ZOS, Massive Spike in Ping/LAG in Recent Days - What Gives?

DragonRacer · August 1

Yeeeeeah was helping a friend level a new toon in BRP the other day at like 10:00am, so NOT peak time at all for East Coast as many people are working at that time during a weekday, and it's just back to mashing skill buttons 4-5 times in a row hoping they go off. And several moments where nothing happened with skills that were hit, then suddenly they all go off at once, almost acting like I was about to DC and then the game decided "Nah" and fast-forwarded to catch me back up.

This is weird, guys. Can you power-cycle your modems or something?

Photosniper89 · August 1

Jaraal wrote: »

And the longer they go without rebooting the servers, the worse it gets. Classic memory leak symptom.

Bingo. And we have been saying this for years.

Reboot the servers and everything is fine for a few days and slowly gets worse.

Just_Attivi · August 1

Jaraal wrote: »

And the longer they go without rebooting the servers, the worse it gets. Classic memory leak symptom.

Definitely cant be a memory leak, Its just Aliens, guys! Their hardware is flawless! Aliens must be intercepting our signals! /s

Solariken · August 2

These issues are getting REALLY bad. I logged in tonight, got in a BG, had several incidents of 10+ seconds where the client connection hangs... it behaves like a hard lag spike but my internet connection is fine. After the BG I was complaining about it in guild chat and it happened again, this time with a full disconnect at the end.

What's weird is that most of us are experiencing these spikes, yet it doesn't happen to everyone at the same time.

But anyway the game is basically unplayable for me, so I may be shelving ESO for a while.

Photosniper89 · August 2

@ZOS_Kevin any chance you can grace us with a late friday update? Anything?!

I_killed_Vivec · August 2

Just_Attivi wrote: »

Definitely cant be a memory leak, Its just Aliens, guys! Their hardware is flawless! Aliens must be intercepting our signals! /s

Oh it's definitely aliens! Or maybe cosmic rays!

But memory leaks are a software problem... the hardware doesn't physically leak away into a puddle on the floor

Photosniper89 · August 2

I_killed_Vivec wrote: »

Just_Attivi wrote: »

Definitely cant be a memory leak, Its just Aliens, guys! Their hardware is flawless! Aliens must be intercepting our signals! /s

Oh it's definitely aliens! Or maybe cosmic rays!

But memory leaks are a software problem... the hardware doesn't physically leak away into a puddle on the floor

idk. You ever seen a server room melt to the ground?

ShadowGendalf · August 3

I got my ass kicked every time that ping let me down, I think it's time for ZOS to think about what they do to players in pvp!

dcrush · August 3

PC NA GH just now. Fare under attack by a million EP. Crash > “please make sure you have a valid internet connection”.

Fix
Your
Servers

Just_Attivi · August 4

Ashpit, middling pops, 2 players in a field, 9+ second delays.

Roe UA, 7 DC 5 AD, 16+ second delays

can we make a class action to get compensation for all the keyboards that need replacing from smashing buttons just praying a dang skill fires? maybe sprinkle in some undo trauma or something? I'll do the paperwork

Id like to /s this but seriously, at this point just logging into this game, not even playing the main campaign, is infuriatingly difficult.

#ReasonsIStoppedPaying

Photosniper89 · August 4

Just_Attivi wrote: »

Ashpit, middling pops, 2 players in a field, 9+ second delays.

Roe UA, 7 DC 5 AD, 16+ second delays

can we make a class action to get compensation for all the keyboards that need replacing from smashing buttons just praying a dang skill fires? maybe sprinkle in some undo trauma or something? I'll do the paperwork

Id like to /s this but seriously, at this point just logging into this game, not even playing the main campaign, is infuriatingly difficult.

#ReasonsIStoppedPaying

I crashed 5 times last night just doing random things. I'm extremely close to ending my sub after like 7 years straight. AoC can't launch soon enough. I know of at least two entire guilds moving over to that.

It's a shame we haven't gotten a word from @ZOS_Kevin or anyone at ZOS for that matter in a very long time.

Just_Attivi · August 5

Photosniper89 wrote: »

Just_Attivi wrote: »

Ashpit, middling pops, 2 players in a field, 9+ second delays.

Roe UA, 7 DC 5 AD, 16+ second delays

can we make a class action to get compensation for all the keyboards that need replacing from smashing buttons just praying a dang skill fires? maybe sprinkle in some undo trauma or something? I'll do the paperwork

Id like to /s this but seriously, at this point just logging into this game, not even playing the main campaign, is infuriatingly difficult.

#ReasonsIStoppedPaying

I crashed 5 times last night just doing random things. I'm extremely close to ending my sub after like 7 years straight. AoC can't launch soon enough. I know of at least two entire guilds moving over to that.

It's a shame we haven't gotten a word from @ZOS_Kevin or anyone at ZOS for that matter in a very long time.

Yea... Ive honestly stopped logging in outside of when im catching up with a friend that still plays. Last night I actually had decent performance, but my metric for 'decent' in ESO is pretty low, and generally unacceptable for most games. Not a single time that I lost a fight last night did I feel like I screwed up/got outplayed as much as performance crashed/skills stopped firing/the game decided the player directly in front of me wasnt what i was targeting and im instead shooting a guard 20 meters behind the guy killing me, which is not a good look for pvp (and no, i dont think im gods gift to pvp lol, im pretty mid, but i know when im outplayed vs the game deciding skills shouldn't fire/people arent where they seem/etc)

But my friend and I had a convo regarding being glad we arent putting any more money toward this game, and I hate having that attitude, but this is just sad at this point, and I dont know whose at fault regarding miserable server performance. If a game released that was just a clone of Cyrodiil, but actually functional with more than 1 player in an area, Id swap in a heartbeat. Cyrodiil (and IC if its populated) are the only things that really keep me in ESO in any capacity, and even that is letting go now.

Photosniper89 · August 5

@ZOS_Kevin any chance we can get an update on this thread? If you all are not interested in providing updates can you at least let us know. A lot of the community put a significant amount of work into recording, submitting tickets, giving you all the feedback you requested and it's been radio silence ever since we provided all of that.

ragnarok6644b14_ESO · August 5

I have had pretty good performance on the whole, but I feel for those that don't.

It *is* difficult for me to blame ZoS though, rather than the innumerable intermediaries between your machines and ZoS.

If the servers themselves were at fault, surely it would affect everyone equally who was logged onto the server, right?

Just_Attivi · August 5

ragnarok6644b14_ESO wrote: »

I have had pretty good performance on the whole, but I feel for those that don't.

It *is* difficult for me to blame ZoS though, rather than the innumerable intermediaries between your machines and ZoS.

If the servers themselves were at fault, surely it would affect everyone equally who was logged onto the server, right?

if ZOS even simply told us 'hey, we are really certain that (insert network provider) is actually the cause of issues, our hardware/software/underwear is all fine' id be thrilled. but we have gotten a 'we are looking into it' and then a lack of response, lack of views on submitted videos, lack of anything.

that said, until i moved about a month ago, I had a different ISP than most of the people I ran with (my Spectrum vs their xfinity for most of them). from different parts of the country/world. and experience the same delays, rewinds, teleports etc. I find it hard to believe that a player from US, a player from US closer to the servers, an aussie, and a brit (yes, playing NA instead of EU) would all experience the same delays/rewinds/teleports/crashes if it wasnt the server/something on ZOS end (not my field of expertise). with the lacking responses/replies/anything, sorry, I cannot assume we all just happened to have the same issue around the globe that only affects connectivity to ESO in exactly the same way.

yes, different groups of people seem to get hit at different times. but often these players are from different locales/different ISPs and yet experience the same issues. Not everyone (it seemed to hit ~40% of the pop at a time the last few months), regardless of PVP/PVE/Trials/Dungeons/RP in werewolf land, whatever. whole zones erupt in 'this lag' or 'just crashed' complaints as people log back in.

this past month ish, it has seemed to be *better* in the grand scheme of things (ive changed ISP's and am speaking less on my own behalf at the moment, as much as the observed complaints of others) but there seems to still be ... almost spottyy issues. some days performance seems okay for me and everyone i interact with. other days, its like youre dragging your computer through the mud and trying to hit your keys with a trash can, nothing works as it should (and at this point, 3 months into these issues becoming widespread, most of the regular voices here have thoroughly explored their own hardware/software/underwear issues and double/triple checked that issues arent from our ends. the fact that this thread is about to be 34 pages long and 3 months old and people who previously had no issues are still struggling with performance issues solely with ESO, suggests that there are problems outside our computers/ISP. ZOS could inform us what they know. but they havent.

Photosniper89 · August 6

Just_Attivi wrote: »

ragnarok6644b14_ESO wrote: »

I have had pretty good performance on the whole, but I feel for those that don't.

It *is* difficult for me to blame ZoS though, rather than the innumerable intermediaries between your machines and ZoS.

If the servers themselves were at fault, surely it would affect everyone equally who was logged onto the server, right?

if ZOS even simply told us 'hey, we are really certain that (insert network provider) is actually the cause of issues, our hardware/software/underwear is all fine' id be thrilled. but we have gotten a 'we are looking into it' and then a lack of response, lack of views on submitted videos, lack of anything.

that said, until i moved about a month ago, I had a different ISP than most of the people I ran with (my Spectrum vs their xfinity for most of them). from different parts of the country/world. and experience the same delays, rewinds, teleports etc. I find it hard to believe that a player from US, a player from US closer to the servers, an aussie, and a brit (yes, playing NA instead of EU) would all experience the same delays/rewinds/teleports/crashes if it wasnt the server/something on ZOS end (not my field of expertise). with the lacking responses/replies/anything, sorry, I cannot assume we all just happened to have the same issue around the globe that only affects connectivity to ESO in exactly the same way.

yes, different groups of people seem to get hit at different times. but often these players are from different locales/different ISPs and yet experience the same issues. Not everyone (it seemed to hit ~40% of the pop at a time the last few months), regardless of PVP/PVE/Trials/Dungeons/RP in werewolf land, whatever. whole zones erupt in 'this lag' or 'just crashed' complaints as people log back in.

this past month ish, it has seemed to be *better* in the grand scheme of things (ive changed ISP's and am speaking less on my own behalf at the moment, as much as the observed complaints of others) but there seems to still be ... almost spottyy issues. some days performance seems okay for me and everyone i interact with. other days, its like youre dragging your computer through the mud and trying to hit your keys with a trash can, nothing works as it should (and at this point, 3 months into these issues becoming widespread, most of the regular voices here have thoroughly explored their own hardware/software/underwear issues and double/triple checked that issues arent from our ends. the fact that this thread is about to be 34 pages long and 3 months old and people who previously had no issues are still struggling with performance issues solely with ESO, suggests that there are problems outside our computers/ISP. ZOS could inform us what they know. but they havent.

It's also worth noting that the performance is always "better" during MYM. I can only assume the rent more servers during this time and it helps combat the underlying issues (memory leak?). As the event goes on.. in particular the last week of the event... you can "feel" the game get worse. The lag builds and things just slow down.

What I can't seem to get my head around is the fact I will have 100 FPS, 120 ping, but the game "feels" like I have 5fps and 700 ping. This experience is similar for everyone I run with.

It's not an us problem, its not a pc problem, it's not an ISP problem, it's not a routing problem... it's a ZOS problem that @ZOS_Kevin needs to provide an update on.

It's time.

Sluggy · August 6

Photosniper89 wrote: »

What I can't seem to get my head around is the fact I will have 100 FPS, 120 ping, but the game "feels" like I have 5fps and 700 ping. This experience is similar for everyone I run with.

This was my experience last night. I was looking forward to getting in one last night in Cyrodiil before the event ended and after an hour-and-a-half wait I finally got into greyhost... and it was totally off-putting.

Breakfree simply didn't exist as a mechanic. Same goes for dodge roll. Half of my single-target skills refused to work. NONE of my AoEs ever hit anything. Crit Rush was an absolute joke constantly telling me my target was invalid and often firing out of order and getting me stuck on that bar for upwards of two seconds after it landed. Streak was so bad I'd often cast it, see it failed, move on to do other things and then watch it fire like AFTER five or six other skills had already been used. Caltrops would constantly get cancelled by other actions. Potions? What even are those? Rapid Strikes was just a joke too. Never once saw it fire the entire time. I couldn't even use doors at keeps and had to walk up the steps and jump out to escape my prison.

And it's not like the map was crazy. Despite being poplocked I think I saw maybe fifteen other players of any given faction actually doing anything. There were no fights going on pretty much anywhere. My ping claimed it was sitting around the 120-150 mark but honestly it felt closer to 2k or 3k. Eventually, I gave up and tried Ravenwatch which was is pretty much always deserted and it was only slightly better there... I could use keep doors.

CrazyKitty · August 6

ZOS is way overdue for another server upgrade at their server farm. Seems unlikely they will ever do it though.

ZOS is releasing less content, lowering the pop cap in Cyrodiil making it impossible for more players to participate, and doing all manner of other cut backs to their investment into ESO.

Seravi · August 6

Yesterday was harsh. I haven't posted much just taking in where and when the issues happen. I was in Stonefalls all day doing my Cadwell quest on an alt. She is a Necromancer and I had issues with throwing skulls, sending my blastbones to the enemy and even Bone Yard didn't fire properly. I probably need a new keyboard after all the slamming the key 4-6 times to get one fire of the skill.

Today in Deshan it's no better. Went to grab a mat, some ore for the daily and my character stood there doing the animation to retrieve the mat yet no menu popped up. She was in a loop of some kind. Happened twice.

Trying to quest is painful. I had to leave the building to get the quest giver in the basement to trigger and start the next quest,
"A Timely Matter". I walk up on a wayshrine I don't have and I stand there for 6-8 seconds before it triggers to mark it on my map. Quests take this long to trigger for the next quest regardless of where I am.

Everything I can run says I am still at 2-3 ms to the server and yes I am the one that lives right by the data center. I don't see any packet loss but there is only so much I can do on my side.

I'm going to need a new keyboard after this zone I think...

EDIT:
I can walk up to enemies and they don't trigger for 2-4 seconds. Same thing if I throw a skull at them or hit them with a dagger. Takes a few seconds before they even react. Not using any stealth so they should be aggro'd immediately.

Seravi · August 6

I finally gave up for the day. Deshan was nothing but delays with the keyboard, looping mat harvesting and 999+ spikes. I've been in the upper DLC for a while now with my alts and didn't really see a ton of issues. Decided to finish my Cadwell quests on a few alts and the starter zones are just really bad for me right now.

Wow so I just ran another tracert and now I am back in the Akami loop and the ping to those are bad.... Your DFW Akami routes are super laggy ZOS. Most likely the reason for some of the others delay as Akami was out of the loop for a few weeks and now it is back. Ugh...

LaintalAy · August 6

Photosniper89 wrote: »

I_killed_Vivec wrote: »

Just_Attivi wrote: »

Definitely cant be a memory leak, Its just Aliens, guys! Their hardware is flawless! Aliens must be intercepting our signals! /s

Oh it's definitely aliens! Or maybe cosmic rays!

But memory leaks are a software problem... the hardware doesn't physically leak away into a puddle on the floor

idk. You ever seen a server room melt to the ground?

Our computer room (1986) had the roof collapse literally onto the minicomputer and was flooded during a storm.
Same computer has the auto-shutdown heat sensors physically cut out of the circuit board.
It kept shutting down because of the heat.
We kept the room at 16C and the cabinet doors open to compensate after that.

20 years later another system was rebooted every Sunday night to mitigate memory leak.
Unless heavy processing forced it earlier in the week.

Yet Another site had a water-cooled Fujitsu M-780 mainframe that we powered off every week to ensure that four shifts of operators had the knowledge and experience to be able to shutdown, in case the building chilling towers went offline for some reason.

Every problem is manageable.

ectoplasmicninja · August 6

Performance has been terrible (40FPS and 200 ping that feels like 900 with periods of actual 900 ping) lately and I still get the launcher error stating that my installation is corrupt and I need to repair every time I quit the game despite having already repaired several times. I have no problem starting the game or logging in and out and don't get any crashes, it just feels absolutely awful to play. I can't do my rotation anymore because nothing fires when it should and the animations are all janky, so I have to just button mash and hope.

I have no idea what the issue is. I was happily getting 100FPS and 160 ping earlier this year on this same rig and setup. My temperatures are fine, other games are fine, I haven't had problems with my internet with other services. It's just ESO. I'm 13,000 hours deep in this thing and bought a year of ESO+ in January. Sigh.

Seravi · August 7

ZOS it would be super awesome if someone could look at the Akami hops. They are horrible locally so I can only imagine what others are seeing with these hops. You did remove them for a while and I really hope you do so again.....

po110.bs-a.sech-dfw.netarch.akami.com 23.57.102.243
ai120.access-a.sech-dfw.akami.com 23.57.102.249

M33tr3 · August 7

ragnarok6644b14_ESO wrote: »

I have had pretty good performance on the whole, but I feel for those that don't.

It *is* difficult for me to blame ZoS though, rather than the innumerable intermediaries between your machines and ZoS.

If the servers themselves were at fault, surely it would affect everyone equally who was logged onto the server, right?

I've said it before (months ago, so you may have missed it) that my significant other and I sit in the same room, hardwired to the same internet, and see vastly different pings: sometimes doing different content and sometimes playing together. We've both seen the other just stop in game for a few seconds and their character not do anything while the other was fine. We've had vastly different pings where one gets around 90-100 and the other hits 999 on the in game meter. Or one gets booted from the game for a connection issue while the other has no high ping/lag at all. From what I've seen, this is entirely something in ZOS's server/code/client just not doing what it should be doing.

Jaraal · August 7

Seravi wrote: »

You did remove them for a while and I really hope you do so again.....

Yeah I noticed that too. People's tracerts were not showing Akamai in the results.

I've often wondered why Microsoft doesn't keep the anti-DDoS filtering in-house with Azure.

Seravi · August 7

Jaraal wrote: »

Seravi wrote: »

You did remove them for a while and I really hope you do so again.....

Yeah I noticed that too. People's tracerts were not showing Akamai in the results.

I've often wondered why Microsoft doesn't keep the anti-DDoS filtering in-house with Azure.

I wish they would remove them again because it is a MAJOR source of lag in game. I did fine when they removed it for a few weeks and now that it's back I have major key delay on skills, the 999+ ping showing up in game all the time and now I can't even grab a mat because it causes my character to get stuck in some mat grab loop for at least 10 seconds and then it releases. I could throw a rock and hit the data center. I shouldn't be having these issues...ugh...

M33tr3 · August 9

Still happening. Was in a trial on 8/8 around 8:40 pm eastern time. Various members having high ping and skills slow to fire, other computer in the house was working fine. @ZOS_Kevin any idea of when you get to tell us you are "looking into it still" or is ignoring this on-going issue going to continue? I've seen posts of yours in the last few days, so you haven't been fired. What is going on???

Sluggy · August 9

M33tr3 wrote: »

Still happening. Was in a trial on 8/8 around 8:40 pm eastern time. Various members having high ping and skills slow to fire, other computer in the house was working fine. @ZOS_Kevin any idea of when you get to tell us you are "looking into it still" or is ignoring this on-going issue going to continue? I've seen posts of yours in the last few days, so you haven't been fired. What is going on???

Companies this big and in the public space are not going to allow employees, even public reps, to make any kind of announcement, explain any internal issues, or say anything that hasn't been scripted, reviewed, approved, and signed off. If a rep hasn't gotten back by now then they have not been instructed on what to say and so they will say nothing. Doing otherwise would be putting one's job and possibly one's career in the industry at risk.

silky_soft · August 9

error 307 booted from server on my first account. sec

M33tr3 wrote: »

ragnarok6644b14_ESO wrote: »

I have had pretty good performance on the whole, but I feel for those that don't.

It *is* difficult for me to blame ZoS though, rather than the innumerable intermediaries between your machines and ZoS.

If the servers themselves were at fault, surely it would affect everyone equally who was logged onto the server, right?

I've said it before (months ago, so you may have missed it) that my significant other and I sit in the same room, hardwired to the same internet, and see vastly different pings: sometimes doing different content and sometimes playing together. We've both seen the other just stop in game for a few seconds and their character not do anything while the other was fine. We've had vastly different pings where one gets around 90-100 and the other hits 999 on the in game meter. Or one gets booted from the game for a connection issue while the other has no high ping/lag at all. From what I've seen, this is entirely something in ZOS's server/code/client just not doing what it should be doing.

We've been getting this for years. Worked with multiple ISP here in Australia in that time to figure something out. Even forwarded onto the NBN, infrastructure provoder. Always comes back to ZOS problem. Exitlag mitigates it to a degree.

I got crazy lag in bg the last week. I just randomly hit 999 then back to normal. I'd be around corner up the stairs and still be getting hit by wrecking blow.

I know my Aussie ping is a factor as I have played in Brazil before. It's significantly better with 100ms less. But it's just ridiculous trying anything with a cast time on target as the always fail. Why I see the sorcs like a waterfall.

M33tr3 · August 9

Sluggy wrote: »

Companies this big and in the public space are not going to allow employees, even public reps, to make any kind of announcement, explain any internal issues, or say anything that hasn't been scripted, reviewed, approved, and signed off. If a rep hasn't gotten back by now then they have not been instructed on what to say and so they will say nothing. Doing otherwise would be putting one's job and possibly one's career in the industry at risk.

A simple "we are still investigating" would be nice. The fact that they ASKED us for video of what is going on and haven't even bothered to look at those videos for MONTHS or even checked in on this thread for OVER A MONTH is disgusting. I know he is just a mouth-piece for the higher ups at ZOS. I'm just doing my best to keep this on-going issue on the front page.