Why isn't ESO cross platform yet?

WhiteScythe

Why hasn’t ZOS/ESO implemented cross-platform play? PC and console players should be able to play together.

Technical issues, server limitations, or something else?

FoJul

WhiteScythe wrote: »

Why hasn’t ZOS/ESO implemented cross-platform play? PC and console players should be able to play together.

Technical issues, server limitations, or something else?

I'm pretty sure, it raises concern with market and currency flow/server flow/ and nights when everyone is on like on the weekend, the servers cant even handle the amount of people playing during those times.

The economies between all platforms has always been complained about when talks of merging.

There's definitely some higher things like server status that I don't know enough to talk about.

Desync is probably going to be real bad, and comparing to other games, consoles will be at a slight disadvantage cause they don't support keyboard and mouse/Higher than 60 fps.

WhiteScythe

Hmm if anything it would bring more into the economy. I think both sides would benefit from more players in the pool.

Desync is probably the biggest reason they haven't done it.

Unfadingsilence

WhiteScythe wrote: »

Hmm if anything it would bring more into the economy. I think both sides would benefit from more players in the pool.

Desync is probably the biggest reason they haven't done it.

Because a high n PC and the addons a PC has to offer WILL 100% DESTROY anyone on Xbox or Playstation sorry just the truth. I play on all platforms and I know first hand the skill gap is different because of how much faster performances on PC compared to console. Now with that being said having them merge Xbox NA and EU and same with Playstation NA and EU would be nice since most of EU is dead dead on both consoles and would help a little for the player base

Maitsukas

Unfadingsilence wrote: »

WhiteScythe wrote: »

Hmm if anything it would bring more into the economy. I think both sides would benefit from more players in the pool.

Desync is probably the biggest reason they haven't done it.

Having them merge Xbox NA and EU and same with Playstation NA and EU would be nice since most of EU is dead dead on both consoles and would help a little for the player base

That isn't really a solution, since one region will be forced to deal with a higher latency than the other, depending on where the merged servers are physically located (my regular latency on PTS & PC-NA for example is ~200 ms compared to PC-EU at ~100 ms).

Orbital78

PC-NA and PC-EU aren't on cross platform transfer even. Purchases don't cross over or anything.

RebornV3x

We don't need cross platform but cross save would be amazing being able to port my console account to PC would be nice.

CAB_Life

The solution to this—as I’ve said elsewhere and before—is to keep the servers locked to their platforms, but to allow players of any platform to queue together for group activities. This doesn’t require a radical overhaul of any platform-specific servers or economies and with (soon) console addons everyone is technically on the same page with regards to baseline functionality.

I’m not implying it’s as easy as 1/2/3, but it’s not as if ZOS don’t have the funds to implement a solution if they chose.

I’d also like to see cross platform unlocks for achievements, crown store purchases etc, and it’s baffling that they can’t come up with any solutions to these problems given how closely they work with the Kings of cross platform/ unlocks/ servers, Blizzard, who offer these solutions in nearly every one of their titles.

Meiox

WhiteScythe wrote: »

Why hasn’t ZOS/ESO implemented cross-platform play? PC and console players should be able to play together.

Technical issues, server limitations, or something else?

what would you do with people that have accounts on more than one platform?
Combine them and let them have 40 or even 60 characters if they maxed out characters on all platforms?

Tandor

I guess it's a combination of things. Technical problems, legal problems arising from the different platform providers, cost/benefit analysis, the fact that it would be a one-way traffic with those not wanting to join in playing on even quieter console servers while the PC servers would be even more overloaded, and not least the potential for cross-platform contamination of the kind we saw when things went horribly wrong with the PTS data appearing on the Live servers - they won't be in a hurry to repeat that disaster!

Dagoth_Rac

The megaserver architecture. PC-NA, just as an example, is not a server. It is probably dozens or even hundreds of servers, and you essentially have crossplay all day, every day. But megaserver to megaserver crossplay is "crossplay crossplay".

And they clearly were not designed for this. It is like asking your bank to allow 2 people to have the same social security number. SSN is not just some display field. The bank's systems are built from the ground up to treat SSN as unique. If you suddenly declare it non-unique, you need to rebuild the underlying system from the ground up.

They can't even get PC-NA and PC-EU to play nicely on PTS! They have to do a clunky complete wipe and rebuild of entire database between NA and EU testing on PTS.

There is tons of circumstantial evidence that each megaserver is using a vast web of unique database keys. Table A has unique key X, which links to Tables B and C. And Table B has unique key Y and Table C has unique key Z. And that is just the tip of the iceberg. And if any of those unique keys gets corrupted or broken, the whole system breaks, and suddenly another player has access to your bank, or another player has your achievements, or another player has your non-combat pet. Etc., etc.

And this uniqueness is lost across megaservers. And trying to traverse such a massive database, give everything new unique keys, not break any existing links between unique keys, not conflict with unique keys on other megaservers, and then stay unique and non-conflicting, is a huge undertaking.

Impossible? No. Worth the time and money and risk? So far the answer is no. Maybe that will change. Maybe an AI can write the database merge algorithm (a notoriously tedious and error-prone process) with more accuracy than a human. Or do 90% of the grunt work and hand it off to humans for review and final 10%.

But this is ultimately what you need. It is not a matter of just putting _EU after everyone's character name. It is a really complicated process under the hood. And likely complicated further by the already complex nature of the megaserver architecture.

Cooperharley

To put it simply, it’s likely due to old tech that they haven’t bothered with upgrading to my knowledge.

It’s also a business, so even though we’d love that largely, it’s likely not worth the investment for them. They can barely handle the servers they have currently ya know? They need major server overhauls and upgrades to be able to do that and we have no idea if that’s in the works or not.

redlink1979

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/675743/is-cross-play-or-at-least-cross-save-more-on-the-horizon-now/p1

valenwood_vegan

They've stated a number of times in the past that there are technical issues that need to be overcome.

For example, Rich somewhat recently touched on it here:

According to Lambert, the issue is complicated, but the devs are not ignoring it.

“It is hard. We made a lot of decisions in like 2008 and 2009 when we were just starting to build the technology that doesn’t necessarily play nice with that,” he touched on during a recent Q&A with press.

“It’s a big, big gnarly thing,” he said of crossplay, before explaining the team has been “digging” into what’s involved. “My answer has kind of changed over the years. Especially now that we’ve spent a lot more… brain power behind it. But it’s definitely not something that’s going to happen anytime soon.”

I'm not aware of any more recent comments, but perhaps someone will link to one if it exists.

dk_dunkirk

valenwood_vegan wrote: »

They've stated a number of times in the past that there are technical issues that need to be overcome.

For example, Rich somewhat recently touched on it here:

According to Lambert, the issue is complicated, but the devs are not ignoring it.

“It is hard. We made a lot of decisions in like 2008 and 2009 when we were just starting to build the technology that doesn’t necessarily play nice with that,” he touched on during a recent Q&A with press.

“It’s a big, big gnarly thing,” he said of crossplay, before explaining the team has been “digging” into what’s involved. “My answer has kind of changed over the years. Especially now that we’ve spent a lot more… brain power behind it. But it’s definitely not something that’s going to happen anytime soon.”

I'm not aware of any more recent comments, but perhaps someone will link to one if it exists.

As a 30-year full-stack dev, I've made comments that basically echoed what many others here are saying, and which Rich alludes to here, and got actioned, so I find this whole discussion very interesting. Not that I'm bitter or anything.

I can't believe the very first two comments aren't about either the lack of mods on consoles (which is finally being addressed, but will take time, and will never be equivalent) or the lack of mouse/keyboard, leading to PVP being unfairly tilted towards PC.

LootAllTheStuff

dk_dunkirk wrote: »

valenwood_vegan wrote: »

They've stated a number of times in the past that there are technical issues that need to be overcome.

For example, Rich somewhat recently touched on it here:

According to Lambert, the issue is complicated, but the devs are not ignoring it.

“It is hard. We made a lot of decisions in like 2008 and 2009 when we were just starting to build the technology that doesn’t necessarily play nice with that,” he touched on during a recent Q&A with press.

“It’s a big, big gnarly thing,” he said of crossplay, before explaining the team has been “digging” into what’s involved. “My answer has kind of changed over the years. Especially now that we’ve spent a lot more… brain power behind it. But it’s definitely not something that’s going to happen anytime soon.”

I'm not aware of any more recent comments, but perhaps someone will link to one if it exists.

As a 30-year full-stack dev, I've made comments that basically echoed what many others here are saying, and which Rich alludes to here, and got actioned, so I find this whole discussion very interesting. Not that I'm bitter or anything.

I can't believe the very first two comments aren't about either the lack of mods on consoles (which is finally being addressed, but will take time, and will never be equivalent) or the lack of mouse/keyboard, leading to PVP being unfairly tilted towards PC.

The only game I've actually experienced cross-play on is Borderlands 3, which isn't a terribly relevant example because:
1. It had it's own performance issues even in single player mode
2. It has a max of 4 players, and only extremely limited PvP (1v1 duelling)
3. It's client-to-client, not server-based.

That said, the experience was... not good. Severe lag and desync, comms issues, and the occasional freeze.
My expectation would be that cross-play would be much easier to implement cleanly if that had been a design goal from the beginning, and baked into the codebase even if it wasn't enabled at launch.

BTW current gen XBoxen do support mouse/keyboard, but developers have to enable it for their games individually.

SilverBride

If 2 players have the same name who gets to keep their name and who has to change theirs? That alone is reason enough not to do it.

Maitsukas

There's also

• A chance of Guild names to overlap.
• A possibilty of there being players, that make housing projects in the same house for each megaserver (so someone's Grand Psijic Villa has one thing on PC-NA, but a completely different thing on a different megaserver under the same account). They would likely have to choose which project to scrap entirely.

HatchetHaro

2024's PTSpocalypse demonstrated beautifully that different game builds (PTS and PCNA Live) can point to the exact same database and make changes flawlessly. All of the database structures are the exact same. If anything, at least cross-save is very much possible, like, right now.

dk_dunkirk

HatchetHaro wrote: »

2024's PTSpocalypse demonstrated beautifully that different game builds (PTS and PCNA Live) can point to the exact same database and make changes flawlessly. All of the database structures are the exact same. If anything, at least cross-save is very much possible, like, right now.

Touché!

Dagoth_Rac

HatchetHaro wrote: »

2024's PTSpocalypse demonstrated beautifully that different game builds (PTS and PCNA Live) can point to the exact same database and make changes flawlessly. All of the database structures are the exact same. If anything, at least cross-save is very much possible, like, right now.

PC-NA and PTS were exact copies of each other. If Account Joe_Schmo was database id 96528285369528258 on PTS, it was database id 96528285369528258 on PC-NA. That would not be the case for cross platform. Those database ids would belong to different players. Then, instead of Joe Schmo overwriting his PC-NA data with his PTS data, he would overwrite the data of whatever completely unrelated player happened to have the same database id on PC-EU.

The database structure is not the problem. Of course they are the same. It is the actual data and the database key conflicts that would arise. Imagine you are employee id 3863 at Amazon and you leave to work for Apple. And Apple uses same ADP payroll software. You could copy your data from Amazon over to Apple but it would either bomb out because it conflicts with whoever is employee id 3863 at Apple, or you overwrite that existing Apple employee's data.

It's not the schema. It is the data itself.

FoJul

dk_dunkirk wrote: »

valenwood_vegan wrote: »

They've stated a number of times in the past that there are technical issues that need to be overcome.

For example, Rich somewhat recently touched on it here:

According to Lambert, the issue is complicated, but the devs are not ignoring it.

“It is hard. We made a lot of decisions in like 2008 and 2009 when we were just starting to build the technology that doesn’t necessarily play nice with that,” he touched on during a recent Q&A with press.

“It’s a big, big gnarly thing,” he said of crossplay, before explaining the team has been “digging” into what’s involved. “My answer has kind of changed over the years. Especially now that we’ve spent a lot more… brain power behind it. But it’s definitely not something that’s going to happen anytime soon.”

I'm not aware of any more recent comments, but perhaps someone will link to one if it exists.

As a 30-year full-stack dev, I've made comments that basically echoed what many others here are saying, and which Rich alludes to here, and got actioned, so I find this whole discussion very interesting. Not that I'm bitter or anything.

I can't believe the very first two comments aren't about either the lack of mods on consoles (which is finally being addressed, but will take time, and will never be equivalent) or the lack of mouse/keyboard, leading to PVP being unfairly tilted towards PC.

If you are referring to my comment which is the 2nd comment on this post. I did mention console not supporting keyboard and mouse, and addons are just QoL, doesn't really give a full advantage. Besides console is getting addon support now. I didnt see it more important than desync and no kbm support.

Desiato

I would guess it's because it currently doesn't offer them enough benefits.

The technical challenges are trivial for a company with the resources of Zenimax -- consider that hobbyists resurrect dead online games with wrappers and by reverse engineering servers in their spare time. But it would cost money, tie up management bandwidth and would be a disruptive experience for all parties involved.

I believe it will happen only when crossplay becomes the solution to a problem ZOS is experiencing -- like if the population of a particular megaserver became so low that it negatively affected business.

Maybe this will first happen to one of the console platforms, resulting in crossplay between consoles.

I think that universal crossplay would have a lot of push-back from PC players until there's a significant decline in population.

It's probably inevitable in the long term unless ESO experiences a decline so fast that it precludes further investment.

HatchetHaro

Dagoth_Rac wrote: »

HatchetHaro wrote: »

2024's PTSpocalypse demonstrated beautifully that different game builds (PTS and PCNA Live) can point to the exact same database and make changes flawlessly. All of the database structures are the exact same. If anything, at least cross-save is very much possible, like, right now.

PC-NA and PTS were exact copies of each other. If Account Joe_Schmo was database id 96528285369528258 on PTS, it was database id 96528285369528258 on PC-NA. That would not be the case for cross platform. Those database ids would belong to different players. Then, instead of Joe Schmo overwriting his PC-NA data with his PTS data, he would overwrite the data of whatever completely unrelated player happened to have the same database id on PC-EU.

The database structure is not the problem. Of course they are the same. It is the actual data and the database key conflicts that would arise. Imagine you are employee id 3863 at Amazon and you leave to work for Apple. And Apple uses same ADP payroll software. You could copy your data from Amazon over to Apple but it would either bomb out because it conflicts with whoever is employee id 3863 at Apple, or you overwrite that existing Apple employee's data.

It's not the schema. It is the data itself.

I feel the incredible need to state very clearly that the event did not involve database copies. It was literally a case of two different game builds pointing to one singular database.

And I am not saying that cross-saving would be possible without any user downsides. If it were to happen right now, yeah, you're right, they would have to pick one database to use if account and character IDs have conflicts, and so one region gets their characters intact and everyone else gotta start from scratch. Or just run a script to merge the databases with an extra number in the ID to denote the region of origin.

Point is, it's possible right now to have cross-saves between regions; they just need to update the database pointers to all point to the same one, whether it be server-side or hardcoded into game builds. It won't be pretty for the players, but it'll technically work.