Do you think Cyrodiil will ever be lag/delay free?

Nightwiish

As the 10th year anniversary of ESO is upon us, I am reminded of the fact that after 10 years, the performance in Cyrodiil is still not lag/delay free. What are your thoughts on why this is?

React

Other (please explain)

Kind of a poorly written poll, as all of these are probably true.

The hardware gave us the most lag free experience I've ever had on eso, but it didn't last very long. This is either due to them reallocating resources away from cyrodiil, or because of the unoptimized code hampering the servers. So it is both possible that new/additional hardware or server resources allocated to cyrodiil could fix the problem, but also that a rewrite of the code could. They were supposed to be rewriting the code over the past two years, but after leading us along all that time their most recent update was that they'd made "no significant progress and had no eta for the future of the project", or something to that effect.

HOT stacking/ball group behavior in general undeniably causes performance issues. As soon as these groups are present and in combat, the campaign becomes measurably more laggy. When you're nearby these groups, you often encounter delays with abilities, spikes in ping, frame loss, etc.

Finally, it is almost certain we will never have a lag free cyrodiil. I think that when they conceded defeat with the code rewrite project, they more or less confirmed this.

The best I think we can hope for is that the Q4 pvp update will give us a meaningful new pvp system that will have measures in place to avoid some of the things that we know cause problems in cyrodiil, such as 12 man group sizes + destructible structures + objective systems that encourage everybody to stack in the same spots.

Turtle_Bot

Other (please explain)

React pretty much covered it.

It's a combination of everything listed as well as probably a few other things not listed that is causing so much lag in cyro, but considering the delay (or effective cancelation of the code rewrite), it also looks like that outside of priorities at a board level completely shifting to be willing to spend the massive amounts of money/time/resources required to implement the required fixes (dedicated hardware, code rewrite from the ground up, limits on stacking same abilities/effects, etc), it's not going to be fixed.

BenTSG

I believe it would be possible to fix Cyro, giving it more resources, optimzation, hell maybe even a weekly refresh to clear out the server cache or something, I don't know, but ZoS is just not putting in the effort to do it while playing it off like they are.

As for this new PvP thing coming this year, I'm skeptical about what it could be, and how it will perform in both population and actual performance

colossalvoids

It's a combination, also one affecting the other like they've freshen up hardware part but did not allocated enough resources it seems or optimisation isn't good enough currently for the hardware part to carry spaghetti going in pipes back and forth.

Heals_With_Orbs

I think its a combination of factors

What I would like more than anything, is the complete truth and transparency from ZOS no matter how painful that is.

One of the most frustrating things for anyone is not knowing why things are like they are, because then you get ideas, theories etc.

We got an explanation why housing slots are capped because it affects performance, ok great, the honesty is appreciated.

People can deal with honesty and an explaination over trying to make guesses.

Having said that I think ball groups created performance drops and HOT stacking. When these groups appear the performance suffers, and you can tell one is nearby before youve even seen it.

It really is not acceptable to allow this kind of playstyle if it compromises other players gaming experiences, and how much longer must the community keep saying this?

Its not the Elder Balls Online, its the Elder Scrolls Online.

KlauthWarthog

Answering the question in the title, no, I do not think Cyrodiil will ever be lag/delay free.
The actual issue for me is not that the game lags, but that the core combat mechanics flat out stop working when it does.
If an online game is lagging, I expect any actions that I take to have a delay before they actually happen. This is a sane online service response to lag.
But in this game here, if it is lagging, I can issue a command to swap weapon bars, and have it just... not happen. Ever. I can issue a command to break free from hard CC, and watch it get blissfully ignored by the server.
That is the big problem I have with this game. It is extremely fragile. If things move out of the expected lab parameters, it seizes up and dies.

Soraka

Main issue is Software/coding related (unoptimized, subpar code, etc.)

KlauthWarthog wrote: »

Answering the question in the title, no, I do not think Cyrodiil will ever be lag/delay free.
The actual issue for me is not that the game lags, but that the core combat mechanics flat out stop working when it does.
If an online game is lagging, I expect any actions that I take to have a delay before they actually happen. This is a sane online service response to lag.
But in this game here, if it is lagging, I can issue a command to swap weapon bars, and have it just... not happen. Ever. I can issue a command to break free from hard CC, and watch it get blissfully ignored by the server.
That is the big problem I have with this game. It is extremely fragile. If things move out of the expected lab parameters, it seizes up and dies.

The doors that just won't open while you die a sad death scrabbling to get in is my biggest pet peeve 😂

reazea

Other (please explain)

ZOS used to do just fine keeping cyrodiil running well and with population caps more than triple what they are today. They could do it again if they wanted to.

I'm sure they'd have to implement a number of different methods to restore cyrodiil to it's former glory, but it's indisputable that if they could do it before that they could do it again if they tried. Instead they only reduce cyrodiil server resources and lower the population caps.

silky_soft

Other (please explain)

Need some whales to come play pvp instead of playing housing simulator. Only then will zos give a thought to pvp.

Like what from crown store could you buy with real money for pvp? Skins for seige? You can't customise keeps.

GooGa592

Other (please explain)

reazea wrote: »

ZOS used to do just fine keeping cyrodiil running well and with population caps more than triple what they are today. They could do it again if they wanted to.

I'm sure they'd have to implement a number of different methods to restore cyrodiil to it's former glory, but it's indisputable that if they could do it before that they could do it again if they tried. Instead they only reduce cyrodiil server resources and lower the population caps.

So much this^

ZOS could make it work like it used to again if they tried. Everything else is just an excuse.

Caecus0

Main issue is Software/coding related (unoptimized, subpar code, etc.)

I wish there was a "all of the above" button. Because all of them to one extent or another are true.

I am fairly certain the hardware is no longer the biggest problem. For a little bit after the hardware upgrade, Cyro ran FINE. I'm talking the best in years. Pros were excited and coming back. Then after about a week or so, they performed "maintenance" on it and it was suddenly laggy again. Perhaps not as bad as it was before the upgrade, but certainly worse than it was right after the upgrade.

This implies that ZoS is very much capable of fixing it if they really wanted to, but probably not with the way their team is currently being run. I don't know what is going on behind the scenes, but is very telling when the game literally ends up running worse after they performed "maintenance."

notyuu

Other (please explain)

The lag is caused by hardware limitations, it's easily resolved by dedicating more if the servers resources to it (which they did a couple of years back during the PvP event, at the cost of trials) or by aquring more hardware, the entire reason they do not do this is quite simple (and more than a little disheartening), the PvP poptulation is not large and/or profitable enough to justify such costs on ZoS's end of things.

SkaraMinoc

It is simply not possible to have a Cyrodiil that is lag/delay free

No game company has solved this n² problem, excluding player culling. (e.g. GW2)

Overamera

Other (please explain)

Would be nice if they updated the hardware more frequently as it was lag free until they started doing patches

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

Other (please explain)

Overamera wrote: »

Would be nice if they updated the hardware more frequently as it was lag free until they started doing patches

It took them 2 years to order the parts for a new server for EU, I'm not sure how frequently they can do hardware updates with whatever supplier they are using

As for the lag, it started when they did the lighting patch which introduced server side anti bot checking etc because players were exploiting, using cheat engine etc, it got worse and worse as more and more was added to the check and on top of this all the proc gear/buffs / changes to healing compounded these issues.

Its a shame because back at launch they had some really fun skills and interactions which they removed mainly due to the lag. (reflect tennis, dynamic ulti, wings, blinding flashes and most of all softcaps)

JustLovely

Other (please explain)

notyuu wrote: »

The lag is caused by hardware limitations, it's easily resolved by dedicating more if the servers resources to it (which they did a couple of years back during the PvP event, at the cost of trials) or by aquring more hardware, the entire reason they do not do this is quite simple (and more than a little disheartening), the PvP poptulation is not large and/or profitable enough to justify such costs on ZoS's end of things.

I agree with everything you said up until the "pvp population is not large and/or profitiable..."

The PvP population used to be exponentially larger than it is now. ZOS ran them off with poor performance and radically lowering the population caps. My friends list is now 1/10 of what it used to be because almost everyone left due to lack of PvP support from ZOS. It's also not at all accurate the PvP players don't spend major bank on the game. Every PvP player I know spend, per capita, WAY more on the game than the average PvE player. PvP is all the PvE plus PvP both in terms of participation and money spent on the game.

El_Borracho

It is simply not possible to have a Cyrodiil that is lag/delay free

Not a tech guy, but it seems that if you encourage massive battles in Cyrodiil involving 18-24+ players (like a siege), lag is unavoidable. There is lag in PVE trials, albeit uncommon, with only 12 players battling a NPC/preprogrammed enemy. Double that number and then deal with the randomness of classes, skills, buffs, debuffs, styles, etc. in PVP, and you get lag

reazea

Other (please explain)

El_Borracho wrote: »

Not a tech guy, but it seems that if you encourage massive battles in Cyrodiil involving 18-24+ players (like a siege), lag is unavoidable. There is lag in PVE trials, albeit uncommon, with only 12 players battling a NPC/preprogrammed enemy. Double that number and then deal with the randomness of classes, skills, buffs, debuffs, styles, etc. in PVP, and you get lag

Cyrodiil used to work very well and virtually lag free with populations 3-5x what they are today. It's not a hardware limitation. ZOS skimps on server resources.

notyuu

Other (please explain)

JustLovely wrote: »

notyuu wrote: »

The lag is caused by hardware limitations, it's easily resolved by dedicating more if the servers resources to it (which they did a couple of years back during the PvP event, at the cost of trials) or by aquring more hardware, the entire reason they do not do this is quite simple (and more than a little disheartening), the PvP poptulation is not large and/or profitable enough to justify such costs on ZoS's end of things.

I agree with everything you said up until the "pvp population is not large and/or profitiable..."

The PvP population used to be exponentially larger than it is now. ZOS ran them off with poor performance and radically lowering the population caps. My friends list is now 1/10 of what it used to be because almost everyone left due to lack of PvP support from ZOS. It's also not at all accurate the PvP players don't spend major bank on the game. Every PvP player I know spend, per capita, WAY more on the game than the average PvE player. PvP is all the PvE plus PvP both in terms of participation and money spent on the game.

While I am not saying your personal experience is incorrect or wrong, I am going to say there's a reason why ZoS scaled back the server resrouces being spent on PvP, and given that ZoS is a company, thus money driven it is only logical to conclude that the PvP base wasn't bring in enough coin for it to be feasable to keep that level of PvP inrastructure running, so downscaled it and redistributed the resources elsewhere in the game.

tl;dr most likely people voted with their wallets and zos listened, thus resources taken from pvp and put in other places

Freilauftomate

Other (please explain)

notyuu wrote: »

tl;dr most likely people voted with their wallets and zos listened, thus resources taken from pvp and put in other places

Yes, many PvP players voted with their wallets. They stopped playing ESO. Hoping for ZOS to do something about the terrible performance. Waiting for an opportunity to come back. But it didn't have the effect they hoped for. And Cyrodiil might be dead soon.

Decision makers in this company don't seem to see what they could have with Cyrodiil. Everything else in this game is just a copy of other games, and a grindfest. Cyrodiil could be one of a kind (almost) and very entertaining. I am not sure if they just misunderstand and misinterpret everything related to PvP, or if they just don't like the players and want to get rid of them. Same with endgame PvE. Maybe the players are too loud and demanding. Or maybe the company that made 2 billion dollars with this game doesn't have the ressources, who knows...

Necrotech_Master

It is simply not possible to have a Cyrodiil that is lag/delay free

as noted by others, the issues are a combination of options 1-3 in the polls

they did get new server hardware, but likely options 2 and 3 are still causing bottlenecks, and likely not all of the new server hardware was allocated to cyrodiil

the only reason cyro was slightly less laggy with higher pop caps back in the 2014-2015 era was because ESO was still running clientside and not fully on the server, but this was changed, mainly to get stadia support, but also for other reasons (security + cheat prevention), it was after this change that led to the significant performance degradation

JustLovely

Other (please explain)

notyuu wrote: »

JustLovely wrote: »

notyuu wrote: »

The lag is caused by hardware limitations, it's easily resolved by dedicating more if the servers resources to it (which they did a couple of years back during the PvP event, at the cost of trials) or by aquring more hardware, the entire reason they do not do this is quite simple (and more than a little disheartening), the PvP poptulation is not large and/or profitable enough to justify such costs on ZoS's end of things.

I agree with everything you said up until the "pvp population is not large and/or profitiable..."

The PvP population used to be exponentially larger than it is now. ZOS ran them off with poor performance and radically lowering the population caps. My friends list is now 1/10 of what it used to be because almost everyone left due to lack of PvP support from ZOS. It's also not at all accurate the PvP players don't spend major bank on the game. Every PvP player I know spend, per capita, WAY more on the game than the average PvE player. PvP is all the PvE plus PvP both in terms of participation and money spent on the game.

While I am not saying your personal experience is incorrect or wrong, I am going to say there's a reason why ZoS scaled back the server resrouces being spent on PvP, and given that ZoS is a company, thus money driven it is only logical to conclude that the PvP base wasn't bring in enough coin for it to be feasable to keep that level of PvP inrastructure running, so downscaled it and redistributed the resources elsewhere in the game.

tl;dr most likely people voted with their wallets and zos listened, thus resources taken from pvp and put in other places

You're thinking of it slightly wrong. The reason is financial, just not in the way you're thinking. One of the largest recurring costs for ESO is the server resources. That's why they cut back the server resources for PvP, not because there wasn't a very high degree of interest in PvP or that PvP players don't spend a ton of money on the game. You can fit exponentially more PvE casual questing onto the same server capacity as you can PvP activity. PvP is the highest demand on servers, so they scaled it back instead of adding server resources. The decision has been financial, yes, but not in the way you are thinking.

ZOS could always add more server resources, bring back higher pop caps in cyrodiil and better performance in cyrodiil and end game trials, but they choose not to, even though they can easily afford to.

Nord_Raseri

There needs to be a new option to the poll, "What @React said"

Stamicka

Other (please explain)

No, but because they don't care enough to take fixing the lag seriously.

Desiato

Main issue is Software/coding related (unoptimized, subpar code, etc.)

Stamicka wrote: »

No, but because they don't care enough to take fixing the lag seriously.

This is the number one reason.

I don't know why people remember ESO being less laggy in 2015. In EARLY 2014 it may have been less laggy because everyone was low level and no one knew how to play. By 1.4 we had FAR worse prime time lag than anything scene today and it got worse every year as players got better.

For years players blamed the "lighting patch" which made no sense. ZOS explained it was coincidence and they thought the main factor was the average level increasing. But it was also players learning the game and organized groups learning from each other and becoming more common.

Before target dummies, hardly anyone knew how to weave. I was accused of cheating every night just by doing it prior to 2017. As more players learned to play, the stress on the server increased.

Keep in mind that good players and groups stress the server a lot more because of a higher APM which basically results in exponentially more calculations when status effects, procs, hots, dots and buffs are considered, especially in groups layering hots on each other.

The dude light/heavy attacking from the wall is stressing the server the least. In early 2014 that was 95% of players. By late 2014, every big fight resulted in crippling lag across the map. Eventually no one would take damage because the server was overwhelmed. We'd stand there spamming attacks for 20 minutes and nothing would happen. We could spam an unlimited number of ults that didn't register. Doors would stop working entirely.

From my POV as someone who played a lot 2014-2019 both solo and in ball groups, prime time performance now is WAY better than it was then. It's not even close. I have something like 1TB of clips from then to confirm my recollection -- including my final play sessions in 2019, and the server lag was brutal. Not 2014 brutal because we had lower pop caps by then, but brutal compared to now.

ixthUA

Main issue is Software/coding related (unoptimized, subpar code, etc.)

I play another game with 10k online players (during prime time) and it has 7 ms lag. Whole map is open for pvp and there are massive world boss battles with hundreds of players killing each other. The difference is that it has almost no damage\healing over time skills, no CP tree, gear sets are passive, basically many times less things to account into calculations. Also they use many hundreds of cores AMD EPYC servers.

gariondavey

It is simply not possible to have a Cyrodiil that is lag/delay free

React wrote: »

Kind of a poorly written poll, as all of these are probably true.

The hardware gave us the most lag free experience I've ever had on eso, but it didn't last very long. This is either due to them reallocating resources away from cyrodiil, or because of the unoptimized code hampering the servers. So it is both possible that new/additional hardware or server resources allocated to cyrodiil could fix the problem, but also that a rewrite of the code could. They were supposed to be rewriting the code over the past two years, but after leading us along all that time their most recent update was that they'd made "no significant progress and had no eta for the future of the project", or something to that effect.

HOT stacking/ball group behavior in general undeniably causes performance issues. As soon as these groups are present and in combat, the campaign becomes measurably more laggy. When you're nearby these groups, you often encounter delays with abilities, spikes in ping, frame loss, etc.

Finally, it is almost certain we will never have a lag free cyrodiil. I think that when they conceded defeat with the code rewrite project, they more or less confirmed this.

The best I think we can hope for is that the Q4 pvp update will give us a meaningful new pvp system that will have measures in place to avoid some of the things that we know cause problems in cyrodiil, such as 12 man group sizes + destructible structures + objective systems that encourage everybody to stack in the same spots.

Amen

Sporigudinai

It is simply not possible to have a Cyrodiil that is lag/delay free

ixthUA wrote: »

I play another game with 10k online players (during prime time) and it has 7 ms lag. Whole map is open for pvp and there are massive world boss battles with hundreds of players killing each other. The difference is that it has almost no damage\healing over time skills, no CP tree, gear sets are passive, basically many times less things to account into calculations. Also they use many hundreds of cores AMD EPYC servers.

NW?

bbrown0770

It is simply not possible to have a Cyrodiil that is lag/delay free

Never has and never will be lag free might get better but lag will always be therr

Jsmalls

Heal stacking and overlapping abilities causing too much stress on servers

You can literally feel the game struggle when there are ball groups heal stacking etc.

Also No CP, no proc campaigns (during MYM when they are populated) do not suffer from lag/delays.

We're literally so close to a lag free Cyrodiil.

Limit ball group ability stacking. Fix coding for procs.