Lag Switches, Macros, and Consoles

El_Borracho

The last few weeks I have encountered something... unusual. There is a group of 6-8 DC players and every time I come across them, there is a massive onset of lag. To the level it feels like one of those "server battles" at a keep between 60+ players. Except this is in the open, at keeps, at farms, at outposts, etc. It doesn't matter how many players are there, as there have been times where there is no more than 10 of us combined and the stagger is bad. It doesn't matter if its 3 bars for all factions or low population. Nobody is spamming area chat. The group spams heals and shields like any other. Lots of ROA and Tarnished Nightmare with the typical 2-3 bombers, again, not unheard of. But with this group, performance crashes instantly. Once they die, performance goes back to normal.

I've held off on posting this as I loathe "cheater" accusations when it could just be bad PVP servers. But this has gone on for almost 4 weeks and its rare to encounter this particular group and NOT suffer immediate lag. But this is too coincidental for it to be simple lag. I know lag switches and macros designed to cause lag were a PC thing years ago in this game. I suppose you could do the same on a console, as last generation consoles are easier to manipulate. I don't want to report anyone especially when there is nothing concrete to report other than this. Friends and guildies have experienced the same issue with this group. Anyone have any ideas as to what this could be?

I play on PS-NA with a PS5, my internet is just fine, and this does not happen outside of what I have described.

xylena_lazarow

El_Borracho wrote: »

I've held off on posting this as I loathe "cheater" accusations when it could just be bad PVP servers.

The servers can't handle ball groups on PC/NA either.

El_Borracho

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

El_Borracho wrote: »

I've held off on posting this as I loathe "cheater" accusations when it could just be bad PVP servers.

The servers can't handle ball groups on PC/NA either.

This is what I first told myself when it would happen. But this isn't exactly a big group, let alone a big group fighting another big group, nor is it tied to a fight at a keep. The one that pushed me into the "It might not be the servers" conclusion was when it happened north of Roe, far away from Nik, Roe, and the farm. It was as if we were in a massive battle at a keep but it was 14-15 players in a field.

CameraBeardThePirate

El_Borracho wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

El_Borracho wrote: »

I've held off on posting this as I loathe "cheater" accusations when it could just be bad PVP servers.

The servers can't handle ball groups on PC/NA either.

This is what I first told myself when it would happen. But this isn't exactly a big group, let alone a big group fighting another big group, nor is it tied to a fight at a keep. The one that pushed me into the "It might not be the servers" conclusion was when it happened north of Roe, far away from Nik, Roe, and the farm. It was as if we were in a massive battle at a keep but it was 14-15 players in a field.

It doesn't really have to be a big group. If they're all kitted out with a comp that has lots of HoTs, conditional buffs, stacking buffs, etc etc then its going to lag.

Veinblood1965

That odd as I have had the same problem with an AD group. My guild noticed it also, maybe the sets they are wearing are bogging things down or that in combination with skills and skill styles? Seriously it's really noticeable, can be just me and them or me and a group or them, or a large battle and them. When they show up, here comes the lag. PS4/5 NA server also here.

El_Borracho

Veinblood1965 wrote: »

That odd as I have had the same problem with an AD group. My guild noticed it also, maybe the sets they are wearing are bogging things down or that in combination with skills and skill styles? Seriously it's really noticeable, can be just me and them or me and a group or them, or a large battle and them. When they show up, here comes the lag. PS4/5 NA server also here.

In a weird way, I'm happy to hear other factions have this issue. I'm sure, like me, you see one or two names in the group and you know its lag time.

I'm hoping its a combo of sets and skills because consoles have had the one advantage of no scripts or any of these other tools PC has had to deal with. I was playing last night and a similar-sized group from EP was inside a keep, doing similar things, with more players from AD there, but performance was not really affected. Bubbles, heals, bombing, etc. and while things slowed down, they didn't get anywhere near the full slide show effect. And it was a 3-bar night for all factions.

Either way, It would be nice to know if its the combo of sets with skills, perhaps even scribed skills, causing the lag. I am not asking for any of those sets or skills to be removed from the game, but whatever it is, performance is terrible and needs to be addressed.

xylena_lazarow

El_Borracho wrote: »

but whatever it is, performance is terrible and needs to be addressed

It's the sheer volume of stacked effects organized groups are capable of. The game engine can't handle that much stuff going on at once. The devs are addressing this with Vengeance mode, which strictly limits effect stacking.

Veinblood1965

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

El_Borracho wrote: »

but whatever it is, performance is terrible and needs to be addressed

It's the sheer volume of stacked effects organized groups are capable of. The game engine can't handle that much stuff going on at once. The devs are addressing this with Vengeance mode, which strictly limits effect stacking.

That would make sense if it was all the time. But we can have a battle where almost every bar is present, 50, 60 people and everything is fine. The one group shows up and bam. It even happens when there are NO battles. Just them. It hasn't happened in a while as I have not saw them on in a while.

Veinblood1965

Veinblood1965 wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

El_Borracho wrote: »

but whatever it is, performance is terrible and needs to be addressed

It's the sheer volume of stacked effects organized groups are capable of. The game engine can't handle that much stuff going on at once. The devs are addressing this with Vengeance mode, which strictly limits effect stacking.

That would make sense if it was all the time. But we can have a battle where almost every bar is present, 50, 60 people and everything is fine. The one group shows up and bam. It even happens when there are NO battles. Just them.

Maybe they switched to DC, I haven't really played much lately I'll start looking on my own faction which is DC and see if I recognize their names. If it is then it may be cheating....

LOL replied to my own post, didn't know you could do that.

xylena_lazarow

Veinblood1965 wrote: »

But we can have a battle where almost every bar is present, 50, 60 people and everything is fine. The one group shows up and bam.

Yeah that's the difference between an organized comp group and a disorganized zerg. Those 8-12 guys have more stuff going on than the 40-60 and that's how they dominate 40-60 opponents. It's legit, the game itself is just broken. The devs are addressing this problem with Vengeance returning at some point. It had new skill lines on the PTS.

CameraBeardThePirate

Veinblood1965 wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

El_Borracho wrote: »

but whatever it is, performance is terrible and needs to be addressed

It's the sheer volume of stacked effects organized groups are capable of. The game engine can't handle that much stuff going on at once. The devs are addressing this with Vengeance mode, which strictly limits effect stacking.

That would make sense if it was all the time. But we can have a battle where almost every bar is present, 50, 60 people and everything is fine. The one group shows up and bam. It even happens when there are NO battles. Just them. It hasn't happened in a while as I have not saw them on in a while.

Cyro has always been like this. Ball groups cause lag, and anyone telling you they don't is either ill-informed or disingenuous.

An unorganized Zerg is not running around with every buff in the game ticking, 12x HoTs going off on everyone + 7 different shields, etc etc. A 60 man of randoms just isn't putting nearly as much strain on the server as a coordinated group intentionally trying to check off every box in the list of buffs. That 60 man zerg has what, 2 or 3 people buffing the people immediately next to them? With maybe 2 or 3 buffs and HoTs? In the ball group, every single player is buffing the rest of their group. The math gets out of hand very quickly.

It's why Vengeance Cyrodiil had very few HoTs and virtually no buffs to give others

master_vanargand

This lag may be intentionally being caused by cheats or exploits of bugs.
Please report this to an official ESO account with details such as the cheat player name, date and time.
May also be able to fix the issue by Bug Reports of BBS.

El_Borracho

@Veinblood1965 The DC group I was referring to has been DC the last 2 campaigns. I think I know the AD group you are referring to, and they have are mostly AD with some new members from EP for this campaign.

@CameraBeardThePirate Agree and disagree. While an organized group can put out more skills as you described, in no way can it get to the level of 60+ players fighting, regardless of organizational skills. The groups I am talking about are small. No more than 8 players max fighting another small group. Like @Veinblood1965 said, and sometimes, its just me when I happen to round a corner en route to another location. 9 players total should not cause crippling lag.

Plus, I have encountered larger ball groups in the same exact locations, who are just as organized, with more players on my side, and the lag is nowhere near as bad. Anyone on PS-NA knows that there are LOTS of large-scale organized groups in AD and DC who fight in the forest north of Nik and below the gate and the lag is just not there, until one of these groups show up.

I'm not reporting anyone as I have no idea what is causing this. But its something that's become a problem

xylena_lazarow

There's still a huge gap in the amount of effects being stacked by top minmax groups compared to average mid groups, enough to explain the lag. I've seen it from enough different groups over the years on PC/NA. Save the cheating suspicion for players flying, walking through walls, running faster than a maxed mount, etc.

YandereGirlfriend

It isn't just "a ballgroup" thing.

What if I told you... that most of the apex groups run their own extensive suites of custom, unlisted addons. Those are also the same groups, and sometimes simply individual players, that will chug the server any time that you encounter them.

It isn't simply skills. It isn't simply buffs. It isn't simply high APM. You can and do have groups where all of those things are present and they still leave the server intact.

Simply blaming "ballgroups" is lazy. You need to go deeper than that.

LadyGP

El_Borracho wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

El_Borracho wrote: »

I've held off on posting this as I loathe "cheater" accusations when it could just be bad PVP servers.

The servers can't handle ball groups on PC/NA either.

This is what I first told myself when it would happen. But this isn't exactly a big group, let alone a big group fighting another big group, nor is it tied to a fight at a keep. The one that pushed me into the "It might not be the servers" conclusion was when it happened north of Roe, far away from Nik, Roe, and the farm. It was as if we were in a massive battle at a keep but it was 14-15 players in a field.

There are specific skills in the game that causes an insane amount of server side checks when they are cast. Arc beam is one of those that is just brutal on the server (constantly checking who is coming into and out of the beam etc).

This is probably what you're experiencing (not are beam specifically but skills/server side check/lag in general).

soelslaev

I remember in the PS4 days when a dude figured out how to make everyone’s screen be overwritten with rows of big red “@“ just from something he typed into the ‘yell’ text chat. I loved that guy. Never grouped. Always blasting ’Phatt Bass’ by the Warp Brothers over area voice chat during scroll runs.

My point is that no special cheats are needed.

You got 8 guys with 3 sets each that buff everyone in the group. That 8^2*3 =192 procs going. Then all 8 of them are triggering 2 group effects per second from abilities and passives so that is 8^2*2 =128 more effects to track. So 192 + 128 =320 effects per second in that tight area.

Now yer typical having fun 12 man. Every one is a brawler with no group buff set. 4 guys on siege doing nothing else. 1 guy turning in a quest back home. 3 guys chasing a tower troll. And 3 guys fighting but spread out and like 1 guy throwing heals. So that like 8 effects per second max from that group. Three more isolated groups and its 24 effects per second max.

Do you see how if that tight 8 man group could flood a server vs 36 randos running around not coming close to the same server load?

Now, with the cash flow this game is bringing in, maybe replace some of these lore master employees with hard core computer programming performance tuning fanatics and let them go to town for a few years and see what they can do. Or maybe Zeni has done that but the prognosis was “LOL, needs a total rewrite”. I don’t know.

JonnytheKing

This might just be a case of selective memory or negativity bias.
We tend to remember bad things more than good, so we pay a lot more attention to lag. Then we start looking for it — and of course, we see it.
Things like macros and scripts can't cause server lag, because they’re only doing what a player could do manually.
Lag switches are basically a meme these days.

MincMincMinc

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

It isn't just "a ballgroup" thing.

What if I told you... that most of the apex groups run their own extensive suites of custom, unlisted addons. Those are also the same groups, and sometimes simply individual players, that will chug the server any time that you encounter them.

It isn't simply skills. It isn't simply buffs. It isn't simply high APM. You can and do have groups where all of those things are present and they still leave the server intact.

Simply blaming "ballgroups" is lazy. You need to go deeper than that.

Im still not sure why zos didnt disable addons for vengeance, its always been an unknown. Zos did say they were investigating addons not too long ago though.