Great, new patch coming up...wait? you are not working on fixing the mac client?

Monsoon · April 2014

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/78524/upcoming-patch-highlights-in-progress-updates

Not a single mention of working on fixing the Mac client...oops

I guess that means another two weeks of not being able to play in Cyrodill. I am starting to understand what it feels to be a second class citizen in Tamriel. Any reason for no acknowledgements and no mention of the issue being looked at?

Moonraker · April 2014

Monsoon wrote: »

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/78524/upcoming-patch-highlights-in-progress-updates

Not a single mention of working on fixing the Mac client...oops

I guess that means another two weeks of not being able to play in Cyrodill. I am starting to understand what it feels to be a second class citizen in Tamriel. Any reason for no acknowledgements and no mention of the issue being looked at?

1. They are not the Patch Notes just an update of general issues;

The full patch notes will be available during the maintenance period, but we wanted to share the highlights with you now since they were a direct result of your feedback:

2. They rarely include technical items in the Patch Notes so most client specific changes wont be noted anyhow. Same for either client (In fact I've never seen a PC client item mentioned)

3. The issue has already been acknowledged in the Known Issues (Mac) sticky post at the top.

Tomorrow we can see it the Mac client is actually updated after the patch it updated.

KhajitFurTrader · April 2014

Patch Notes. For real.

The Elder Scrolls Online v1.0.3 features a number of fixes to existing content, mainly focusing on systems and quests that were blocking progression. We’re working hard to resolve other issues we know you’re eager to see fixed, and we’ll let you know when they’re addressed.

(emphasis mine)

So yeah, you'll have to take their word for it. I've already given you some possible reasons why they won't, and can't, and even shouldn't rush these things. You may agree with them or not, it's entirely your decision.

rebelcoder · April 2014

Already cancelled. 2 months and still dealing with the same issue? I don't think so. I'm not planning on spending another cent on this game.

dyoung522 · April 2014

Yay.

Monsoon · April 2014

"Tomorrow we can see it the Mac client is actually updated after the patch it updated."

As I said...not surprised that NOTHING was done for the mac client. Second class customers we are. Can t play in Cyrodill? Ohhhhhh noes...just kidding, sucks to be you but thanks for the $100 now get out while we fix quests first.

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/78407/patch-notes-v1-0-3

"We’re working hard to resolve other issues we know you’re eager to see fixed, and we’ll let you know when they’re addressed."
Best PR sentence I have ever read in a while, it deserves an Oscar

So as of today we are at 19 days of not being able to play in Cyrodill for more than 5 minutes. 19 days left until the next subscription kicks in for many people.This means half the time spent in the initial subscription with half the game not functional.

Am I the only one that feels like the Mac subscription should be extended until the client is fixed? Are you going to subscribe May 4th with the PVP area of the game unplayable? Are you ok with paying the same as a PC player but getting half the content?

ShoudenKalferas · April 2014

Try opening the game in Windowed mode and checking the About > About ESO menu

It reports the Mac client is by one person. Interesting and expectation setting.

rebelcoder · April 2014

Monsoon wrote: »

"Tomorrow we can see it the Mac client is actually updated after the patch it updated."

As I said...not surprised that NOTHING was done for the mac client. Second class customers we are. Can t play in Cyrodill? Ohhhhhh noes...just kidding, sucks to be you but thanks for the $100 now get out while we fix quests first.

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/78407/patch-notes-v1-0-3

"We’re working hard to resolve other issues we know you’re eager to see fixed, and we’ll let you know when they’re addressed."
Best PR sentence I have ever read in a while, it deserves an Oscar

So as of today we are at 19 days of not being able to play in Cyrodill for more than 5 minutes. 19 days left until the next subscription kicks in for many people.This means half the time spent in the initial subscription with half the game not functional.

Am I the only one that feels like the Mac subscription should be extended until the client is fixed? Are you going to subscribe May 4th with the PVP area of the game unplayable? Are you ok with paying the same as a PC player but getting half the content?

I agree. When I purchased the game it said 'HUGE PVP BATTLES' as one of the main selling points.

It should have read 'HUGE PVP BATTLES' *

*We cannot guarantee pvp battles of any size with any amount of reliability. Especially for you mac folks.

I think they should have just done away with the mac client, if that was the case then I wouldn't have expected to be able to play on my mac. I would have booted to bootcamp like I do for every other game. Although for this game in particular I probably would have passed.

I doubt they care tho, they probably just wanted a few more first day sales. That's the vibe i'm getting at this point.

dyoung522 · April 2014

Look... let's be honest here guys. The Mac is a great system with a fantastic OS -- for everything except games. It was never designed to be a gaming machine.

Bottom line, be happy we have a Mac client at all and if you really want the best gaming performance, go out and get a gaming PC.

The game just launched, they'll eventually figure it out but it won't be right away. In the meantime? Focus on what we can do, such as the immersive PvE content. PvP will still be there when it's fixed, I promise.

KhajitFurTrader · April 2014

dyoung522 wrote: »

Look... let's be honest here guys. The Mac is a great system with a fantastic OS -- for everything except games. It was never designed to be a gaming machine.

Bottom line, be happy we have a Mac client at all and if you really want the best gaming performance, go out and get a gaming PC.

Good idea! Lessee... what to buy? Haswell Core i7 3.5GHz 4c/8t? Sounds good. Check.
16 GB DDR3 RAM? Nah, make that 24! Check.
nVidia GTX 780M w/ 4 GB GDDR5 VRAM? Oh yeah! Check.
Noisy, slow HDD with SATA3? Nope. SATA-SSD? Better, but nope! PCI-SSD? Yes, please!
Generic 24" HD res TN panel LCD? Pass. Make that a brilliant 27" 2550x1440 IPS panel, and you got a deal.
Now that's what I call a gaming rig! Bring it on.

Oh, wait, I have all that in my iMac! Cancel that order; turns out I already own a freaking gaming PC!

Now, I could even run Windows 8.1 Update 1 64-bit on that rig, but the best thing about that fact is: I don't need to if I don't want to. Between the Mac App Store, Steam, and numerous other game studios, there is a plethora of games to choose from. Way more than I have time left to play.

I've been building my own PCs since 1988. I continued to do this up until 2007, when I decided that Vista was the new Windows 2000 (remember that?), and I would never willingly touch it without being paid for my time to do so. So I parted ways with PCs, which were never that upgradeable as they were and are made out to be (the industry saw to that, because sales numbers > continuity). You wanted to be honest here... I am.

dyoung522 · April 2014

Yup, so run Windows 8.1 in bootcamp and end all your gaming woes. Otherwise, you're trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

Don't get me wrong, I'm in the same boat... I own and work on Macs all day long, and the thought of using Windows puts me into a tizzy... but that said, I know when to use the right tool for the job, and for gaming, it's Windows OS.

Wishing it otherwise doesn't make it any less true.

That said, OS X is gaining a LOT of ground in the gaming market with more and more publishers supporting our lovely OS, but we're not quite there yet. Case in point, the ESO Mac client was ported/coded by one guy.

Just be happy you have a choice to run a native Mac version, albeit not as robust as the Windows version... OR... bootcamp it and get the best of both worlds, something a pure Windows PC user can't do.

viktorcodeneb18_ESO · April 2014

The problem is that OS X game developers are close to non-existing breed. You can make Mac fly, but you have to know OS X ins and outs, and obviously be a highly professional OpenGL programmer.

Monsoon · April 2014

The launcher is made by a third party: Solid State Networks http://www.solidstatenetworks.com/

The client is written by Chris Dillman who is the Lead Mac OS X Engineer at ZeniMax Online and has been working there since 2010

I believe this is the position he filled: http://www.zenimaxonline.com/jobs_senior_mac_client_programmer.html

Come on Chris...give us an update dude

Moonraker · April 2014

Monsoon wrote: »

The launcher is made by a third party: Solid State Networks http://www.solidstatenetworks.com/

Old news

The client is written by Chris Dillman who is the Lead Mac OS X Engineer at ZeniMax Online and has been working there since 2010

Old news

You missed that the Mac ESO_Install is by InstallAnywhere - Flexera Software LLC

But then that's also the same for the PC too.

And it's pretty much irrelevant as the Install and Launcher are also developed in house with ZOS. And the Mac install is the product of 200-300 developer team, hardly the product of one person. ESO is developed cross-platform in fact. And things like the OpenGL, Audio etc. is all developed that way. Let alone the actual game, servers, network etc.

I've seen some of the comments that people have posted about surprise that there is one main OS X Lead Engineer. Like they expect a room full of Oompa-Loompas typing away at Mac keyboards

For the whole of Blizzard games there is a only a few actual Mac engineers to do all their games like WoW, Starcraft, Diablo etc. No OS X Engineer for GW2 at all, or any other AAA MMO I can think of actually that offer a Mac 'client'

In the end what matters is whether things work or not.

Monsoon · April 2014

I wish there was an ignore function on the forums.

ShoudenKalferas · April 2014

A percentage of the bugs that are on this Mac forum are likely Mac-specific. So that likely would mean Chris Dillman and the people directly working under him would be the individuals responsible for for correcting them for the Mac client specifically.

I guess the worry is that the client-base of ESO that is using Mac is a very small percentage of the total client-base using Windows. Most companies allocate resources (people) based on potential revenue. So this likely would mean of all of the developers who work on ESO game client (Windows & Mac), only a small percentage of them likely would be working with the Mac client specifically.

---

I personally use Windows bootcamp to play and find it works really well on my late-2011 MacBook Pro (on medium graphical settings). I would like to be able to smoothly play it under Mac OS X, but I'm willing to accept booting to Windows to play in the meantime until they sort out the Mac client issues. I know not everyone has that choice, unfortunately.

Moonraker wrote: »

In the end what matters is whether things work or not.

I couldn't agree more. So we're all hoping that the right amount of effort is put towards the Mac client in a timely manner so that these issues don't cause potentially great customers to cancel due to not being able to play.

Moonraker · April 2014

ShoudenKalferas wrote: »

A percentage of the bugs that are on this Mac forum are likely Mac-specific. So that likely would mean Chris Dillman and the people directly working under him would be the individuals responsible for for correcting them for the Mac client specifically.

I guess the worry is that the client-base of ESO that is using Mac is a very small percentage of the total client-base using Windows. Most companies allocate resources (people) based on potential revenue. So this likely would mean of all of the developers who work on ESO game client (Windows & Mac), only a small percentage of them likely would be working with the Mac client specifically.

The known issues are pretty much all identified at this point both from this forum and from testing etc. and prioritised for fixing. Obviously the memory issue is that main priority as the other main problems have been addressed now.

I don' think it works in the way you say. It's not about people 'under him' but working on a development team and coordinating with his peers as necessary to find solutions. For example, for an audio bug it would be with the Audio Engineer , or for the OpenGL, with another team, as part of a cross-platform development (as can be seen by the similarity in install directory for example) Ultimately the OS X specific work is dealt with by him.

Moonraker wrote: »

In the end what matters is whether things work or not.

I couldn't agree more. So we're all hoping that the right amount of effort is put towards the Mac client in a timely manner so that these issues don't cause potentially great customers to cancel due to not being able to play. :smile

I'm pretty sure that would be their hope also

I can't think that having invested that resource & installed someone to develop the Mac client in the development team for over four years, not to do so. It is as much in their interest to be doing what they realistically can.

However much everyone would like to have the issue get fixed, it is still something that has to function within the context of a complex game (especially the demands of large scale PvP) and is itself a non-trivial issue. Work is ongoing and hopefully more of that will get to a live hotfix/ update soon, along with some other minor ,but still important for some, fixes.

Monsoon · April 2014

Enough of the apologetics comments types please...I believe I mentioned this before

KhajitFurTrader · April 2014

Monsoon wrote: »

Enough of the apologetics comments types please...I believe I mentioned this before

Why so glum? Nobody else wants to jump on your bandwagon?

Things aren't as bad as you want to look at them. Even the bank slot issue will get fixed. My bet is that a lot of people at ZOS are in fact very hard at work right this moment. It's just that these things take time to be implemented and tested, and there's absolutely no need to keep us informed about every single step along the way. Indeed, it would be counter-productive and unprofessional of them to do so.

viktorcodeneb18_ESO · April 2014

I do not doubt Chris' professionalism as a developer. What I'm talking about is that one man per studio is not enough for quality Mac porting.

Writing cross-platform code doesn't end with making it compilable for every OS; it's just the start. OpenGL code must be optimised specifically for Mac clients (GL version + graphics hardware), for instance. Obviously, these are the steps that are better addressed during the development.

stevenbennett_ESO · April 2014

@dyoung522: As I've said elsewhere, sorry, but no thanks. I do that already for certain games and it's like pulling teeth every single time I have to boot into Windows. I'm somewhat tolerant of running Windows in a VM like Parallels Desktop (I do that daily, in fact, as part of my job…), but rebooting my machine into Boot Camp just to run a game is NOT worth it anymore. If I want a native Windows machine, I'll custom build another one. (I've built many over the years…)

But I don't game as much as I used to, so I'm getting downright ornery about requiring Mac versions of any game I want to play. If ESO had been Windows-only, there would be a very good chance I wouldn't be playing. The Mac is a *very* capable game machine -- just not a super-high end one. It's long past time to get out of the self-defeating "use Boot Camp" mindset and require publishers to make native Mac games instead if they want to sell to Mac users. We'll end up with more Mac games, and more Mac game developers, and everyone will win.

ESO gets huge kudos from me for making a Mac client. I think they made a somewhat ill-considered decision to make it a 32 bit client, which is part of the problem - and hopefully will be corrected in coming months. Meanwhile, I find none of the bugs show stoppers yet - even this memory leak crash (which usually means I need to get up and stretch for a few minutes anyway…), and am patient about getting a fix. As a programmer, I know how hard it can be to track down this kind of bug, but I'm sure they'll get it eventually.

Monsoon · April 2014

KhajitFurTrader wrote: »

Why so glum? Nobody else wants to jump on your bandwagon?

Things aren't as bad as you want to look at them.

Really? 50% of the game being unplayable is not as bad?
I bought the game for Cyrodill. It have been 21 days I can t play it withou crashing anytime I get to capture an objective or after running for 4 minutes to a keep...and you think it is not that bad?

I paid the same amount as a PC player but I can t play in Cyrodill and you don t think it is that bad? sounds like trolling

EDIT: An analogy would be your brand new car's engine shutting down randomly when you drive on a road but works fine on Highway. Its great if you bought your car for long distances but is not acceptable when you drive through town to get to work/university. Imagine your car shutting down every 5 minutes while driving and having people driving other cars telling you it is not that bad and that one day you will be able to use the car the way you thought it would work when you bought it.

I know I know I am the master of analogies /rolleyes

cmagiepreub18_ESO · April 2014

Really? 50% of the game being unplayable is not as bad?
I bought the game for Cyrodill. It have been 21 days I can t play it withou crashing anytime I get to capture an objective or after running for 4 minutes to a keep...and you think it is not that bad?

I paid the same amount as a PC player but I can t play in Cyrodill and you don t think it is that bad? sounds like trolling

EDIT: An analogy would be your brand new car's engine shutting down randomly when you drive on a road but works fine on Highway. Its great if you bought your car for long distances but is not acceptable when you drive through town to get to work/university. Imagine your car shutting down every 5 minutes while driving and having people driving other cars telling you it is not that bad and that one day you will be able to use the car the way you thought it would work when you bought it.

I know I know I am the master of analogies /rolleyes

I tend to agree. At the same time, the PVE side of things is great, and I am having fun playing that aspect of the game. I may have to resort to a bootcamp installation (don't currently have one on my rig), but I'll give them a little more time to fix PVP for Mac players. I do agree that Cyrodiil is a big reason why I bought the game, and not being able to play there pretty much sucks.

Kiwi · April 2014

KhajitFurTrader wrote: »

Good idea! Lessee... what to buy? Haswell Core i7 3.5GHz 4c/8t? Sounds good. Check.
16 GB DDR3 RAM? Nah, make that 24! Check.
nVidia GTX 780M w/ 4 GB GDDR5 VRAM? Oh yeah! Check.
Noisy, slow HDD with SATA3? Nope. SATA-SSD? Better, but nope! PCI-SSD? Yes, please!
Generic 24" HD res TN panel LCD? Pass. Make that a brilliant 27" 2550x1440 IPS panel, and you got a deal.
Now that's what I call a gaming rig! Bring it on.

thats what i call a rig that cant run ESO

dyoung522 · April 2014

stevenbennett_ESO wrote: »

@dyoung522: As I've said elsewhere, sorry, but no thanks. I do that already for certain games and it's like pulling teeth every single time I have to boot into Windows.

Again, I too use the Mac client to play... and for me, it works "good enough" with the knowledge that they'll [slowly] work out the kinks in it over time.

I'm merely suggesting for those who think it's not "good enough" to use bootcamp and run the native Windows client. Pure and simple and to each their own.

Does that mean they shouldn't do whatever they can to make it better? Of course not, but it will take time and we need to understand and respect that.

To post in a public forum claiming the Mac client "sucks" when you have alternatives is just plain silly [IMO].

Calmyron · April 2014

I've commented on this previously elsewhere, but the main problem is a memory leak. When new areas are loaded, like when zoning or traveling (especially in PVP where tons of textures are needed for armor and the like), the game will ask Finder for more memory to handle it. At some point it needs to dump the old information, but it never releases the memory, it just becomes inactive. Every time it needs memory, it asks for new memory, it never accesses the inactive portion. This isn't a problem if it would release the inactive memory to Finder, but it never does. Eventually, the Mac will run out of memory and crash. The less memory you have on your system, the sooner it will happen.

stevenbennett_ESO · April 2014

@Calmyron: Yes, it's clearly a memory leak. Unfortunately, memory management in a complex program like this is *really* difficult to debug. Figuring out what's causing the leak is very difficult to do, especially since it may not even be in the Mac specific code, and also may not be a single problem but potentially multiple problems interacting.

I know - I've had issues like that doing cross platform device drivers in the past. I had a problem once in shared code between the platforms, which, due to the way certain structures were packed and aligned differently between the Mac and Windows, caused the Windows side to work wrong when a *different* bug in a different area of code accessed that structure the wrong way - it took a lot of time and a bit of luck to find the two issues and resolve them.

The problem would be significantly less serious with a 64 bit client (although it would still be an issue that needs fixing), but in a 32 bit client is a bit more critical. I'm certain that Chris Dillman is working diligently on trying to figure it out and fix it, so give him time. We'll get a fix when we get it.

Moonraker · April 2014

Calmyron wrote: »

I've commented on this previously elsewhere, but the main problem is a memory leak. When new areas are loaded, like when zoning or traveling (especially in PVP where tons of textures are needed for armor and the like), the game will ask Finder for more memory to handle it. At some point it needs to dump the old information, but it never releases the memory, it just becomes inactive. Every time it needs memory, it asks for new memory, it never accesses the inactive portion. This isn't a problem if it would release the inactive memory to Finder, but it never does. Eventually, the Mac will run out of memory and crash. The less memory you have on your system, the sooner it will happen.

This post is so full of wrong information it's not worth trying to respond TBH. OS X memory management works nothing like this and you keep referring to 'Finder' which has nothing to do with it at all, it a file manager.

Inactive Memory is efficient memory usage and if your whole memory shows Inactive Memory will never crash your Mac. it's a term not even used in 10.9 in Activity Monitor (good reason);

The combination of Free, Wired, Active, Inactive & Used memory statistics in previous versions of Activity Monitor have been replaced in Mavericks with an easy to read "Memory Pressure" graph.

but it never releases the memory

This is wrong. If you watch the eso process in AM you can watch it load into memory, then character loads and the memory value will drop. It varies. What is correct is that, over time it is leaving less and less available memory.

There is two clear effects in play with the Mac client memory issue. One is the additional libraries etc. it has to load over the PC client which results in less available memory in the 4GB (actually around 3.7GB due to overheads) address space. Combined with this smaller usable memory footprint, there is some form of memory leak/ memory management issue/s causing the gradual reduction of available memory over time.

The thrust of the OP was that nothing is being done to address this issue. This is not accurate and work continues to identify the issues, including potential memory leaks and put in changes which are then put through QA and internal testing before then being released in future patches (which are unlikely to be included in Patch Notes just like PC client changes)

I'm sorry to go on about this but misinformation will not help those looking for some explanation to this specific issue.

LavaDrop · April 2014

I second Moonraker. Calmyron, the foundations of your concept are well formed but the details are wrong. It's not the Finder going out of memory, it's the eso process that's confined to 3.7 Gb RAM. On the Mac, a process requests memory allocation, and the memory manager allocates it. It's up to the program to have garbage collection or other methods to deallocate memory. The ESO client has the memory leak. It's not a platform exclusive issue, it happens on the Windows client, but it's just that it's not as severe on the PC, since the memory footprint of a WindowsXP system is tiny next to Mavericks, so a typical crappy and very outdated PC with lower RAM runs ESO longer. Also most people on Windows run ESO on resolutions much lower than us Mac folk.

Monsoon · April 2014

One more patch today 1.0.4...still no fix for the mac client
22 days since launch and still counting
that is all...

sithjedi · April 2014

dyoung522 wrote: »

Look... let's be honest here guys. The Mac is a great system with a fantastic OS -- for everything except games. It was never designed to be a gaming machine.

Bottom line, be happy we have a Mac client at all and if you really want the best gaming performance, go out and get a gaming PC.

The game just launched, they'll eventually figure it out but it won't be right away. In the meantime? Focus on what we can do, such as the immersive PvE content. PvP will still be there when it's fixed, I promise.

You're speaking out of your .........