large groups able to force opponents off map in Cyrodiil. (Due to server message rate limit maybe?)

Iriidius

why is this in general eso discussion and not in alliance war category?

hrothbern

p00tx wrote: »

That used to happen to me on Xbox when the keeps or gates would change appearance due to taking dmg or being repaired during prime time. It would mass DC everyone pretty reliably, every time. Also the onset of weather, like snow, rain or fog in Cyrodil would cause massive lag and FPS drops, making hard to even move.

Would be nice when we could switch off weather.
Not only in Cyro.

BXR_Lonestar

Holycannoli wrote: »

It's a big problem. Any large fight with a ball group on Grey Host PC-NA and you're liable to lose connection.

Its not just Greyhost. In Black Reach, any time you have 3 large armies from each of the factions fighting in the same area, it seems to kick a bunch of people (from all sides, except yellow oddly enough).

OBJnoob

Jaraal wrote: »

OBJnoob wrote: »

Actually I would think oakensoul makes for less calculations not more. Its not like you can't get these buffs elsewhere. Having them constantly is probably simpler than having them for 20 seconds and then having to recast.

Recasting a skill is one calculation. But having to calculate 17 different modifiers per tick of incoming and outgoing damage and healing is a lot of calculations. And I guarantee you nobody in Cyro that doesn't run Oakensoul has 17 different buffs on them at once, unless they are in an organized group.

It'd be nice to have a dev answer that because honestly I just don't know how much needs to be calculated every time and how much can maybe just be saved to the template of your character and reused over and over. Like I have 10 attribute points into health... Does the server calculate that every time I get hit? Or is it just somehow understood on a more permanent basis like when I log in for the first time every day and surprise surprise my characters are all there right where I left them.

I still think its gotta be simpler to have 17 buffs with permanent uptime than 10 coming and going all the time. And I wouldn't be so sure that a non oakensoul solo build can't get very close to that number.

My warden for instance... Off the top of my head... Major brutality, major savagery, minor berserk, major expedition, minor protection, major resolve, minor resolve, minor toughness, major mending, minor lifesteal or whatever, all three major RSS restore buffs from drinking tripots. I'm not currently using it but it wouldn't at all be weird for my warden to have major and minor heroism or major evasion.

And all of these are coming and going constantly by the activation of skills, passives, gear, and potions. Probably easier to just process one single package of predetermined buffs called oakensoul and go from there. Don't you think they have a way to do that? I'd think they'd have to.

OBJnoob

TLDR version: oakensoul is not a proc set. It just is.

SaffronCitrusflower

Adernath wrote: »

doabhi wrote: »

Adernath wrote: »

It looks like your graphical settings are too high. Try starting your way up from minimal settings to see if that improves the situation.

not graphical, settings are on potato and i'm using FSR, framerate is relativly decent, By slow motion i should probably clarify they were crawling and across the area real slow and rubberbanding,

Ping however in these situations jumps from the 'Normal' (by eso standards) to being above 300 or "999+" before it kicks you off. I suspect this is server side problems.

for the record, i'm on 1Gb Cable internet, so it's not like i'm out in the stix on a dusty old DSL line from 1998

In the past I had many dc-s I ran on an older PC with low memory. That sort of problem almost vanished with a hardware upgrade from my side. However I still experience lag spikes during prime time. My dc-s nowadays come mostly when I try to port to a very contested keep.

My personal guess is that the server start kicking those people on PCs which can't keep up. But honestly I don't know the precise reason either, sorry. Just guessing.

It's not a personal hardware issue except in the rarest of cases. It's almost exclusively on the ZOS server end as has been the issue for more than 5 years now, with varying degrees of intensity.

The population cap in cyro used to be 250-400 per faction. Now it's clear down around 75/faction, and that change alone causes all kinds of problems in cyrodiil even if you don't still get kicked during the bigger fights.

Getting kicked from server is almost always an issue on the ZOS server end. The same thing happens during final boss fights in trials and other end game activities when many players with high APM's are running content.

doabhi

Someone suggested to me was to look down at the floor when approaching large groups and give the client time to slowly load everything in before engaging, this somewhat helped, a bit maybe (i'll keep trying it), but this honestly isn't always possible so it's not really a fix.

It is however, a highlight on a problem with the message rate limitation server side to "Prevent spam" the only problem is, everything your client sends from movements to abilities as well as just gestures/emotes counts as a message, and that rate limit is very easy to hit in busy areas.

This actually makes perfect sense, Unrelated to this issue I have on a number of occasions received a "you're sending too many messages" alert when i've actually in reality be doing very little in game or simply moving about town. which leads me to believe whoever set that limit or recently changed it didn't account for this or just can't do math very well (Sorry devs ) . I think the limit needs looking in to and either increasing to something sane that takes large population areas in to consideration, or removing entirely since it doesn't really do much for the game during these sorts of easily found situations

doabhi

Iriidius wrote: »

why is this in general eso discussion and not in alliance war category?

because while the problem is most prevalent in PVP due to the larger population and frequency of large groups, the issue itself is not exclusive to PVP and can happen in PVE too. A moderator is welcome to disagree and move the topic where they want to however.

ZOS_Hadeostry

Greetings,

After further review we have decided to move this thread to a category we think is more appropriate for this topic.

Thank you for your understanding

doabhi

Honestly to me the logical solution to this problem overall would be a proper divide between PVE and PVP. By that i mean either heavily limiting what sets are allowed/functional in PVP zones, or removing them entirely and replacing it with a PVP specific build system based on your invested time in that part of the game with the sets being tailored to it.

What isn't working for the game is trying to balance both things as a single entity, we end up with things getting nerfed or buffed to better favor one over the other and the end result is the complete mess we have now; server overloaded by set procs going off for everyone all at once, the message rate limit being hit by all that new information appearing all in one go on top of the buffs/debuffs applied/expired in a constant stream and of course most annoying are the tank metas which while exceptionally useful in PVE for hard mode content are totally inappropriate for a PVP setting because they legitimately create god-mode players.

Paske

PCEU - Grey Host

My PVP guild calls them "Special groups".

All of a sudden you slow down to a crawl. And its always when you encounter certain enemies.

Mind you its not FPS. My FPS is 60+ , but character simply moves super slowly.

They were reported many times. Nothing happens.

Jaraal

Paske wrote: »

PCEU - Grey Host

My PVP guild calls them "Special groups".

All of a sudden you slow down to a crawl. And its always when you encounter certain enemies.

Mind you its not FPS. My FPS is 60+ , but character simply moves super slowly.

They were reported many times. Nothing happens.

Lag switching is not an uncommon strategy with organized groups. And yes, you can tell by the way the lag behaves which groups are nearby.

doabhi

Paske wrote: »

PCEU - Grey Host

My PVP guild calls them "Special groups".

All of a sudden you slow down to a crawl. And its always when you encounter certain enemies.

Mind you its not FPS. My FPS is 60+ , but character simply moves super slowly.

They were reported many times. Nothing happens.

Pretty sure i've witnessed the same thing on NA - Greyhost too. I'd be tempted to call it cheating, but it's really exploiting a weakness in the way the game was designed and it's super annoying when it happens.

doabhi

Sad to see the last 'Patch update' didn't include a fix for this issue.

doabhi

Multi-threaded rendering may be a factor in this problem, I have tried a suggestion by a guild member to turn it off, and i have seen disconnects like this far less or in some runs none at all than with it on. of course my frame-rate has taken a hit, but at least the brawl slideshow remains a slideshow and not a freezeframe to login screen. i don't know if there's a coincidence that maybe the devs tweaked something server side? but this is worth testing if anyone else is having the same issues.

Dr_Con

I play EP, I've been noticing the same group of DC who heal stack like crazy then and burst people down. Usually not an issue, however after I'm pulled in from an aoe pull like Dark Convergence I'm frozen for what feels like a full two seconds despite using break free with adequate stam, roll dodging, etc. They don't get me as often as they should because I expect it to happen, but it's as if they stack their heals to invincibility and once they're fully stacked they'll attack (they seem to ignore people otherwise).

This really needs to be looked into as there's no way these groups don't know what they're doing to cause it, it's part of what makes me disengage from them rather than attempt a counter.

The times I get kicked are when I get close to a keep that has at least 1 ball group defending it, usually at Alessia or Challman. We can blame it on the pug zergs ofc, but i suspect a lot of status effects, buffs, debuffs, heals, etc. are the culprit.

OBJnoob

Sorry late to the thread maybe someone would be kind enough to summarize for me?

Wondering what cause there is to believe anyone is doing this on purpose. Hasn't lag and kicks (sometimes worse sometimes better,) been a problem for years? And isn't it just a performance issue?

doabhi

OBJnoob wrote: »

Sorry late to the thread maybe someone would be kind enough to summarize for me?

Wondering what cause there is to believe anyone is doing this on purpose. Hasn't lag and kicks (sometimes worse sometimes better,) been a problem for years? And isn't it just a performance issue?

TL;DR recently, it's been happening a lot that approaching large groups of players will result in some (not all) players getting automatically kicked to a login screen with an 'Unknown error occured' message. It's reproducible to a point that it could lean in to 'exploit' territory if a large enough group triggers it on purpose.

So in summery no not blaming people, there might be an element of 'we know doing this can have this effect' but more of a huge "Hey there's this glaring flaw in the game that if abused can lead to a strategic advantage" type deal, but it's more the fault of the game/net code than the playerbase at large. It's not really anybodies fault since it can and does happen to anyone on any faction, but some concerning patterns emerged that might loosely suggest it can be/is being abused in some rare cases, but on a whole mostly just a coincidence because the trigger for it happens to be a major play mechanic of Greyhost in general.

Jaraal

OBJnoob wrote: »

Sorry late to the thread maybe someone would be kind enough to summarize for me?

Wondering what cause there is to believe anyone is doing this on purpose. Hasn't lag and kicks (sometimes worse sometimes better,) been a problem for years? And isn't it just a performance issue?

It is discussed among the perpetrators on Discord and in group chat. Screenshots and videos exist.

OBJnoob

Okay thanks for the info you two. I'm still a little skeptical since I havent seen the videos myself. As the first person said, it seems the trigger is something that has always been a main mechanic of the game itself-- grouping, stacking heals, and just doing a lot of crap with a lot of effects in a small area.

I'm surprised videos exist... Because I'd think it would be an unprovable and unpunishable offense... Except for if someone was dumb enough to put it in writing. In which case... Ban them of course.

Soraka

I used to have this issue until I set a static IP and port forwarding.

FannyWarden

Zyva wrote: »

People need to distinguish what they mean by "ballgroup". To me, a ballgroup is a coordinated group of 12 in voice coms.

Zergs, however, is multiple groups, not always IN a group, and usually not in voice comms (anywhere from 20-40 people usually), and just group together for ease of pvp. And Faction stacking, is when the majority of a faction descend into one area, Usually to defend a key keep, take a scroll/ stomp on Hammer.

From my experience, it is almost ALWAYS when the hammer is in play and factions stack, that people crash. There wont even be ball groups there, and people start crashing. You try to run to a keep where there is a faction stack fight, and you will pass other people standing still mid-stride who crashed trying to get there. Or you will try to port to a keep about to be flagged by multiple zergs, and you will crash on port.

It is not just when its enemies, either. If your own faction is zerging or stacking, you can crash. Let alone when two factions worth of stacking/zerging is happening and fighting each other.

I would not be surprised at all if siege also plays a factor. When a keep has a dozen of three factions worth of siege, or max siege from two factions.

One thing I can say for certain, is I have never crashed in an open field, even when three ball groups were present.

I've crashed in open field, but it is certainly not as often as within or approaching keeps. As for stuck in combat, I get that alot regardless of who I fight, but nearly 100% when I fight ball groups.

It's not just the amount of players. Ball groups use automation to help them coordinate their activities. The automation basically tells them the paths to run, what abilities to cast and when, etc. If you are not sure how beneficial this automation they use is, you can check for yourself. Download RdK. Many use that addon, others use a "private' version of that (there are other threads on this topic). Everyone has access to these addons, but most do not use all of the features or rely on the addons the way ball groups do. I would suspect that addons like these, used by ball groups, are behind much of the issues we are complaining about in this and many other threads.

The performance impact and the play style of ball groups is what has driven many players away from Cyrodiil. Unless you like chasing unkillable 12 man groups in circles around keeps all night, many have opted out for more enjoyable gaming experiences.