Mac Client Crashes Frequently

_subjectnamehere_ · June 2014

Does this work (see Seedier's comment above)? Moon...what do you think?

I am still crashing frequently!!! Every 20-30 minutes in Cyrodiil!

They keep saying they fix it, but nothing is changing on my end...

Ashurek20 · June 2014

I have almost no problem in PvE, except in Clagorn when I play in group, but in Cyrodiil PvP the game crash every 30-40 minutes (each time it happens I send the crash report) . Please Fix it.

I love this game, especially PvP, but crash every half an hour make it almost unplayable.

MacBook Pro 13-inch 2014 16 Gb Ram

Moonraker · June 2014

_subjectnamehere_ wrote: »

Does this work (see Seedier's comment above)? Moon...what do you think?

I am still crashing frequently!!! Every 20-30 minutes in Cyrodiil!

They keep saying they fix it, but nothing is changing on my end...

You could try it for sure. I can only see that it helps if for some reason the Repair process is not repairing correctly which it seems to do generally.

The only way to tell is to try I think. I haven't had the need myself.

Think we are just waiting now for further fixes/ optimisation to improve Cyrodiil crashes.

_subjectnamehere_ · June 2014

Anyone playing the new patch yet? (v1.2.3)? Have they fixed the memory leak issue yet, or are we still waiting?

Volla · June 2014

The client Crashes Rarely on PVE.... But in Cyrodiil it Crashes 15-20 min every time.

More the PvP thats the issue in crashes for me anyways.

Moonraker · June 2014

_subjectnamehere_ wrote: »

Anyone playing the new patch yet? (v1.2.3)? Have they fixed the memory leak issue yet, or are we still waiting?

There are no Mac specific items in the Patch Notes for the new 1.2.3 Update so I don't believe there is any new fixes for the memory issues in it.

There are other fixes (groups in Cyrodiil noted for instance) which may help overall but I am still downloading the new update still so haven't tested myself yet. I'm not expecting any significant change though for Mac client.

GreySix · June 2014

My dual-processor Mac Pro sees an ESO crash anywhere from thirty to ninety minutes. Of course, if I run ESO on the Windows 7 drive, it crashes much sooner.

Jagath · July 2014

my mac crashes every 5 mins since after the patch. It crashes back to the mac login screen and seems to happen randomly no matter what i am doing in game.

Moonraker · July 2014

christopher.pesapaneub17_ESO wrote: »

my mac crashes every 5 mins since after the patch. It crashes back to the mac login screen and seems to happen randomly no matter what i am doing in game.

If it crashes every five minutes then there is another issue as it is not going to hit the memory limit in that time even in big battle PvP.

Next time copy paste the ESO crash report here which will give a better idea of things. Use the Spoiler tags to keep post size down (under Quote menu in editor window, like a backwards 'P')

You also need to provide details of your Mac, connection type and activity when crashing. Also indication of current settings and that you have also disabled all addons.

You could also do an uninstall and reinstall which resolved a similar issue after 1.2.3 Update from this post.

_subjectnamehere_ · July 2014

After reading this from their "Known Issues" post:

Frequent Mac Client Crashing:
Could be due to the game client slowly leaking memory over long play sessions.
Memory usage can be significantly reduced by turning textures down to medium or by turning the graphics settings down to medium.

Is it really a fix? I mean, people like me have a machine built to see ESO's graphics on high. So you tell us that to fix the crashing, turn down our settings? This is not a fix. I have a machine capable of viewing your game on high settings, and that's what I want to do.

Moonraker · July 2014

_subjectnamehere_ wrote: »

After reading this from their "Known Issues" post:

Frequent Mac Client Crashing:
Could be due to the game client slowly leaking memory over long play sessions.
Memory usage can be significantly reduced by turning textures down to medium or by turning the graphics settings down to medium.

Is it really a fix? I mean, people like me have a machine built to see ESO's graphics on high. So you tell us that to fix the crashing, turn down our settings? This is not a fix. I have a machine capable of viewing your game on high settings, and that's what I want to do.

It doesn't say it's a final fix just that it helps reduce frequency of crashes which are longer in PVE but more frequent still in PvP.

tttopperub17_ESO · July 2014

@_subjectnamehere_‌ I agree that we should be able to run with settings on high if we have a Mac capable of it. I didn't turn my settings down to Medium, but I did turn off a few things. This gives me decent gameplay,reasonable FPS and less frequent crashes in PVE. I started with settings on HIGH, then customized:

Vertical Sync . . . . . . OFF
Shadow Quality . . . . MEDIUM
Water Reflection . . . . OFF
Bloom . . . . . . . . . . . . OFF
Ambient Occlusion . . OFF
Sunlight Rays . . . . . . OFF

Some of these settings were a holdover from Beta. YMMV in PvP

Moonraker · July 2014

tttopperub17_ESO wrote: »

@_subjectnamehere_‌ I agree that we should be able to run with settings on high if we have a Mac capable of it. I didn't turn my settings down to Medium, but I did turn off a few things. This gives me decent gameplay,reasonable FPS and less frequent crashes in PVE. I started with settings on HIGH, then customized:

Vertical Sync . . . . . . OFF
Shadow Quality . . . . MEDIUM
Water Reflection . . . . OFF
Bloom . . . . . . . . . . . . OFF
Ambient Occlusion . . OFF
Sunlight Rays . . . . . . OFF

Some of these settings were a holdover from Beta. YMMV in PvP

You are mixing the two things.

Turning down settings especially Texture Quality is related directly to the memory issue in order to help reduce frequency of crashes because it reduces initial memory load on lower settings.

Reducing Shadow Quality and other settings (view distance effects both) does nothing for that but does help increase performance i.e. FPS as it is demanding on the GPU. This is cleary stated in the sticky;

Shadows are REALLY SLOW to draw.
To draw the shadows, ESO has to draw every 3D object casting a shadow a second time.
The easiest way to get more speed out of ESO is to simply turn the shadows down to low or off.

Nothing stops you from adjusting settings as high as you wish other than gaining the users desired balance of visual quality and performance. Reducing textures down will also improve performance (less textures to draw) but is primarily recommended to be reduced to help alleviate somewhat the current memory issue.

No one is disputing I think that the memory issue needs resolving so there is no crash. However it is also quite possible to play with high graphics settings for extended play in PVE. For example on my iMac 27 I play at Ultra-High with Shadow Quality set to Medium and View Distance to the previous default of 62 (raised to 100 which is a mistake IMO) also a couple of other settings OFF as personal preference (have a small effect on performance) and can play for hours without a crash. When my computer nears the memory limit I relaunch the client to avoid the crash.

In PvP it is a lot more demanding currently and the memory issue is amplified in big battle play so setting adjustments tend to show less difference in crash frequency.

In you settings above I would set Shadow Quality to Low or Off. The difference in visual quality between High > Medium > Low is negligible. Off is, well off

Given it makes a real difference to FPS it's the one identified and what I set down to increase performance. I would also suggest adjusting View Distance as it has quite an impact too.

Gix · July 2014

Turning everything "Off" (including normal maps and specular maps) does nothing to help prevent crashes on my 2011 MBP. All it does it make the game look like something that came out of an N64.

In fact, I can almost reproduce the crash on command. Is your Faction attacking a keep? Yeah? Go and help them out. The moment the inner door in destroyed, rush in and, you'll most likely crash before you actually get inside the building.

Of course, just merely running around in Cyrodiil will eventually get a crash. Sometimes I crash when I've died and need to teleport back to a keep.

I still get crashes in PvE but I get far more play-time before it happens.

I've also notice that I get a few RARE crashes when I still have roughly 2gb of free ram.

tttopperub17_ESO · July 2014

Moonraker wrote: »

tttopperub17_ESO wrote: »

...

You are mixing the two things.

Turning down settings especially Texture Quality is related directly to the memory issue in order to help reduce frequency of crashes because it reduces initial memory load on lower settings.

Reducing Shadow Quality and other settings (view distance effects both) does nothing for that but does help increase performance i.e. FPS as it is demanding on the GPU. This is cleary stated in the sticky;

Shadows are REALLY SLOW to draw.
To draw the shadows, ESO has to draw every 3D object casting a shadow a second time.
The easiest way to get more speed out of ESO is to simply turn the shadows down to low or off.

Nothing stops you from adjusting settings as high as you wish other than gaining the users desired balance of visual quality and performance. Reducing textures down will also improve performance (less textures to draw) but is primarily recommended to be reduced to help alleviate somewhat the current memory issue.
...

I was mixing the two things ... my bad

Thanks for clarifying

I have textures turned down but not off, and view distance nudged up a tad at 54. That is my compromise in settings between what I will tolerate in graphics and trade off in performance. And I tend to not worry about which does what as long as I'm not crashing every time I walk into a bank or fight at an anchor.

henrycupcakerwb17_ESO · July 2014

Christ ... The game is still crashing as usual in cyrodiil...
Sometimes I just feel sick of it... Can't even fully enjoy a bloodbath battle ..
I will keep my subscription on just for the love of elder scroll and this game ..

Stash · July 2014

I am having the same issue. The mac client crashes regularly, especially in PvP. It seems like the ESO client can't access the file cache held in RAM. I reset the PRAM (shutdown mac, hold command+option+p+r until comp restarts) and my Activity Monitor shows about 1.4GB of memory held in the file cache, after ESO crashes, the file cache is showing 3.48GB and the Memory Used at 5GB. It seems like the Mac client is unable to access or clear up RAM from the file cache in time to prevent a crash.I added 4GB of RAM this week to get to a total of 8GB RAM. The ESO client just seems to slowly eat up RAM until the memory used field shows 7.99GB while the Real Memory field for the ESO application never gets above 3.1GB.
While in Cyrodil, if I sit in a quiet area, the client can free up some memory, but not much. The client slowly gobbles up all the RAM my comp has until it sits at 7.99GB, sometimes if I sit still in an empty part of the map, the memory used field drops to 7.8GB or so. If nothing is going on, then the client seems to be able to trade File Cache memory for application memory. I have yet to see the client actually get to 4gb, which I thought was the max for a 32 bit application.

some specs of my comp (its old, I know)
late 2009 Imac 27inch
Processor 2.66 GHz Intel Core i5
Memory 8 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
Graphics ATI Radeon HD 4850 512 MB
Software OS X 10.9.4 (13E28)

Moonraker · July 2014

Stash wrote: »

I am having the same issue. The mac client crashes regularly, especially in PvP. It seems like the ESO client can't access the file cache held in RAM. I reset the PRAM (shutdown mac, hold command+option+p+r until comp restarts) and my Activity Monitor shows about 1.4GB of memory held in the file cache, after ESO crashes, the file cache is showing 3.48GB and the Memory Used at 5GB. It seems like the Mac client is unable to access or clear up RAM from the file cache in time to prevent a crash.I added 4GB of RAM this week to get to a total of 8GB RAM. The ESO client just seems to slowly eat up RAM until the memory used field shows 7.99GB while the Real Memory field for the ESO application never gets above 3.1GB.
While in Cyrodil, if I sit in a quiet area, the client can free up some memory, but not much. The client slowly gobbles up all the RAM my comp has until it sits at 7.99GB, sometimes if I sit still in an empty part of the map, the memory used field drops to 7.8GB or so. If nothing is going on, then the client seems to be able to trade File Cache memory for application memory. I have yet to see the client actually get to 4gb, which I thought was the max for a 32 bit application.

some specs of my comp (its old, I know)
late 2009 Imac 27inch
Processor 2.66 GHz Intel Core i5
Memory 8 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
Graphics ATI Radeon HD 4850 512 MB
Software OS X 10.9.4 (13E28)

The crash is a known issue and continues to be worked on with some improvements since launch especially in PVE with average time between crashes 2-4 hours. In PvP big battles it is more of an issue with interval down to 20-45 minutes still.

I think you are confusing how OS X Mavericks in particular handles memory. Basically unused RAM is wasted memory so it will look to use it where it can and is normal for the Memory Used to gradually become fully used.

If an app is closed (or crashes) then OS X will mark the RAM used as File Cache which is correct behaviour. Best explained in the Apple support page for Mavericks Activity Montior;

As an example of how File Cache works, if you've been using Mail and then close it, the RAM that Mail was using is marked as File Cache. This RAM is now available for use by another app. If you open Mail again before its File Cache is used (overwritten) by a different app, Mail opens more quickly because its File Cache memory is converted back to App memory instead of loading all of its contents from your drive.

Previously the typical Mac client memory crash was at around 2.7GB Real Memory and 3.7GB Virtual Memory (best monitored by double clicking the eso process to open a separate window and select Memory)

This reflects the 4GB addressable space limitation in a 32-bit process in that Real Memory will be used in the initial loading of overheads (API etc.) at launch which is notably higher requirement than in the PC client. It is the Virtual Memory approaching the 4GB limit which is the point of crash. Due to overheads it is closer to 3.7-8GB on crash than the theoretical limit of 4GB.

It appears that more recently the Real Memory has been reduced but the VM continues to grow over time and faster in some situations such as PvP big battles. Hence the continued crashing.

The best way to read actual computer memory usage is via the Activity Monitor Memory Pressure graphic which is explained in the linked page. I recommend to open a separate window and monitor Memory usage via Activity Monitor to see what is actually going on.

I find that memory does go down as well as up in use but inevitably over time, the VM grows and causes the crash, which is why I monitor the memory and relaunch the game when it gets close to the limit to avoid a crash. Not ideal but at least it's not a crash. In PvP this is really not an option due to the timescale.

We await further fixes for the memory issue whether directly in the Mac client and/ or in the game engine.

As a final note you will really struggle graphics wise with the base model ATI Radeon HD 4850 512 MB GPU which really is not up to driving the fully 2560 x 1440 native resolution of the iMac. It is the minimum spec. card and I guess means Low settings. Unfortunately this was a poor design decision by Apple which they continue to repeat in later models IMO.

Stash · July 2014

I was wondering which of the memory fields I should be watching. I just crashed in PvP, I had my activity monitor going and I crashed right at 3.95GB of virtual memory and 3.1GB or so of Real Memory. The Memory Pressure meter never even spikes or shows any sign of really changing from its idle state. I have all the ESO graphics settings set to low or off.

On another note, does anyone know if Zenimax is getting all the crash reports being generated by the Mac system crash reporter? Whenever I crash, I almost always get the Mac system crash reporter, and not the Zenimax crash reporter.

Moonraker · July 2014

Stash wrote: »

I was wondering which of the memory fields I should be watching. I just crashed in PvP, I had my activity monitor going and I crashed right at 3.95GB of virtual memory and 3.1GB or so of Real Memory. The Memory Pressure meter never even spikes or shows any sign of really changing from its idle state. I have all the ESO graphics settings set to low or off.

On another note, does anyone know if Zenimax is getting all the crash reports being generated by the Mac system crash reporter? Whenever I crash, I almost always get the Mac system crash reporter, and not the Zenimax crash reporter.

Those figures are pretty typical with VM between 3.7GB - 4.0GB on crash, the 32-bit limit. So Real Memory Size and mainly Virtual Memory Size in Activity Monitor eso process window.

The Memory Pressure is not spiking as the actual RAM/ installed memory is not being pushed overall i.e. it is not running out but the 4GB limit as discussed.

In PvP whatever the settings, it only seems to extend the period between crashes a bit and inevitably will crash on a regular basis in actual big battle locations (riding around generally in Cyrodiil is little difference in my testing than PVE questing) It is most likely the density of other players, effects etc. that is a big factor (possibly also being grouped which is another issue)

You can see the difference in player density in both PVP and PVE (especially cities or other populated areas) by play testing on the PTS server. Generally in PVE I could play for extended periods of time without a crash, presumably due to much lower player population and no heavy server load.

They do receive the Zenimax crash reports now. But they may not generate depending on if there is sufficient residual memory to do so. For me it typically does though occasionally not. For some it doesn't. I am not sure on the reason for the difference. So they do receive crash reports but not all instances of crashing. Given the memory crash is known and pretty similar data it will just be confirming this.

viktorcodeneb18_ESO · July 2014

Just watch virtual memory in process info of Activity Monitor. When it nears 4 GB — restart the game. That is, if your Mac has more than 4 GB RAM, which it should have. For 4GB system I can’t say what numbers are good.

Real memory can be ignored; it is not used up to its full capacity. Running out of address space, that’s what happening. ESO guys did a good job decreasing actual memory allocations, but not so in VM department, because system frameworks make their own use of VM too, increasing total pressure. Interested developers might want to take a look at vmmap to see the picture for themselves.

Unfortunately, I don’t see other solution now than moving to 64-bit port.

_subjectnamehere_ · July 2014

Okay guys...I am going to bump this thread to see if we can get any kind of communication from Zenimax because I would really like a status update.

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom‌ @ZOS_GinaBruno‌

I spent the last two days talking to an "Erin" via email. She recommended I update to Mavericks and update my usersettings file, which I did according to her instructions. She also had me adjust some video settings, which we all know how to do by now.

None of this solved my memory issue. Memory still leaks apparently, and the game will crash after awhile.

The main conclusion I come to is this: it is quite impossible for Zenimax to fix the problem running a 32-bit client in a 64-bit environment. Their mac client is seriously lacking in development and this is a serious issue that needs serious attention.

This makes it so mac users virtually cannot PvP without a crash every 20 minutes to an hour, depending on your settings.

PLEASE, Zenimax....give us some feedback. These Mac help forums are really lacking in green posts.

Thank you.

Stash · July 2014

does this thread have a green post yet?
@ZOS_JessicaFolsom‌ @ZOS_GinaBruno‌

Moonraker · July 2014

_subjectnamehere_ wrote: »

Their mac client is seriously lacking in development and this is a serious issue that needs serious attention.

I want to pull you up right there.

There is no contention that this is a serious issue specific to the Mac ESO client that has been ongoing since beta/ launch especially in PvP big battles.

The fact is however, that the Mac client, aside from the specific memory issue, both in terms of performance and graphics is close to or on par with the PC client which flies in the face of your assertion quoted above.

If the memory issue was easy to fix then it would have been done so long ago. The fact is that the differences in running a native Mac client which uses different API such as OpenGL got graphics, presents it's own unique challenges in a modern 3D MMO game.

There have been improvements over time especially in PVE which have reduced crash frequency which come from ongoing efforts to resolve this. PvP still remains a serious problem however as is clear from this forum section and thread.

Players are right to continue to draw attention to this here and push for at least information on the current status of this issue. But widening that to overly generalistic criticism which is factually wrong doesn't help anything.

Because specific mention is not made in the Patch Notes doesn't mean that this work continues (I am certain it does) and smaller fixes probably continue to be introduced as things are identified and pushed out (Mainly small items would not necessarily get included in notes)

And also important to consider this situation, especially with PvP which has other wider issues still as we can see even from the latest 1.2.6 patch they continue to work on the overall game optimisation, which may well help address at least partially some of the problem.

I agree that it is important that Zenimax needs to keep players informed of progress especially when it is a serious impediment to fully enjoying an important aspect of game play as PvP in Cyrodiil is in ESO. Silence over time rarely helps anyone.

Stash · July 2014

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom‌ @ZOS_GinaBruno‌
So i just crashed in cyrodil again. The silence from zenimax is deafening.

Edit: I think im going to go download the Destiny beta, I hear its out for all platforms.

Seedier · July 2014

I keep logging onto the forums to see if the mac situation has changed. Clearly it hasn't and no announcement for potential fixes posted.
I suspect the mac contingent will have shrunk palpably after the early optimism. Oh well, life it too short to get frustrated over silly things...

GFBStarWars · July 2014

any news?

KhajitFurTrader · July 2014

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/121851/mac-client-main-priority-according-customer-support#latest