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

Xandreia_

again sanitys edge is really bad for lag, how are we supposed to get the trifecta when the trial is working against us

Just_Attivi

the past couple days Ive actually had decent performance again (not good, just not terrible). Today however, was easily one of the worst days ive experienced yet, so much rubberbanding, time warping, crashes....

#whoIsDrivingThisThing?

BahometZ

Multiple people freezing and disconnections over several hours in lucent citadel today. Worse performance than yesterday same time. And this is post maintenance, so kinda curious what it was supposed to achieve.

It's at the point where trial progging is nigh on pointless during events, and its event after event atm.

Coo_PnT

I think it would be better to describe the problem in as much detail as possible and provide feedback to the ZoS side.
I still like ESO, so please give me some more hope.

1.Platform/Server (PC/NA, etc.)
2.Country of origin of connection and rough location if possible
3.Your previous average ping/now average ping
4.Problem status (lag, freeze, disconnections, rubberbanding, etc.)
5.Specific location of the problem (overland/dungeons/trials/PvP)
6.Time of day when the problem occurred
7.Connection environment (wired/wireless VPN)
8.How often you play and how often the problem occurs

Results of traceroute or similar tools, if possible

If you have any other suggestions, I would appreciate it if you could add them.

Could the ZoS side please take a quick survey to identify this problem?

Coo_PnT

My situation. I don't remember exactly when this problem started occurring, but it started about 6 months ago.

#Connecting to PC/NA from Japan
#Play about 3 hours about 3 times a week (8:00AM EDT~)
#Played only in Cyrodiil, disconnected about once every 3 times and the situation was mixed.
(Ping999+ sometimes occurs even when in town during events)
#Average ping was and still is 180-220 with a wired connection (NA prime time is around 300)

Is the following IP address still correct for ESO Server?
https://help.elderscrollsonline.com/#en/answer/30903

Renato90085

i just play bg and got 700-999ping
and a enemy pm me say i am hack
because he say he got my dmg repeatedly 1 sec

LadyGP

Coo_PnT wrote: »

I think it would be better to describe the problem in as much detail as possible and provide feedback to the ZoS side.
I still like ESO, so please give me some more hope.

1.Platform/Server (PC/NA, etc.)
2.Country of origin of connection and rough location if possible
3.Your previous average ping/now average ping
4.Problem status (lag, freeze, disconnections, rubberbanding, etc.)
5.Specific location of the problem (overland/dungeons/trials/PvP)
6.Time of day when the problem occurred
7.Connection environment (wired/wireless VPN)
8.How often you play and how often the problem occurs

Results of traceroute or similar tools, if possible

If you have any other suggestions, I would appreciate it if you could add them.

Could the ZoS side please take a quick survey to identify this problem?

We have done this for over 60 pages now. @ZOS_Kevin asked for videos, tickets to be submitted (and numbers put here), OP has helped facilitate getting info from people (regions,VPN on or off), where the issue occurred, what pings were, etc.

It took about 40 pages (4 months) before we go confirmation that anyone was actively assigned to this task in the backlog.

We now go weeks without updates and when we get an update it's always a "don't have much to report" (this is 100% not a knock on Kevin he can only report to us what he is told).

At this point I am done with ESO. I've cancelled my subscription and all the raid groups I am apart of have either fallen apart because of this issue or are making zero progress because of crashes.

Here is a prime example - I was sent a DM with this video. The team had 4 disconnects during the first trash pull.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2266369218?t=00h07m52s

ZoS sent out a survey asking for feedback related to guilds. The main reason guilds are breaking up and leaving ESO is because of the performance.

I'll still post in this thread and pass along information as I know there are still people who have hopes for this issue being solve. I'm cutting my losses here and moving on. This is a game I have been a part of since the beta and it's really upsetting to make this call but I feel as though this issue STILL is not getting the attention it deserves (I see you PvP I know we have been having these same issues for 7 years now) so the last tool in my chest is to put my money into games that I feel respect their player base. Unfortunately, I lost that with ZoS over the last few years.

This is not a knock on anyone at ZoS or speculation at all - this is just my personal experience and views from playing the game since beta up until now.

LadyGP signing off.

CatoUnchained

I only disconnected twice in 3 hours of playing today. I feel privileged now.

Artymiss

Hubby and I were running IA together, same connection, in the same room. Not only were both of us lagging, it was at different times. I would see his character on my screen standing in damage and attacking, while, right next to me, he is pressing the roll-dodge combo and cursing because it is not responding!

Then, a marauder spawned, and fortunately we managed to take him down. But here's the thing: he died on hubby's screen WHILE I was still battling him on mine!!

We finally gave up mid-Arc 3, because the lag was so bad...we could bar swap, couldnt roll-dodge etc.

If we are going to get content where progress cannot be saved, and/or there are limited lives, please, ZOS, can we at least be guaranteed no lag, so that we have a fair chance of seeing how far we can go?

LadyGP

Artymiss wrote: »

Hubby and I were running IA together, same connection, in the same room. Not only were both of us lagging, it was at different times. I would see his character on my screen standing in damage and attacking, while, right next to me, he is pressing the roll-dodge combo and cursing because it is not responding!

Then, a marauder spawned, and fortunately we managed to take him down. But here's the thing: he died on hubby's screen WHILE I was still battling him on mine!!

We finally gave up mid-Arc 3, because the lag was so bad...we could bar swap, couldnt roll-dodge etc.

If we are going to get content where progress cannot be saved, and/or there are limited lives, please, ZOS, can we at least be guaranteed no lag, so that we have a fair chance of seeing how far we can go?

You'll never get a guarantee of no lag - nor will we get an update on why we are 5 months in with this still being such a big issue.

Jaraal

Renato90085 wrote: »

i just play bg and got 700-999ping
and a enemy pm me say i am hack
because he say he got my dmg repeatedly 1 sec

Yep, I see this complaint all the time in Cyrodiil. Players accuse (and sometimes report) innocent players of hacking, when they are actually playing normally, their inputs get delayed in a lag packet, and then hit the enemy in a seemingly impossible burst 'combo' that one shots them. Then the victim announces to the zone that their killer is a cheater, using macros, and whatnot.

This is yet another unpleasant and unnecessary side effect of these chronic performance issues.

Just_Attivi

Logged in. Loaded straight into Cyrodiil.

ping reads 66, WHOA thats better than usual! moved up to 84, then back down to 67, sweet!

Open mail, each mail takes ~6 seconds to open. removing hireling loot takes another 6.

Port to Blue Road Keep.

Loading screen.... loading screen... An Error has occurred, please wait to log in.

logged out.

Its just not worth the struggle, to try to keep playing this game. I'm sure I will stupidly continue to try to play in the coming days, but my time is more limited these days, and ESO is just not performing well enough to keep me wanting to try.

LadyGP

Just_Attivi wrote: »

Logged in. Loaded straight into Cyrodiil.

ping reads 66, WHOA thats better than usual! moved up to 84, then back down to 67, sweet!

Open mail, each mail takes ~6 seconds to open. removing hireling loot takes another 6.

Port to Blue Road Keep.

Loading screen.... loading screen... An Error has occurred, please wait to log in.

logged out.

Its just not worth the struggle, to try to keep playing this game. I'm sure I will stupidly continue to try to play in the coming days, but my time is more limited these days, and ESO is just not performing well enough to keep me wanting to try.

Idk why I even tried tonight.

Yup, I'm done with ESO. For real.

Xandreia_

again dc's and lag all night in sanitys edge.

@ZOS_Kevin its been nearly 2 weeks since the last update, please please please can you say something

Rkindaleft

BahometZ wrote: »

Multiple people freezing and disconnections over several hours in lucent citadel today. Worse performance than yesterday same time. And this is post maintenance, so kinda curious what it was supposed to achieve.

It's at the point where trial progging is nigh on pointless during events, and its event after event atm.

Joined a group on PS/NA last night and at least half of the group was suffering random freezes and 5+ second rubber banding during the knot running before Xoryn...

Xandreia_ wrote: »

again sanitys edge is really bad for lag, how are we supposed to get the trifecta when the trial is working against us

Since the maintenance Lucent Citadel seems to be getting there too.

Soriana

Couldn't even finish vet Lucent Citadel tonight; disconnected 3 times before the second boss

SeveN085

PC EU it's caused by level 3 network

ZOS_Kevin

Hi all, we wanted to provide you with a small update. As many of you know, overall performance in any online game can be affected by a variety of different factors, many of which are outside of our influence. We do have ways of mitigating those outside influence situations as they arise. We have also been investigating whether there may be more than the normal "order-of-business-for-an-online-game" happening lately.

As we continue to monitor your feedback and investigate game performance, when we make back-end adjustments in the future we will check in with you to gauge whether you are seeing improvements. Thank you for your continued patience and feedback – please keep it coming. Specific details including what type of performance issues you experienced (high ping, rubber-banding, disconnect, etc.), the time of day you experienced a game performance issue, and where you were in the game, is especially helpful.

LPapirius

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi all, we wanted to provide you with a small update. As many of you know, overall performance in any online game can be affected by a variety of different factors, many of which are outside of our influence. We do have ways of mitigating those outside influence situations as they arise. We have also been investigating whether there may be more than the normal "order-of-business-for-an-online-game" happening lately.

As we continue to monitor your feedback and investigate game performance, when we make back-end adjustments in the future we will check in with you to gauge whether you are seeing improvements. Thank you for your continued patience and feedback – please keep it coming. Specific details including what type of performance issues you experienced (high ping, rubber-banding, disconnect, etc.), the time of day you experienced a game performance issue, and where you were in the game, is especially helpful.

There is most definitely more than the normal "order of business for an online game" performance issues going on with ESO. And this has been the case for PvE for over 5 months, and over 5 years for PvP. Telling us "we're working on it" at this point isn't going to provoke the desired response from most players who have been reporting these issues for so long.

LadyGP

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi all, we wanted to provide you with a small update. As many of you know, overall performance in any online game can be affected by a variety of different factors, many of which are outside of our influence. We do have ways of mitigating those outside influence situations as they arise. We have also been investigating whether there may be more than the normal "order-of-business-for-an-online-game" happening lately.

As we continue to monitor your feedback and investigate game performance, when we make back-end adjustments in the future we will check in with you to gauge whether you are seeing improvements. Thank you for your continued patience and feedback – please keep it coming. Specific details including what type of performance issues you experienced (high ping, rubber-banding, disconnect, etc.), the time of day you experienced a game performance issue, and where you were in the game, is especially helpful.

TL;DR

They aren't giving Kevin any info to share with us. Thank you for trying to give us an update - I know you're doing everything you can.

These issues are WELL outside the "order-of-business-for-an-online-game" .

Destai

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi all, we wanted to provide you with a small update.

Kevin, you've been asked a few times by posters here to provide weekly updates, tell us more concretely what's been tested, and even tell us what the actual scope of the issue is. The issue is 5 months old now and we still haven't gotten that framework. Can you please adjust your communications to directly address things that are asked of you and the developers? Last time this was brought up, it seems like the topic was misunderstood again.

Again, can you please provide the following information:

1. What's the scope of the issue, how many people are impacted (roughly)?
2. Which platforms are impacted?
3. What is the priority of the issue for the teams involved?
4. What testing has been done so far?
5. What's currently being tested?
6. When will the team view the videos and information provided?
7. Is there a timeline yet for a fix?

There's also been concerns around Akamai, the early May patch, and the role of AI chat monitoring in this situation. Can we please get direct answers to those in your next small update?

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

As many of you know, overall performance in any online game can be affected by a variety of different factors, many of which are outside of our influence. We do have ways of mitigating those outside influence situations as they arise. We have also been investigating whether there may be more than the normal "order-of-business-for-an-online-game" happening lately.

From ZOS's perspective, what is the scope of the issue at this point?

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

As we continue to monitor your feedback and investigate game performance, when we make back-end adjustments in the future we will check in with you to gauge whether you are seeing improvements. Thank you for your continued patience and feedback – please keep it coming. Specific details including what type of performance issues you experienced (high ping, rubber-banding, disconnect, etc.), the time of day you experienced a game performance issue, and where you were in the game, is especially helpful.

I feel like this is already what people have been giving you. This feels like we're back at square one - did the issue get reassigned or something? Why have many of the videos already provided not received any views?

Ultimately, the developers should be giving you a diagnostic framework to post here. That's standard triaging. Can you provide a more concise list for what people should be testing for and how they should test?

LPapirius wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi all, we wanted to provide you with a small update. As many of you know, overall performance in any online game can be affected by a variety of different factors, many of which are outside of our influence. We do have ways of mitigating those outside influence situations as they arise. We have also been investigating whether there may be more than the normal "order-of-business-for-an-online-game" happening lately.

As we continue to monitor your feedback and investigate game performance, when we make back-end adjustments in the future we will check in with you to gauge whether you are seeing improvements. Thank you for your continued patience and feedback – please keep it coming. Specific details including what type of performance issues you experienced (high ping, rubber-banding, disconnect, etc.), the time of day you experienced a game performance issue, and where you were in the game, is especially helpful.

There is most definitely more than the normal "order of business for an online game" performance issues going on with ESO. And this has been the case for PvE for over 5 months, and over 5 years for PvP. Telling us "we're working on it" at this point isn't going to provoke the desired response from most players who have been reporting these issues for so long.

@ZOS_Kevin I think this a sentiment you should be addressing directly.

LadyGP

Destai wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi all, we wanted to provide you with a small update.

Kevin, you've been asked a few times by posters here to provide weekly updates, tell us more concretely what's been tested, and even tell us what the actual scope of the issue is. The issue is 5 months old now and we still haven't gotten that framework. Can you please adjust your communications to directly address things that are asked of you and the developers? Last time this was brought up, it seems like the topic was misunderstood again.

Again, can you please provide the following information:

1. What's the scope of the issue, how many people are impacted (roughly)?
2. Which platforms are impacted?
3. What is the priority of the issue for the teams involved?
4. What testing has been done so far?
5. What's currently being tested?
6. When will the team view the videos and information provided?
7. Is there a timeline yet for a fix?

There's also been concerns around Akamai, the early May patch, and the role of AI chat monitoring in this situation. Can we please get direct answers to those in your next small update?

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

As many of you know, overall performance in any online game can be affected by a variety of different factors, many of which are outside of our influence. We do have ways of mitigating those outside influence situations as they arise. We have also been investigating whether there may be more than the normal "order-of-business-for-an-online-game" happening lately.

From ZOS's perspective, what is the scope of the issue at this point?

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

As we continue to monitor your feedback and investigate game performance, when we make back-end adjustments in the future we will check in with you to gauge whether you are seeing improvements. Thank you for your continued patience and feedback – please keep it coming. Specific details including what type of performance issues you experienced (high ping, rubber-banding, disconnect, etc.), the time of day you experienced a game performance issue, and where you were in the game, is especially helpful.

I feel like this is already what people have been giving you. This feels like we're back at square one - did the issue get reassigned or something? Why have many of the videos already provided not received any views?

Ultimately, the developers should be giving you a diagnostic framework to post here. That's standard triaging. Can you provide a more concise list for what people should be testing for and how they should test?

LPapirius wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi all, we wanted to provide you with a small update. As many of you know, overall performance in any online game can be affected by a variety of different factors, many of which are outside of our influence. We do have ways of mitigating those outside influence situations as they arise. We have also been investigating whether there may be more than the normal "order-of-business-for-an-online-game" happening lately.

As we continue to monitor your feedback and investigate game performance, when we make back-end adjustments in the future we will check in with you to gauge whether you are seeing improvements. Thank you for your continued patience and feedback – please keep it coming. Specific details including what type of performance issues you experienced (high ping, rubber-banding, disconnect, etc.), the time of day you experienced a game performance issue, and where you were in the game, is especially helpful.

There is most definitely more than the normal "order of business for an online game" performance issues going on with ESO. And this has been the case for PvE for over 5 months, and over 5 years for PvP. Telling us "we're working on it" at this point isn't going to provoke the desired response from most players who have been reporting these issues for so long.

@ZOS_Kevin I think this a sentiment you should be addressing directly.

I'd like this post 500 times if I could. This is literally what everyone has been asking for...

Todays update reads as though the 2 network admins came back and said "everything looks fine to us". Clearly, this is a ZoS issue. There are WAY to many people getting the EXACT same issue for it to me an "us" issue.

Estin

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi all, we wanted to provide you with a small update. As many of you know, overall performance in any online game can be affected by a variety of different factors, many of which are outside of our influence. We do have ways of mitigating those outside influence situations as they arise. We have also been investigating whether there may be more than the normal "order-of-business-for-an-online-game" happening lately.

As we continue to monitor your feedback and investigate game performance, when we make back-end adjustments in the future we will check in with you to gauge whether you are seeing improvements. Thank you for your continued patience and feedback – please keep it coming. Specific details including what type of performance issues you experienced (high ping, rubber-banding, disconnect, etc.), the time of day you experienced a game performance issue, and where you were in the game, is especially helpful.

I appreciate the update, but I am sorry to say that this further ruins the amount of faith I have left in the game and this problem ever being fixed. "Overall performance in any online game can be affect by a variety of different factors, many of which are outside of our influence." reads exactly like "There's nothing we can do on our end to fix this problem".

sshogrin

@ZOS_Kevin
Can the AI chat bot be deleted for now to see if that helps with performance?
AI takes an insane amount of CPU/resources, so unless you guys actually added servers to support this, you're taking away performance from the game servers.
I get lags, rubber banding, frame freezes throughout the day, and it's not consistent as to zone or activity.
I have 1GB Fiber, when I do a traceroute I get major packet losses in Texas right before it hits your servers. Mine doesn't say akami like others, mine is cogent communications. Is it possible that your ISP is causing these issues? Many people have posted their traceroutes on this thread showing that. There is also another handoff in the traceroute that loses packets and even has a "doesn't respond" description, it seems to be the same IP address across the board on that mid connection hand off.

LadyGP

Estin wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi all, we wanted to provide you with a small update. As many of you know, overall performance in any online game can be affected by a variety of different factors, many of which are outside of our influence. We do have ways of mitigating those outside influence situations as they arise. We have also been investigating whether there may be more than the normal "order-of-business-for-an-online-game" happening lately.

As we continue to monitor your feedback and investigate game performance, when we make back-end adjustments in the future we will check in with you to gauge whether you are seeing improvements. Thank you for your continued patience and feedback – please keep it coming. Specific details including what type of performance issues you experienced (high ping, rubber-banding, disconnect, etc.), the time of day you experienced a game performance issue, and where you were in the game, is especially helpful.

I appreciate the update, but I am sorry to say that this further ruins the amount of faith I have left in the game and this problem ever being fixed. "Overall performance in any online game can be affect by a variety of different factors, many of which are outside of our influence." reads exactly like "There's nothing we can do on our end to fix this problem".

YUP!

aka the hero engine.

They know what the issue is... except the lag now is more than the typically accepted amount... therefore they are putting people on it to see if there is something "new" that is going on.

I'd put my money on it they know exactly what the cause is but can't do anything about it because their tools are what they are.

This is EXACTLY what happens when you build years upon years of technical debt and leadership refuses to unwind some of that debt. You're now in an impossible situation where you have to continue to pump out content to generate revenue while knowing each iteration is just going to compound these issues. This is the quiet part they can't directly talk about but there are so many case studies/stories of software development where building technical debt and refusing to address it early on leads to these kind of impossible situations.

I truly feel for everyone involved, Kevin included.

LadyGP

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi all, we wanted to provide you with a small update. As many of you know, overall performance in any online game can be affected by a variety of different factors, many of which are outside of our influence. We do have ways of mitigating those outside influence situations as they arise. We have also been investigating whether there may be more than the normal "order-of-business-for-an-online-game" happening lately.

As we continue to monitor your feedback and investigate game performance, when we make back-end adjustments in the future we will check in with you to gauge whether you are seeing improvements. Thank you for your continued patience and feedback – please keep it coming. Specific details including what type of performance issues you experienced (high ping, rubber-banding, disconnect, etc.), the time of day you experienced a game performance issue, and where you were in the game, is especially helpful.

You mentioned a month or so ago you were working on a bigger update. Where are we at with that bigger update? If I recall your goal was to have it 3 or so Fridays ago.

Seravi

Wow after all this time we are still at the same spot we were in the beginning. I know there are issues depending on region, Akami, ISP and many, many other things. I've been in the network chair before. Kevin is the middle man and has no control on what the "powers that be" do or don't do to address these issues.

I flipping sit on the data center for the love of all the salt on crackers so there is NO reason I should be getting the 999+ pings non stop in game. The latency/ping spikes in PVE (for me anyway) literally goes back to when the PTS and the live servers had the issues and people lost access to their accounts for weeks. The game has never recovered from that cluster fudge and just keeps getting worse.

LadyGP

Seravi wrote: »

Wow after all this time we are still at the same spot we were in the beginning. I know there are issues depending on region, Akami, ISP and many, many other things. I've been in the network chair before. Kevin is the middle man and has no control on what the "powers that be" do or don't do to address these issues.

I flipping sit on the data center for the love of all the salt on crackers so there is NO reason I should be getting the 999+ pings non stop in game. The latency/ping spikes in PVE (for me anyway) literally goes back to when the PTS and the live servers had the issues and people lost access to their accounts for weeks. The game has never recovered from that cluster fudge and just keeps getting worse.

That is when my issues started as well.

I think there was a brief DDoS attack right before that but that was a one off. Since that "incident" is when these issues have been here.

DinoZavr

@ZOS_Kevin thank you for keeping communication alive

in my humble understanding:
- freezes are caused by the Zenimax load balancers, which do not have enough buffers and lose packets
- lags are overloaded servers lacking CPU capacity
- disconnects have two reasons: the major one is load balancers do not have sufficient buffers to service the entire amount of connections from online players, the minor one is the code unable to relocate players from one location to another or poor backend server interconnections (derived from the fact connection is often broken because of teleporting from one zone/house to another)
Being "bundled" together these different issues (and many other issues like bugs) form the Gordian Knot of ESO hard to diagnose and fix.
Issues need man-hours and budget to be fought and, eventually, resolved. Plus intent, motivation and skills to proceed with them fixes attempts.

Nharimlur_Finor

LadyGP wrote: »

These issues are WELL outside the "order-of-business-for-an-online-game" .

Or they would be if there were any industry standards.