves a prize. As was stated above, the "test" should be ground based AoEs that way you prevent class and weapon spamables from being affected. Does not seem like rocket science.
If there are changes to class and weapon spamables that will mitigate the affect of the changes proposed in this test, then you should probably announce them so that people can take them into consideration when theorycrafting.
@ZOS_RichLambert
Have you thought about basing the cooldown or cost increase on the the total area affected by the AOE?
So for example Sweeps which is cone and 8 meters could have a cooldown of 1sec and Purge which is a circle of radius 18m 6secs.
Sweeps only affect approx 100m2 and Purge covers 1000m2 why punish both the same?
TineaCruris wrote: »I am totally baffled as to why they can't just implement what ever changes were made during the MYM event on a full time basis. What ever those changes were helped a ton. It didn't bring us back the the utopian good ol days, but it got us a lot of the way there.
Why can't we just implement the MYM changes on a full time basis and go from there?