Can you guys give us a heads up to the server lag.

BasP

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

JustLovely wrote: »

It makes me wonder how much server resources they transfer from the regular game to support the PTS. This seems to be a pretty common issue when the PTS is open.

It's a fact that performance always suffers when the PTS is running, at least this has been the case in the last two to three years. It makes it seem like ZOS is running an absolute bare bones server farm to support their game, then they squeeze in the PTS by taking resources from other aspects of the game and we all suffer for it.

I might be mistaken, but I think that the PTS is up for the entire year? Though it's possible that more resources are spend on the PTS when a new patch is actively being tested by more players.

SilverBride

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

The players who continually claim "I've never had lag", at this point, after all these years, are simply not believable. The problem is too consistent over both NA and EU servers and to ubiquitous to claim it doesn't exist.

I am being completely honest when I say I never lag. The only person in game that I ever heard complain of lag is playing on an 11 year old computer.

I never claimed that some players aren't lagging but I think it's most likely for reasons other than just server performance or we all would be experiencing it.

reazea

SilverBride wrote: »

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

The players who continually claim "I've never had lag", at this point, after all these years, are simply not believable. The problem is too consistent over both NA and EU servers and to ubiquitous to claim it doesn't exist.

I am being completely honest when I say I never lag. The only person in game that I ever heard complain of lag is playing on an 11 year old computer.

I never claimed that some players aren't lagging but I think it's most likely for reasons other than just server performance or we all would be experiencing it.

The only players who don't have lag at least to some degree every day they play are the players who don't engage in end game content. (they don't PvP or participate in vet trials or vet dlc dungeons)

reazea

BasP wrote: »

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

JustLovely wrote: »

It makes me wonder how much server resources they transfer from the regular game to support the PTS. This seems to be a pretty common issue when the PTS is open.

It's a fact that performance always suffers when the PTS is running, at least this has been the case in the last two to three years. It makes it seem like ZOS is running an absolute bare bones server farm to support their game, then they squeeze in the PTS by taking resources from other aspects of the game and we all suffer for it.

I might be mistaken, but I think that the PTS is up for the entire year? Though it's possible that more resources are spend on the PTS when a new patch is actively being tested by more players.

PTS is not up all year. It's only up when they are testing a new release.

Desiato

reazea wrote: »

The only players who don't have lag at least to some degree every day they play are the players who don't engage in end game content. (they don't PvP or participate in vet trials or vet dlc dungeons)

That's just not true. I've been running vet trials and arenas all week with no issues outside of the connectivity issues on the 7th and minor packet loss to the NA server on the 9th. No one I play with has reported any issues either.

If a majority of players were experiencing the significant issues some are reporting, the forums and the subreddit would be melting down.

tsaescishoeshiner

It's definitely not addons. Last week, I saw several people in a group get kicked from the server all at the same time. Addons don't interact with your connectivity to the game--many are client-side, and some of them request tiny amounts of data from the server, nowhere near enough to cause lag. (EDIT: Also, people have had addons this whole time, but this general lag storm was suddenly felt last week.)

It would be more likely that one individual just wasn't impacted by it, or that they weren't doing anything where they notice it. For example, I don't get as much lag in the wilds of Cyrodiil as I do trying to cast any ability with a cast time or drink a potion around a lot of other players.

Last week I had lag in housing! With no housing addons. Rubberbanding, "Someone is already moving that furnishing" (while I'm alone), etc. In addition to getting teleported around dragon fights. It's been fine like 95% of the time, it's just that 5% that make it really distracting. It seemed to stop over the weekend.

Desiato

tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »

It would be more likely that one individual just wasn't impacted by it, or that they weren't doing anything where they notice it. For example, I don't get as much lag in the wilds of Cyrodiil as I do trying to cast any ability with a cast time or drink a potion around a lot of other players.

I am highly sensitive to latency. When the server isn't responsive, it makes me angry. Not only have I not been affected, but I'm in a fairly large raid guild with multiple progression groups and no one is discussing lag issues. Not a single mention of it all week. I've been in voice chat during vet trials and no one has complained.

I play prime time EDT evenings.

Because there aren't multiple 100 page threads in the forums, it is more likely that a minority of players are being affected by network issues at some level.

The players who are impacted are feeling it whatever they do. It's definitely affecting them in Cyrodiil because many PVP players have complained about it. A notable PVP streamer who is a very good player is also affected by whatever is going on.

moderatelyfatman

Yep, with all the freezinng and then speeding up again it's like I'm in a Zack Snyder movie....

Jaimeh

Kevin has said in another thread that they are aware, so hopefully we will have an update soon.

vsrs_au

tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »

It's definitely not addons. Last week, I saw several people in a group get kicked from the server all at the same time. Addons don't interact with your connectivity to the game--many are client-side, and some of them request tiny amounts of data from the server, nowhere near enough to cause lag. (EDIT: Also, people have had addons this whole time, but this general lag storm was suddenly felt last week.)

It would be more likely that one individual just wasn't impacted by it, or that they weren't doing anything where they notice it. For example, I don't get as much lag in the wilds of Cyrodiil as I do trying to cast any ability with a cast time or drink a potion around a lot of other players.

Last week I had lag in housing! With no housing addons. Rubberbanding, "Someone is already moving that furnishing" (while I'm alone), etc. In addition to getting teleported around dragon fights. It's been fine like 95% of the time, it's just that 5% that make it really distracting. It seemed to stop over the weekend.

Addons can interfere with your connectivity, e.g. if the game detects an addon is "spamming", you'll get error 318 and be disconnected.

tsaescishoeshiner

vsrs_au wrote: »

tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »

It's definitely not addons. Last week, I saw several people in a group get kicked from the server all at the same time. Addons don't interact with your connectivity to the game--many are client-side, and some of them request tiny amounts of data from the server, nowhere near enough to cause lag. (EDIT: Also, people have had addons this whole time, but this general lag storm was suddenly felt last week.)

It would be more likely that one individual just wasn't impacted by it, or that they weren't doing anything where they notice it. For example, I don't get as much lag in the wilds of Cyrodiil as I do trying to cast any ability with a cast time or drink a potion around a lot of other players.

Last week I had lag in housing! With no housing addons. Rubberbanding, "Someone is already moving that furnishing" (while I'm alone), etc. In addition to getting teleported around dragon fights. It's been fine like 95% of the time, it's just that 5% that make it really distracting. It seemed to stop over the weekend.

Addons can interfere with your connectivity, e.g. if the game detects an addon is "spamming", you'll get error 318 and be disconnected.

Agreed, that's possibly an issue that we wouldn't be able to see obviously. That wouldn't explain the recent lag issues with what we know, and I don't think we know enough for someone to rob themselves of addons because they think it'll impact their connection. So I think that's a superstition.

I know people who uninstalled or disabled their addons last week and still had issues.

If there was evidence that addons caused disconnects, rubberbanding, and skill delays, we would hear more about guilds disabling all addons for group content. (Some do ask people to disable MM and stuff)

Xandreia_

SilverBride wrote: »

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

The players who continually claim "I've never had lag", at this point, after all these years, are simply not believable. The problem is too consistent over both NA and EU servers and to ubiquitous to claim it doesn't exist.

I am being completely honest when I say I never lag. The only person in game that I ever heard complain of lag is playing on an 11 year old computer.

I never claimed that some players aren't lagging but I think it's most likely for reasons other than just server performance or we all would be experiencing it.

What do you do in game though? I do end game trials (multiple hard modes a day) and pvp. I've seen insane amounts of lag and disconnects in both for the last few weeks

no1care

Since sometime after the PTS issue / rollback, myself and several people I play(ed) with are complaining suddenly about lag spikes (that seem to be server related) when the problems didn't occur previously. I'm mostly waiting for the next chapter, but that this issue was an added factor to me taking somewhat of a break.
Hoping they do actually address it -- maybe something is not optimized? (Just wildly guessing, I have no idea. But it does seem common lately, seriously.)

SilverBride

Xandreia_ wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

The players who continually claim "I've never had lag", at this point, after all these years, are simply not believable. The problem is too consistent over both NA and EU servers and to ubiquitous to claim it doesn't exist.

I am being completely honest when I say I never lag. The only person in game that I ever heard complain of lag is playing on an 11 year old computer.

I never claimed that some players aren't lagging but I think it's most likely for reasons other than just server performance or we all would be experiencing it.

What do you do in game though? I do end game trials (multiple hard modes a day) and pvp. I've seen insane amounts of lag and disconnects in both for the last few weeks

I quest. I run dungeons and the Infinite Archive and occasionally arenas, and recently started normal trials. I do housing and writs and gather surveys. I occasionally go to Cyrodiil to get skyshards and lore books and do delves and dolmens. I occasionally do battlegrounds.

I've not lagged doing any of these.

I think it would be more helpful to look at what may be causing some player's lag rather than just assuming it's bad server performance.

ArchangelIsraphel

reazea wrote: »

BasP wrote: »

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

JustLovely wrote: »

It makes me wonder how much server resources they transfer from the regular game to support the PTS. This seems to be a pretty common issue when the PTS is open.

It's a fact that performance always suffers when the PTS is running, at least this has been the case in the last two to three years. It makes it seem like ZOS is running an absolute bare bones server farm to support their game, then they squeeze in the PTS by taking resources from other aspects of the game and we all suffer for it.

I might be mistaken, but I think that the PTS is up for the entire year? Though it's possible that more resources are spend on the PTS when a new patch is actively being tested by more players.

PTS is not up all year. It's only up when they are testing a new release.

This isn't true. The PTS is up and can be accessed year round- it just isn't regularly updated with new data. I use it year round to test housing builds and design characters and can get on it whenever I want. Which side of your account (EU or NA ) it displays depends on the region testing ended on. There is pretty much no one on the test server outside of testing periods however. I doubt the test server itself is at fault.

People testing packet loss have been seeing packet loss occur at certain points- pinging the server to see where packet loss happens for you may lead to more answers.

Jaraal

tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »

It's definitely not addons. Last week, I saw several people in a group get kicked from the server all at the same time.

But this contradicts the "must be your system/connection" argument, unless the group of people are all playing in the same location with identical hardware.

I have seen the mass disconnect happen in Cyrodiil on several occasions, when the action is heavy and all of a sudden a large number of people just disappear. Then, a few minutes later, people are talking in zone chat about the big crash. Just the other day I was waiting in a queue of 38 for Gray Host, so I started doing my crafting dailies, and within three minutes I was porting to Cyro. I found that quite unusual, so I asked in zone chat if there had been a big crash, and the answer was yes. But I was having no issues whatsoever in Vivec City. So take the "it must be a problem on your end" claims with a grain of salt.

Desiato

Jaraal wrote: »

I have seen the mass disconnect happen in Cyrodiil on several occasions, when the action is heavy and all of a sudden a large number of people just disappear. Then, a few minutes later, people are talking in zone chat about the big crash. Just the other day I was waiting in a queue of 38 for Gray Host, so I started doing my crafting dailies, and within three minutes I was porting to Cyro. I found that quite unusual, so I asked in zone chat if there had been a big crash, and the answer was yes. But I was having no issues whatsoever in Vivec City. So take the "it must be a problem on your end" claims with a grain of salt.

Mass disconnects in Cyrodiil have been an issue since launch. They are less common now because of the reduced population cap, but it's nothing new. Outside of the entire zone crashing which is uncommon and would disconnect everyone, they typically happen at big fights feature many players because the the processing load on the server is so high.

Another consideration is that overland zones are divided into "subzones". It used to be common during busy weekends to arrive at a keep fight and be disconnected upon entering the subzone of a keep. This is more rare now, but has happened to me a few times in recent months. These aren't mass disconnects per say, but may affect multiple players as they arrive at the keep -- or wherever the big fight may be.

Incidentally, Cyrodiil was supposed to feature a technology that would isolate server processing lag from the rest of the server, but for whatever reason it never worked.

Players may describe mass disconnects as crashes, and their clients may crash when they are affected, but it doesn't mean the server actually crashed.

Addons can play a role in disconnects in Cyrodiil because they affect client responsiveness. I sometimes see streamers with insanely poor FPS because they run too many addons. The engine used for UI scripting called LUA -- and is separate from the game engine -- is single-threaded, so the more addons that are active, the less responsive the client will be. A ZOS software engineer described in the forums the severe impact addons can have when Summerset was released because of client rendering performance issues introduced then. Each client also has a rate limit which can be more easily exceeded when certain addons are used when there is a lot of server lag as requests get queued.

These issues would be separate from -- yet exacerbated by -- whatever more short term issues have been affecting some players lately that may or may not be related to the problems everyone had connecting on May 7.

Tandor

Is it also the case in Cyrodiil that there's a known exploit whereby the exploiter(s) can target other players and trigger lag/disconnects? I've seen it mentioned here, but have no knowledge as to whether it's true or not. Also, what about ball groups? Do they cause disconnects or just lag, or neither?

Necrotech_Master

i generally dont really run into too much lag issues outside of cyro, pretty stable ping for the most part (70-90 is stable for me)

every once in awhile i get spiked to like 125-135 which is where i start noticing lag but it usually doesnt last long if it occurred outside of cyro, can definitely be very consistent in cyro though its been largely better since the server hardware updates a few years ago

Desiato

Tandor wrote: »

Is it also the case in Cyrodiil that there's a known exploit whereby the exploiter(s) can target other players and trigger lag/disconnects? I've seen it mentioned here, but have no knowledge as to whether it's true or not. Also, what about ball groups? Do they cause disconnects or just lag, or neither?

Every action a player does contributes to load on the server. Consider not only movement, light/heavy attacks and ability use, but also procs, status effects, dots, hots, AE damage/healing, etc..

So a player in a ball group that is constantly executing hots, group shields, AE damage, procs, etc on their teammates and their opponents will contribute to server load more than a player who is standing on a wall heavy attacking that group.

When the server load becomes to high, players begin to experience the most common kind of lag in Cyrodiil, server processing lag.

So yes, ball groups can cause a disproportionate amount of lag. It's common for me to experience a fun large scale fight at a keep that's performing well until one or more ball groups show up causing poor server performance.

There's always been rumors of "lagsploits" and it's theoretically possible for players to intentionally load the server, but I think most of the time it's just people playing the game with no ill intent.

People in this day in this age are prone to pass on things they hear others say as fact without proof, and that's usually the case when you hear about someone lagsploiting or cheating.

Sometimes there are bugs that can used against players as a denial of service attack. This happened recently when a certain string or character could cause another player's client to crash. So malicious players were causing mass disconnects by displaying this string in zone chat, in addition to sending tells to specific players to cause them to crash.

There may be other bugs active, but until proof is provided, I would take accusations with a grain of salt.

Jaraal

Tandor wrote: »

Is it also the case in Cyrodiil that there's a known exploit whereby the exploiter(s) can target other players and trigger lag/disconnects? I've seen it mentioned here, but have no knowledge as to whether it's true or not. Also, what about ball groups? Do they cause disconnects or just lag, or neither?

Yes.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8072178/#Comment_8072178

katanagirl1

SilverBride wrote: »

Xandreia_ wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

The players who continually claim "I've never had lag", at this point, after all these years, are simply not believable. The problem is too consistent over both NA and EU servers and to ubiquitous to claim it doesn't exist.

I am being completely honest when I say I never lag. The only person in game that I ever heard complain of lag is playing on an 11 year old computer.

I never claimed that some players aren't lagging but I think it's most likely for reasons other than just server performance or we all would be experiencing it.

What do you do in game though? I do end game trials (multiple hard modes a day) and pvp. I've seen insane amounts of lag and disconnects in both for the last few weeks

I quest. I run dungeons and the Infinite Archive and occasionally arenas, and recently started normal trials. I do housing and writs and gather surveys. I occasionally go to Cyrodiil to get skyshards and lore books and do delves and dolmens. I occasionally do battlegrounds.

I've not lagged doing any of these.

I think it would be more helpful to look at what may be causing some player's lag rather than just assuming it's bad server performance.

Normal trials probably don’t have any lag because they have way fewer mechanics than vet hm trials.

Arenas are instanced areas with only 1-4 players depending on the area. Shouldn’t be much lag there. Same for group dungeons,

If you are in Cyrodiil doing skyshards and lorebooks you are probably not in Gray Host. Other campaigns are not as busy (in fact may have 3 empty bars) and don’t have the lag problems.

So neither of those things prove anything.

SilverBride

katanagirl1 wrote: »

Arenas are instanced areas with only 1-4 players depending on the area. Shouldn’t be much lag there. Same for group dungeons

If you are in Cyrodiil doing skyshards and lorebooks you are probably not in Gray Host. Other campaigns are not as busy (in fact may have 3 empty bars) and don’t have the lag problems.

So neither of those things prove anything.

Vet trials only have additional mechanics on the bosses, not throughtout the entire instance.

As far as Cyrodiil I have done some PvP there in the past with a couple of different friends but it's been awhile... but I didn't lag nor did they.

Players are complaining that server performance is bad, but it appears they only mean Cyrodiil or some Veteran Trials, which makes me think the addons they use for these activities may be to blame, rather than the server.

katanagirl1

SilverBride wrote: »

katanagirl1 wrote: »

Arenas are instanced areas with only 1-4 players depending on the area. Shouldn’t be much lag there. Same for group dungeons

If you are in Cyrodiil doing skyshards and lorebooks you are probably not in Gray Host. Other campaigns are not as busy (in fact may have 3 empty bars) and don’t have the lag problems.

So neither of those things prove anything.

Vet trials only have additional mechanics on the bosses, not throughtout the entire instance.

As far as Cyrodiil I have done some PvP there in the past with a couple of different friends but it's been awhile... but I didn't lag nor did they.

Players are complaining that server performance is bad, but it appears they only mean Cyrodiil or some Veteran Trials, which makes me think the addons they use for these activities may be to blame, rather than the server.

Yes, and the bosses are where you are going to spend most of your time. You are not likely to lag and/or dc just walking around.

Were you on Gray Host or Blackreach in Cyrodiil? Blackreach rarely has any lag.

EDIT: remember that consoles do not have add-ons and plenty of players on console are reporting lag.

Just_Attivi

Just adding clarity that the lag spikes people are complaining about are OUTSIDE of cyrodiil, in PVE land. The original post in this thread was talking about prog groups. there is another thread with more people conversing, and yes, while cyro lag is even worse than before, the random lag spikes/5 second delays/sudden ping 999s/etc are outside cyro, personally i had them in near empty overland towns that I log in/out in, running around picking flowers/doing daily endeavors. They were particularly bad last week, and mine seemed to have cleared up this week with me changing nothing on my end after all of my trouble shooting last week improved nothing. I ended up just taking my daily log in and leaving last week, as the lag prevented pretty much interacting with anything. logged in last night/today for endeavors and seemed fine now.

These lagspikes did not seem to hit everyone. some dungeons would have 3 of 4 people lag out, while 1 was 100% fine. some towns have people teleporting all over, while others walk normally. PVP latency is a joke 99% of the time and isnt a fair measure of server performance at this point, but youd get some players entirely freezing up while everyone around them fights normally.

davidtk

Since I read the forum and other topics regarding lag and ping.
So many people have lags, disconnections, crashes. Some people play without any problems.
It almost looks like some problem on the route between the client and the server?
Maybe the Akamai network? Or an ISP problem?
i played on NA a bit with bearable ping 120-160 (about moth before) but now its horrible 240+++ up to 999+
And I playing on EU a experiencing random weird lags, ability lags and enviroment lags.
And I have it outside the Cyrodiil like some other players with similar issues.

BasP

Just another IA run on PC EU for me (coincidentally Marauder Gothmau showed up when my game froze for the fourth time. That didn't end well )

GooGa592

Desiato wrote: »

reazea wrote: »

The only players who don't have lag at least to some degree every day they play are the players who don't engage in end game content. (they don't PvP or participate in vet trials or vet dlc dungeons)

That's just not true. I've been running vet trials and arenas all week with no issues outside of the connectivity issues on the 7th and minor packet loss to the NA server on the 9th. No one I play with has reported any issues either.

If a majority of players were experiencing the significant issues some are reporting, the forums and the subreddit would be melting down.

Except there are many new posts about the problem.

sarahthes

GooGa592 wrote: »

Desiato wrote: »

reazea wrote: »

The only players who don't have lag at least to some degree every day they play are the players who don't engage in end game content. (they don't PvP or participate in vet trials or vet dlc dungeons)

That's just not true. I've been running vet trials and arenas all week with no issues outside of the connectivity issues on the 7th and minor packet loss to the NA server on the 9th. No one I play with has reported any issues either.

If a majority of players were experiencing the significant issues some are reporting, the forums and the subreddit would be melting down.

Except there are many new posts about the problem.

Not to mention it coming up in quite a few raid discords. In fact, when I was having problems with my raid last night, someone in an entirely different raid posted at the exact same time in discord asking if people were having issues.

IIBonesII

Just came out of a vCR+1 prog evening. Tanks losing taunt because they can't see that they've dropped it bc of lag. That leads to other mechs not being handled. Which leads to more dd's dying. Which leads to group wipe. I am so sick of prog nights honestly bc I feel like all we're doing is handling the bugs and lag. We waste time doing reloadui's to reset everything. That doesn't work half the time so we end up with players wasting time doing full game reloads.

I thought this last year or so was meant to be about fixing this kind of thing.