The Gold Road Chapter – which includes the Scribing system – and Update 42 is now available to test on the PTS! You can read the latest patch notes here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/656454/
Suggestion for performance improvements based on what we've seen in testing
asneakybanana
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So over the past month and a half of testing we've seen quite a few different tests and most seemed fairly ineffective at helping with the lag. However, one test in particular, week 5's test which limited support and healing skills to only your group provided a noticeable improvement. While there was still lag at times, in general it was far better than what we've seen over the years.
There are definitely a few downsides to how this test played out though. First, it made players who wanted to run around and try to support their faction without joining a group basically useless. Many of my healer friends expressed their frustration during that week that they may as well not go into Cyrodiil without a group otherwise they wouldn't be able to accomplish anything. Second, it put the organized groups that already run 12 person raids at a huge advantage compared to normal which could have a negative effect on the more casual players that are joining zone groups as those zone groups will have a far harder time than normal. Third, you are still encouraged to run the largest size group possible, and while that's only 12 they should be trying to encourage smaller groups that may have a lesser impact on the server than the 24 man zergs.
My suggestion is to raise the group cap from 12 to 20 or 24. This will allow zone pick up groups to still remain fairly effective and have a numbers advantage against the organized 12 mans. That said there should be some mechanic besides prox det to deter them from wanting to stack that large of a group. One mechanic I had thought up was essentially a mechanic where the smaller the group is the more ultimate they can get when fighting outnumbered. Perhaps some mechanic where in a group of 6 or less they receive 1 ultimate for every enemy they hit, 12 or less they receive .5 ultimate per enemy hit and then above that they do not receive any extra ultimate per hit. This will allow a smaller, more organized group a better chance against the large groups but will not reduce the effectiveness of large groups in general. The last suggestion is to make groups under 4 people able to heal and support players outside of their group, this will remove the situation where the solo healer feels helpless when they enter Cyrodiil but prevent large groups who tend to cast more heals and things like that on their allies from creating too many calculations on players in the area.
While this may not give quite the same performance boost as we saw in week 5 of the Cyrodiil testing it will still hopefully give a decent amount of performance improvement while also shifting the focus from running the largest possible group to running smaller groups that can potentially be more effective. ZOS will still need to make many back end changes to help further make large scale fights more performant but this could be a good first step.
TL;DR:
Raise group cap to 20 or 24 from 12
Make some kind of balance of power between small groups and large groups to help promote running smaller vs running max size groups
Allow groups of 4 or less to heal friendlies outside of group.
There are definitely a few downsides to how this test played out though. First, it made players who wanted to run around and try to support their faction without joining a group basically useless. Many of my healer friends expressed their frustration during that week that they may as well not go into Cyrodiil without a group otherwise they wouldn't be able to accomplish anything. Second, it put the organized groups that already run 12 person raids at a huge advantage compared to normal which could have a negative effect on the more casual players that are joining zone groups as those zone groups will have a far harder time than normal. Third, you are still encouraged to run the largest size group possible, and while that's only 12 they should be trying to encourage smaller groups that may have a lesser impact on the server than the 24 man zergs.
My suggestion is to raise the group cap from 12 to 20 or 24. This will allow zone pick up groups to still remain fairly effective and have a numbers advantage against the organized 12 mans. That said there should be some mechanic besides prox det to deter them from wanting to stack that large of a group. One mechanic I had thought up was essentially a mechanic where the smaller the group is the more ultimate they can get when fighting outnumbered. Perhaps some mechanic where in a group of 6 or less they receive 1 ultimate for every enemy they hit, 12 or less they receive .5 ultimate per enemy hit and then above that they do not receive any extra ultimate per hit. This will allow a smaller, more organized group a better chance against the large groups but will not reduce the effectiveness of large groups in general. The last suggestion is to make groups under 4 people able to heal and support players outside of their group, this will remove the situation where the solo healer feels helpless when they enter Cyrodiil but prevent large groups who tend to cast more heals and things like that on their allies from creating too many calculations on players in the area.
While this may not give quite the same performance boost as we saw in week 5 of the Cyrodiil testing it will still hopefully give a decent amount of performance improvement while also shifting the focus from running the largest possible group to running smaller groups that can potentially be more effective. ZOS will still need to make many back end changes to help further make large scale fights more performant but this could be a good first step.
TL;DR:
Raise group cap to 20 or 24 from 12
Make some kind of balance of power between small groups and large groups to help promote running smaller vs running max size groups
Allow groups of 4 or less to heal friendlies outside of group.
Asneakybanana AD DK Former emperor of Chrysamere and Chillrend. World first hardmode Hel'ra and Quake con winner (Alliance rank 25)
Asneakyhabenero EP DK Former emperor of Thornblade, Haderus. World first vMA Dk clear (Alliance rank 39)
Asneakycucumber EP Sorc Former empress of Blackwater Bay and Trueflame (Alliance rank 32)
Asneakypineapple EP Temp Former empress of Azuras Star and Haderus (Alliance rank 22)
Asneakypickle EP NB Former empress of Trueflame (Alliance rank 47)
Sweat SquadAsneakyhabenero EP DK Former emperor of Thornblade, Haderus. World first vMA Dk clear (Alliance rank 39)
Asneakycucumber EP Sorc Former empress of Blackwater Bay and Trueflame (Alliance rank 32)
Asneakypineapple EP Temp Former empress of Azuras Star and Haderus (Alliance rank 22)
Asneakypickle EP NB Former empress of Trueflame (Alliance rank 47)
Crowned 27x on 12 different campaign cycles | 200M+ AP earned
Fastest AA clear ever: 5:42 | Fastest HRC clear ever: 5:27 | NA first HM MoL
609k Mag Sorc vMA
NA first Tick Tock Tormentor
NA first trinity (All No Death/HM/Speed run trials titles)
2x Tick Tock Tormentor
1
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SgtNuttzmeg✭✭✭✭We definitely noticed the loss of lag during these environments too! The other thing I have noticed with the last two testing environments is tendency for larger guilds stack multiple different groups of 12s on top of one another. Whenever this happened the lag and latency increased dramatically. The other thing I noticed was that alot of people on Grey Host NA wouldn't bother to group up or would stack in teams of five. This gave them the means to continue spaming aoes and it likely didn't help the lag.
Legions of Mordor Core
Cold0neFTBs1 -
master_vanargand✭✭✭✭✭
✭asneakybanana wrote: »week 5's test which limited support and healing skills to only your group provided a noticeable improvement.
The 5th test was very bad. Only the 1st test was good.
All other tests were lagging and the server was heavy.
In the 1st test, AoE global cooldown has significantly improved the Cyrodiil.0 -
asneakybanana✭✭✭✭✭master_vanargand wrote: »asneakybanana wrote: »week 5's test which limited support and healing skills to only your group provided a noticeable improvement.
The 5th test was very bad. Only the 1st test was good.
All other tests were lagging and the server was heavy.
In the 1st test, AoE global cooldown has significantly improved the Cyrodiil.
The first test is a wash since the IC event was going and Cyrodiil generally wasn't even pop locked. If they reran the testing from the first week maybe we could use that data instead but personally I'm pretty over the tests.Asneakybanana AD DK Former emperor of Chrysamere and Chillrend. World first hardmode Hel'ra and Quake con winner (Alliance rank 25)Sweat Squad
Asneakyhabenero EP DK Former emperor of Thornblade, Haderus. World first vMA Dk clear (Alliance rank 39)
Asneakycucumber EP Sorc Former empress of Blackwater Bay and Trueflame (Alliance rank 32)
Asneakypineapple EP Temp Former empress of Azuras Star and Haderus (Alliance rank 22)
Asneakypickle EP NB Former empress of Trueflame (Alliance rank 47)
Crowned 27x on 12 different campaign cycles | 200M+ AP earned
Fastest AA clear ever: 5:42 | Fastest HRC clear ever: 5:27 | NA first HM MoL
609k Mag Sorc vMA
NA first Tick Tock Tormentor
NA first trinity (All No Death/HM/Speed run trials titles)
2x Tick Tock Tormentor4 -
master_vanargand✭✭✭✭✭
✭asneakybanana wrote: »master_vanargand wrote: »asneakybanana wrote: »week 5's test which limited support and healing skills to only your group provided a noticeable improvement.
The 5th test was very bad. Only the 1st test was good.
All other tests were lagging and the server was heavy.
In the 1st test, AoE global cooldown has significantly improved the Cyrodiil.
The first test is a wash since the IC event was going and Cyrodiil generally wasn't even pop locked. If they reran the testing from the first week maybe we could use that data instead but personally I'm pretty over the tests.
PC NA Gray Host was full in the 1st test.
I have encountered many times where ball groups and PUGs are fighting.
There was no lag. this is true.0 -
csparks1✭✭✭Y'all don't really think they are reading any of this *** you guys are posting do you?
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Joy_Division✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »
We’ve determined that we’d like to run at least two more tests to gather additional data, which are outlined below. Our goal here is to see how a combination of changes from previous tests affect the performance, as we’ve found they have not had a significant impact individually.0 -
idk✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭The issue is we have not seen everything and what one person observed does not always correlate to what another person observed. As such our suggestion will be based on incomplete information.
Heck, we have seen some say they experienced significantly less lag during a test while another saying lag was bad for them.
What is beneficial is providing constructive feedback on our experience with a specific test, especially how we had to adjust if we actually did try. Then Zos can couple that good feedback with the real data concerning server load and lag gathered from each test.1