Refreshing Path causing terrible lag...

Rittings

Ever since High Isle, the "Refreshing Path" morph of Path of Darkness for the nightblade skill lines is causing TERRIBLE frame rate drops. PS4/PS5 servers I've seen this on, but I've a feeling it's across all servers.

I'm not sure what animation or calculation is causing the frame rates to drop to unnacceptable levels - but it's basically ostracising Nightblade healers and tanks from end game content. @ZOS_Bill can we get a fix for this please???

vivisectvib16_ESO

Seconding this @ZOS_Bill - PS5 NA. whenever I use twisting or refreshing path, framerate drops drastically.

cptscotty

Speed buff right? Try testing on a Templar and using their AOE heal that gives a speed buff as well. See if that gives you the same lag. If not, then its either the AOE-HoT or the actual Animation (which could be semi-tested with the other morph of the spell).

Also...test if you get that same lag with another weapon besides a staff. A couple of the passives have added effects for that move with destro and resto staffs.

virtus753

Not just a PS problem - experiencing it all over PC-NA. In two different groups of mine, with 10/12 different people (there are only myself and my partner in common, and neither of us is on a blade), nightblade healers and dps using this skill cause people's frames to drop, sometimes into the 20s from 60+.

Worse, it's not a steady 20-something but extremely jittery, which makes the experience terrible for people with motion sickness.

This has been going on for months. Please find a fix.

cptscotty

virtus753 wrote: »

Not just a PS problem - experiencing it all over PC-NA. In two different groups of mine, with 10/12 different people (there are only myself and my partner in common, and neither of us is on a blade), nightblade healers and dps using this skill cause people's frames to drop, sometimes into the 20s from 60+.

Worse, it's not a steady 20-something but extremely jittery, which makes the experience terrible for people with motion sickness.

This has been going on for months. Please find a fix.

Jittery? Sounds like a v-sync problem that could be fixed on your end to remove the jitter. Look up MSI Afterburner and run that with a timeline graph of your FPS and Frametime. Share the screen shot of the "jitter". Guessing it follows a digital graph pattern with the floor being close to 30fps.

Rittings

I'm finding that twisting path isn't giving the same issues... it appears to be only the refreshing morph doing this. Maybe that's pure luck, or maybe it has something to do with the heal portion of the refreshing path?? My nightblade healer and nightblade tank have now been rejected from several groups if I insist on running this ability (which is my source of major resolve, so it's kind of important to my build).

_Liz_

Can I get some clarification on this? How do you know this is the skill specifically causing lag? My group hasn’t had any issues with it. I haven’t had a single issue with either morph. The first time I’ve heard of this is when I played on EU this week. And personally have had no issues there myself either. So not really understanding.

Rittings

_Liz_ wrote: »

Can I get some clarification on this? How do you know this is the skill specifically causing lag? My group hasn’t had any issues with it. I haven’t had a single issue with either morph. The first time I’ve heard of this is when I played on EU this week. And personally have had no issues there myself either. So not really understanding.

Because we tested it? Everytime I cast the skill the frame rates dipped to below 15 for everyone in the trial... even if no other skills were present. When I removed the skill, the frame rates remained steady with no issues. Same when our nightblade healer was in vSS with us - she removed the skill after the tanks were suffering and compained... and the issue immediately stopped.

We've tested it in numerous situtations.

_Liz_

I’ve tested both morphs and haven’t seen an issue. I’ll keep testing.

cptscotty

Rittings wrote: »

_Liz_ wrote: »

Can I get some clarification on this? How do you know this is the skill specifically causing lag? My group hasn’t had any issues with it. I haven’t had a single issue with either morph. The first time I’ve heard of this is when I played on EU this week. And personally have had no issues there myself either. So not really understanding.

Because we tested it? Everytime I cast the skill the frame rates dipped to below 15 for everyone in the trial... even if no other skills were present. When I removed the skill, the frame rates remained steady with no issues. Same when our nightblade healer was in vSS with us - she removed the skill after the tanks were suffering and compained... and the issue immediately stopped.

We've tested it in numerous situtations.

sounds like you guys are using the addon to track/share each others dps for comparison.

cptscotty

Dropping below 15 fps for everyone involved points towards cpu/hdd/sdd lock ups. Usually its from writing or loading in some sort of data. Not network. Not GPU. For you all to have that same level of drop you either all have the same exact computer setup with the same background processes running (very very unlikely unless you are a professional team working in the same building for a competition) or most likely you are all capturing/reading data the same way.

<snip> my suggestion for you would be to disable all your trackers in your group...or go run a dungeon with different people and test it there with you not having any trackers or background programs (including discord).

<snip for baiting>

virtus753

cptscotty wrote: »

Rittings wrote: »

_Liz_ wrote: »

Can I get some clarification on this? How do you know this is the skill specifically causing lag? My group hasn’t had any issues with it. I haven’t had a single issue with either morph. The first time I’ve heard of this is when I played on EU this week. And personally have had no issues there myself either. So not really understanding.

Because we tested it? Everytime I cast the skill the frame rates dipped to below 15 for everyone in the trial... even if no other skills were present. When I removed the skill, the frame rates remained steady with no issues. Same when our nightblade healer was in vSS with us - she removed the skill after the tanks were suffering and compained... and the issue immediately stopped.

We've tested it in numerous situtations.

sounds like you guys are using the addon to track/share each others dps for comparison.

That poster gave their platform as PS4/PS5. How are they meant to use or disable add-ons?

Rittings

cptscotty wrote: »

Rittings wrote: »

_Liz_ wrote: »

Can I get some clarification on this? How do you know this is the skill specifically causing lag? My group hasn’t had any issues with it. I haven’t had a single issue with either morph. The first time I’ve heard of this is when I played on EU this week. And personally have had no issues there myself either. So not really understanding.

Because we tested it? Everytime I cast the skill the frame rates dipped to below 15 for everyone in the trial... even if no other skills were present. When I removed the skill, the frame rates remained steady with no issues. Same when our nightblade healer was in vSS with us - she removed the skill after the tanks were suffering and compained... and the issue immediately stopped.

We've tested it in numerous situtations.

sounds like you guys are using the addon to track/share each others dps for comparison.

I'm gonna refer you to my original post... lol. I'm on PS5... we have no add ons.

Rittings

_Liz_ wrote: »

I’ve tested both morphs and haven’t seen an issue. I’ll keep testing.

I'm also wondering if it's more prominent when both morphs are present in the group composition. So when a dps is using twisting, and then a tank or healer uses refreshing morph ?? I'll test a little more...

The first boss of Dreadsail is honestly unplayable on my nightblade tank. And we noticed the same thing on the ice dragon in Sunspire from a nightblade healer.

In fact... just going into our grouping location of Bleakrock and casting the ability appears to lock everyone up too. Even when everyone is just moving around but not casting anything themselves. It's like the healing/expedition processing is too much for the game to handle.

Rittings

I should also add that this is done in performance mode - oh and the people experiencing this are on a mixture of ps4 pro, ps4 and ps5...

Red_Feather

virtus753 wrote: »

Not just a PS problem - experiencing it all over PC-NA. In two different groups of mine, with 10/12 different people (there are only myself and my partner in common, and neither of us is on a blade), nightblade healers and dps using this skill cause people's frames to drop, sometimes into the 20s from 60+.

Worse, it's not a steady 20-something but extremely jittery, which makes the experience terrible for people with motion sickness.

This has been going on for months. Please find a fix.

Oh my god, could this be why my game seems fine, but every once in a while, my fps just plummets?

Today I was in blackwood running around. It was actually fine. I was pretty happy about that.
Then I went to Stormhaven and it seemed fine, but I'd get frame drops around the undaunted camp where players duel while they queue for BG.
I went to Cyrodiil and joined a big group and it was fine. But then I stealthed and watched enemies go by and every once in a while, my fps plummeted!
I went to Riften and it was fine, but I went up to players goofing around with skills and my fps plummeted again!

Rittings

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Bill

Please watch and understand… keep also in mind this was with hardly anyone casting abilities and not in combat…when that happens and combat begins its 3 times worse…

https://youtu.be/NPNinM-G9-0

cptscotty

Rittings wrote: »

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Bill

Please watch and understand… keep also in mind this was with hardly anyone casting abilities and not in combat…when that happens and combat begins its 3 times worse…

https://youtu.be/NPNinM-G9-0

ps5 right? What happens when you disable HDR and force your ps5 to run at a lower resolution?

Rittings

cptscotty wrote: »

ps5 right? What happens when you disable HDR and force your ps5 to run at a lower resolution?

It is ps5 and I do have hdr disabled and running performance mode here. But not only that, you can hear everyone else in the group complaining about it… and we have a mixture of ps4 and ps4 pro and ps5 players in here. It doesn’t matter who it is… refreshing path is simply a hot mess right now. It’s a completely unusable morph of a skill… rendering nightblade healing non existent and tanking lots more awkward…

Just like with the heavy attack bug, I feel ZoS are going to brush this one under the rug…

cptscotty

Rittings wrote: »

cptscotty wrote: »

ps5 right? What happens when you disable HDR and force your ps5 to run at a lower resolution?

It is ps5 and I do have hdr disabled and running performance mode here. But not only that, you can hear everyone else in the group complaining about it… and we have a mixture of ps4 and ps4 pro and ps5 players in here. It doesn’t matter who it is… refreshing path is simply a hot mess right now. It’s a completely unusable morph of a skill… rendering nightblade healing non existent and tanking lots more awkward…

Just like with the heavy attack bug, I feel ZoS are going to brush this one under the rug…

I am noticing that. Can you attempt to force the resolution down? Very few people do this so its a good chance no one in your group is doing it. If that is difficult for you to do...plug your ps5 into a 1080p computer monitor to test. Specifically testing a known 4k issue for all games and hardware concerning particle-effects/fill-rate. This would just get you to play your game smoother on console. Its a trick I do for ps4 because I cant handle any stutters what so ever.

Rittings

Sadly I don’t think it’s an issue with resolution. It appears to be a refreshing path animation conflict with expedition animation… it’s different to the twisting animation. Both look similar, but there is a Smokey animation present in refreshing g that doesn’t exist in its twisting morph. If you want to see how bad it is I should upload a video near bots…

Jaimeh

Rittings wrote: »

Sadly I don’t think it’s an issue with resolution. It appears to be a refreshing path animation conflict with expedition animation… it’s different to the twisting animation. Both look similar, but there is a Smokey animation present in refreshing g that doesn’t exist in its twisting morph. If you want to see how bad it is I should upload a video near bots…

I think it must be visual/animation-related because other visuals in the past have caused big fps drops--I remember watching a video of how a visual in Icereach dropped fps to nothing and when it was gone, or the character turned around from it, the fps would go back up. It was quite funny to watch in isolation, but during playing the fps drop was very frustrating.

Rittings

Yeah especially since path is something you want to keep a good uptime of for major resolve and the heal and expedition buffs… I don’t understand why it’s yet to be acknowledged too… probably because sweaty groups don’t allow nightblade healers or tanks in their runs and so the stream team are less likely to spot and complain about this… seems these days only those folks can inflict fixes and changes to happen.

vivisectvib16_ESO

What's interesting is that I find while it does happen sometimes with Twisting Path, it happens most often (like every single time) with Refreshing. I'm wondering if it has something to do with the heal tick being added in there?

LurgidBean

Rittings wrote: »

I don’t understand why it’s yet to be acknowledged too… probably because sweaty groups don’t allow nightblade healers or tanks in their runs and so the stream team are less likely to spot and complain about this… seems these days only those folks can inflict fixes and changes to happen.

Rittings wrote: »

But not only that, you can hear everyone else in the group complaining about it… and we have a mixture of ps4 and ps4 pro and ps5 players in here.
Just like with the heavy attack bug, I feel ZoS are going to brush this one under the rug…

I think you answered your own question. Any console specific or largely console related bugs seem mostly ignored (see the major login bug they keep reintroducing on Xbox but don't acknowledge, and the minor, but mysterious unworking emotes) because the combination of no prominent players complaining, and the fact that the console update drops 2 weeks after the "Buzz" is gone, so PC players & devs & customer service reps are all already onto the Next Thing because the new PTS is released right after.

Heck, they "forgot" to add a major hyped feature of the Chapter to both console versions (choosing your title music). I believe it is indicative of a larger issue of non-responsiveness when it comes to the split populations.

Rittings

I have to agree... I mean this bug hasn't even gotten a shred of acknowledgment from Zenimax.. no mention of it anywhere - not even an empty promise of a fix... which to be fair, still waiting on the heavy attack bug to be mentioned after they said they'd fix it in a future patch but have since long forogotten about it.

These are the kind of infuriating problems we are having as customers...

Rittings

Still broken. Even in a low pop starter zone…

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Bill can we get some acknowledgement and time frame for a fix of this morph please? I’m convinced it’s the animation causing the issue… seems to be a conflict…

https://youtu.be/kKlTq8K5lpM

Rittings

Update 35 and still zero acknowledgment from Zenimax. Tickets submitted have been totally ignored too…

Here is the current state of refreshing path….

https://youtu.be/W2rfH29y1hU

This is a prime and lasting example of negligence in maintenance of this game.

Rittings

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_RichLambert @ZOS_Bill @ZOS_MattFiror

Why am I not seeing any acknowledgement for this broken morph??? It's clearly broken - and trust me, we could easily troll the entire of the game and Cyrodiil with this morph and make it VERY well known if that's what we need to do to get acknowledgment of it being broken.

I see no mention of it in the next patch either... plenty of additions and crown store stuffs - but nothing about fixing broken aspects of the game.

xDeusEJRx

Yeah it is really bad, I get really terrible fps drop too and it's only been using this morph

festegios

Also to confirm. Still an issue on ps5 eu. It lags the entire group. Not just the person using the skill