ESO PvP Update [Updated June 2022]

SidraWillowsky

Great to hear that ESO has finally made it to the beta stage!

Lysette

Kwoung wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

Kwoung wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

Kwoung wrote: »

If this actually happens before something better to play comes out or New World pulls a "ESO" and turns their game around to be something great, that would be cool. But at this point, what reassurances do we have as players that this isn't just another in the very long line of yearly posts saying something will be done, but isn't? In just the recent years we had... Year of performance improvements... complete bust. Year of new servers... someone forgot to order them apparently.

Also, not to be confrontational, but a recent video made fun of PVPers because it is supposedly a well know fact that PVP was being worked on forever... and here we now hear "We’ve been planning this for the last quarter and we’re starting work on it right now"?

All I can say is, please deliver and provide updates on progress to the community along the way. We can be very understanding and if you hit a bump in the road, let us know, make a breakthrough, let us know. Communication is key and a very simple method of keeping you customers happy. Also, most MMO's now have a public roadmap posted in one form or another, please consider doing the same. It doesn't have to contain spoilers, just a general idea of what is being worked on and the progress of those items.

Nah, this step is admitting - we can't really achieve it with the old design, so if we want to get it done (and we do), we really need to redesign it. because the old technology was based on premises, which have changed so drastically, that it requires a redesign to address the issues. This is about what Matt's decision is based on and I think he is completely right with it.

A roadmap in regards to server redesign - nah, what would you do with it - give them a chance to be flexible and innovative, don't put them into a cage of a roadmap to achieve - this is creative work, redesigning the server architecture, just let them do it and be free to make changes or even discard steps they took, because they found a better solution meanwhile - a roadmap could hinder this creative freedom.

Umm ok, so basically you are saying "it will be different this time". I would love to believe that, but after 6+ years of "we are working on it", I am a tad jaded and feel a bit more than yearly words are required at this point. Also due to timing, this seems a lot more like damage control to a viral video than a sincere attempt at improving the players game experience, which could in fact, have been done at any time in years past.

If it took that video to spur actual action, then that is awesome, because quite honestly, I love playing PVP in this game and if it actually performed, I will probably play ESO for another decade, even though the PVE end of things has pretty much dried up for me. The yearly chapters or whatever they are called are great most of the time, but that's like a weeks worth of play and doesn't come near to filling my time in game... PVP keeps it fresh and since I am here, I still spend about $1000 in the crown store every year.

When the game was designed, they thought a lot of the computation can be outsourced to the client machines - and that is why they had good performance at start. Problem with this approach is, that it opened up the possibility to cheat quite drastically - (because it was breaking the basic rule of client-server architecture "never trust the client") - so they transferred vital steps back to the servers, which now choked on this because they were never designed to have this kind of workload. All the steps which have been done to better the situation, where just band aids and workaround basically, because they had to do it on a server-architecture, which was never designed to deal with this kind of workload.

A redesign will address this major design problem and I am quite hopeful, that this will not just benefit pvp, but as well give us better performance in other crowded areas - it is a step into the right direction, imo.

I am well aware of all of that, I just want to see them deliver on what was just posted, not have to wait to hear another excuse come Jan 2023 of why performance is still abysmal. And quite honestly, I have a side bet with a friend that them adding this next chapter, will destroy PVE completely as well, as the last 2 brought the game to it's knee's and those long term PVP issues, are full on in PVE content now.

I can just guess that you mean group-oriented PVE with this - as my pve "single-player" experience was never better than it currently is - everything group-oriented should get better with a redesign - because this is the elephant in the room, the current server-architecture isn't capable to do group-oriented content properly with good performance - simply because it was never designed to deal with this amount of computations.

Lysette

SidraWillowsky wrote: »

Great to hear that ESO has finally made it to the beta stage!

it's actually alpha - beta is all features in, tweaking and bug-fixing - a redesign is putting it back to alpha state.

SidraWillowsky

Lysette wrote: »

SidraWillowsky wrote: »

Great to hear that ESO has finally made it to the beta stage!

it's actually alpha - beta is all features in, tweaking and bug-fixing - a redesign is putting it back to alpha state.

Hmmm, maybe it never left the alpha stage then. It's in beta alpha stage!!

Spiritrush

Thank you @ZOS_MattFiror for being willing to make the difficult business decision to refactor underlying code. This is absolutely the right decision. We wish you and the team every success in this endeavor.

Lysette

SidraWillowsky wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

SidraWillowsky wrote: »

Great to hear that ESO has finally made it to the beta stage!

it's actually alpha - beta is all features in, tweaking and bug-fixing - a redesign is putting it back to alpha state.

Hmmm, maybe it never left the alpha stage then. It's in beta alpha stage!!

Yeah, we would need a different term for live service games anyway - as those are never really getting to beta stage, because they add new features all the time.

nejcn001

YES, THANK YOU!

RedBranch

It’s good to hear from you.

It’s the silence that can sometimes make people anxious. Communication keeps people on your side even when the message isn’t exactly what they want to hear. Good luck this year! Thanks for the hard work.

Kwoung

Lysette wrote: »

Kwoung wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

Kwoung wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

Kwoung wrote: »

If this actually happens before something better to play comes out or New World pulls a "ESO" and turns their game around to be something great, that would be cool. But at this point, what reassurances do we have as players that this isn't just another in the very long line of yearly posts saying something will be done, but isn't? In just the recent years we had... Year of performance improvements... complete bust. Year of new servers... someone forgot to order them apparently.

Also, not to be confrontational, but a recent video made fun of PVPers because it is supposedly a well know fact that PVP was being worked on forever... and here we now hear "We’ve been planning this for the last quarter and we’re starting work on it right now"?

All I can say is, please deliver and provide updates on progress to the community along the way. We can be very understanding and if you hit a bump in the road, let us know, make a breakthrough, let us know. Communication is key and a very simple method of keeping you customers happy. Also, most MMO's now have a public roadmap posted in one form or another, please consider doing the same. It doesn't have to contain spoilers, just a general idea of what is being worked on and the progress of those items.

Nah, this step is admitting - we can't really achieve it with the old design, so if we want to get it done (and we do), we really need to redesign it. because the old technology was based on premises, which have changed so drastically, that it requires a redesign to address the issues. This is about what Matt's decision is based on and I think he is completely right with it.

A roadmap in regards to server redesign - nah, what would you do with it - give them a chance to be flexible and innovative, don't put them into a cage of a roadmap to achieve - this is creative work, redesigning the server architecture, just let them do it and be free to make changes or even discard steps they took, because they found a better solution meanwhile - a roadmap could hinder this creative freedom.

Umm ok, so basically you are saying "it will be different this time". I would love to believe that, but after 6+ years of "we are working on it", I am a tad jaded and feel a bit more than yearly words are required at this point. Also due to timing, this seems a lot more like damage control to a viral video than a sincere attempt at improving the players game experience, which could in fact, have been done at any time in years past.

If it took that video to spur actual action, then that is awesome, because quite honestly, I love playing PVP in this game and if it actually performed, I will probably play ESO for another decade, even though the PVE end of things has pretty much dried up for me. The yearly chapters or whatever they are called are great most of the time, but that's like a weeks worth of play and doesn't come near to filling my time in game... PVP keeps it fresh and since I am here, I still spend about $1000 in the crown store every year.

When the game was designed, they thought a lot of the computation can be outsourced to the client machines - and that is why they had good performance at start. Problem with this approach is, that it opened up the possibility to cheat quite drastically - (because it was breaking the basic rule of client-server architecture "never trust the client") - so they transferred vital steps back to the servers, which now choked on this because they were never designed to have this kind of workload. All the steps which have been done to better the situation, where just band aids and workaround basically, because they had to do it on a server-architecture, which was never designed to deal with this kind of workload.

A redesign will address this major design problem and I am quite hopeful, that this will not just benefit pvp, but as well give us better performance in other crowded areas - it is a step into the right direction, imo.

I am well aware of all of that, I just want to see them deliver on what was just posted, not have to wait to hear another excuse come Jan 2023 of why performance is still abysmal. And quite honestly, I have a side bet with a friend that them adding this next chapter, will destroy PVE completely as well, as the last 2 brought the game to it's knee's and those long term PVP issues, are full on in PVE content now.

I can just guess that you mean group-oriented PVE with this - as my pve "single-player" experience was never better than it currently is - everything group-oriented should get better with a redesign - because this is the elephant in the room, the current server-architecture isn't capable to do group-oriented content properly with good performance - simply because it was never designed to deal with this amount of computations.

Yes, you can enjoy the solo game with little to no issues. But when half your trial team gets disconnected multiple times trying to gain an achievement, or you are doing a guild event with the same outcome just because you have 12+ folks in the same area casting spells.. it is more than a tad annoying. I would say the number of complaints in guild chat about disconnects has risen, but that is not quite right, it used to never happen at all unless someones Internet glitched, now it is a common experience, as is lag, skills not firing, etc. It took PVPers years to figure it out, it will probably take PVEers the same, but in the end they will realize as well, that the game performance has taken a dive and eventually start posting and complaining about it, just like the PVPers who have dealt with it already are.

Or... they simply fix the game like right now, and the part of their customer base they seem to care about the most, is none the wiser, and the PVPers can start touting this as the best PVP game ever once again.

Oh and BTW... even solo away from anyone, I can't seem to harvest nodes reliably anymore. For some weird reason, the E key doesn't activate and stays greyed out even though my mouse is dead over the node I have harvested a thousand times before. Not happening to you?

Zealand

Thanks for the update, I literally just resubscribed due to this great news! I know it will take some time, but lets GO!

wildbear247

I have a request. I just learned over in the Battlegrounds (BGs) thread that ZOS is planning to remove the Deathmatch (DM) only queue in the next update. At least until Cyrodiil is fixed per your update Matt, can we please maintain the BGs DM only queue? BGs DM only has been the most fun I've had in ESO PvP since the old days when Cyrodiill PvP was not horribly crippled by lag and had more balanced alliance populations.

aetherial_heavenn

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

It’s long past time to give everyone an update on where we are with PvP improvements. As many of you know, we did a series of tests over the last year to give us more data. These tests were successful and gave us the information we needed. We now have a plan going forward - but heads up: it is going to take some time.

In short – just like we did for the client a year or so back when we introduced multithreaded rendering to increase client frame rates – we are going to rearchitect our server. The version of ESO in 2022 is many magnitudes larger and more complex than the ESO that launched in 2014. So, in order to give everyone a good play experience in high-intensity situations like PvP and Trials, we need to essentially rewrite some of the foundational server code to account for it. This should dramatically increase server performance, but obviously we will need to test and evaluate as we go along.

We’ve been planning this for the last quarter and we’re starting work on it right now. But, as you can imagine, changing the fundamentals of a huge live game such as ESO is a delicate and multi-stepped process, so expect this to take up much of 2022. Much of the early work is going to happen behind the scenes and we are definitely not going to rush it. A re-architecture of this magnitude will require the entire game to be re-tested and evaluated, as this particular code is the foundation on which the game is built. It will take tons of QA and testing time as well, and I’m sure that when the time comes, we’ll do as large a test as we can on the PTS.

In the meantime, we’ll consider additional ways to keep Cyrodiil and Battlegrounds interesting and exciting (for example, potentially special rulesets or weekend events) and will continue to work on bug fixes affecting combat, but we won’t be adding any new features to PvP until the work mentioned above is complete. Doing so would not only prolong the fixes we want to implement but would also exacerbate the issue of poor performance.

We completely understand the frustration many of you are feeling, especially with lack of information about our PvP plans. This was a huge decision to make and we needed to make sure we had exhausted all other possibilities before announcing this. Thanks for bearing with us, and we will give you periodic updates about the re-architecture progress over the course of the year.

Thank you. Could you schedule this as a quarterly communique? Maybe do a Q&A on stream. Could even be a Ted talk type presentation on what's actually involved. Thereby leading to more patience with the expected time frame.
And to satisfying my curiosity

H3rBie

also as a (almost) non pvp player I'm happy to read such news because reading between the lines, it means that there are no plans to let the game die in the near future.

Mayrael

Great news! It's been a long time since I've been this excited about ESO announcements. This is great news to start this year especially since it's long been known that it's the game's unoptimized code that causes redundant server loads.

Given that multithreading has been a success I'm hopeful that we'll see Cyrodiil in all its glory yet!

Lysette

Kwoung wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

Kwoung wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

Kwoung wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

Kwoung wrote: »

If this actually happens before something better to play comes out or New World pulls a "ESO" and turns their game around to be something great, that would be cool. But at this point, what reassurances do we have as players that this isn't just another in the very long line of yearly posts saying something will be done, but isn't? In just the recent years we had... Year of performance improvements... complete bust. Year of new servers... someone forgot to order them apparently.

Also, not to be confrontational, but a recent video made fun of PVPers because it is supposedly a well know fact that PVP was being worked on forever... and here we now hear "We’ve been planning this for the last quarter and we’re starting work on it right now"?

All I can say is, please deliver and provide updates on progress to the community along the way. We can be very understanding and if you hit a bump in the road, let us know, make a breakthrough, let us know. Communication is key and a very simple method of keeping you customers happy. Also, most MMO's now have a public roadmap posted in one form or another, please consider doing the same. It doesn't have to contain spoilers, just a general idea of what is being worked on and the progress of those items.

Nah, this step is admitting - we can't really achieve it with the old design, so if we want to get it done (and we do), we really need to redesign it. because the old technology was based on premises, which have changed so drastically, that it requires a redesign to address the issues. This is about what Matt's decision is based on and I think he is completely right with it.

A roadmap in regards to server redesign - nah, what would you do with it - give them a chance to be flexible and innovative, don't put them into a cage of a roadmap to achieve - this is creative work, redesigning the server architecture, just let them do it and be free to make changes or even discard steps they took, because they found a better solution meanwhile - a roadmap could hinder this creative freedom.

Umm ok, so basically you are saying "it will be different this time". I would love to believe that, but after 6+ years of "we are working on it", I am a tad jaded and feel a bit more than yearly words are required at this point. Also due to timing, this seems a lot more like damage control to a viral video than a sincere attempt at improving the players game experience, which could in fact, have been done at any time in years past.

If it took that video to spur actual action, then that is awesome, because quite honestly, I love playing PVP in this game and if it actually performed, I will probably play ESO for another decade, even though the PVE end of things has pretty much dried up for me. The yearly chapters or whatever they are called are great most of the time, but that's like a weeks worth of play and doesn't come near to filling my time in game... PVP keeps it fresh and since I am here, I still spend about $1000 in the crown store every year.

When the game was designed, they thought a lot of the computation can be outsourced to the client machines - and that is why they had good performance at start. Problem with this approach is, that it opened up the possibility to cheat quite drastically - (because it was breaking the basic rule of client-server architecture "never trust the client") - so they transferred vital steps back to the servers, which now choked on this because they were never designed to have this kind of workload. All the steps which have been done to better the situation, where just band aids and workaround basically, because they had to do it on a server-architecture, which was never designed to deal with this kind of workload.

A redesign will address this major design problem and I am quite hopeful, that this will not just benefit pvp, but as well give us better performance in other crowded areas - it is a step into the right direction, imo.

I am well aware of all of that, I just want to see them deliver on what was just posted, not have to wait to hear another excuse come Jan 2023 of why performance is still abysmal. And quite honestly, I have a side bet with a friend that them adding this next chapter, will destroy PVE completely as well, as the last 2 brought the game to it's knee's and those long term PVP issues, are full on in PVE content now.

I can just guess that you mean group-oriented PVE with this - as my pve "single-player" experience was never better than it currently is - everything group-oriented should get better with a redesign - because this is the elephant in the room, the current server-architecture isn't capable to do group-oriented content properly with good performance - simply because it was never designed to deal with this amount of computations.

Yes, you can enjoy the solo game with little to no issues. But when half your trial team gets disconnected multiple times trying to gain an achievement, or you are doing a guild event with the same outcome just because you have 12+ folks in the same area casting spells.. it is more than a tad annoying. I would say the number of complaints in guild chat about disconnects has risen, but that is not quite right, it used to never happen at all unless someones Internet glitched, now it is a common experience, as is lag, skills not firing, etc. It took PVPers years to figure it out, it will probably take PVEers the same, but in the end they will realize as well, that the game performance has taken a dive and eventually start posting and complaining about it, just like the PVPers who have dealt with it already are.

Or... they simply fix the game like right now, and the part of their customer base they seem to care about the most, is none the wiser, and the PVPers can start touting this as the best PVP game ever once again.

Oh and BTW... even solo away from anyone, I can't seem to harvest nodes reliably anymore. For some weird reason, the E key doesn't activate and stays greyed out even though my mouse is dead over the node I have harvested a thousand times before. Not happening to you?

hm, this could happen if it is the stuck in combat bug - it still exists - sometimes you count as still in combat, even all foes have been eliminated - it helped me sometimes, to just swing my weapon to get unstuck again.

RPGplayer13579

"In the meantime, we’ll consider additional ways to keep Cyrodiil and Battlegrounds interesting and exciting (for example, potentially special rulesets or weekend events) and will continue to work on bug fixes affecting combat, but we won’t be adding any new features to PvP until the work mentioned above is complete. Doing so would not only prolong the fixes we want to implement but would also exacerbate the issue of poor performance."


With this paragraph in mind here is an idea for a weekend event. A PvE only weekend for the Imperial City. The story can be that the three alliances agree to a temporary truce to get the daedra and dremora out of the capital. Similar to what happened when the alliance leaders agreed in stopping the plane meld on the island of Stirk.

James-Wayne

As good as it is I've been hearing about improvements for over 6 years now and nothing has changed.

I guess like the last 6 years I just need to sit and wait to see if you follow through with solving the issue.

I hope you do.

Xandreia_

RPGplayer13579 wrote: »

"In the meantime, we’ll consider additional ways to keep Cyrodiil and Battlegrounds interesting and exciting (for example, potentially special rulesets or weekend events) and will continue to work on bug fixes affecting combat, but we won’t be adding any new features to PvP until the work mentioned above is complete. Doing so would not only prolong the fixes we want to implement but would also exacerbate the issue of poor performance."


With this paragraph in mind here is an idea for a weekend event. A PvE only weekend for the Imperial City. The story can be that the three alliances agree to a temporary truce to get the daedra and dremora out of the capital. Similar to what happened when the alliance leaders agreed in stopping the plane meld on the island of Stirk.

Why would there be a pve only event in a pvp zone. The rest of the game is pve leave the pvp zones to be just that.... pvp

RaptorRodeoGod

Bro imagine having to recode an entire mmo ☠️😂

RPGplayer13579

Xandreia_ wrote: »

RPGplayer13579 wrote: »

" In the meantime, we’ll consider additional ways to keep Cyrodiil and Battlegrounds interesting and exciting (for example, potentially special rulesets or weekend events) and will continue to work on bug fixes affecting combat, but we won’t be adding any new features to PvP until the work mentioned above is complete. Doing so would not only prolong the fixes we want to implement but would also exacerbate the issue of poor performance."


With this paragraph in mind here is an idea for a weekend event. A PvE only weekend for the Imperial City. The story can be that the three alliances agree to a temporary truce to get the daedra and dremora out of the capital. Similar to what happened when the alliance leaders agreed in stopping the plane meld on the island of Stirk.

Why would there be a pve only event in a pvp zone. The rest of the game is pve leave the pvp zones to be just that.... pvp

Because this pvp zone has pve quests and content shoved in there for some reason. And the above quote mentions the potential of having weekend events this year. So, I wrote one that I would like.

Wolfkeks

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

In the meantime, we’ll consider additional ways to keep Cyrodiil and Battlegrounds interesting and exciting (for example, potentially special rulesets or weekend events)

Would love for double AP to return for some weekends, like when we had the Cyro tests. 😄

Or some new campaign rewards, like a mount, pet or even materials like Hajeko for the meantime. 🤔

marius_buys

Heres a tip
Remove cant mount during combat mechanic and you have literally taken a massive dent out of combat computation. Almost no one wants it, most players hate it.

Tommy_The_Gun

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

So, in order to give everyone a good play experience in high-intensity situations like PvP and Trials, we need to essentially rewrite some of the foundational server code to account for it. This should dramatically increase server performance, but obviously we will need to test and evaluate as we go along.

Am I reading this correctly ? You are finally going to nerf the "spaghetti code" & remove redundancy ?

That is wonderful news. Even if it is going to take long time. I remember the "old" days of PvP in this game (2014 - 2015). Lag free Cyrodiil. Yes. I have said that. Cyrodiil back then "just worked". You might think I am crazy, but back then you did not had to take lag into account when making a PvP build (hence why everyone is so tanky nowadays). It was awesome experience.

Bring it back.

WhiteCoatSyndrome

RPGplayer13579 wrote: »

With this paragraph in mind here is an idea for a weekend event. A PvE only weekend for the Imperial City. The story can be that the three alliances agree to a temporary truce to get the daedra and dremora out of the capital. Similar to what happened when the alliance leaders agreed in stopping the plane meld on the island of Stirk.

Voicing support for this. IC has a good questline, something like this would help more people see it.

JDredd

Thanks for letting us know. There are lot of us who only play this for PvP. Also being an important part of the whole game, this is good news that you have communicated. Happy to be playing other content while this gets fixed but please keep communicating so players don't get frustrated when no one tells anything.

Would be really nice if you can include the players when you are doing the staged tests on this. Or have some players on the your dev comms even.

Thanks

Oakenaxe

Awesome! This is what we always wanted: communication. Public acknowledgement and shared plans, so we know where you stand and where we are going. It feels good to know PvP is getting the needed attention, it has much potential.

Thank you!

TechMaybeHic

So with all the skepticism; I do wonder if this sort of rebuild will be part of moving to the new servers? Would make it more understandable that this is just getting started now. The frustration comes from hearing something similar every year with no results; then the last year pretty much all as silence after a bunch of testing.

Honesty and transparency is not something that builds trust by only occuring in a single annual letter

ajkb78

BlossomDead wrote: »

So should all PvPers cancel subs for the foreseeable next 2 years or so? This announcement tells me I shouldn't get my hopes high for an unacceptable amount of time. With the state of PvP now, it really means I'm expected to accept being unable to play for years more.

Software development is not that complicated as you make it sound. Maybe this statement would work with a clueless upper management, but certainly not with a community already waiting for years for significant fixes.

IMHO your priority should be this, and only this. Hire more people if you need to. Everything else is irrelevant.

This to me is only PR damage control.

The bottleneck likely isn't people to do the coding but the QA. One does not simply rewrite the absolute foundation of a game and expect there won't be significant issues, consequential changes etc. This will need a whole battery of tests scaling up from unit testing to mass testing on PTS, probably more than once. It has taken longer than I would like for ZoS to get to this point, but now they have I hope they take the time to implement it properly without breaking the stability of the game as a whole.

ajkb78

@ZOS_GinaBruno The announcement was very much aimed at PvP and that's clearly been the worst case for the issues you're trying to solve, but when implemented does the team expect these changes to make a noticeable improvement to laggy situations in PvE too? (Mainly trials is where it's worst.)

BlossomDead

I have forgotten to address the increasingly expensive content in the Crown Store while the game continues to under deliver massively.

Paying £600 for a mount to ride it in lag - not fun at all. On top of all the regular subs and dlc purchases. How much money do you need to make before you return that investment into quality development and adjust the prices accordingly to what it is being delivered? You have overvalued your content for a very long time now.