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

kevkj

I had been relatively immune to any issues before this but on Aug 7 & 8 I have started experiencing frequent lag spikes/rubberbanding in instanced content. On Aug 7 it was in different runs of City of Ash II, at various points throughout the dungeon. On Aug 8 it was during a run of Frostvault and a run of Sanity's Edge. During the Frostvault run I was in voice chat with a friend and they got the lag spikes at the exact same time despite living on the literal opposite side of the globe. Our other 2 group members did not experience this however, so it's still not a fully universal problem.

EdjeSwift

kevkj wrote: »

I had been relatively immune to any issues before this but on Aug 7 & 8 I have started experiencing frequent lag spikes/rubberbanding in instanced content. On Aug 7 it was in different runs of City of Ash II, at various points throughout the dungeon. On Aug 8 it was during a run of Frostvault and a run of Sanity's Edge. During the Frostvault run I was in voice chat with a friend and they got the lag spikes at the exact same time despite living on the literal opposite side of the globe. Our other 2 group members did not experience this however, so it's still not a fully universal problem.

If you're running on PC; do you and your friend run the same add-ons? Because that could very much be the culprit if you two had similar add-ons and the others did not. Remember add-ons send, receive, and process data on top of what's normally being transmitted so if you two were running the same/similar add-ons that could be why you two hiccuped and the others did not.

kevkj

It's possible, though the only addons we have in common are probably Tamriel Trade Center and Combat Metrics. I'm not going to say addons aren't a contributing factor to the lag spikes I and others experience (in fact they probably are), but I think it's unlikely that they are the whole reason.

We play together quite regularly, my friend has been one of the poor souls affected by the lag spikes for the past 2 months while I had been previously unaffected. This week is my first time seeing the same spikes that he is seeing with no hardware/network change on my end. So all in all I feel like this points to a ZOS problem even if it's not affecting everyone at the same time.

dcrush

Unplayable lag tonight for me. Half of Vivec City wasn’t even loading. Other online services and games have no issue whatsoever, it’s always just ESO.

Also, playing without a vpn from Southeast Asia seems to be impossible once again.

sunandstars77

The game for me has been unplayable in Cryo since the last 'Maintainance'

Zenimax still can't get anything right. You want my money Zenimax? Fix the game.

Jastara

On the EU server, I am getting multiple "silent" DCs. Then seem to be getting worse this week. Also getting more DCs on the NA server. I am up to 3 DCs now, trying to do the Weekly Endeavor on Bleakrock Isle.

malistorr

The bad lag is on Xbox NA as well. I notice large frame drops where a second or 2 of time goes missing from the screen even though I'm in performance mode on Series X using half-gig fiber and I'm hardwired in. I have all the latest gaming features like a 120hz TV, VRR, ALLM, and QFT. I think this has been happening for several days since the last maintenance but it's worst playing PVP with lots of players around. This have been bad enough that I thought other players were using cheating/exploit devices to mess with enemy players connections if that's even possible.

Auberon1983

PS5/NA checking in again. Lag has been off and on for a few days now. We (guildmates and I) were running normal Blessed Crucible earlier today, and the game just abruptly stopped during a boss fight. When the action resumed, the boss was dead lol. The final boss also kept glitching out on her health bar, showing full health, but an accurate percentage

Drammanoth

A thousandth comment

Not that it means anything - just like you-know-what

Shara_Wynn

It's was really bad for me yesterday. While trying to do my daily crafting writs in Skingrad, I must have been booted at least 8 or 9 times in a little over an hour of playtime. All with the same message.

"An error has occurred. Please wait a few minutes and log in again."

My ping was way up and either I got booted or rubberbanded all over the place.

I have become quite used to being booted every now and then, but every 10 minutes was just silly.

I have a fantastic PC gaming set up with a 1 gig connection speed (Denmark has one of the fastest internet speeds in the world), and after running speed and performance tests, I know it's been nothing my end.

Seravi

Seriously has ZOS just given up on this? Please check your Akami routes! When my route did not have Akami things were wonderful. Now that you have TWO Akami routes in my route again the skill fire delay is horrid.

Akami is showing 200ms, 450ms, 800ms, etc connections at different times. Seriously I can throw a rock at the Data Center and I am dealing with this? I have 2-3 ms everywhere EXCEPT the Akami routes.

Hrafngrimr3

Hadn’t logged on in awhile (too many performance issues), came back in today for a few trial runs with friends, somehow worse than before. Long skill delay, rubber banding, freezing, desynching during overland and trial content, the list goes on. Glad I cancelled my ESO+ membership after 4 years and largely moved on. Based on the population it seems I’m not the only one - It feels like a sinking ship!

Sluggy

Absolutely unplayable today. And that's not hyperbole. Literally my ping somewhere between 3 thousand and 4 thousand and I disconnected like every three minutes or so. Actually unplayable.

Rkindaleft

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.

Bingo. My partner and I both play the game at the same times and run off the same network both with Ethernet cords and there have been occasions where one of us will be having issues while the other doesn't have any. 99% of the time we don't have any issues at all when we do this so when it does happen it's very noticeable and we know it has nothing to do with our side.

We were in vet Cloudrest maybe 2 weeks ago and I was having random 1 second freezes seemingly at random times and I got disconnected twice while I was downstairs (leading to a wipe as I was solo DPS) and my partner sitting 5 meters away didn't have a single issue the whole evening. Sometimes it's the reverse where I will have zero lag and for my partner it's almost unplayable.

Aquatorch

Cyrodiil on the PC-NA was pretty unplayable for me as well. I tried in Grayhost and it was completely unplayable and in Blackreach, I was just rubberbanding all over the place. I'm gaming from the Middle East by the way.

Photosniper89

@ZOS_Kevin It's disappointing that prior to Gina leaving you were so active in this thread and since then it's been radio silent from you. I can only speculate on why that is (won't do that on here).

With that being said.... performance is back to being worse than BEFORE I MADE THIS THREAD.

Rubber banding is back in full force and it's a 5+ second full lock up followed by fast fwd at 200x speed until you catch back up to "real time".

I'm struggling to remember a time when performance was this bad - and I'm not being dramatic there.

Also - Azureblight is causing a metric (poop) ton of lag spikes.

Auberon1983

"Rubber Banding" was in full force last night, from about 8PM-10PM, Arizona time/PDT. Even Stros M'Kai was heavy with lag.

Interestingly enough, the random BG I ran had almost zero lag, but upon returning to overland, the lag was back. Not sure if that's anything worth noticing

Photosniper89

Auberon1983 wrote: »

"Rubber Banding" was in full force last night, from about 8PM-10PM, Arizona time/PDT. Even Stros M'Kai was heavy with lag.

Interestingly enough, the random BG I ran had almost zero lag, but upon returning to overland, the lag was back. Not sure if that's anything worth noticing

Yup, without a doubt the worst it has been this year. @ZOS_Kevin

I'm also 100% confident that Kevin has seen the pings in here as well as the numerous posts on social media directed at him regarding this thread so it's fair to assume we are intentionally being ignored by ZOS by this point. Why, well I won't speculate on that.

malistorr

I've been running solo IA and the performance has been bad night after night. Lots of gaps with missing frames etc. I'm on series X and hardwired into half-gig fiber so the issue isn't on my side. There were plenty of times last night where I was in big fights and the screen just froze or there were up to 3-second gaps in action on my screen. I have top-of-the-line equipment in my home with all the latest gaming features for the receiver/tv but it's not helping. The problem is on their side.

Photosniper89

malistorr wrote: »

I've been running solo IA and the performance has been bad night after night. Lots of gaps with missing frames etc. I'm on series X and hardwired into half-gig fiber so the issue isn't on my side. There were plenty of times last night where I was in big fights and the screen just froze or there were up to 3-second gaps in action on my screen. I have top-of-the-line equipment in my home with all the latest gaming features for the receiver/tv but it's not helping. The problem is on their side.

Yup, this isn't an "us" problem this is 100% a ZOS problem.

igormaxbr03

This friday night on xbox NA realy bad the game is freezing every 5 seconds on bleackreach bur a friend of mine said that always happen in BGS ,i tired of this game keep getting worse does that also happen on pc ,playing on xbox series s mean nothing if the game is running i get siege by 10 player os more

Photosniper89

Tonight myself and a few group members (not ball group) had over 10 crashes each in the game. When we weren't crashing we would have insane rubber banding every 1 or 2 minutes. We even had people get kicked from cyro and they experienced this in empty towns in PvP.

Whatever you all did the last week or two @ZOS_Kevin it had a significantly negative impact on performance and should be reverted.

This is beyond embarrassing now and the lack of communication from ZOS is something I would expect from an indie studio - not from a studio that is celebrating their 10th year anv.

ruengdet2515

For my ping 350 400 600 800 999 .... 9999+
Ok, you don't want me to play your game anymore?

Photosniper89

ruengdet2515 wrote: »

For my ping 350 400 600 800 999 .... 9999+
Ok, you don't want me to play your game anymore?

It's not just you it's everyone.

Tandor

Photosniper89 wrote: »

ruengdet2515 wrote: »

For my ping 350 400 600 800 999 .... 9999+
Ok, you don't want me to play your game anymore?

It's not just you it's everyone.

It may be everyone playing from certain parts of the world, particularly in the Southern Hemisphere, perhaps due to Akamai, or it may be everyone playing certain specific content, notably high-end PvE and PvP, and of course it could be both, but it certainly isn't everyone who is playing the game.

While this thread has passed 30 pages, it's taken 3 months to do so and I've been on forums where literally everyone has suffered serious performance issues and they've passed 30 pages overnight. Here there is clearly a specific problem that is affecting certain players, and it needs an update from @ZOS_Kevin on what their investigations are telling them, and what they're doing about it.

Einar_Hrafnarsson

So i wasn't hallucinating. Seeing how long this has been going on, i suspect this issue will get the same treatment as the Combat Bug or the Dungeon Tool Bug. Ignoring it.

VouxeTheMinotaur

PS5/NA
took a break from ESO for roughly 3 weeks to play Helldivers, came back last night with hope that the rubber banding / lag issues were fixed since I saw there were maintenance fixes and such, and boy was I disappointed... issues are still persisting as if no one has even made an attempt to fix it, I'd even say worse in certain content.

After playing a couple of other games and deep diving into those studio's forums, I agree with Photosniper89's comment. I have to say the communication between their teams (other studio's) and their players exceeds ZOS' tenfold. it really is actually quite embarrassing for a studio who boasts about a 10-year success and $1 billion dollar milestone among other successes, really due to the community of players who have helped them achieve these, to not have these problems addressed quickly. Seemingly given up, just like with the PvP issue. Whoever's lucky enough to play will still fund the game anyway, not a dent in ZOS's wallet apparently.

How is it okay to continue to update the website and forums with "exciting" content, sites, promotions, announcements and such without further update or acknowledgement to this issue? People cannot use your product for its intended purpose. People paid money, most monthly, to use this product yet it's defective.

Absurd.

Photosniper89

VouxeTheMinotaur wrote: »

PS5/NA
took a break from ESO for roughly 3 weeks to play Helldivers, came back last night with hope that the rubber banding / lag issues were fixed since I saw there were maintenance fixes and such, and boy was I disappointed... issues are still persisting as if no one has even made an attempt to fix it, I'd even say worse in certain content.

After playing a couple of other games and deep diving into those studio's forums, I agree with Photosniper89's comment. I have to say the communication between their teams (other studio's) and their players exceeds ZOS' tenfold. it really is actually quite embarrassing for a studio who boasts about a 10-year success and $1 billion dollar milestone among other successes, really due to the community of players who have helped them achieve these, to not have these problems addressed quickly. Seemingly given up, just like with the PvP issue. Whoever's lucky enough to play will still fund the game anyway, not a dent in ZOS's wallet apparently.

How is it okay to continue to update the website and forums with "exciting" content, sites, promotions, announcements and such without further update or acknowledgement to this issue? People cannot use your product for its intended purpose. People paid money, most monthly, to use this product yet it's defective.

Absurd.

Thanks for the post, I agree with you 100%.

I'm in the process of documenting everything that has been brought up in this thread, my experience with pvp going back since launch but more importantly the lack of action and significant decrease in performance these last 5+ years.

Documenting all of that and typing up a big email that will be going anyone in a leadership position in ZOS, Bethesda, and Microsoft. Gonna make sure it gets all the eyes on it. I'm tired of this issue being ignored.

People love to complain about PvPers but what have we gotten in the last 7 years? What is the upcoming PvP "feature" going to be (they already said it's not Cyro so who even cares at that point... remember they consider ToT a PvP feature).

The frustration from everyone in here is warranted and for a studio of this caliber it's embarrassing.

Jaraal

Photosniper89 wrote: »

I'm in the process of documenting everything that has been brought up in this thread, my experience with pvp going back since launch but more importantly the lack of action and significant decrease in performance these last 5+ years.

In the few times they've publicly addressed the performance issues, data bloat was the primary reason given. They eliminated data such as alternate character achievements to 'make room for new systems and achievements' (such as companions, the card game, etc.). They've pared down data that they felt was less relevant (deleting deer in Cyrodiil, both announced and stealth removal of spell effect visuals, reworking glyphs to be less data intensive, reducing mail timers and storage, slashing group sizes in half, to name a few) while allowing things that are profitable (new gear sets, flashy mounts, polymorphs, arms packs and whatnot) to continually increase in number and complexity.

And in the ever enlarging efforts (over 650 unique armor/weapon sets and growing) to come up with new 5th piece ideas, effects are becoming more and more complicated.... having to keep track of resource percentages and constantly changing skill parameters of numerous enemies and allies wearing a plethora of different possible combinations... it's easy to see how servers can become quickly overwhelmed. And when they were installing the new servers a while back, they told us not to expect performance increases, as the new hardware changes were more focused on back end processes and less forward facing effects. They also noted that the data rework/sharding efforts weren't producing the results they expected, so they walked that back as well.

So, as the game continues to get bigger and more bloated with each update and pixel-heavy crown mount/polymorph/recall/interactive furnishings, while retaining the same data limits... performance will only continue to get worse. There will come a point where there will be less and less long standing game features to delete to make room for new data. And what will happen then? Only time will tell.

Drammanoth

Uh... I wish ZOS did something about it... but I do wonder, whether this is 1) something which they do not need to address (as they're dealing with it), OR - worse - 2) what they're being accused of.

I wish I was wrong, but if evidence proves one thing, it is certainly NOT the other.

A good game, handled in such a way. Shame