Can we please get some clarity from the devs on why the servers aren't being upgraded?

JohnnyTaco112

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_BillE @ZOS_KaiSchober @ZOS_AntonioP @ZOS_JessicaFolsom

You have a huge population of people who really enjoy your game. I looked forward to finding a game like this for many years. Baldur's Gate and Diablo were the precursors to this game for me.. 3rd person, might and magic, dungeon crawler type games that are super immersive and unique in so many ways. What those titles lack, ESO has plus much, much more. ESO is everything most of your players have ever wanted in a game, and it's the only one I've ever paid a subscription to. What makes ESO unique is that it is massively multiplayer, PvP AND PvE, 3rd person capable, non turn-based, and at the same time being stunningly beautiful. ALL of these aspects, together, are what make this game great.

If you take any of these things away, it loses it's luster. it becomes handicapped, lame, watered-down. Your players have been screaming for years about why there is so much lag, especially in Cyrodiil. Cyrodiil fights feel like epic, real-time, Lord of the Rings scale battles, sieges and keep defenses that we used to only witness in movies. If you start putting delays on skills, then the game dies. The lag is a real problem, yes, but can we please get some clarity FROM YOU as to why you don't use our money to upgrade your servers? You are opting to gimp your game to fix a problem, which may work for the game, but that won't work for your players. We have paid you all a lot of dough to scroll, so please help us out here.

Thanks in advance for your response. And thank you for such an awesome game.

Firstmep

Business.

Profit wise it doesnt make sense for them to increase server capacity beyond whats absolutely necessary.

Also the game is 6 years old now, and has gone through a lot of changes, they probably think they can alleviate some of the issues by cleaning up the code.

valeriiya

It would cost money

lostcloud

I honestly wonder if it is a case of better hardware honestly the game its self is so broken they simply do not know how to fix it.

Xologamer

lostcloud wrote: »

I honestly wonder if it is a case of better hardware honestly the game its self is so broken they simply do not know how to fix it.

it is hardware
i know this cause they increased server capacity on mym = good performance
after mym= trash perforamnce

Firstmep

Xologamer wrote: »

lostcloud wrote: »

I honestly wonder if it is a case of better hardware honestly the game its self is so broken they simply do not know how to fix it.

it is hardware
i know this cause they increased server capacity on mym = good performance
after mym= trash perforamnce

Well, the game is also full of bugs, delays, desyncs etc, and a lot of it has nothing to do with lag.

redgreensunset

Xologamer wrote: »

lostcloud wrote: »

I honestly wonder if it is a case of better hardware honestly the game its self is so broken they simply do not know how to fix it.

it is hardware
i know this cause they increased server capacity on mym = good performance
after mym= trash perforamnce

Guess I imaginrd all the people who complained about performance during MYM then.

caeliusstarbreaker

They were too busy making a zebra pet for you to buy in the crown store

ChimpyChumpy

Think of all the stuff they do throughout the year. Greymoor chapter, new dlcs, new cosmetics. All to get new players, new players bring money. They already got your money.

Here's two scenarios for you:

Hey you folks not playing the game we improved performance, the game works better!

Hey you folks not playing the game here's a new 15 minute video about a new chapter in SKYRIM!!!! Check out these cool caverns!!

What will make more money?

Neloth

Xologamer wrote: »

lostcloud wrote: »

I honestly wonder if it is a case of better hardware honestly the game its self is so broken they simply do not know how to fix it.

it is hardware
i know this cause they increased server capacity on mym = good performance
after mym= trash perforamnce

or

it's mym -> Cyrodiil full of solo PVEers -> guild ball groups sit in a queue for 2 hours (or split between different campains) -> significantly less AoEs are casted -> we have good performance during mym (not all the time though)

RMerlin

Beside hardware, I personally have doubts about their Internet connection. I constantly get the feeling that those lag bursts are triggering their anti-DoS protection, which would be why after you get kicked out, you are no longer able to reconnect for the next 5 minutes. And I`m not talking about "You are already logged in", but "Cannot reach the server, check your Internet connection" types of messages that we get during that period, which would indicate to me that the packets are silently getting dropped at the remote end, rather than being actively rejected.

VeragoSlater

Get rid of snow and unnecessary npcs

Spearpoint

VeragoSlater wrote: »

Get rid of snow and unnecessary npcs

CAN'T RUIN THE 'MMERSION!

ManDraKE

valeriiya wrote: »

It would cost money

That is actually false. Upgrading servers to new generations, reduce cost because they are more power efficent. The main cost of datacenter is energy bills. Staying with older servers is actually more expensive than upgrading to newer ones.

What people need to understand is that no matter how much money they put into servers, as long as their code is the bottleneck, you will have lag. When your code is unefficent and the execution time of the server-side algoritms is awful, you can poor millons into server infrastructre and still see 0 performance benefits.

Having devs full time working on performace improvments for months and years, is far more expensive than upgrading servers. This is not a money issue, is a tecnical and game design issue.

RMerlin wrote: »

Beside hardware, I personally have doubts about their Internet connection. I constantly get the feeling that those lag bursts are triggering their anti-DoS protection, which would be why after you get kicked out, you are no longer able to reconnect for the next 5 minutes

They use Akami for routing and DNS protection, and is a *** terrible service. The routing is abismal, specially from outside the US. If they switched to AWS Global Accelerator, they could probably reduce ping by 50/60ms. Akamai is the bane of my existence in ESO.

Elsonso

ManDraKE wrote: »

They use Akami for routing and DNS protection, and is a *** terrible service. The routing is abismal, specially from outside the US. If they switched to AWS Global Accelerator, they could probably reduce ping by 50/60ms. Akamai is the bane of my existence in ESO.

I am not an expert on AWS, but I don't think that AWS Global Accelerator is the same thing as Akamai's DDOS protection.

ManDraKE wrote: »

Having devs full time working on performace improvments for months and years, is far more expensive than upgrading servers. This is not a money issue, is a tecnical and game design issue.

This. Whatever they did for MYM, where some people say they saw improvement, I figure it was not what people are thinking.

ManDraKE

Elsonso wrote: »

ManDraKE wrote: »

They use Akami for routing and DNS protection, and is a *** terrible service. The routing is abismal, specially from outside the US. If they switched to AWS Global Accelerator, they could probably reduce ping by 50/60ms. Akamai is the bane of my existence in ESO.

I am not an expert on AWS, but I don't think that AWS Global Accelerator is the same thing as Akamai's DDOS protection.

is not the same, but AWS global accelerator leverages AWS shield for DDOS Protection.

Jierdanit

VeragoSlater wrote: »

Get rid of snow and unnecessary npcs

It actually makes a quite noticable difference, at least it seems like you get way more Loadscreens in the snowy parts of cyro.

Like i dont get to Dragon or Bruma without at least 1 or 2 Loadscreens

IAmIcehouse

Throwing money at a problem isn't always the solution to the problem. We are players. We have no idea what the root causes are.

Constantly asking for better hardware is ignorant. You can't always just add more cores and think everything is going to be OK. Obviously it can't hurt, but it doesn't mean its going to "solve lag".

Let the devs do their damn thing and don't expect them to try to explain what's a software problem and what's a hardware problem. They are better at that jobs than we are.

Gilvoth

could the servers be upgraded?
really?
i have no idea how that would work, but seems to me that might not even be possible.

Gilvoth

VeragoSlater wrote: »

Get rid of snow and unnecessary npcs

yes, absolutely, Especially in cryodiil - there is Zero reason to have those guards at the shrines inside the castles.
i can understand guards on the flaggs and maybe 2 "At Most 2" at the door but thats all need, because why would they even be there? they look so stupid and have no reason to exist, if we OWN that castle then the guards "serve us" but in cryodiil those guards are not serving us.

Lord-Otto

Gilvoth wrote: »

could the servers be upgraded?
really?
i have no idea how that would work, but seems to me that might not even be possible.

Of course. But it would probably mean a maintenance downtime of a day, probably longer, up to a week.

MasterSpatula

Really, though, saying, "It's not money, because it's more expensive to do it the way their doing it" fails to understand the nature of cheapness. Cheapness and frugality are not the same thing; they're opposites. Cheapness is almost always very, very expensive.

Ghostbane

ManDraKE wrote: »

What people need to understand is that no matter how much money they put into servers, as long as their code is the bottleneck, you will have lag. When your code is unefficent and the execution time of the server-side algoritms is awful, you can poor millons into server infrastructre and still see 0 performance benefits.

Having devs full time working on performace improvments for months and years, is far more expensive than upgrading servers. This is not a money issue, is a tecnical and game design issue.

vestahls

They will never tell you the rea$on.

Aside from the servers, and their pushing more and more checks on the server side rather than investing in a cheat-detection software (because when more stuff was client-side, that also helped with lag), there is the code that is messed up. A lot of the people who made the game have since left, and the people working on it currently must not have gotten a proper handover. This is why when they fix one problem, they create two more somewhere else. They would have to re-write the whole game, and there's no way that would get approved.

Guess we just have to hope ESO2 will be better.