Alternate Characters and Performance Issues

El_Borracho · October 10

Like many players, I have multiple characters. From time to time, one of them suffers "performance" issues [INSERT JOKE HERE], as in massive lag, disconnects, hard crashes, and other gameplay problems. This week, that character is a Mag DK who couldn't walk more than 50 meters in West Weald without seeing a load screen. In the middle of a field, with no other characters around, far away from any mirror incursion. Forget about trying to sprint on a mount, it was like playing with AOL dial-up internet. In a normal Cloudrest run, there was no sound, in the portals, he could not activate the winds synergy, and I could not swap the bars, ever.

I swapped over to another character, absolutely no issues at all. I've seen this occasionally on a magblade in that he could not join a trial no matter what, porting in, porting to a player, walking in, etc. and would make the game crash to the opening screen. Also on a necro tank that could not swap bars at any point after porting into a group dungeon. Those problems were over a year ago and I haven't seen them since. Until this week with the DK.

Does this happen to other players?

Desiato · October 10

El_Borracho wrote: »

Does this happen to other players?

Someone who doesn't play ESO but reads the forums would think the servers are constantly melting down. There's been ongoing threads about PVE performance issues since at least May. There have also been posts about PVP performance, but Cyrodiil has always had terrible performance issues.

The thing is that I've largely been unaffected except for a few occasions. The same is true for most of the players I play Trials with. I can see others have had decent experiences through twitch streams because I sometimes watch trifecta/high score runs.

I recall at least once case in the forums in which a player described having an extremely laggy play session, but their roommate on the same network who was also playing had no problems at all. The problem fixed itself later in the day.

Recently, I recall one particular trial instance that had a lot of rubber banding for several players in our group, but the next instance of the same trial immediately after was fine.

So IMO, I think there are multiple causes of intermittent performance issues, including:
- server lag affecting a single instance of any kind (overland/dungeon/trial)
- server lag affecting particular sessions
- possible character/account related performance issues based on the physical location on the network that character/account's data is stored
- possible local network related hicups within an eso server host
- ddos attacks that may affect only one of multiple links to eso server hosts

I'm not stating these as facts, but expressing theories about what we're experiencing.

AnduinTryggva · October 10

Apart from the performance issues I have made a few observations on how things are loaded to my screen.

For instance when porting to a new area I often have it that player models are just the black placeholders and it takes some time for the player model and the texture to load.

Same goes for some of the NPC. For instance, when I want to pick up pledges I have to wait maybe around 10s for the NPCs to make an appearance and another 2s for the questmarker to appear.

It was really really bad during the zone event for Gold Road when doing the Mirrormoor incursions. I will port to an active one, ride there and I see a lot of people in a huge fight. What I don't see are the champion, the valkynazes and the adds for maybe something around 30s. I had to guess where the targets for the other players were to place my dots and st in order to get my damage tick for qualifying for the quests.

This was clearly a result of the many players around because this I did not have with lower populations.

El_Borracho · October 10

@Desiato oh no, all of that is helpful, and I've seen some of them as well. For the most part, the game has run smoothly, again, with the exceptions of Cyrodiil and the Orphic Shattered Shard boss in Lucent Citadel.

This issue affects one particular alternate character and none of the others. I've swapped mounts, put on the skeleton polymorph, removed other appearance options, and its the same thing for the last 5 days. Its weird.

@AnduinTryggva I see what you are describing a lot. Especially in Skingrad during the event, and on all of my characters. Sometimes you can not go through a door or bar swap until the area fully loads. I've noticed if you have the mount speed increases on the green CP tree, sometimes you can outrun the loading of the game if there are too many players in the area. I'm on PS-NA. Have a hard-wired connection and really good internet, so I know its not that. This thing with the DK is similar, but far worse.

Desiato · October 10

It could be a client-side issue. For example, it could be an addon enabled only for the character in question or a corrupted setting affecting only that character. Or perhaps there is an interaction between an aspect of that character or an addon that is causing an issue.

To test this, I would temporarily reset my eso client-side settings by renaming the live folder. To do this, I would:
- exit eso
- open file explorer if using Windows
- browse to Documents/Elder Scrolls Online
- rename the Live folder to something like "live_old"

After doing so, the next time ESO starts, it will generate a new live folder. The old settings will continue to exist in the live_old folder which can be reverted to at any time as long as it's not deleted.

If the problem persists after doing this, at least you will know it's not addon/setting related. If the problem is solved, you can then focus on figuring out why.

To revert the changes, you can go back to the Documents/Elder Scrolls Online folder, delete the temporary live folder that was generated and rename live_old back to "live".

AnduinTryggva · October 10

Also I noticed the following:

When trying to parse on the trial dummy in our guild hall the weaving gets clunky and erratic as soon as a second player is present inside the home.

Sometimes I hear the attack or skill sound without my toon performing the animation, sometimes there is a delay betweein sound and animation and not to mention that some light attacks or skills don't go off...

It seems really an issue of the multiplayer part of ESO because when I am alone in the guild hall, parsing works fine.

tomofhyrule · October 10

One thing I've noticed about the recent performance issues is that it does seem to affect some people and not others, even if they're in the same room on the same connection.

I was running trials the other day, and my cotank was almost in slideshow mode, while his wife wasn't having any issues whatsoever. I also have run dungeons with another group of friends, and one had stutters and rubberbanding on one day, and then the other two had that issue on another day but the first was fine.

It does remind me of that time a few years back when there was a hardware fault. I think it was in one of the switches or something? Basically, anyone whose login was directed through the faulty switch ended up having an unstable connection and ping spikes all over, but it wasn't everyone, and since players are assigned to a switch on login, it was always different who was assigned to the bad one. I remember there was a dev comment that that switch got replaced, and I seem to remember that the same kind of thing was happening then.

I wonder if there's another hardware fault going on, since that would explain some of the recent lag issues and how it's hard to pin down to a cause.

nessarose_0112358 · October 11

Does this happen to other players?

Yes — I have been experiencing a similar issue — also on PS-NA. I started noticing that there was a discrepancy between different characters and the speed at which things would load in September 2023. At the time I made a ticket and sent in a bunch of video clips. My main character (sorc) and my primary tank (warden) were by far the most affected of my characters. I probably have the most play time on these two — plus they both have a bunch of extra stuff unlocked…..like crafting motifs, eidetic memory, and antiquities (they both have the treasure chest visibility perk). After a bunch of back and forth, including using an alternative internet connection and making a character to test on the EU server, there was little else to try and the problem went unresolved.

There was some improvement during the winter of 2024, but by the time May rolled around, things started going downhill again. As of late, my warden tank still has comically bad load times. For example, in Bedlam Veil — the first boss Hm — I typically can’t see any of the little crystal atros or glaciers spawn in until the boss has about 75% health. I’m lucky if I see the animation for the boss’ first heavy attack. I have also tried some of the usual tricks (restarting game/ps before prog, using a polymorph, and searching myself in guild rosters) — but none of it seems to help. My DK tank — who I don’t use all that much — has a lot easier of a time with things loading in. My sorc dps is extremely prone to hitting random load screens (to the point where they are not so random as I can usually predict where/when they will occur on a particular dungeon map).

Toanis · October 11

Yeah, on PC-EU it's especially bad in Vivec City: you load in and port there and have to wait 10-20s for the banker to show up. Same for the Luxury furniture vendor, it's not a short ride from the wayshrine, but I still have to wait a couple seconds before the vendor shows up.

On my first visit to Skingrad I had to google where the dailies are, because I rode past the invisible NPCs before they showed up. Generally the faster you move, the worse the issue is. A new level 1 char on a geriatric horse might be fine.

El_Borracho · October 11

@nessarose_0112358 yes, this is exactly it. Did anything come from the ticket, even a response?

The times it happened on other characters, it would resolve itself after a week or two. But like you have described for your sorc, it makes the character unplayable. My Mag DK has most of the skill lines unlocked, but I don't think that is it. I have another DK that is my primary that has everything unlocked and there are zero issues with that character. I'm no computer guy, but that Mag DK feels like using a computer that picked up a bug or virus. It just doesn't work.

SeaGtGruff · October 11

@El_Borracho, on the character that's experiencing the unusual amount of lag (i.e., different than your other characters), you could try switching to a different instance by checking the rosters for the various player guilds you're in to see if anyone else is in that zone, then travel to them, going down the roster until you finally get the message about the other player being in a different instance and that you'll be placed in the same instance as them.

El_Borracho · October 11

@SeaGtGruff I'll give that a try. Thanks!

Servadei · October 11

My necro Nord is cursed like this.

CGPsaint · October 11

Every now and then one of my alts gets put in timeout in that I simply cannot login to them. The login either fails or just freezes on the load screen. I can try over and over again, but no dice. At that point I just figure that character is not going to be playable for a while. There was a period of well over a year that I couldn't go to Wrothgar or Vvardenfell, as any character that I took there got put in timeout. Good times.

Trier_Sero · October 11

Can't say that about alts but I did notice that the lag is much worse and frequent on one of my accounts compared to others.

nessarose_0112358 · October 12

El_Borracho wrote: »

@nessarose_0112358 yes, this is exactly it. Did anything come from the ticket, even a response?

Yes — I did get a response when I submitted the ticket back in fall 2023. Once I got through the standard lag protocol stuff, it got escalated and that’s when support had me try running the game through a hotspot (which showed no difference/improvement) and trying the ps-Eu server (I made a new character, also a sorc, and went through the tutorial — and I had substantially less problems than I did on PS-NA. I was playing during US east coast prime time — so that might have contributed to the better results on ps-eu…..most people would be in bed there.). Ultimately, there was no suggestion that I tried that remedied the problem. It was extremely frustrating because content I had done weeks earlier with little to no issue (vRG HM prog) became basically unplayable (no one likes to feel like they are the one holding the team back because the adds are not loading in). Things got a little better in the winter — infinite archive worked flawlessly on my sorc, so I spent time doing that……now it’s gotten so bad that I won’t even attempt to go past arc 2 — adds won’t spawn in reliably there. (It’s funny though — some content is worse than others. bedlam, rock grove, lucent citadel are a disaster, but blackrose prison and shipwrights regret work nearly flawlessly.

the1andonlyskwex · October 12

AnduinTryggva wrote: »

Apart from the performance issues I have made a few observations on how things are loaded to my screen.

For instance when porting to a new area I often have it that player models are just the black placeholders and it takes some time for the player model and the texture to load.

Same goes for some of the NPC. For instance, when I want to pick up pledges I have to wait maybe around 10s for the NPCs to make an appearance and another 2s for the questmarker to appear.

It was really really bad during the zone event for Gold Road when doing the Mirrormoor incursions. I will port to an active one, ride there and I see a lot of people in a huge fight. What I don't see are the champion, the valkynazes and the adds for maybe something around 30s. I had to guess where the targets for the other players were to place my dots and st in order to get my damage tick for qualifying for the quests.

This was clearly a result of the many players around because this I did not have with lower populations.

This is 100% a client issue, not a server issue. I had this problem all the time when I played on PS4Pro, and it almost never happens on PS5 with everything else exactly the same (server, network, account, etc.). I'm pretty sure it's caused by your system struggling to transfer all of the currently needed 3D models and textures from your hard drive into GPU memory.

LaintalAy · October 12

I came back in March after a six month absence. I was getting 24 Fps and around 430 ping all through April. That's the best its ever been for 9 years and I was quite happy, given the range of limitations that I have here.

May 7 comes along and that all changes. I rarely get above 12 fps with 3fps being the norm now. I don't have any issues being disconnected. My problems occur on all my characters. They are all new (from March) with 750 CP and the low end of skill points.

Now today I notice that performance seemingly varies by what Zone I'm in.

Aurielle · October 12

LaintalAy wrote: »

I came back in March after a six month absence. I was getting 24 Fps and around 430 ping all through April. That's the best its ever been for 9 years and I was quite happy, given the range of limitations that I have here.

May 7 comes along and that all changes. I rarely get above 12 fps with 3fps being the norm now. I don't have any issues being disconnected. My problems occur on all my characters. They are all new (from March) with 750 CP and the low end of skill points.

Now today I notice that performance seemingly varies by what Zone I'm in.

3-12 FPS is a PC problem, not a game performance problem. Are you playing with integrated graphics or something? You need a dedicated graphics card to play this game comfortably. Even a cheap low end card like an RTX 3060 will net you a steady 90-100+ FPS on high settings.

LaintalAy · October 12

Aurielle wrote: »

LaintalAy wrote: »

I came back in March after a six month absence. I was getting 24 Fps and around 430 ping all through April. That's the best its ever been for 9 years and I was quite happy, given the range of limitations that I have here.

May 7 comes along and that all changes. I rarely get above 12 fps with 3fps being the norm now. I don't have any issues being disconnected. My problems occur on all my characters. They are all new (from March) with 750 CP and the low end of skill points.

Now today I notice that performance seemingly varies by what Zone I'm in.

3-12 FPS is a PC problem, not a game performance problem. Are you playing with integrated graphics or something? You need a dedicated graphics card to play this game comfortably. Even a cheap low end card like an RTX 3060 will net you a steady 90-100+ FPS on high settings.

Ok then, don't read everything that I wrote.

the1andonlyskwex · October 12

LaintalAy wrote: »

Aurielle wrote: »

LaintalAy wrote: »

I came back in March after a six month absence. I was getting 24 Fps and around 430 ping all through April. That's the best its ever been for 9 years and I was quite happy, given the range of limitations that I have here.

May 7 comes along and that all changes. I rarely get above 12 fps with 3fps being the norm now. I don't have any issues being disconnected. My problems occur on all my characters. They are all new (from March) with 750 CP and the low end of skill points.

Now today I notice that performance seemingly varies by what Zone I'm in.

3-12 FPS is a PC problem, not a game performance problem. Are you playing with integrated graphics or something? You need a dedicated graphics card to play this game comfortably. Even a cheap low end card like an RTX 3060 will net you a steady 90-100+ FPS on high settings.

Ok then, don't read everything that I wrote.

All of it is consistent with client problems. Variable performance by zone could be caused by some zones being more graphically intensive than others, and changes over time could be caused by other changes on your system like different add-ons, different GPU drivers, or otherwise different background processes. Heck, even a cooling fan clogged with dust could cause problems.

All of that said, just because it's a client problem doesn't mean it's not the game's fault. I don't keep track of patch dates, but it's certainly possible that one or more game updates from ZOS have changed the hardware requirements for good performance. I know that the Morrowind chapter made PS4 performance much worse, for example.

Edit to add: We know your problem is client side because server and network problems don't cause frame rate issues. None of the rest of your observations change that.

Aurielle · October 12

LaintalAy wrote: »

Aurielle wrote: »

LaintalAy wrote: »

I came back in March after a six month absence. I was getting 24 Fps and around 430 ping all through April. That's the best its ever been for 9 years and I was quite happy, given the range of limitations that I have here.

May 7 comes along and that all changes. I rarely get above 12 fps with 3fps being the norm now. I don't have any issues being disconnected. My problems occur on all my characters. They are all new (from March) with 750 CP and the low end of skill points.

Now today I notice that performance seemingly varies by what Zone I'm in.

3-12 FPS is a PC problem, not a game performance problem. Are you playing with integrated graphics or something? You need a dedicated graphics card to play this game comfortably. Even a cheap low end card like an RTX 3060 will net you a steady 90-100+ FPS on high settings.

Ok then, don't read everything that I wrote.

I read everything you wrote. If you’re getting 3-12 FPS on average in ESO, then your PC is simply too weak to handle this game. When people talk about performance problems in ESO, they’re talking primarily about ping spikes and disconnects that often affect multiple people in the area at the same time. High ping causes problems with bar swapping, firing off skills, rubberbanding, etc.

The fact that your FPS drop occurred after an update isn’t surprising, as player populations increase after updates, and that will put more strain on a weak PC. Also, different areas may be more populated or more graphically intense than others, which again, will place more strain on a weak PC.

katanagirl1 · October 13

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

AnduinTryggva wrote: »

Apart from the performance issues I have made a few observations on how things are loaded to my screen.

For instance when porting to a new area I often have it that player models are just the black placeholders and it takes some time for the player model and the texture to load.

Same goes for some of the NPC. For instance, when I want to pick up pledges I have to wait maybe around 10s for the NPCs to make an appearance and another 2s for the questmarker to appear.

It was really really bad during the zone event for Gold Road when doing the Mirrormoor incursions. I will port to an active one, ride there and I see a lot of people in a huge fight. What I don't see are the champion, the valkynazes and the adds for maybe something around 30s. I had to guess where the targets for the other players were to place my dots and st in order to get my damage tick for qualifying for the quests.

This was clearly a result of the many players around because this I did not have with lower populations.

This is 100% a client issue, not a server issue. I had this problem all the time when I played on PS4Pro, and it almost never happens on PS5 with everything else exactly the same (server, network, account, etc.). I'm pretty sure it's caused by your system struggling to transfer all of the currently needed 3D models and textures from your hard drive into GPU memory.

This is true, but I was thinking last night how the PS4 used to be able to handle the game before the dark silhouettes of players and invisible npcs and adds. At some point, the game became more taxing for our systems.

LaintalAy · October 13

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

I don't keep track of patch dates

Ok. That does affect the credibility of your reply somewhat.

Aurielle wrote: »

I read everything you wrote. If you’re getting 3-12 FPS on average in ESO, then your PC is simply too weak to handle this game.

As I stated, it was working well enough in the six weeks prior to May 6. The hardware that I'm using is proven in three geographically different locations (1100km north and 1600km west) with no real variation in performance, from local networking issues.

Aurielle wrote: »

The fact that your FPS drop occurred after an update isn’t surprising, as player populations increase after updates

Here are the notes from the May 6 update. Hardly a major update.
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/658146/pc-mac-patch-notes-v9-3-9#latest

U41 went online around 26 March.
U42 went online around 6 June.

I can't see how the 6 May update would increase player populations on the EU server.

The start of my problems coincided with this topic:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/658253/zos-massive-spike-in-ping-lag-in-recent-days-what-gives#latest

My post was to provide symptoms of my problem to the OP in order to asses their own problem.

If you seriously suggesting that OP's local client environment is responsible for one of his characters behaving differently from other characters, then perhaps you should focus your technical experience on providing an explanation for that.

I took your explanations and advice and resolved the issue by uninstalling the game.
That guarantees that I won't have any more problems like this.

Aurielle · October 13

LaintalAy wrote: »

Aurielle wrote: »

I read everything you wrote. If you’re getting 3-12 FPS on average in ESO, then your PC is simply too weak to handle this game.

As I stated, it was working well enough in the six weeks prior to May 6. The hardware that I'm using is proven in three geographically different locations (1100km north and 1600km west) with no real variation in performance, from local networking issues.

Your geographical location would have no bearing on your FPS, so I’m not sure why you even brought that up.

LaintalAy wrote: »

Aurielle wrote: »

The fact that your FPS drop occurred after an update isn’t surprising, as player populations increase after updates

Here are the notes from the May 6 update. Hardly a major update.
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/658146/pc-mac-patch-notes-v9-3-9#latest

U41 went online around 26 March.
U42 went online around 6 June.

I can't see how the 6 May update would increase player populations on the EU server.

The start of my problems coincided with this topic:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/658253/zos-massive-spike-in-ping-lag-in-recent-days-what-gives#latest

Fair enough. But there are any number of other reasons why the game may have been coincidentally more populated at that time — the end of the winter semester for most universities, for instance. Maybe some component in your setup started failing at that time as well.

LaintalAy wrote: »

My post was to provide symptoms of my problem to the OP in order to asses their own problem.

If you seriously suggesting that OP's local client environment is responsible for one of his characters behaving differently from other characters, then perhaps you should focus your technical experience on providing an explanation for that.

OP wasn’t referencing massive FPS drops, though. The OP refers to “massive lag, disconnects, hard crashes” that varies between characters. Lag is not the same thing as FPS stuttering. Lag is visible on-screen delay that generally doesn’t impact FPS. People are experiencing the OP’s problems even with extremely powerful gaming PCs, so it’s clear that those problems are not local client related. I’m not at all suggesting that OP’s local client environment is responsible for his issues. I’m merely pointing out that your PC is responsible for your issues, which are not the same issues being experienced by the OP.

LaintalAy wrote: »

I took your explanations and advice and resolved the issue by uninstalling the game.
That guarantees that I won't have any more problems like this.

That’s…dramatic? I simply identified the source of your poor FPS, didn’t suggest you should uninstall the game (though how you tolerated playing for months at 3-12 FPS is beyond me — anything below 30 FPS is unplayable). If you actually want to avoid the problems you’re having, I would advise upgrading to an inexpensive low end gaming laptop or desktop that at least has an RTX 3050 card or equivalent. This should give you around 60 FPS in ESO (if not more), and you wouldn’t have to turn your graphics settings to “potato.” For an extra $100 or so, you could even get something with an RTX 3060, and enjoy framerates in ESO of around 90-100 FPS.

Trying to game on a PC with integrated graphics or an old gaming PC with a severely outdated graphics card is an exercise in frustration and futility. If you enjoy gaming, it makes sense to at least invest in hardware that will allow you to actually play games, instead of watching pixelated slideshows.