Please participate in AoE test

zaria

Test protocol: Wear the most flashy gear you have, emphasis on proc sets with animation effects like mad tinker and Maw of the Infernal, Obviously an flashy mount too. Purpose is to generate visual effects not maximize damage.

Jeremy wrote: »

robpr wrote: »

A lot of people already declared that they will sit and wait for tests to end. Nothing to say more. PLEASE PARTICIPATE IN THE TEST
-Yes its gonna be painful
-Yes, it will destroy [my class here]
-Yes, nobody likes cooldowns
-Yes, nobody likes so drastic changes
-Yes, it's a game design fault if AoEs are the problem

but if its gonna help, even by any slightest bit to make Cyro a little more pleasant, please do.
Think about it as another Sheogorath toying with us to make alliance war "more interesting and more cheese". Remember that changes are temporary for now.
I want to game live for longest, there is no other experience than this. Bad performance is nail in the coffin of any competitive environment.

PvPers, enjoy double AP
PvErs, you can also help by simply checking the performance in combat fighting Resource NPCs or delves.

Test will yield nothing if simply there would be not many people logged in. It needs to be real stress test.

I'm planning on participating. But I don't understand why this is necessary.

If they think it's an abundance of Area of Attack skills causing the lag - then why not just simulate the effects of lots of AoE skills going off and see? I don't understand why you would have to go live to test that.

This seems like another shot in the dark to me - like when they theorized the added calculations from CP was the cause of the lag when I knew it wasn't. The reason no CP Cyrodil has better performance than CP Cyrodil is simply because the no CP campaign is less crowded. The root problem is their server just can't handle the load when a lot of players are active at once. You saw the same thing happen right after Greymoor launched and West Skyrim became unplayable due to lag. Was that because there was "ball groups" running around spamming AoE? In PvE? Not likely. So I'm very skeptical this is going to have any significant effect.

This, the weird thing is that they does not difrensiate between ground based AoE and instant AoE effects.
How is this different? Well for an instant AoE, find all target inside hit area then apply effect. Assume for some effects its an dot or debuff but this is character based.

Now ground based, I assume they first has to map the effect on ground, then find units inside the area then apply effect, this has to be re caluclated every tick as you move and effects time out and is re cast all the time.
Sounds to me they will be much more server intensive in just the mapping rater than near caster and they also last typically 8 seconds.

Now you could set up an simulation of this have 2x96 bots of two factions, four 24 man groups perhaps 1 player and 23 followers who copied them. All have infinite sustain and raid boss health, perhaps an very strong heal too.
Now test various effects and observe server. You could even make copy skills so you could lay down 5 arrow barrages at once to focus on this skill. Damage is irrelevant here, server work load is the same.
You could also make new spells like an single instant ranged effect to test this compared to ground based.
Test various skills and their combinations. This should give good data.

After doing this you might want to do live tests to see real world effects.

TheImperfect

I will participate if I am able at the time. I don't like the idea of aoe cooldowns one bit. I think it will destroy pve completely if done with 3 seconds and make gameplay more boring. I do appreciate that nothing is fixed and it's just a test and they may try other things. I think just knowing that spamming aoe is causing server stress will make me try to be a little more careful with it, not that I didn't know before but it's on a more conscious level now.

WreckfulAbandon

I don't care how good these tests are for the game, I won't participate in a test that, if implemented fully, will cause me to leave the game. None of the 3 tests provide a solution for me because all 3 of them are akin to throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

dem0n1k

I plan on participating with multiple character classes. Some with lots of AOE skills, others with all single target skills. Interested to see if such tests will affect 'delayed' AOE skills such as Sub Assault & Proxy Det. The test that places a cooldown on all AOE skills is going to make bombing hard

zaria

WreckfulAbandon wrote: »

I don't care how good these tests are for the game, I won't participate in a test that, if implemented fully, will cause me to leave the game. None of the 3 tests provide a solution for me because all 3 of them are akin to throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

I agree here, I don't need more AP and yes this will destroy the game for me so I will be out.
And no buffing single target will not resolve this as they will not buff it enough as it again will let you burn other players too fast in PvP and will make burning many bosses too easy.
And as other point out lots of skills has secondary AoE effect including proc sets, if they proc will it stop me from casting.
Thinking Chernobyl was also an test.

Nevidyra

I'm loving the new introduction of turn-based combat for Templar. It's like I'm playing an old RPG instead of an MMO with dynamic, fast-paced fluid action combat. /sarcasm

Sanctum74

The problem with testing is that magplar, magden, magdk, and magcro will not be able to test effectively. Most of their offensive and defensive skills have aoe checks. People will just get fed up and log off or switch to single target stam characters and farm the ones that won’t be able to fight back.

OmniDo

The testing is pointless.
You mean to tell me that with all their developer admin options, all their expensive DBA's, and all their college graduate code-monkeys, they really have to resort to live testing? Where are all their spreadsheets? Where are all their simulations? Who do they have working for them anyway?

The "solution" is simple: UPGRADE YOUR DAMN HARDWARE.

You really think calculation is cheap? It's simple math. X*Y=Z.
If you have X number of players casting Y number of abilities per second, you will require Z number of computer cycles. If you don't have that, then upgrade until you do.

Perhaps they should go learn from the real giants in the industry, like Blizzard.

Zer0_CooL

Cooldowns are programmed lag, change my mind.

Hapexamendios

Testing it - fine

Implementing it - gtfo

Hamish999

Jeremy wrote: »

I'm planning on participating. But I don't understand why this is necessary.

If they think it's an abundance of Area of Attack skills causing the lag - then why not just simulate the effects of lots of AoE skills going off and see? I don't understand why you would have to go live to test that.

This seems like another shot in the dark to me - like when they theorized the added calculations from CP was the cause of the lag when I knew it wasn't. The reason no CP Cyrodil has better performance than CP Cyrodil is simply because the no CP campaign is less crowded. The root problem is their server just can't handle the load when a lot of players are active at once. You saw the same thing happen right after Greymoor launched and West Skyrim became unplayable due to lag. Was that because there was "ball groups" running around spamming AoE? In PvE? Not likely. So I'm very skeptical this is going to have any significant effect.

You don't play PC EU noCP do you?
If you did you would know it is a pop locked campaign every single prime time lol

Faulgor

I'll make it a point to play my stamplar during these tests, and I'll dutifully spam jabs every 3 seconds.

Firstmep

Im sorry how am i supposed to play my templar during these tests?

Im literally playing a single target ranged templar with dark flare, javelin etc.

But my ENTIRE defensive toolkit will be pretty much disabled during these test.

No thank you.

Tammany

There will be enough people, don't worry
[snip]

[edited for baiting]

Shanan

im in! everything that destroys noballer ballgroups is fine. zos take my money!

idk

Jeremy wrote: »

robpr wrote: »

A lot of people already declared that they will sit and wait for tests to end. Nothing to say more. PLEASE PARTICIPATE IN THE TEST
-Yes its gonna be painful
-Yes, it will destroy [my class here]
-Yes, nobody likes cooldowns
-Yes, nobody likes so drastic changes
-Yes, it's a game design fault if AoEs are the problem

but if its gonna help, even by any slightest bit to make Cyro a little more pleasant, please do.
Think about it as another Sheogorath toying with us to make alliance war "more interesting and more cheese". Remember that changes are temporary for now.
I want to game live for longest, there is no other experience than this. Bad performance is nail in the coffin of any competitive environment.

PvPers, enjoy double AP
PvErs, you can also help by simply checking the performance in combat fighting Resource NPCs or delves.

Test will yield nothing if simply there would be not many people logged in. It needs to be real stress test.

I'm planning on participating. But I don't understand why this is necessary.

If they think it's an abundance of Area of Attack skills causing the lag - then why not just simulate the effects of lots of AoE skills going off and see? I don't understand why you would have to go live to test that.

This seems like another shot in the dark to me - like when they theorized the added calculations from CP was the cause of the lag when I knew it wasn't. The reason no CP Cyrodil has better performance than CP Cyrodil is simply because the no CP campaign is less crowded. The root problem is their server just can't handle the load when a lot of players are active at once. You saw the same thing happen right after Greymoor launched and West Skyrim became unplayable due to lag. Was that because there was "ball groups" running around spamming AoE? In PvE? Not likely. So I'm very skeptical this is going to have any significant effect.

They can simulate only to a point. There is no simulation that can completely mimic players. It is why Zos did some stress testing of the reworked GF on live. It also makes sense that a simulation cannot properly predict how we, as players, we adjust to each of the four scenarios that are going to be tested.

This is no different than when Zos tested Cyrodiil without CP two or three years ago.

Further, the root of the problem is not the servers. While Cyrodiil has never been perfect, it used to perform significantly better in 2014 than it has in recent years. That was with a significantly larger pop cap than we have today. That alone demonstrates that something else has been going on that has caused performance to degrade over the years.l

Unified_Gaming

Aoe spamable example (jabs) from pts

https://youtu.be/HzG-t7e4y7I

Heal example from pts

https://youtu.be/8A_zWfD70ow

I can't see many magicka specs wanting to play if all their skills are like this.

TwinLamps

I play sDK
Test will affect me less than others I guess

Grandchamp1989

Lets do it! Fix the AOE so I can log into the game again! Oh...

Gythral

Why download and store 100Gb of data, just to have any feedback ignored?

As this is how it has 'felt' for years...

technohic

If you dont like the idea of these changes, the last thing you want to do is not show up and aid in better performance by lack of participation to make it apear these debuffs helped. There is a real possibility then, that they pick one of these and we STILL have issues when people show up. We really need organized ball groups to make their best adjustments to show how little it will change for them.

You can either sit here and whine about it, or get out there and prove it wrong.

CrazYDunm3r

If we understand things correctly, how wouldn't some of these changes destroy classed like templars?

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QSEAlqv5mNVK9AWPhHUO_w-s9Pixa0qMRO4lWTjVpbE/edit#gid=0

As some pointed out: participate, gather information and describe in depth why these changes would make ESO a dumbed down version of its otherwise very unique combat system (compared to other MMO's). It is up to ZOS to listen to us and as we all know they don't always like to listen, which PTS feedback has proven multiple times.

Athyrium93

I'm going to go test, but I'm going with 3 proc sets, all with the most ridiculous animations I can find, that will cause major server calculations (definitly Hiti's, maybe Valkyn Skoria or Iambris? Still need to find a 3rd, any suggestions?) A pet with a ton of glowing animations, a mount with a ton of animations, and an outfit with any and all peices of obnoxious glowing gear I can find a motif for... For skills I'm going to spam a massive ground based AOE every 3 seconds, and test which single target spamable has the most obnoxious animation.

If they want to test the server without AOEs, okay cool, but I'm going to do everything in my power to stress the server as much as possible. It will suck and I will die a lot, but my poor templar healer is going to be double nerfed durring the test, so I'm going to be as obnoxious as I can durring it....

finehair

Funny thing; we had almost no lag problems in MYM's first days because the ball groups couldn't join altogether thanks to long queue time. Sure they might have upgraded something during the event but as soon as the ball groups showed up, it was the same laggy piece of candy all over again.

What I am trying to say is; random people spamming aoe's don't create lag as much as those ball groups. Because as the testing thread points, people shouldn't be able to stam aoes without running out of resources.
Lfg group members can't do that, because there are random roles and they need to heal themselves and can't trust some random healbots in group to spam radiating regen.
Smallscalers will stop their aoe spam to heal one another or themselves.
Solo players rely on their own heals so even if they are spamming aoe in offensive mode, they can't spam whirling blades through the map and stay alive, they need to stop offensive mode and go back to defensive every now and then.
Organized guilds have their healbots sure, but their damage dealers don't act like air atronachs from city of ash2. There are guilds who use sieges AND their group to defend the keep in outnumbered situations instead of running on the third floor with aoe spammers followed by healbots.

Raudgrani

If they actually go through with either of these, it's literally the end of Cyrodiil PVP. They could just as well change it a bit and make it a legit PVE zone instead; and actually - that change seems long overdue by now. It all comes to a point, where we are sacrificing far too much for what we would have, if it would even prove to work. Severely castrated PVP or no PVP, my choice is the later.

Jaimeh

VaranisArano wrote: »

If it's going to destroy your class, you've got to participate in the test.
Tell ZOS its going to destroy your class with as much evidence as possible.

If its going to ruin all the fun of PVP, you've got to participate in the test.
Tell ZOS its going to ruin all the fun of PVP with as much evidence as possible.

If you don't participate, how can you expect ZOS to listen to you?

This. And please participate at least with one class that is majorly impacted by the changes, so you can tell them about how bad these proposals are.

Banana

I've already got my 25k ap for the month. No need for more punishment

RDMyers65b14_ESO

It takes more than 3 seconds for the skills to actually go off as it is. Oh wait, yeah, our group barely reaches 18 people on good nights. It is the megazergs that spam everything constantly that actually will be affected.
Good. Finally fair fights.

SpacemanSpiff1

Zer0_CooL wrote: »

Cooldowns are programmed lag, change my mind.

They turned animation cancelling into a feature when they couldn't get rid of it. Makes sense they'd try the same for lag.

Gandrhulf_Harbard

Athyrium93 wrote: »

I agree everyone should go, everyone should do their absolute best to participate. Everyone should also make sure to make their opinion as known as possible, because maybe if everyone tells them in is awful they won't make the change permanent.

Well that didn't work with the Morrowind "raise the floor, lower the ceiling" combat changes.

EVERYONE told them the proposed changes were a) bad, and b) would do the exact opposite of what they intended them to do.

Guess what? ESO went ahead anyway, and EVERYONE was correct.

After many, many hours of testing for Morrowind, and providing feedback (not just getting a head start on content like so many "top tier" guilds do), and seeing all the feedback ignored.

That was when I decided giving ESO feedback was pointless.
They simply DO NOT care about the opinions of players.


All The Best