PVP Lag and ISP service; Server Updates

tobov119

I am on a rural area, WAN, with a static IP, typical down/up speeds at 6pm: 110mbs down/25mbs up, 21ms latency, no packet loss. My Xbox X is wirelessly connected to a 6 month old Linksys router. Speed tests at my Xbox are 60ishmbs down/15-20mbs up, 27-40ms latency, no packet loss. These are averages from multiple tests run in a row. I have my Xbox set in the DMZ on my router. My NAT is open. My Xbox is connected to a 52 inch gaming HDR TV on Gaming Mode. I have the performance option setting turned on in the options menu. Hard wire from router to Xbox is not an option but to test this possibility, I ran a hard wire from my router 25 feet to my Xbox and it made ZERO difference.

I find that most of the time, all of my toons are completely unplayable in Cyrodiil PVP. From between 5pm to 10pm, CST, it is laughable. Jabs on Templar does not fire, or when is does fire, no damage is registered, or even worse, it fires 2 seconds after it was cast. Both my stam and mag Templars are basically unplayable at peak times. Getting on a horse for any toon varies from taking 1 second to 4 or more seconds. Run to a keep door, hit A to go in door, and my toon stands there for 4 seconds before anything happens. I cannot use Dizzy Swing/Wrecking Blow two hand skill on a Stam Sorc. Forget trying to heavy attack. None of those fire. Try getting off a Crystal Weapon and a light attack at 6pm CST using my specs. How come my attack does not fire? Trying to drink a pot, well sometimes that doesn't happen.

I researched combat mechanics. There is supposed to be a 1 second delay between skills. So why is there a 2 to 4 second delay sometimes? Why does a skill completely not fire at all? If there is a 1 second delay between skills, then how does a player in 1v1 combat fire one light attack, one skill, an Ultimate, a heavy attack, another skill, and three procs, in less than one second, at the same time that my toon is taking 2 or more seconds for a skill to fire? How does that happen? How does my toon with 29k resistances with 31.5k health die in less than one second and how is it possible that the player that killed me fire off all that in less than 1 second? I don't even have time to hold block or cast a shield or do anything. The time to kill in this game is beyond ridiculous. And I'm not even talking about a whatever the lastest ganker meta build coming out of stealth and killing me.

We now have players who are running around with 20+ people attacking them and they are not only surviving, but getting procs off and killing people while doing it. I can't tell you how many times that I have clearly been well out of range of a Dark Convergence going off, but I still get pulled. Or how about drinking an Immovable pot and 3 seconds later getting pulled into a Dark Convergence. What happened to CC immunity? Don't roll dodge, you just get jerked right back right? That's funny. Stand and hold block right? Someone gets killed, and the 6 other procs fire off and kill me anyway. As a result, my play style has mostly changed to being a ranged player now. Forget stamina and melee toons, They are unplayable.

[snip]

I watch Youtube videos of some popular players and see them casting more than one skill in less than 1 second all the time. I privately message them and ask them about their connection and they are on a fiber optic ISP. Go figure. It must be nice to play this game in PVP and your game work. I painstakingly copied one of those popular Youtuber builds, down to every last detail. I watch them get in 1v2 fights in the video and kill both players in 10 seconds. I watch them rip around and run around and jump up and down and dodge roll and cast heals and cast skills. Then I go and play and my play experience is nothing like theirs, even though I practiced combos for over a week on test dummies. So this begs the question: Is the fix to PVP lag is that everyone needs to be on an equal level ISP service?

To deal with the lag, several months ago, I built a MagDK heavy attack build and did fairly well as I placed 13th overall in the February Grey Host campaign on the NA server. However, heavy attacks, according to ZOS, take 2.25 seconds to complete, right? Most of the time, heavy attacks on that build at peak time take 3 or more seconds to complete. After ZOS nerfed the Sergeant's Mail set last update, the heavy attack build that I used is mostly useless now. I pull my trigger and hold for a heavy attack and it goes off for 3 to 4 seconds, on a skill that is supposed to complete in 2.25 seconds, and of course, that proc adding 3136 weapon and spell damage to my heavy attack, it does not work. I do 40% less damage with that build than I was doing back in February, because of that change. And it wasn't like I was killing people in 2 seconds. So why did ZOS change that set, a set that has been in the game for years now? Hey ZOS, your change does not work. Further, there is exactly ZERO explanation of how that proc is actually supposed to work. At what point is the 3136 weapon and spell damage increase supposed to proc? How does it proc? How does that affect the damage of the heavy attack? Does that 3136 damage increase also affect skills that active on the player you are attacking?

I had hoped that the High Isle release, and supposed server update, that was suppoed to take place on console would fix the lag issues that ZOS claims to fix, however, I played last night, and I logged out in frustration because once again, I am in 1v1 combat and my skills DO NOT FIRE, so I get killed in 2 seconds or less, and then some punk T-Bags me cause he thinks he just wiped me when the truth is I couldn't even pull block or fire a skill or do anything, and he killed me in 2 seconds with 31.5k health, fully buffed at the time of the attack with over 31k resistances. Yeah, that is a real fun playing experience. I feel like I have done everything that I can do on my end to make my playing experience optimal. So what is ZOS going to do about this?

[edited for bashing]

Amottica

As you seem to acknowledge, some people are on better connections. More than just their connections, there may also be switches in the rural area that impede your progress in the game. In other words, if everyone else is not having such noteworthy issues yet you are then the problem is closer to home. Unfortunatly.

I state this as I also do not know where the measurements noted at the start of your post are taken from being from the game server or some local server via a speed test site.

Hopefully, Zenimax can give you some suggestions to try that may improve your experience. Good luck.

Sluggy

There comes a point where all other things being equal it will really just come down to communication time between clients and server. At the end of the day all networked games are limited by the rules of the physical universe we live in and there really isn't much anyone can do about it. For this reason you really shouldn't ever take online games as any kind of real competitive environment and especially not ones like ESO that notoriously have issues when even the slightest hiccup in networking can break things. Your best bet is to continue to refine your build around how your internet is allowing you to perform and then... just take a big breath and relax. Just revel in the chaos and have a laugh.

That being said it does sound like you've got some really nasty lag going on. I haven't been on in a while but back when I played this sort of thing was all of the time and it boiled down to the server itself bogging down horrendously. I've heard it's massively improved since then for PC NA but if you are on any other server then this is likely the core source of your problem. Last time I played it was absolutely impossible to function most hours of most days and this was entirely due to the server bogging down.

(Also, you have a pretty solid network but something to keep in mind are that most 'speeds' advertised by ISPs are just a measure of bandwidth and not ping)

React

Regardless of your connection, you're playing on the old server hardware.

Zenimax recentley replaced the server hardware for PC NA, and the performance is night and day in comparison to what it used to be. Before, PC NA would have 3-5 second skill delay in grayhost from like noon eastern until 3AM eastern. Now, you can play during prime time with little lag whatsoever until the ball groups log on.

It is a result of poor coding and decade old server hardware. Unfortunatley xbox (and every other server aside from PC NA) is still on the old hardware, and will still have this severe lag. No amount of download speed is going to help you - when I was on Xbox, I had a wired gigabyte up and down connection and still had the same delay.

Aces-High-82

A wireless connection with zero packet loss oO How did you monitored this with eso running on a Xbox?
I played on PS4 (wired) in the past and beside the obvious hardware driven issues there were clearly other issues regarding the client/server communication. I switched to PC gaming last year and ran some test if wireless could be an option. Now that I can run a detailed connectivity graph on every game a wireless connection is always experiencing some packet loss. In my case it can be up to 13% depending on interfering signals in proximity.

tobov119

Aces-High-82 wrote: »

A wireless connection with zero packet loss oO How did you monitored this with eso running on a Xbox?
I played on PS4 (wired) in the past and beside the obvious hardware driven issues there were clearly other issues regarding the client/server communication. I switched to PC gaming last year and ran some test if wireless could be an option. Now that I can run a detailed connectivity graph on every game a wireless connection is always experiencing some packet loss. In my case it can be up to 13% depending on interfering signals in proximity.

I used the Xbox connection tests in the Settings app on Xbox. I was not able to run tests while game was running. I think it is possible but I haven't tried yet. From my home computer on the same connection, I pinged Google and found that my connection went through 8 nodes. I then also ran a speed test at my router and compared the two results. When running just straight tests, the tests haven't reported any packet loss, but I guess that might be different with the game actually running. Ultimately, I just want to play and have fun but constantly getting killed in 1 to 1.5 seconds and me not even knowing I am being attacked and instantly dying and then looking at the kill recap and seeing numerous skills that fired off on me is making the game less than enjoyable, and my favorite part of the game is the PVP side of the game.

tobov119

Sluggy wrote: »

There comes a point where all other things being equal it will really just come down to communication time between clients and server. At the end of the day all networked games are limited by the rules of the physical universe we live in and there really isn't much anyone can do about it. For this reason you really shouldn't ever take online games as any kind of real competitive environment and especially not ones like ESO that notoriously have issues when even the slightest hiccup in networking can break things. Your best bet is to continue to refine your build around how your internet is allowing you to perform and then... just take a big breath and relax. Just revel in the chaos and have a laugh.

That being said it does sound like you've got some really nasty lag going on. I haven't been on in a while but back when I played this sort of thing was all of the time and it boiled down to the server itself bogging down horrendously. I've heard it's massively improved since then for PC NA but if you are on any other server then this is likely the core source of your problem. Last time I played it was absolutely impossible to function most hours of most days and this was entirely due to the server bogging down.

(Also, you have a pretty solid network but something to keep in mind are that most 'speeds' advertised by ISPs are just a measure of bandwidth and not ping)

Yep, I just want to have a few laughs and try not to take it to seriously. When I have time sometimes to log in early in the day (CST Time Zone) it does perform better, just wanted to compare others Xbox setups to mine and see if anyone is having the same experiences. Speed tsts and ping times were done with two methods: 1) Speed test and ping direct from router. 2) Speed test and ping from the test within the Xbox settings menu. I also did a ping to Google from my home computer on the same connection and the ping went through 8 nodes. Not sure if that is normal or not.

Sluggy

tobov119 wrote: »

Sluggy wrote: »

There comes a point where all other things being equal it will really just come down to communication time between clients and server. At the end of the day all networked games are limited by the rules of the physical universe we live in and there really isn't much anyone can do about it. For this reason you really shouldn't ever take online games as any kind of real competitive environment and especially not ones like ESO that notoriously have issues when even the slightest hiccup in networking can break things. Your best bet is to continue to refine your build around how your internet is allowing you to perform and then... just take a big breath and relax. Just revel in the chaos and have a laugh.

That being said it does sound like you've got some really nasty lag going on. I haven't been on in a while but back when I played this sort of thing was all of the time and it boiled down to the server itself bogging down horrendously. I've heard it's massively improved since then for PC NA but if you are on any other server then this is likely the core source of your problem. Last time I played it was absolutely impossible to function most hours of most days and this was entirely due to the server bogging down.

(Also, you have a pretty solid network but something to keep in mind are that most 'speeds' advertised by ISPs are just a measure of bandwidth and not ping)

Yep, I just want to have a few laughs and try not to take it to seriously. When I have time sometimes to log in early in the day (CST Time Zone) it does perform better, just wanted to compare others Xbox setups to mine and see if anyone is having the same experiences. Speed tsts and ping times were done with two methods: 1) Speed test and ping direct from router. 2) Speed test and ping from the test within the Xbox settings menu. I also did a ping to Google from my home computer on the same connection and the ping went through 8 nodes. Not sure if that is normal or not.

Well your answer is right there: You are on Xbox. As someone above mentioned, they have not upgraded server hardware for anything except the NA PC servers. There is nothing you can do on your end to solve this issue. It's just the server becoming so overloaded that it cannot handle all of the incoming requests. First it starts to bog down and handle them at longer and longer intervals. Then it hits a wall where it becomes impossible to ever catch up and it is forced to dump some incoming commands. This is more-or-less random so there is nothing you can do to prepare or play around this limitation.

ShadowProc

React wrote: »

Regardless of your connection, you're playing on the old server hardware.

Zenimax recentley replaced the server hardware for PC NA, and the performance is night and day in comparison to what it used to be. Before, PC NA would have 3-5 second skill delay in grayhost from like noon eastern until 3AM eastern. Now, you can play during prime time with little lag whatsoever until the ball groups log on.

It is a result of poor coding and decade old server hardware. Unfortunatley xbox (and every other server aside from PC NA) is still on the old hardware, and will still have this severe lag. No amount of download speed is going to help you - when I was on Xbox, I had a wired gigabyte up and down connection and still had the same delay.

So true. It truly is amazing to play before the ball groups get on. Most of them play when in not group too. I know they know the difference too. Some blatantly don’t care. Even joke about it.

I was watching a DC guild leader stream not to be confused with a popular rum, the other night and he was actually joking about tanking performance openly with his raid.

I just dont get it. Sorry to derail.

Master_Kas

ZOS don't care about XBOX/PS/PCEU. We're second class citizens.

Only PCNA matters sadly. The sooner you accept that fact the better.

Thecompton73

Your connection to the ZOS servers are a much bigger part of success in PvP than most people realize. I have played an insane amount of hours in Cyrodiil and very very rarely have gotten what I like to call a "magic connection" where my experience is like that of the streamers you talk about. When I get that connection there is a huge difference in how fights play out and I can beat players that typically wipe the floor with me or successfully 1vX, which I'm typically not very good at.
Way way back in the first couple of years the game was out when things got hectic in PvP everything would slow down on screen to make sure animations matched on each end as the servers swapped info back and forth. If you saw me on your screen and hit me with a move but my client was 3/4 of a second behind yours the server would delay the application of the damage until I had seen the animation. But this too often made the combat look and feel sluggish. As a fix they seemed to just do away with the need for the server to wait for the slower client to receive the info and play out the animations. If the person with the better connection landed a blow it registered the damage instantly on the server and the person on the other end received the damage without the server delaying the application to make sure they saw the animation play out. The result is combat looks much smoother at the expense of people getting killed from abilities they never saw animations for on their screen. Sometimes it's so bad you'll run around for as many as 2-3 seconds unable to cast anything before the server updates your client to tell you "Oh you can't cast anything because you've been dead this whole time" and then you fall over.

Cuddlypuff

Thecompton73 wrote: »

Your connection to the ZOS servers are a much bigger part of success in PvP than most people realize. I have played an insane amount of hours in Cyrodiil and very very rarely have gotten what I like to call a "magic connection" where my experience is like that of the streamers you talk about. When I get that connection there is a huge difference in how fights play out and I can beat players that typically wipe the floor with me or successfully 1vX, which I'm typically not very good at.
Way way back in the first couple of years the game was out when things got hectic in PvP everything would slow down on screen to make sure animations matched on each end as the servers swapped info back and forth. If you saw me on your screen and hit me with a move but my client was 3/4 of a second behind yours the server would delay the application of the damage until I had seen the animation. But this too often made the combat look and feel sluggish. As a fix they seemed to just do away with the need for the server to wait for the slower client to receive the info and play out the animations. If the person with the better connection landed a blow it registered the damage instantly on the server and the person on the other end received the damage without the server delaying the application to make sure they saw the animation play out. The result is combat looks much smoother at the expense of people getting killed from abilities they never saw animations for on their screen. Sometimes it's so bad you'll run around for as many as 2-3 seconds unable to cast anything before the server updates your client to tell you "Oh you can't cast anything because you've been dead this whole time" and then you fall over.

I can't say if I'd do much better with better ping / fps but after the PC-NA hardware refresh, it is definitely possible to play the most lag sensitive bombing builds with terrible connections. I'm playing from Australia with minimum 250 ping (according to the ingame widget) and <20 fps in big fights due to regression in the U33 patch. Even in PVE on this connection I can parse near the theoretical max with 0.95+ la/s.

That being said there are real server lag issues in PVP, notably skills not casting and CC/pull delay - especially when one or more ball groups are operating nearby. I'm contemplating starting a megathread where we can all post timestamps and locations where Cyrodiil lags despite being 1/2 bars across the factions, so the devs can review server logs and identify the bottleneck.