Could Proc Sets be Responsible for Lag in Cyrodiil?

Athyrium93

Many players have said that Cyrodiil used to not be a lag fest, and that populations on each campaign used to be higher. I've also seen people say that AOEs used to be even more heavily used than they are now.
I wasn't playing back then, but looks to me like the only thing that's really changed since then is that there are more proc sets....
It stands to reason if the above is true that proc sets could be the problem ....
Even ZOS has said that procs stress the servers, hence the update 27 changes to make them conditional instead of percent based.

So why aren't they testing a Cyrodiil with no proc sets instead of testing cooldowns that fundamentally change combat?

Maybe there is a valid reason, Idk just seems kinda odd to me....

Edit- I have zero issue with proc sets and actually run a few, I just thought it was a worthy point of discussion.

Snowgoons

Athyrium93 wrote: »

Many players have said that Cyrodiil used to not be a lag fest, and that populations on each campaign used to be higher. I've also seen people say that AOEs used to be even more heavily used than they are now.
I wasn't playing back then, but looks to me like the only thing that's really changed since then is that there are more proc sets....
It stands to reason if the above is true that proc sets could be the problem ....
Even ZOS has said that procs stress the servers, hence the update 27 changes to make them conditional instead of percent based.

So why aren't they testing a Cyrodiil with no proc sets instead of testing cooldowns that fundamentally change combat?

Maybe there is a valid reason, Idk just seems kinda odd to me....

It's something to look at for sure, I feel like MAYBE they were at the tipping point, and a few more sets and mounts pushed into perma lag and oblivion lol for real.

relentless_turnip

I would much prefer this test 👍😂

Snowgoons

READ EVERYTHING YOU GUYS SAID, NOT GONNA REPLY TO IT OR SAY ANYTHING REGARDING IT. JUST WANNA TAKE THIS TIME TO INSERT THIS GENERIC MESSAGE:

Just a friendly reminder that it’s okay to disagree and debate on the official ESO forums, but we do ask that you keep all disagreements civil, constructive, and on-topic.

TwinLamps

Maybe players are responsible for lag in Cyrodiil.
should we limit the player numbers to 4 per alliance, just like we have in BG teams?

Snowgoons

TwinLamps wrote: »

Maybe players are responsible for lag in Cyrodiil.
should we limit the player numbers to 4 per alliance, just like we have in BG teams?

There were more players in the past, it's been downgraded multiple times.

We used to have 3-4 keeps being raided, now one MAYBE 2.

They already robbed us of other players, now they are trying to rob us of aoe skills.

Neither of which are the issue.

jetplane_18

Snowgoons wrote: »

TwinLamps wrote: »

Maybe players are responsible for lag in Cyrodiil.
should we limit the player numbers to 4 per alliance, just like we have in BG teams?

There were more players in the past, it's been downgraded multiple times.

We used to have 3-4 keeps being raided, now one MAYBE 2.

They already robbed us of other players, now they are trying to rob us of aoe skills.

Neither of which are the issue.

Also remember the towers at every resource used to be destructible and every resource contributed up to five levels of upgrades with specific models and animations to their respective keeps.

Lord_Draevan

Athyrium93 wrote: »

Many players have said that Cyrodiil used to not be a lag fest, and that populations on each campaign used to be higher.

Yup. I've been playing since the last two Betas before launch. In an interview from 2014 ZOS said it was 600 players max per faction in Cyrodiil, so a 3-way pop-lock (which happened a lot back then, never forget the good ol' days of the Wabbjack campaign) meant 1,800 players. ZOS reduced it since then a few times but hasn't revealed the new numbers.
While it wasn't perfect, it wasn't anywhere near as laggy as it's been for the past few years.

mr1sho

There was a time when you could have a open field battle and all your skills would work i honestly think it's the Champion points thats causing the lag

Bucky_13

mr1sho wrote: »

There was a time when you could have a open field battle and all your skills would work i honestly think it's the Champion points thats causing the lag

We have the same issues in no CP, and it's pretty bad there when ball groups are around. So while CP might impact performance, it's not the core reason and probably one of the latter things to check.

Rungar

You cant compare to the past because they have shifted most calculations server side and additionally the use a service to prevent ddos attacks. Theres no need to test proc sets since theyve already made the changes. I think they are on to part of the problem with aoe's but i also think they have allowed actions per second in a general sense to get out of control. As more people gain high apm it just falls apart because its a megaserver and resources are allocated as necessary.

Aurielle

Athyrium93 wrote: »

Many players have said that Cyrodiil used to not be a lag fest, and that populations on each campaign used to be higher. I've also seen people say that AOEs used to be even more heavily used than they are now.
I wasn't playing back then, but looks to me like the only thing that's really changed since then is that there are more proc sets....
It stands to reason if the above is true that proc sets could be the problem ....
Even ZOS has said that procs stress the servers, hence the update 27 changes to make them conditional instead of percent based.

So why aren't they testing a Cyrodiil with no proc sets instead of testing cooldowns that fundamentally change combat?

Maybe there is a valid reason, Idk just seems kinda odd to me....

Another thing that has changed since launch is the development team... It’s quite possible that the folks responsible for fixing Cyrodiil in 2020 don’t actually know what made Cyrodiil function well in 2014. Code is often idiosyncratic. Read this for some insight: https://www.polygon.com/2020/1/13/21064100/vvvvvv-source-code-game-development-terry-cavanagh-release

It’s highly possible that ESO will NEVER perform like it used to. Best we can probably hope for is an ESO 2.

YandereGirlfriend

I would imagine that proc sets and having so many dynamic statistics for literally every character on the map does indeed contribute to the lag.

I was thinking specifically about the old Scathing Mage set which had nested RNG checks within two additional logic checks (e.g. If Scathing Mage Proc == false [1] then "Direct Damage [2] Critical Hits [3] have a 20% chance [4] to proc") and how computationally gross that was to run on literally every tick of damage that a character does. And that's only ONE five-piece bonus on ONE character in Cyrodiil.

And then you have CP and that has another entire gauntlet of exotic proc conditions that each requires server cycles to run.

Makes me wonder how much more performant Cyrodiil might be if everyone ran only stat sets in a non-CP environment.

Lord_Draevan

Aurielle wrote: »

It’s highly possible that ESO will NEVER perform like it used to. Best we can probably hope for is an ESO 2.

ESO 2: Akaviri Boogaloo

Gilvoth

yes (proc sets) they do contribute, and so does anything that brings complications and conflict.

here are more examples:

outfits and clothing
especially armor and clothing that may have differing effects on your character or quest effects - like disguises.

add-ons
Especially add-ons involving guild store connections like price checking add-ons
and add-ons that give information about other players -

being a member of multiple guilds
Especially guilds that have members of other the alliances which is all guilds, it did not used to be this way at launch, you could only join your alliances guilds. but this open freedom now in guild allowances does add alot of calculating especially in pvp.

animation canceling
especially when your internet is at a different speed than the person(s) you are fighting.

purchase and play characters in different alliances

this list goes on and on and on and on for anything that needs calculations and has complications and effects your entire character and gameplay.

Elsonso

Athyrium93 wrote: »

Many players have said that Cyrodiil used to not be a lag fest

Cyrodiil has been a lag-fest for years. It may get better, or worse, over periods of time, but it has always been a lag-fest.

At one point, it was best described as a Power Point slide show, and I can attest to that from personal experience. My understanding is that it got better for a while, then slipped.

What Lambert posted recently about server performance is basically the same thing that ZOS has been saying for years. There is a common theme that server processes that handle Cyrodiil are getting overloaded when lots of players are in the same location. There might be different things happening, from combat to just being in the same place, but it all points to the same basic issue that has plagued the game since launch.

These are from 2015. (Edit: this is not the only reference, just the easy to find ones)

"Performance drags when there are numerous players in the same place at the same time. This is why performance in Cyrodiil is fine for much of the day, but gets worse during more popular times. We are currently investigating ways in which we can reduce the spike of performance loss."

"We are looking at the issue from many angles. I certainly didn't mean to imply we couldn't or wouldn't change code to improve performance, but rather that the answer wasn't more hardware. (It is often suggested this is the best way to fix problems.) I also wasn't implying you shouldn't play naturally, but unfortunately it is true that more players right now in a smaller area causes the performance problems."

In my opinion, the answer isn't too many players, proc sets, or spammable AoE, or Champion Points as a single cause, but it is all of them. That is why the answer isn't to fix one of them.

baltic1284

It is processing issue. The company didn't invest in the product itself to better and better means of processing the amount of data that comes in. Think about you have to process every single little thing, where you located in the map your movement the key you hit to which power that powers animation damage type of damage at who where they are located, time of day it i in game, now do that for every single player in the the entire game itself little lone Cyrodiil, takes a lot of processing to do that and the system they have cant handle it.
So instead of investing into better more powerful processers and getting more if needed they rob Paul to pay Peter with no real solution, they reduce the numbers of player, now AoE powers, PVE now suffers from Lag due to using those servers to process not only PVE but Also PvP for Cyrodiil. Again robbing Paul to pay Peter with no investment into the system to handle what they are asking of it, on top of that the Megaservrs .
In short it isn't player count in Cyrodiil or AOE or any of that stuff it is processing cant keep up and instead of investing in better equipment and more of the better equipment to do so they choose rob Paul to pay Peter with no solution for it. Many games hit this issue STO, WoW, Star Wars Knight of the Old Republic, WoT, WoWP, WoWS, any and all online based games have hit it and did what ZoS is doing and it never worked for theme, so wont for ZoS.
They have to spend money they make on the Equipment to handle those demands and eventually ZoS will have to face that fact and do themselves too.

Rungar

Gilvoth wrote: »

yes (proc sets) they do contribute, and so does anything that brings complications and conflict.

here are more examples:

outfits and clothing
especially armor and clothing that may have differing effects on your character or quest effects - like disguises.

add-ons
Especially add-ons involving guild store connections like price checking add-ons

being a member of multiple guilds
Especially guilds that have members of other the alliances

animation canceling
especially when your internet is at a different speed than the person(s) you are fighting.

purchase and play characters in different alliances

this list goes on and on and on and on for anything that needs calculations and has complications and effects your entire character and gameplay.

These are solvable problems.
1 they can have alliance uniforms to solve the armor problem.
2 addons can be all disabled in pvp
3 group frames can be disabled in pvp
4 i would fix dps related animation cancelling but keep block and dodge cancelling.
5 transmute cp into flat stat bonuses
6 use a combination of higher cost and cost scaling on the big aoe offenders
7 proc sets are fixed already though i would make them cost ultimate as well.
8 enchants proc only on light and heavy attacks and not weapon skills.
9 modify certain skills to tone down aoe when its not necessaryi.e less aoes overall.

No cooldowns required really.

Tammany

When grouping was disabled due to bug - Cyrodill was perfect, ur statement about proc sets is invalid.

vgabor

Elsonso wrote: »

In my opinion, the answer isn't too many players, proc sets, or spammable AoE, or Champion Points as a single cause, but it is all of them. That is why the answer isn't to fix one of them.

^ This. There's no single magic 'bug' you can fix and the performance will be good. Every calculation the servers have to do during a fight adds a tiny bit to their workload, and those bit by bit build the massive mountain of calculations which needs to be done in a given time. And increasing your hardware capacity helps only if you actually able to increase it. If you're already running on the biggest servers you can get, theres no upscaling left anymore and you have to look elsewhere.

In the end it's all about cots and benefit balance. More fun, more dynamics, more enjoyable game at the cost of more performance requirements. What functions and features you sacrifice for the performance gain is entirely dependent on where you drawing the line. And of course the development cost of possible changes.

But the main problem with trying to fix the performance at the cost of game functions and features is that it will upset players, and also will trigger changes in user behaviour to how people play and what they use. The overall performance is dependent on what actually needs be calculated, and if people playing behaviour changes any improvement you hope coming from a particular change might be much less prevalent as people shift to use more enjoyable/playable features, which features probably will have more performance cost. If you cut down things across the entire board, you decrease the overall enjoyment of the game and inevitably will loose costumers. And while less players undeniably will lessen the stress on the servers, I'm pretty sure that's not the outcome ZOS would prefer


But back to the original question, proc sects actually one of the main culprits indeed for performance issues, probably more than than the currently singled out aoes:

- all the AOE requires distance calculation to see who's affected by that and then to the actual effect for each affected character. And that actually square proportional, the more dense people are it's not just the more subject will be affected, but with more actor to cast them the number of aoes in the given area are increasing too.

- all DOTs and HOTs require continued tracking and ticking regularly, so you not just calculate what people doing right now, but what carried over from the past, which multiplies the workload for any single time interval.

- all proc sets have trigger conditions, cooldowns and actual effects which all needs to be calculated, and in many cases they aren't just one time effect but buff or dots and hots with all the performance cost of those, and also many cases they are aoe effects with the performance cost of those as well.

The game originally was designed with mostly static sets which gave constant bonus to characters. You calculated that once when people put on the items and after during combat they never changed and the server could use the already recalculated values. Then proc set came in, which on the game content level is actually good for the game as they fun, provide dynamic effects, and increase variety and the enjoyment of the game.

But their cost is the increased calculation requirement during combat, and the game content creator team not much considers the performance implications of the introduced items or game changes. As a simple example, let's just look at the upcoming changes to relequen in next update: less stack generated faster with more bonus for individual stack. From the game content and playability point those changes are beneficial as they allow better use of the set in faster changing fights by building up the stack faster. They are much less favourable for performance, as by halving the generation cooldown the required number of changes and recalculations doubles over the same time interval.

There's already a general agreement here on the forum that next update meta will be a proc meta, as with the nerf to static sets and buf to proc sets it will be more beneficial for playing with proc sets. So whatever effect the proc sets having now on the performance, it will be much worse in next update when they going to be much more wide spread.

Zorgon_The_Revenged

Athyrium93 wrote: »

Many players have said that Cyrodiil used to not be a lag fest, and that populations on each campaign used to be higher. I've also seen people say that AOEs used to be even more heavily used than they are now.
I wasn't playing back then, but looks to me like the only thing that's really changed since then is that there are more proc sets....

No, it's always been a lag fest. The population was lowered to try and reduce the lag. Yeah, AOE's were quite heavily used, but when a huge group of players are standing on one small area spamming aoe damage and healing, you just keep doing it and hope your still alive when the server catches up.

zaria

Snowgoons wrote: »

Athyrium93 wrote: »

Many players have said that Cyrodiil used to not be a lag fest, and that populations on each campaign used to be higher. I've also seen people say that AOEs used to be even more heavily used than they are now.
I wasn't playing back then, but looks to me like the only thing that's really changed since then is that there are more proc sets....
It stands to reason if the above is true that proc sets could be the problem ....
Even ZOS has said that procs stress the servers, hence the update 27 changes to make them conditional instead of percent based.

So why aren't they testing a Cyrodiil with no proc sets instead of testing cooldowns that fundamentally change combat?

Maybe there is a valid reason, Idk just seems kinda odd to me....

It's something to look at for sure, I feel like MAYBE they were at the tipping point, and a few more sets and mounts pushed into perma lag and oblivion lol for real.

Obviously with AOE destroyed proc sets will raise. During the test wear proc sets with lots of animations, use flashy gear and weapons, also mounts. Everything need animation and particle effects, damage is secondary here.
No this is not server but client side there I think most of the issue is.
Yes you could drop AP gains on popular campaigns to push the farmers out.

And no if you can not do dolmens in Alkir during an double XP event you are as unqualified at an pop locked campaign as an fake tank at an vet dlc dungeon.
And yes in part this is an ESO issue as people with serious gaming rigs has issues. Now they could try to run 4K ultra who does not work more likely its something weird like ESO hate your mouse or printer.

geonsocal

and the answer is:

spaghetti code...lots and lots of layered code, by lots and lots of different people...

it's amazing anything works at all at this time in the game's life cycle...

Tommy_The_Gun

My guess why the game is getting more & more laggy is that at some point ZOS moved some calulations from client side to server side (like block changses for example). I beleive there are a lot of things that they do not tell us. For example, I think that they moved range checks & "line of sight" checks to server side. That is why we see significantly more lag when using certain abilities. Ranged skills with cast time / charge are very good to test it (snipe or critical rush for example). Using those is hyper-laggy and often causes de-syncs. If I use crit rush on a mob, often I will "fall" into this wierd state in which I can not swap bars, light / heavy attack or use other skills. It takes 30 seconds - 1 minute for it to return to normal. It is not "lag" as every other player on a world boss is moving smoothly and casting skills normally.
Snipe behaves similar. It should have 1 second cast time, but often it has more... Because the server is testing "line of sight" at least 2 times. When you start casting it and near the end. So if you are moving & your target is moving - it will lag out and cause de-sync. Especially if there are some rocks \ trees on the way.

As for why ZOS did this (moved many calculation to server side) ? Idk. To improve FPS performance (eso has an opinion of beeing CPU heavy) ? Maybe. To combat cheats ? Maybe. I can not anwser that. All I know is that they moved "something" that was previously calulated on the client side - to server side. Now they say it is AOE spam in Cyro... But in the past people used to spam AOE too (in even greater amounts) and server was not as laggy as it is now. The only difference was that in the past, there was a period in which FPS performance was hyper bad.

relentless_turnip

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

My guess why the game is getting more & more laggy is that at some point ZOS moved some calulations from client side to server side (like block changses for example). I beleive there are a lot of things that they do not tell us. For example, I think that they moved range checks & "line of sight" checks to server side. That is why we see significantly more lag when using certain abilities. Ranged skills with cast time / charge are very good to test it (snipe or critical rush for example). Using those is hyper-laggy and often causes de-syncs. If I use crit rush on a mob, often I will "fall" into this wierd state in which I can not swap bars, light / heavy attack or use other skills. It takes 30 seconds - 1 minute for it to return to normal. It is not "lag" as every other player on a world boss is moving smoothly and casting skills normally.
Snipe behaves similar. It should have 1 second cast time, but often it has more... Because the server is testing "line of sight" at least 2 times. When you start casting it and near the end. So if you are moving & your target is moving - it will lag out and cause de-sync. Especially if there are some rocks \ trees on the way.

As for why ZOS did this (moved many calculation to server side) ? Idk. To improve FPS performance (eso has an opinion of beeing CPU heavy) ? Maybe. To combat cheats ? Maybe. I can not anwser that. All I know is that they moved "something" that was previously calulated on the client side - to server side. Now they say it is AOE spam in Cyro... But in the past people used to spam AOE too (in even greater amounts) and server was not as laggy as it is now. The only difference was that in the past, there was a period in which FPS performance was hyper bad.

I honestly believe it was all moved over for stadia.

Rungar

relentless_turnip wrote: »

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

My guess why the game is getting more & more laggy is that at some point ZOS moved some calulations from client side to server side (like block changses for example). I beleive there are a lot of things that they do not tell us. For example, I think that they moved range checks & "line of sight" checks to server side. That is why we see significantly more lag when using certain abilities. Ranged skills with cast time / charge are very good to test it (snipe or critical rush for example). Using those is hyper-laggy and often causes de-syncs. If I use crit rush on a mob, often I will "fall" into this wierd state in which I can not swap bars, light / heavy attack or use other skills. It takes 30 seconds - 1 minute for it to return to normal. It is not "lag" as every other player on a world boss is moving smoothly and casting skills normally.
Snipe behaves similar. It should have 1 second cast time, but often it has more... Because the server is testing "line of sight" at least 2 times. When you start casting it and near the end. So if you are moving & your target is moving - it will lag out and cause de-sync. Especially if there are some rocks \ trees on the way.

As for why ZOS did this (moved many calculation to server side) ? Idk. To improve FPS performance (eso has an opinion of beeing CPU heavy) ? Maybe. To combat cheats ? Maybe. I can not anwser that. All I know is that they moved "something" that was previously calulated on the client side - to server side. Now they say it is AOE spam in Cyro... But in the past people used to spam AOE too (in even greater amounts) and server was not as laggy as it is now. The only difference was that in the past, there was a period in which FPS performance was hyper bad.

I honestly believe it was all moved over for stadia.

Agreed. Side effects of course is that rampant cheating will finally be addressed and performance will go down meaning theyll need to slow down the game a bit

Watch all the rats flee.

redshirt_49

Aurielle wrote: »

Athyrium93 wrote: »

Many players have said that Cyrodiil used to not be a lag fest, and that populations on each campaign used to be higher. I've also seen people say that AOEs used to be even more heavily used than they are now.
I wasn't playing back then, but looks to me like the only thing that's really changed since then is that there are more proc sets....
It stands to reason if the above is true that proc sets could be the problem ....
Even ZOS has said that procs stress the servers, hence the update 27 changes to make them conditional instead of percent based.

So why aren't they testing a Cyrodiil with no proc sets instead of testing cooldowns that fundamentally change combat?

Maybe there is a valid reason, Idk just seems kinda odd to me....

Another thing that has changed since launch is the development team... It’s quite possible that the folks responsible for fixing Cyrodiil in 2020 don’t actually know what made Cyrodiil function well in 2014. Code is often idiosyncratic. Read this for some insight: https://www.polygon.com/2020/1/13/21064100/vvvvvv-source-code-game-development-terry-cavanagh-release

It’s highly possible that ESO will NEVER perform like it used to. Best we can probably hope for is an ESO 2.

You're saying that Cyrodiil functioned WELL in 2014?!
What game in the universe of all that is holy were you PLAYING?

Ruder

no

The Uninvited

I'll just leave this here https://elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/1031

Read the comments: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/114052/official-discussion-thread-for-update-2-has-launched?new=1

Aurielle

redshirt_49 wrote: »

Aurielle wrote: »

Athyrium93 wrote: »

Many players have said that Cyrodiil used to not be a lag fest, and that populations on each campaign used to be higher. I've also seen people say that AOEs used to be even more heavily used than they are now.
I wasn't playing back then, but looks to me like the only thing that's really changed since then is that there are more proc sets....
It stands to reason if the above is true that proc sets could be the problem ....
Even ZOS has said that procs stress the servers, hence the update 27 changes to make them conditional instead of percent based.

So why aren't they testing a Cyrodiil with no proc sets instead of testing cooldowns that fundamentally change combat?

Maybe there is a valid reason, Idk just seems kinda odd to me....

Another thing that has changed since launch is the development team... It’s quite possible that the folks responsible for fixing Cyrodiil in 2020 don’t actually know what made Cyrodiil function well in 2014. Code is often idiosyncratic. Read this for some insight: https://www.polygon.com/2020/1/13/21064100/vvvvvv-source-code-game-development-terry-cavanagh-release

It’s highly possible that ESO will NEVER perform like it used to. Best we can probably hope for is an ESO 2.

You're saying that Cyrodiil functioned WELL in 2014?!
What game in the universe of all that is holy were you PLAYING?

Comparatively speaking... yeah, it functioned well. Cyrodiil has always struggled a bit under max pop situations, but you need to remember that populations were WAY, WAY higher at launch. The game simply would not be able to cope with the sort of populations we had during each platform’s respective launch year. What’s considered a “big fight” now would have been fine a few years back; now, the same fight is unplayable. This is especially true for console. Game is now a stuttery, unresponsive mess on console compared to what it initially was.

Elsonso

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

My guess why the game is getting more & more laggy is that at some point ZOS moved some calulations from client side to server side (like block changses for example). I beleive there are a lot of things that they do not tell us. For example, I think that they moved range checks & "line of sight" checks to server side.

I suspect that a lot of those calculations have been on the server side for a while, but what they have been doing is having the client get that information from the server, rather than calculating it for local use. This is what they did with Block.

With block, what was happening is that the player would block, then the client would tell the server that the player is blocking and immediately show the blocking animation. The server, received the block and all was well. Where things went wrong was if, in the time it took for that to happen, the opponent attacked and did damage. To the player, the damage came after the block.

With the recent change, the client still tells the server that the player is blocking, but it does not show the block animation until confirmation comes back from the server. This means that damage is not taken while it looks like the character is blocking, but there is a delay before the player sees the block.

I am sure that stuff like that is happening all over the game, all the time. When there is a measurable time between the client and server, there is going to be desync like that. What we see happening in the game world when we play the game is all stuff that already happened. It happened in the past, and we are only just finding out about it. We are talking milliseconds here, usually around 100 milliseconds, but in cases of higher latency, it could be a lot more than that.

They need to do more server-side checking than they are now, but given performance, I doubt they will do this.