ZOS please could you take notice of this, AoE isn't the sole reason of Cyrodiil lag.

dsalter

the thing that lags Cyrodiil hardest is the sheer amount of server side ticks from the sheer amount of things IN Cyrodiil, theres a reason Imperial city doesn't lag even WITH blob groups roaming the sewers and streets because the areas are much MUCH smaller and segmented.
think about it.

• each district is separated with a loading screen
• each sewer area is cut up and separated
• sewer and surface are also separated by loading screens
• there are no walls, doors, roofs, etc with its own hit detection and health bars to sync with players
• because the areas are much smaller there is less things to load per player since they wont be loading what isn't in their area
• no siege weapons to add to the per player load

now lets list whats different in Cyro compared to Imperial City

• the whole map is loaded at once so no segmentation, no loading screens etc so EVERYTHING has to be active at once
• players are tracked both on the world space AND its interior delves along with with the enemies inside them
• daily quests and the PvE areas have individual load and tracking for each person on the mega servers which means even outside the area the players daily is part of the daily resets, not as big as an impact but thats an extra tick
• the seer size of Cyrodiil means a lot of area where people are spread out meaning its very likely every campaign has had someone load stuff in so that everyone has the whole zone active at once unless this does not run on cells unlike every other bethesda game in which case this point is only partially true (people will still be loading everything at once regardless if no cells)
• keeps have every piece of wall, tower, door, roof, guard and siege weapons tracked with individual health, hit collision, pathing detection, line of sight, etc.
• this is further amplified by having gates bridges with individually tracked stats as well as resources with several guards, a tower with their own collisions, tracking, buff tracking and such.

pretty big list of difference in things of what is adding to the server right?

these are changes i would personally thing would help ease the strain on Cyrodiil but sadly not all of these may be the best received by the public but they are options.

• remove 50 to 75% of all guards at every keep and resource and instead buff their base stats by x8 or x15 and remove their collision box but not their hit detection (similar to players) this might relieve a lot more strain since there will be less NPC's to track, less buffs, detections etc.
• reduce the number of destructible walls and posts to be 1 on each wall + door so there will be less destructibles to track which should reduce server ticks
• this one might be the worst received but will probably have a big impact on the map lag, reduce map size to only be paths between keeps with some very thin side paths along the outside of them, remove the PvE focused quest hubs, the delves and their dailies and apply door area's similar to Imperial City to bridges and gates though make it so theres plenty of room to leave them safely so a big war group cannot camp them, maybe position 2-3 ranged guards who are x30 times stronger hitting than the regular guards but cannot move and attack very slowly allowing a "rush" to go past but disallowing a camp since if you linger they will start picking players off one by one. i believe this segmenting will severely lower the amount of area needed to be loaded by every player in the campaign and make it more of a strictly PvP area.
• with the above change move all of the delve skyshards to keeps and the overland skyshards to the closest path or gate/bridge so they will be easier to access without removing them
• reduce maximum siege engines to 50% but double their health and damage (25% bonus instead vs players) and increase the time to reload when nobody is manning one by 500% and increase health decay of unmanned sieges by 200% and damage intake by 100% while not manned, this will encourage 1 person to stay on each war machine to maximize its performance and discourage 3-4 man sieges spams on empty keeps and reducing the maximum amount of siege engines will mean less tracking, and lets be honest from a player point of view its no fun having a 4 man group pop out 20 siege engines and rushing a single keep uncontested

with the above changes Cyrodiil will overall be smaller, have less "filler" and be more focused on the war effort of pushing and keeps and with the clearer paths between keeps (along with smaller side paths for sneakier attempts) this will try to funnel PvP combat into a more general direction while giving a more reliable pathway to initiate smaller scale PvP, and segmenting it means less areas loaded at once per player which would hopefully reduce the ticks, though i admit this would be a massive overhaul which im sure would be more than welcome after so many years.

lore wise to justify the changes?
just make it so Molag bal, Dagon, Maphala, Malacath or Shegorath could erect massive daedric walls cutting off those no longer used areas out of the map forcing the map into a smaller zone in hopes of gaining more control of the Imperial City for themselves by trying to push the war closer into the Imperial City perimeter or something like that. i dunno your lore team might have a good way of making this happen.

TequilaFire

I would like to see a simple live test that increases server capacity by 25%,50% and 100% with published results.
This would put to bed the question of whether improving servers capacity is the answer or not preventing gutting of the game.
Of course corporate won't like the answer.

dsalter

TequilaFire wrote: »

I would like to see a simple live test that increases server capacity by 25%,50% and 100% with published results.
This would put to bed the question of whether improving servers capacity is the answer or not preventing gutting of the game.
Of course corporate won't like the answer.

would likely help alleviate the issue but not solve it sadly, im thinking whatever change they made to server detection waaay back during the lighting changes is the root of all of cyrodiils lag issues, i think the way the lighting was implemented does it in a dirty way that causes a hell of a lot of server ticks for each player so when a blob group rolls in the lighting detection goes haywire.

idk

Zos has never suggested AoEs are the sole reason for the lag. However, we know factually that the use of skills is a major contributing factor in the heavy lag as it tends to occur when we have large groups at the same location actively in combat. Zos has even said such large numbers of players at the same location only doing LAs would create lag.

TequilaFire wrote: »

I would like to see a simple live test that increases server capacity by 25%,50% and 100% with published results.
This would put to bed the question of whether improving servers capacity is the answer or not preventing gutting of the game.
Of course corporate won't like the answer.

It is not necessary as we already know that Cyrodiil had significantly better performance early in the game and Zos has reduced the population cap for Cyrodiil multiple times since then. It comes down to how Zos has managed the game.

Edit: OP's assumption that the entire map needs to be active at once is not correct. We merely get high-level notifications such as combat between players is occurring in an area or transit has been established between to keeps. That is very little information.

Further, the number of destructible items on a keep is not the big load as everything related is fairly straight forward.. The load is heavily combat-related, actual combat between players. The number of calls just to determine how much damage an attack does to a player is fairly high.

Seige is already capped fairly low and again, server performance was not this bad with more players and the same number of siege. We had battles back in the early days that make Cyrodiil today look so small. More importantly, increasing the calculations for decaying siege would do nothing to improve Cyrodiil and only lead to people wanting more in their groups to man seige.

Yes, we can cut the number of players, the number of sieges, and what we can destroy to very small numbers but as long as this is our solution to solve Cyrodiil's issues then we might as well just play BGs.

Mortiis13

Delete everything, keeps, delves, trees, rocks, weather, npcs, armor, skins, animations, player character, skills.

Replace it with a plain green area, separate it in 20 zones with loadscreens, players are red, yellow or blue balls, small animated sticks for light attack visuals.



But seriously, cyro is already so empty beside trees and rocks. There is zero "warzone" feeling at all, except a keep siege.

When u reduce the left overs even more, well then we Realy would have a green plain area.

Also I don't like the siege weapon change, not everyone likes to follow a crown with 60 other ppl and doing what he yells.

Be able to take a siege/outpost with 3/4/5 ppl while the zergs are at another place is a tactical compenent of the game and important for it dynamic.

Also the pathing change would result into imperial city/sewer clone. So put siegeable outpost their and you can delete cyrodiil completely for pvp.

I don't want to be mean, it's impressive and sad at the same time how many players (including me) want to save the pvp in this game while we get totally ignored, no conversation at all, and getting changes the majority don't like.

dsalter

Mortiis13 wrote: »

But seriously, cyro is already so empty beside trees and rocks. There is zero "warzone" feeling at all, except a keep siege.

When u reduce the left overs even more, well then we Realy would have a green plain area.


I don't want to be mean, it's impressive and sad at the same time how many players (including me) want to save the pvp in this game while we get totally ignored, no conversation at all, and getting changes the majority don't like.

actually if we reduced the mass of Cyrodiil into a more focused area you would see more people since you are more likely to cross paths

regarding the siege changes though i just feel more isn't needed when more impactful less siege engines would do the same job
i mean wouldn't you rather only need to use 1 siege engine instead of 2? i mean you would need less people to take down a wall and at the same time you wont have to face palm when 30 people turn up and only one guy has a siege engine, at least that one mans siege engine would be 1/10 or 1/15 of the maximum impact instead of 1/20 or 1/30.
sometimes less is more, i mean if the siege engine has double the damage and health but only still counts as one thats more of a buff than a nerf, the nerf would just be the max count, 10/10 would be just as impactful as 20/20 except that its cheaper to maintain and easier to defend said siege as well as defend against.

TequilaFire

idk wrote: »

Zos has never suggested AoEs are the sole reason for the lag. However, we know factually that the use of skills is a major contributing factor in the heavy lag as it tends to occur when we have large groups at the same location actively in combat. Zos has even said such large numbers of players at the same location only doing LAs would create lag.

TequilaFire wrote: »

I would like to see a simple live test that increases server capacity by 25%,50% and 100% with published results.
This would put to bed the question of whether improving servers capacity is the answer or not preventing gutting of the game.
Of course corporate won't like the answer.

It is not necessary as we already know that Cyrodiil had significantly better performance early in the game and Zos has reduced the population cap for Cyrodiil multiple times since then. It comes down to how Zos has managed the game.

But many things have been added since then. Costumes and mounts with heavy visual effects are big culprits that have been added that the server has to update all clients in range for. My client has no idea what custom costumes the zerg of 24 is wearing when I come into range.

React

A fun fact about the sewers themselves (not up top in IC); it's all one large zone.

Another interesting thing is outside of the map in the sewers, there are TONS of random developer assets left out in the middle of nowhere within the live game. Massive buildings and structures (copy pasted sewer rooms), all sorts of random animated objects, and much more.

They just left all these assets out there when they created the zone. That means that each time you load into a part of the sewer near enough to those assets, it has to render them too.

Seeing all this stuff made me wonder if Cyrodiil has similar assets stored below or outside of the map. While I doubt the lag has anything to do with this, it is odd that they wouldn't just delete things like this when publishing patches.

Darkstorne

I'm mostly a PVE player, and still agree with the PVE removal. I feel like a bit of a *** if I go there to do delves, because that's a space my alliance could use for the war effort that I'm taking up selfishly. And the constant threat of being ganked in my PVE gear doesn't make it any fun either.

One of the things I got excited by with the Elsweyr Chapter was Tharn talking about an end to the Three Banners War. Mechanically, that could be amazing. Cyrodiil could be a future Chapter with an entirely PVE zone, rebuilt from scratch for that purpose. The current version of Cyrodiil for PVP (that you queue for) wouldn't be affected at all, because you're just "playing in the past", in the same way that playing the base game's main story, or Orsinium, or Morrowind, or CWC, or Summerset, or Murkmire, or Elsweyr, is also playing in the past. And that also gives them the freedom to do exactly what you're suggesting @dsalter - cut out the PVE content from the PVP version of Cyrodiil, redesign the map a bit, massively improve performance by axing all those delves and the enemies within, and not upset PVE players much at all because they have a brand new, modern visual standard version of Cyrodiil, with proper quest lines and everything. The PVP setting could also benefit from the brand new assets developed for the PVE zone, with trees and rocks etc being replaced by the new high quality models, during the map redesign.

It's a lot of work though, so who knows if it will ever happen. It's my dream announcement for the game though, and seems like it would improve the game for PVE and PVP players alike.

scorpius2k1

I just want to put a word in for the Networking/IT crowd and suggest something that would help tremendously in loaded situations for packet transfer (aka, all group content in ESO):

UDP instead of TCP.

Ping spikes? Lag? Desync? Anyone experience that?

That is all.

idk

TequilaFire wrote: »

idk wrote: »

Zos has never suggested AoEs are the sole reason for the lag. However, we know factually that the use of skills is a major contributing factor in the heavy lag as it tends to occur when we have large groups at the same location actively in combat. Zos has even said such large numbers of players at the same location only doing LAs would create lag.

TequilaFire wrote: »

I would like to see a simple live test that increases server capacity by 25%,50% and 100% with published results.
This would put to bed the question of whether improving servers capacity is the answer or not preventing gutting of the game.
Of course corporate won't like the answer.

It is not necessary as we already know that Cyrodiil had significantly better performance early in the game and Zos has reduced the population cap for Cyrodiil multiple times since then. It comes down to how Zos has managed the game.

But many things have been added since then. Costumes and mounts with heavy visual effects are big culprits that have been added that the server has to update all clients in range for. My client has no idea what custom costumes the zerg of 24 is wearing when I come into range.

We had mounts from day one and while it was a small selection of mounts, there were still differences. We also had disguises that could be equipped as well as about a dozen, or more, possible motifs for our armor. The server has the same load today as it did then to send us this information so this is irrelevant. If anything, the server has less load from this today as we have fewer players in Cyrodiil today than in 2014

Visual effects are local to our PC and have been part of the game since it launched. If anything, suggesting visual effects is an issue is implying the high use of AoEs is a major culprit and suggests Zos is on the right track with this testing.

TequilaFire

idk wrote: »

TequilaFire wrote: »

idk wrote: »

Zos has never suggested AoEs are the sole reason for the lag. However, we know factually that the use of skills is a major contributing factor in the heavy lag as it tends to occur when we have large groups at the same location actively in combat. Zos has even said such large numbers of players at the same location only doing LAs would create lag.

TequilaFire wrote: »

I would like to see a simple live test that increases server capacity by 25%,50% and 100% with published results.
This would put to bed the question of whether improving servers capacity is the answer or not preventing gutting of the game.
Of course corporate won't like the answer.

It is not necessary as we already know that Cyrodiil had significantly better performance early in the game and Zos has reduced the population cap for Cyrodiil multiple times since then. It comes down to how Zos has managed the game.

But many things have been added since then. Costumes and mounts with heavy visual effects are big culprits that have been added that the server has to update all clients in range for. My client has no idea what custom costumes the zerg of 24 is wearing when I come into range.

We had mounts from day one and while it was a small selection of mounts, there were still differences. We also had disguises that could be equipped as well as about a dozen, or more, possible motifs for our armor. The server has the same load today as it did then to send us this information so this is irrelevant. If anything, the server has less load from this today as we have fewer players in Cyrodiil today than in 2014

Visual effects are local to our PC and have been part of the game since it launched. If anything, suggesting visual effects is an issue is implying the high use of AoEs is a major culprit and suggests Zos is on the right track with this testing.

The mounts we had when performance was better were much simpler, didn't explode out of the ground and have all the gaudy visual and sound effects. The style/costume system did not even exist so only a limited amount of simple one piece costumes existed. It is far from the same load. That is added on top of what existed, now thousands of combinations are possible.
None of that stuff is required in PvP.

Lisutaris

It never was the reason ...

During the "Midyear Mayhem" Event everything worked fine, when they "turned up" some more hardware/server ressources.

TequilaFire wrote: »

idk wrote: »

TequilaFire wrote: »

idk wrote: »

Zos has never suggested AoEs are the sole reason for the lag. However, we know factually that the use of skills is a major contributing factor in the heavy lag as it tends to occur when we have large groups at the same location actively in combat. Zos has even said such large numbers of players at the same location only doing LAs would create lag.

TequilaFire wrote: »

I would like to see a simple live test that increases server capacity by 25%,50% and 100% with published results.
This would put to bed the question of whether improving servers capacity is the answer or not preventing gutting of the game.
Of course corporate won't like the answer.

It is not necessary as we already know that Cyrodiil had significantly better performance early in the game and Zos has reduced the population cap for Cyrodiil multiple times since then. It comes down to how Zos has managed the game.

But many things have been added since then. Costumes and mounts with heavy visual effects are big culprits that have been added that the server has to update all clients in range for. My client has no idea what custom costumes the zerg of 24 is wearing when I come into range.

We had mounts from day one and while it was a small selection of mounts, there were still differences. We also had disguises that could be equipped as well as about a dozen, or more, possible motifs for our armor. The server has the same load today as it did then to send us this information so this is irrelevant. If anything, the server has less load from this today as we have fewer players in Cyrodiil today than in 2014

Visual effects are local to our PC and have been part of the game since it launched. If anything, suggesting visual effects is an issue is implying the high use of AoEs is a major culprit and suggests Zos is on the right track with this testing.

The mounts we had when performance was better were much simpler, didn't explode out of the ground and have all the gaudy visual and sound effects. The style/costume system did not even exist so only a limited amount of simple one piece costumes existed. It is far from the same load. That is added on top of what existed. None of that stuff is required in PvP.

You know why ESO takes up so much space on your HDD or SSD? Textures, effects and all that are not server side, but client.

Sgrug

Lisutaris wrote: »

It never was the reason ...

During the "Midyear Mayhem" Event everything worked fine, when they "turned up" some more hardware/server resources.

Real server and network upgrades cost real money but I am sure there is no relevance in this observation.

scorpius2k1

TequilaFire wrote: »

The mounts we had when performance was better were much simpler, didn't explode out of the ground and have all the gaudy visual and sound effects. The style/costume system did not even exist so only a limited amount simple one piece costumes existed. It is far from the same load.

While it's easy to think graphics are the problem, they are only a fraction of it. There is a lot behind the scenes that are causing issues. Graphically is really localized and even though the 3D engine used (HERO) doesn't seem to be well optimized, it does a fairly decent job in the aspect of a rendering a nice looking MMO. Even though they add up, the effects are basic and very primitive. Remember, this game is from 2014 with a 3D engine from around that time. The only time those types of things are PART of the issue and not the ONLY issue is if the client PC hardware is older and not able to display things at decent frame rates. Even in some areas where FPS is acceptable and tons of effects firing off, the lag, desync, and related issues still occur. The worst thing to me personally is how distracting effects, etc are when piled up and you can't even see the target or any of your surroundings ... not to mention everything else from the world/players in the foreground blocking our view. The server does not "see" what you see, at all. It only references positions, calculations, etc....in which a powerful modern server hardware and network backbone are a commonplace thing to process...unless the software that directs said hardware/network is badly designed and/or has weaknesses (aka bugs and inefficiencies)...and here we are.

idk wrote: »

Visual effects are local to our PC and have been part of the game since it launched. If anything, suggesting visual effects is an issue is implying the high use of AoEs is a major culprit and suggests Zos is on the right track with this testing.

This is 100% correct, and is very easy to see for anyone who has had experience running a server, gaming or otherwise. The server does not process any visual graphical information, it's entirely all positioning, calculations, routines, data processing, and packet delivery. Those are the culprits and since the issues are widespread and not localized it speaks volumes of bad and unoptimized code and inneficient packet delivery methods. ZoS has pretty much said many of these same things themselves when they state the server hardware isn't the problem because they've been upgraded already (most recently at Gamescon interview). It pretty much spells it out as software design problems 100%. But what do we know, we aren't the experts but just mere peasants.
.

idk

TequilaFire wrote: »

idk wrote: »

TequilaFire wrote: »

idk wrote: »

Zos has never suggested AoEs are the sole reason for the lag. However, we know factually that the use of skills is a major contributing factor in the heavy lag as it tends to occur when we have large groups at the same location actively in combat. Zos has even said such large numbers of players at the same location only doing LAs would create lag.

TequilaFire wrote: »

I would like to see a simple live test that increases server capacity by 25%,50% and 100% with published results.
This would put to bed the question of whether improving servers capacity is the answer or not preventing gutting of the game.
Of course corporate won't like the answer.

It is not necessary as we already know that Cyrodiil had significantly better performance early in the game and Zos has reduced the population cap for Cyrodiil multiple times since then. It comes down to how Zos has managed the game.

But many things have been added since then. Costumes and mounts with heavy visual effects are big culprits that have been added that the server has to update all clients in range for. My client has no idea what custom costumes the zerg of 24 is wearing when I come into range.

We had mounts from day one and while it was a small selection of mounts, there were still differences. We also had disguises that could be equipped as well as about a dozen, or more, possible motifs for our armor. The server has the same load today as it did then to send us this information so this is irrelevant. If anything, the server has less load from this today as we have fewer players in Cyrodiil today than in 2014

Visual effects are local to our PC and have been part of the game since it launched. If anything, suggesting visual effects is an issue is implying the high use of AoEs is a major culprit and suggests Zos is on the right track with this testing.

The mounts we had when performance was better were much simpler, didn't explode out of the ground and have all the gaudy visual and sound effects. The style/costume system did not even exist so only a limited amount of simple one piece costumes existed. It is far from the same load. That is added on top of what existed. None of that stuff is required in PvP.

Those effects are handled on our PC. The server does not tell us anything other than if the actions of the mount and each one of those new effects is tied to an action all mounts have always done. The number of actions the amount could do has not changed. So the server is not telling us anything more than it used to.

Costumes did exist when the game launched. We had costumes called disguises and we had two polymorphs that could be used in Cyrodiil. The server has always had to tell our PC what we were wearing, but the details of that appearance have always resided on our PC.

Even with the one-piece costumes we had vs the outfit system, we did not all wear costumes. Many of us wore armor which is the same number of pieces the outfit system deals with. As such the server is still dealing with the same ammount of information as it did back in 2014.

precambria

It's just garbo servers and countless software bugs, BG has only 12 people in it and it lags to hell, trials are not people all stacking rapid regen and spamming aoe but they run just as bad as cyrodil.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

precambria wrote: »

It's just garbo servers and countless software bugs, BG has only 12 people in it and it lags to hell, trials are not people all stacking rapid regen and spamming aoe but they run just as bad as cyrodil.

That is simply not true. Trials have always run better than Cyro, especially in primetime. BGs admittedly tend to be hit and miss, but on average, they are somewhere in the middle. I have played plenty of BGs that were effectively lag free. Acting like they are all equally bad makes it very hard to diagnose the problem, especially when it is objectively untrue.

Anyone being objective and honest with themselves would tell you that there was a noticeable improvement in performance yesterday. Certainly the enjoyment of the gameplay might have taken a hit, but the game worked better. Not saying AOEs are the sole cause, but they certainly seems to be high on the list.

richo262

They should make all PVE related quests (save for introduction quest), achievements (save for sky shards), and lore books (save for mages guild) account wide.

That would reduce the PVE players going in on an alt to clear the area. Well, except shards, but that would at least reduce their time spent.

I think many PVE mobs in the overland area should just be replaced with dead bodies. It is hardly a war zone when you have mobs sitting in a camp drinking tea and picking their noses.

I'm also fine with Cyro being shrunk by ~20%. Might lose a bit at home base, but move it forward. That big inaccessible Dolmen that was clearly made as some sort of future content trial could be absorbed by a PVE area and actually be used as a trial.

TineaCruris

TequilaFire wrote: »

I would like to see a simple live test that increases server capacity by 25%,50% and 100% with published results.
This would put to bed the question of whether improving servers capacity is the answer or not preventing gutting of the game.
Of course corporate won't like the answer.

This appears to be the only option that has been permanently taken off the table.

idk

TineaCruris wrote: »

TequilaFire wrote: »

I would like to see a simple live test that increases server capacity by 25%,50% and 100% with published results.
This would put to bed the question of whether improving servers capacity is the answer or not preventing gutting of the game.
Of course corporate won't like the answer.

This appears to be the only option that has been permanently taken off the table.

@TineaCruris

Zos already has tested that. We had more players in Cyrodiil six years ago than now and performance was better. Zos has significantly decreased the population caps and since then performance has decreased.

Edit: adding a link to my comment above addressing the post Tinea quoted. https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/6943772/#Comment_6943772

TequilaFire

idk wrote: »

TequilaFire wrote: »

idk wrote: »

TequilaFire wrote: »

idk wrote: »

Zos has never suggested AoEs are the sole reason for the lag. However, we know factually that the use of skills is a major contributing factor in the heavy lag as it tends to occur when we have large groups at the same location actively in combat. Zos has even said such large numbers of players at the same location only doing LAs would create lag.

TequilaFire wrote: »

I would like to see a simple live test that increases server capacity by 25%,50% and 100% with published results.
This would put to bed the question of whether improving servers capacity is the answer or not preventing gutting of the game.
Of course corporate won't like the answer.

It is not necessary as we already know that Cyrodiil had significantly better performance early in the game and Zos has reduced the population cap for Cyrodiil multiple times since then. It comes down to how Zos has managed the game.

But many things have been added since then. Costumes and mounts with heavy visual effects are big culprits that have been added that the server has to update all clients in range for. My client has no idea what custom costumes the zerg of 24 is wearing when I come into range.

We had mounts from day one and while it was a small selection of mounts, there were still differences. We also had disguises that could be equipped as well as about a dozen, or more, possible motifs for our armor. The server has the same load today as it did then to send us this information so this is irrelevant. If anything, the server has less load from this today as we have fewer players in Cyrodiil today than in 2014

Visual effects are local to our PC and have been part of the game since it launched. If anything, suggesting visual effects is an issue is implying the high use of AoEs is a major culprit and suggests Zos is on the right track with this testing.

The mounts we had when performance was better were much simpler, didn't explode out of the ground and have all the gaudy visual and sound effects. The style/costume system did not even exist so only a limited amount of simple one piece costumes existed. It is far from the same load. That is added on top of what existed. None of that stuff is required in PvP.

Those effects are handled on our PC. The server does not tell us anything other than if the actions of the mount and each one of those new effects is tied to an action all mounts have always done. The number of actions the amount could do has not changed. So the server is not telling us anything more than it used to.

Costumes did exist when the game launched. We had costumes called disguises and we had two polymorphs that could be used in Cyrodiil. The server has always had to tell our PC what we were wearing, but the details of that appearance have always resided on our PC.

Even with the one-piece costumes we had vs the outfit system, we did not all wear costumes. Many of us wore armor which is the same number of pieces the outfit system deals with. As such the server is still dealing with the same ammount of information as it did back in 2014.

Of course visuals aren't rendered on the server who said they were? But what most people mistakenly call lag is actually frame drop on the client, so increasing client processing load is actually part of the multi-layer problem especially on consoles and weaker pc.

And you still are "wearing" armor under the costume which also has to be processed by the server including proc effects shown to other players, so how can it not be more?
It all adds up regardless of how you want to sugar coat it or push a certain eliminate play styles agenda.
There also has been a track record of sloppy memory management throughout the history of this game.
TCP was the right choice when most of the processing was kept client side, but UDP would be faster now that a lot more query/response is required between server and client now that critical processing has been moved server side.

Also you made a statement that we have less players playing PvP today but I am willing to bet that pvp server resources were scaled down as well.

idk

TequilaFire wrote: »

idk wrote: »

TequilaFire wrote: »

idk wrote: »

TequilaFire wrote: »

idk wrote: »

Zos has never suggested AoEs are the sole reason for the lag. However, we know factually that the use of skills is a major contributing factor in the heavy lag as it tends to occur when we have large groups at the same location actively in combat. Zos has even said such large numbers of players at the same location only doing LAs would create lag.

TequilaFire wrote: »

I would like to see a simple live test that increases server capacity by 25%,50% and 100% with published results.
This would put to bed the question of whether improving servers capacity is the answer or not preventing gutting of the game.
Of course corporate won't like the answer.

It is not necessary as we already know that Cyrodiil had significantly better performance early in the game and Zos has reduced the population cap for Cyrodiil multiple times since then. It comes down to how Zos has managed the game.

But many things have been added since then. Costumes and mounts with heavy visual effects are big culprits that have been added that the server has to update all clients in range for. My client has no idea what custom costumes the zerg of 24 is wearing when I come into range.

We had mounts from day one and while it was a small selection of mounts, there were still differences. We also had disguises that could be equipped as well as about a dozen, or more, possible motifs for our armor. The server has the same load today as it did then to send us this information so this is irrelevant. If anything, the server has less load from this today as we have fewer players in Cyrodiil today than in 2014

Visual effects are local to our PC and have been part of the game since it launched. If anything, suggesting visual effects is an issue is implying the high use of AoEs is a major culprit and suggests Zos is on the right track with this testing.

The mounts we had when performance was better were much simpler, didn't explode out of the ground and have all the gaudy visual and sound effects. The style/costume system did not even exist so only a limited amount of simple one piece costumes existed. It is far from the same load. That is added on top of what existed. None of that stuff is required in PvP.

Those effects are handled on our PC. The server does not tell us anything other than if the actions of the mount and each one of those new effects is tied to an action all mounts have always done. The number of actions the amount could do has not changed. So the server is not telling us anything more than it used to.

Costumes did exist when the game launched. We had costumes called disguises and we had two polymorphs that could be used in Cyrodiil. The server has always had to tell our PC what we were wearing, but the details of that appearance have always resided on our PC.

Even with the one-piece costumes we had vs the outfit system, we did not all wear costumes. Many of us wore armor which is the same number of pieces the outfit system deals with. As such the server is still dealing with the same ammount of information as it did back in 2014.

Of course visuals aren't rendered on the server who said they were? But what most people mistakenly call lag is actually frame drop on the client, so increasing client processing load is actually part of the multi-layer problem especially on consoles and weaker pc.

And you still are "wearing" armor under the costume which also has to be processed by the server including proc effects shown to other players, so how can it not be more?
It all adds up regardless of how you want to sugar coat it or push a certain eliminate play styles agenda.
There also has been a track record of sloppy memory management throughout the history of this game.
TCP was the right choice when most of the processing was kept client side, but UDP would be faster now that a lot more query/response is required between server and client now that critical processing has been moved server side.

Also you made a statement that we have less players playing PvP today but I am willing to bet that pvp server resources were scaled down as well.

This thread is discussing issues related to actual server performance. Not PCs unable to handle the load as that is a personal issue.

As for the last sentence, pop cap was reduced several times to help performance earily on the game. While it was better than now it was not ideal. So the theory that Zos reduced server resources as part of that plan to increase server performance does not add up. It would also be the easiest change to make, and not very costly, to revert that change.

zaria

TequilaFire wrote: »

idk wrote: »

Zos has never suggested AoEs are the sole reason for the lag. However, we know factually that the use of skills is a major contributing factor in the heavy lag as it tends to occur when we have large groups at the same location actively in combat. Zos has even said such large numbers of players at the same location only doing LAs would create lag.

TequilaFire wrote: »

I would like to see a simple live test that increases server capacity by 25%,50% and 100% with published results.
This would put to bed the question of whether improving servers capacity is the answer or not preventing gutting of the game.
Of course corporate won't like the answer.

It is not necessary as we already know that Cyrodiil had significantly better performance early in the game and Zos has reduced the population cap for Cyrodiil multiple times since then. It comes down to how Zos has managed the game.

But many things have been added since then. Costumes and mounts with heavy visual effects are big culprits that have been added that the server has to update all clients in range for. My client has no idea what custom costumes the zerg of 24 is wearing when I come into range.

All the new styles, costumes and mounts is an issue but an client rather than server one. Server sends player objects where styles are simply an series of numbers. boots id 105 who is an integer, then 3 byte for color channels. Letting people color their outfits doubled their data, on the other hand if coded smart later updates are just about positioning and who bar player is on, doubt coding is smart.
However moving ESO onto an SSD, did not improve zone load times significantly but it got rid of the low resolution outfits for seconds in busy towns.
Now if you have little ram and less video ram this might hurt you, ZoS had to reduce population in Rawl back before Morrowind as people crashed on entry, no that is not an server issue, its that potatos runs out of vram trying to load outfits.

At launch lots of the combat calculations was done on clients, downside is that this made it easy to cheat.
It was moved server side who killed performance, now you can buy 100 core servers. it set you back $50K with 256 GB ram, not sure if you can put your own rig into Amazon cloud but would help a lot in Cyrodil.
And yes 6x$50K is an easy way out, you can go cheaper on the secondary servers.

3 second cool down on AOE would be way more expensive in revenue loss if enforced overall.
How would all the casuals react then spin to win stop working in public dungeons

No it will not work, this is 70% an client issue, and not only potatoes but also people with bis level gaming rigs.
Client has serious issues to, that unless they run at 4K max, face it lots set up ESO to look at good as possible in overland out of combat and complains that performance suck. Join an Alkir dolmen zerg and configure for that.

zaria

idk wrote: »

TequilaFire wrote: »

idk wrote: »

TequilaFire wrote: »

idk wrote: »

TequilaFire wrote: »

idk wrote: »

Zos has never suggested AoEs are the sole reason for the lag. However, we know factually that the use of skills is a major contributing factor in the heavy lag as it tends to occur when we have large groups at the same location actively in combat. Zos has even said such large numbers of players at the same location only doing LAs would create lag.

TequilaFire wrote: »

I would like to see a simple live test that increases server capacity by 25%,50% and 100% with published results.
This would put to bed the question of whether improving servers capacity is the answer or not preventing gutting of the game.
Of course corporate won't like the answer.

It is not necessary as we already know that Cyrodiil had significantly better performance early in the game and Zos has reduced the population cap for Cyrodiil multiple times since then. It comes down to how Zos has managed the game.

But many things have been added since then. Costumes and mounts with heavy visual effects are big culprits that have been added that the server has to update all clients in range for. My client has no idea what custom costumes the zerg of 24 is wearing when I come into range.

We had mounts from day one and while it was a small selection of mounts, there were still differences. We also had disguises that could be equipped as well as about a dozen, or more, possible motifs for our armor. The server has the same load today as it did then to send us this information so this is irrelevant. If anything, the server has less load from this today as we have fewer players in Cyrodiil today than in 2014

Visual effects are local to our PC and have been part of the game since it launched. If anything, suggesting visual effects is an issue is implying the high use of AoEs is a major culprit and suggests Zos is on the right track with this testing.

The mounts we had when performance was better were much simpler, didn't explode out of the ground and have all the gaudy visual and sound effects. The style/costume system did not even exist so only a limited amount of simple one piece costumes existed. It is far from the same load. That is added on top of what existed. None of that stuff is required in PvP.

Those effects are handled on our PC. The server does not tell us anything other than if the actions of the mount and each one of those new effects is tied to an action all mounts have always done. The number of actions the amount could do has not changed. So the server is not telling us anything more than it used to.

Costumes did exist when the game launched. We had costumes called disguises and we had two polymorphs that could be used in Cyrodiil. The server has always had to tell our PC what we were wearing, but the details of that appearance have always resided on our PC.

Even with the one-piece costumes we had vs the outfit system, we did not all wear costumes. Many of us wore armor which is the same number of pieces the outfit system deals with. As such the server is still dealing with the same ammount of information as it did back in 2014.

Of course visuals aren't rendered on the server who said they were? But what most people mistakenly call lag is actually frame drop on the client, so increasing client processing load is actually part of the multi-layer problem especially on consoles and weaker pc.

And you still are "wearing" armor under the costume which also has to be processed by the server including proc effects shown to other players, so how can it not be more?
It all adds up regardless of how you want to sugar coat it or push a certain eliminate play styles agenda.
There also has been a track record of sloppy memory management throughout the history of this game.
TCP was the right choice when most of the processing was kept client side, but UDP would be faster now that a lot more query/response is required between server and client now that critical processing has been moved server side.

Also you made a statement that we have less players playing PvP today but I am willing to bet that pvp server resources were scaled down as well.

This thread is discussing issues related to actual server performance. Not PCs unable to handle the load as that is a personal issue.

As for the last sentence, pop cap was reduced several times to help performance earily on the game. While it was better than now it was not ideal. So the theory that Zos reduced server resources as part of that plan to increase server performance does not add up. It would also be the easiest change to make, and not very costly, to revert that change.

Ignoring the fact that server performance is server wide so all on the same server / instance get the same issues.

Remember an trial who was idiotic lagy, it was the first trash pull on nHRC.
We ported out re formed group and started again now on another server so it was fine.
And this has been an issue ZoS discussed, instances should go to low load servers.

If you have serious issues while some in your group fighting with you has none its your system. Note it can be the client itself hating AMD A7, you live in Australia, play 4K max setting or play on an potato.

Now dungeon finder is an obvious server issue So is random load screens.

Having other graphic setting for Cyrodil and trials would solve a lot.
Its all add up, server is slow, you have high ping and you get have issues simply rending the fight.

Iamnuff

>this one might be the worst received but will probably have a big impact on the map lag, reduce map size to only be paths between keeps with some very thin side paths along the outside of them, remove the PvE focused quest hubs, the delves and their dailies

Honestly, they should do this anyway. It's a huge pvp battleground. There's no reason for PVE quests here in the first place.
The only reason seems to be to lure in players who don't actually want to take part in PVP at all, and force them to do it.

I know I get aggravated as hell when i'm trying to collect skyshards on my under-levelled under-geared alts and I keep getting oneshot by sweaty tryhards halfway to the delve with the shard.

I don't want to play your crappy pvp mode against dudes who's whole build is perfectly designed to the current meta to burst a max-level player to death in <4 seconds using pseudo-exploit frame-clipping an animation-cancelling.
That's not fun.

I want the magic glowrocks that give me skill-points.