A better and more reasonable approach to testing

Fawn4287

Its clear that the current style of testing isn’t going well given these test have gone on for months with little to no impact of the games dreadful peak time performance and as much as anyone could ever love a balance change of removing proc sets, I do not think that they are the be all and end off to fix lag (as much as I could possibly hope they were). I think a better approach to trying to fix the current problem would be to start from the ground up and strip Cyrodil to an absolute barebones , rock bottom state and work back up from there.

Start a weeks testing with nothing other than solo players in purely stat based gear, with no pets, no CP, no procs, no siege, not even any guards. as simple as the game could possibly be. Then each week add back 1 aspect, like CP the next week, small groups the week after and so on. I feel like this will help isolate what it is that causes the major lag issues far more precisely than cherry-picking random aspects that may or may not make a noteworthy change. This would cause possibly a few months of sub par gameplay for some, however finding and resolving the game’s performance problems seems a more than worthy cause to endure it for.

actosh

Hope they go this way.

SgtNuttzmeg

The problem with this approach is that it would likely kill many guilds to completely remove groups. I don't think it's realistic or a shops starting point. We don't need to remove CP because we already have a non-CP instance.

The benefit of the current test is that lets say they wanted to better optimize CP or how skills interact. Removing an aspect of the game that is also a pain point removes the potential of that aspect skewing the results of your optimization.

VaranisArano

While that plan might look ideal in terms of "how can we test the elements of PVP to decide what will survive", there's a limit to how much players will accept being treated like guinea pigs while ZOS dismantles everything that makes Cyrodiil Cyrodiil in an attempt to make their game work properly.

I mean, we're basically talking about stripping down Cyrodiil to solo-only PVP with no Alliance War objectives.

WhyEvenTry

I agree testing needs to be more structured if the actual goal is to fix/improve lag. They removed sets that require extra calculations for this test, while at the same time bringing back healing outside of group: which adds more calculations. This "test" was flawed from the start to determine the performance impact of these sets.

Also to people complaining about zos treating you like test subjects, this is the only way to actually get results is to do these tests on the live server. PvP right now in cyrodil is really fun imo, but if you don't like it there's other places to pvp without these tests.

VaranisArano

WhyEvenTry wrote: »

I agree testing needs to be more structured if the actual goal is to fix/improve lag. They removed sets that require extra calculations for this test, while at the same time bringing back healing outside of group: which adds more calculations. This "test" was flawed from the start to determine the performance impact of these sets.

Also to people complaining about zos treating you like test subjects, this is the only way to actually get results is to do these tests on the live server. PvP right now in cyrodil is really fun imo, but if you don't like it there's other places to pvp without these tests.

I'm aware the only place to do the tests is on Live. I've PVPed on the PTS. I nearly soloed an outpost before one player showed up to fight me, the place was so deserted. It's not a sufficient testing ground for Cyrodiil changes at all.

The flip side is that player goodwill is not inexhaustible. ZOS knows this. Thats part of why they bribe us with double AP and why they give us breaks from these long periods of testing. I suspect that's also a major part of why they seem to be picking and choosing test elements rather than stripping it all back and slowly building up like the OP suggests.

Now, if ZOS wanted to test interest in a solo-only free for all PVP, that solo-only no objectives Cyrodiil test might be a good trial run.

Nairinhe

You do realize that this isn't particularly genius or unexpected approach, and that devs 100% thought about it and for some reason decided not to do testing that way?

Fawn4287

SgtNuttzmeg wrote: »

The problem with this approach is that it would likely kill many guilds to completely remove groups. I don't think it's realistic or a shops starting point. We don't need to remove CP because we already have a non-CP instance.

The benefit of the current test is that lets say they wanted to better optimize CP or how skills interact. Removing an aspect of the game that is also a pain point removes the potential of that aspect skewing the results of your optimization.

Think how many players have never returned because of lag?

Joy_Division

Give me a call in six months when the testing in Cyrodiil evolves from something more than solo players light attacking each other.