The overall sluggishness of ESO is rapidly becoming unbearable

BFNK · October 2014

Greetings.

I recently purchased the game (have played around a couple of weeks so far) and I live in EU. Quite frankly, I wrote a little bit of a rant e-mail to Bethesda when the open betas came about, explaining why I think asking for fees is absurd, and to my surprise they responded, covering all the points I made. I respected that and as you can see it eventually helped leading me to buy the game and giving it a real shot.

Regardless, the current state of ESO is unacceptable. Every key press is questionable and unreliable. Anything I do is more often than not HINDERED by this unresponsiveness. How can I even consider re-subbing when such issues are apparent and it seems that nothing is being done to address them?

Yes, I am aware of the fact that this business model has been discussed a million times, and I have no plans to discuss it more. I've already accepted it. But what I will not accept is playing a monthly fee for not being able to do anything properly in a game. I keep dying because my weapon swap took too long and ended up instantly swapping twice in a row, completely screwing my rotation or my only chance to survive a hard encounter. Spells not triggering, people teleporting. There seems to be a delay with everything I do, every skill I use, and that is IF the skill triggers normally at all.

It's been half an year, or more, and very basic things (such as lag-free servers) have not been arranged yet. Give me one reason why I should continue my sub given that the game is close to unplayable too often.

TehMagnus · October 2014

Are you using a 56kb connection?

Mondo · October 2014

You speak of PVP yesterday? Im pretty sure that is because of the hotfix they intalled

BFNK · October 2014

No, I am not using a 56kb connection, my internet is actually very, very good. I have no latency problems in ANY other game I have played before.

Please, do not even try to suggest that the problem is on my side, because it is not. I have already discussed this with other EU players and many others have the same problems. For me, this has been going on ever since I bought the game, not just y-day. With the worst times during the weekend, incidentally the time when most people with daily jobs play.

This is surely a server problem, which should have been resolved ages ago. I am sure that thousands of other players experience the same sluggishness as I do.

Rodario · October 2014

I was questing in Malabal Tor yesterday and quit after an hour because of the lag. Never had problems before the EU server migration. Ever since I'm dealing with high latency and lag spikes, no matter the zone or time of day.

And yes, I live in Europe.

drkeys143 · October 2014

I too have been finding this issue over the last few weeks, also on EU, with skills not firing, suddenly being teleported back 100 metres, or being dropped from the server for executing too many commands because I have been mashing buttons too much to try and get a skill to fire, it is a little irritating.

I have changed rotations now for dungeon healing, instead of a DPS bar and a healing bar, I have mixed them up as I can't trust weapon swap anymore. I think the problem is that weapon swap won't trigger over a skill animation, so if you have a slight lag it will wait until the skill has reached the target and fully executed before you see the swap, and if you are tempted to press it again, you will rotate the swap and end up back with the same weapon again. I may be wrong but is just my observance.

Either way, is certainly annoying when it happens, and like OP, I do not believe this to be a problem with my internet connection. I never had this issue before server migration.

BFNK · October 2014

There are no official statements about this, nothing.

If they have said something, please link it, because I haven't seen it. Not even the usual 'we're working on it...'

My sub ends at the end of this month and if the situation remains the same it will be the end of my journey in this game, which is a great shame. I really like TESO, but there is simply no online game that is good enough to deserve playing it with constant latency and responsiveness issues. It's like playing GTA5 on 5 fps. You will probably see some of the game, yes, but you will never be able to enjoy/play/finish the game as it was meant to. Not to mention that twitch reactions don't mean jack in TESO. It doesn't matter if you can react fast since your ability won't trigger at the right moment.

The game is already a grindfest, so technically I get to pay so that I can AoE Grind mobs during heavy lag, so that MAYBE I will be able to actually play the endgame if perhaps some day the game becomes responsive. Something tells me that's not going to happen soon.

guybrushtb16_ESO · October 2014

drkeys143 wrote: »

I too have been finding this issue over the last few weeks, also on EU, with skills not firing, suddenly being teleported back 100 metres, or being dropped from the server for executing too many commands because I have been mashing buttons too much to try and get a skill to fire, it is a little irritating.

I have changed rotations now for dungeon healing, instead of a DPS bar and a healing bar, I have mixed them up as I can't trust weapon swap anymore. I think the problem is that weapon swap won't trigger over a skill animation, so if you have a slight lag it will wait until the skill has reached the target and fully executed before you see the swap, and if you are tempted to press it again, you will rotate the swap and end up back with the same weapon again. I may be wrong but is just my observance.

Either way, is certainly annoying when it happens, and like OP, I do not believe this to be a problem with my internet connection. I never had this issue before server migration.

Agreed, weapon swap in particular is very often unreliable in "button mashing" situations where lots of stuff is happening at once, and for me that is a real issue.

IMO, at the very least, the skillbar should flip instantly (i.e. clientside) in any situation, even when stunned/rolling/mid animation or whatever, so you can queue up actions on your other bar. The way it is now, swapping sets takes up time in my rotation/skill use, so is generally inopportune to do unless absolutely neccessary, which to me feels overly restrictive and breaks combat fluency.

It's not the worst of issues and it doesn't make the game unplayable by any means, but it's a constant annoyance that should get looked at. The problem is, that I think the better part of the generally casual population is not as accustomed to things like responsiveness and animation timings like the more "serious gamers" are, so i fear won't get any real attention...

cazlonb16_ESO · October 2014

This is not lag or latency, but either the command getting lost on the way between client and server or the server simply not executing it. It's particularly appearant when trying to use doors, there's about a 50/50 chance of the first press of "E" working or nothing happening at all. ( Again, this is not lag, it happens even in completely empty vet pve zones. In Cyrodiil it combines with lag to a death trap though. )

Tavore1138 · October 2014

It is not network lag as response times generally stay the same during these 'events' but ever since the servers moved to the EU I see:

- serious lack of response from key presses.
- Times when I can move around but not interact with the game even though connectivity stays up. Often followed by 318 errors.
- Lag death in pvp, dying before you see the events that supposedly killed you.
- Rollbacks/rubber banding/teleports across many regions.

Gotten worse in the last few weeks.

ZOS will not admit it & close calls raised without resolution. They told me it was my Isp even when multiple other players from multiple nations had the same problem at the same time in one region while my wife was fine in another zone.

So they are deliberately trying to keep this one quiet.

It feels like they have badly configured hardware or networking and lack the skills or resources to fix it.

Sublime · October 2014

Never had any issues concerning lag or latency outside of Cyrodiil and I've been playing 4-5 hours/d since day 1.

Just Sayin.

BFNK · October 2014

I just wanted to comment on two things:

1) Yes, I know that some people have no problems. It's really not needed for anyone to claim that they have no problems, since that's obvious. The problem is for those who have it, who would have guessed...

2) Indeed, at times it feels like this is not lag, but just downright lack of responsiveness. I can distinguish between both and this is why I say 'lag/unresponsiveness', since I get both, which is really bad.

It's a really bad move, to keep quiet about this. And based on this attempt to keep things in secrecy, I will most likely keep playing GW2 and not make illusions that ESO will magically get better.

Just look at this: https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/support/tech/Latency-Lag-for-EU-Players-merged/first#post4427068

"During a morning meeting, I learned that some players in Europe have recently been experiencing latency issues. I see posts in a few of the forums, so I’m creating this thread to try to gather and focus your input to help us analyze this issue."

Can you guess when we will see this level of professionalism from Zenimax? You can clearly see how Anet are openly discussing the lag issues and are actively trying to solve the issue while DISCUSSING IT with the community.

I just wanted to give an example of how things should be done, because obviously this example is needed here.

Audigy · October 2014

BFNK wrote: »

No, I am not using a 56kb connection, my internet is actually very, very good. I have no latency problems in ANY other game I have played before.

Please, do not even try to suggest that the problem is on my side, because it is not. I have already discussed this with other EU players and many others have the same problems. For me, this has been going on ever since I bought the game, not just y-day. With the worst times during the weekend, incidentally the time when most people with daily jobs play.

This is surely a server problem, which should have been resolved ages ago. I am sure that thousands of other players experience the same sluggishness as I do.

The EU server has issues late at day, the NA doesn't has those. What the reasons are for that I don't know but its indeed noticeable like yesterday when the responsiveness in regards of opening desks, baskets etc. was incredible slow.

reften · October 2014

Sublime wrote: »

Never had any issues concerning lag or latency outside of Cyrodiil and I've been playing 4-5 hours/d since day 1.

Just Sayin.

same here. Go fire up the original version of Everquest to learn about true sluggishness lol

BFNK · October 2014

Yeah, the only difference is this is 2014 and MMOs have come a long way from where the original EQ used to be. If you are going to compare those, better wait for EQNext to come out, and then wait another 6 months after its release. That would be an almost fair juxtaposition.

Actually, a lot of the popular WoW private servers used to be unresponsive (and still are) like this. Yet, you didn't pay anything for those, so it was acceptable.

KhajitFurTrader · October 2014

BFNK wrote: »

I am sure that thousands of other players experience the same sluggishness as I do.

Sorry, I don't buy this. While I certainly won't deny that you're experiencing the problems you describe, the lack of thousands of postings reporting the very same issue tell me that it simply can't be widespread.

Make sure you open a support ticket and provide detailed information about your location, playing times, and ISP. If it's a possible peering problem as described here, maybe ZOS can intervene with their ISP, but they can do this only if they have gathered sufficiently supporting data from enough users.

Xeres14 · October 2014

I experience this very thing. Just a little background info, I live in NYC and my FIOS connection is 50 Mpbs up and down. My PC is quite good.

And yet, there are times when I hit a key and it doesn't fire. I have the resources to do the action (interrupt, open the door, etc) but it just doesn't happen. Sometimes I'll spam the key repeatedly to get the action to work.

I've opened up 3 tickets on this.

BFNK · October 2014

KhajitFurTrader wrote: »

...

Your points are valid and I have already read through other threads like this one. I've included the client in the Firewall whitelist, as well as the anti-vir one (which actually does create performance problems sometimes).

I don't really know where exactly the EU server is located right now (somewhere in Germany?), but if you know - feel free to share the info. I'll do any test I can, as it really can be a problem with my ISP. It's simply highly unlikely. My connection is fiber optics and at times it can reach 10 MB/s speeds to FTP servers, and easily 6-7MB/s over p2p. It's not a speed problem. The stability is also good, which is noticeable when playing any other online game, really. For example, here is my test to the US servers from that thread. 0% loss, as you can see. There is a decent amount of latency, but hey, those are US servers. I'm supposed to be on EU ones and I never really use US servers when playing games (even though at times I get better results there - during the Hearthstone launch events for example).

Furthermore, I know my case is not isolated because people in the zone chats tend to agree by simply writing about it, as there is usually always someone to complain when the server gets laggy. The fact that not everyone writes about it in the forums does not in any way mean the problem is isolated to only one, or a few cases. Plus, you can find many such threads in Google, and from different sources. Some of them are old, but others are newer and most speak about EU.

drkeys143 · October 2014

KhajitFurTrader wrote: »

BFNK wrote: »

I am sure that thousands of other players experience the same sluggishness as I do.

Sorry, I don't buy this. While I certainly won't deny that you're experiencing the problems you describe, the lack of thousands of postings reporting the very same issue tell me that it simply can't be widespread.

Make sure you open a support ticket and provide detailed information about your location, playing times, and ISP. If it's a possible peering problem as described here, maybe ZOS can intervene with their ISP, but they can do this only if they have gathered sufficiently supporting data from enough users.

I see your point, but I would argue that the majority of players never post on the forums, so that remark is somewhat invalid, it is impossible to judge the scale of a problem simply by the number of forum posts. I myself have found this to be an issue for a while but haven't opened a thread on it either.

coplannb16_ESO · October 2014

I live in Germany (Bavaria). Got 50 MBit DSL and fastpath activated. Had no latency issues when the EU server was located in NA. Have no issues with other online games (Rift, GW2, STO,...).

Ever since the server moved to the EU I run into those lag spikes. Sometimes once an hour, somtimes as often as every few minutes. Sometimes you seem to get a period of up to 30 seconds where the server is not responding. You can move, but you cannot attack, cannot interact, cannot chat. I can still talk to my group members (voice chat).
I type in group chat:
test, wait a few seconds, write test again, wait, test, wait, test

Then as soon as the server decides to talk to my client again the chat says in the same order and the same time frame (between test inputs):
test
test
test
test
test

My girlfriend has the same issue. My brother too (he is sitting in Berlin with a different ISP).

It is not on our side.

And usually in region chat all kind of people report and complain about it.

It is really annyoing.

edit:
oh and forgot one thing, I believe the "loading screen of doom" is related to it. If you use a door and the server then stops responding just after you see the loading screen, bye bye. Can only ALT+F4 the client and restart (you will end up in front of said door and have to use it again and hope the server does not idle on you again).

Wreuntzylla · October 2014

Prior to 1.4 I could run two instances of ESO on my computers without issue.

Post-1.4, running two instances is a complete slideshow, better or worse depending on zones . Commands take full seconds to execute, if they execute at all. If I quit out of one client, the game becomes responsive again after a minute or two. One instance is always fine.

Just thought I'd toss that in there in case it is relevant.

For the sake of completeness, I play over a T3 connection at least part of the time and have better than average rigs.

Tavore1138 · October 2014

KhajitFurTrader wrote: »

BFNK wrote: »

I am sure that thousands of other players experience the same sluggishness as I do.

Sorry, I don't buy this. While I certainly won't deny that you're experiencing the problems you describe, the lack of thousands of postings reporting the very same issue tell me that it simply can't be widespread.

Make sure you open a support ticket and provide detailed information about your location, playing times, and ISP. If it's a possible peering problem as described here, maybe ZOS can intervene with their ISP, but they can do this only if they have gathered sufficiently supporting data from enough users.

I think people may just have stopped raising new threads and tickets everytime, I used to do so... now I just roll my eyes and go read a book instead. I will respond to something like this in the hope maybe it will get fixed but the problem has existed to some degree since the moved data centres and if they planned to fix it they would have tried by now.

Raising CS tickets or in game bug reports has proved to get no response and again one just gives up. I have a few months to run on my sub but I play less each week because this issue takes the fun out of it and at the end of this sub I may well just quietly leave a game I had anticipated playing for some time.

OrangeTheCat · October 2014

Yeah, the delay is pretty bad and it's shameful that it is still dogging the game after all this time. I don't know how often I've had to press 'e' 2 or 3 times just to enter a door only to enter and then exit right away. ZOS has earned the reputation it has and deserves what comes of it.

OrangeTheCat · October 2014

cazlonb16_ESO wrote: »

This is not lag or latency, but either the command getting lost on the way between client and server or the server simply not executing it. It's particularly appearant when trying to use doors, there's about a 50/50 chance of the first press of "E" working or nothing happening at all. ( Again, this is not lag, it happens even in completely empty vet pve zones. In Cyrodiil it combines with lag to a death trap though. )

I think it is basically the same issue as when you try to deposit something in your bank and it fails with the message "waiting on previous request". Not at all yoked to how busy the game is at the moment. Just very poor design I would guess.

lathbury · October 2014

Yep at least 29 ppl in my guild have these issues seems to be worse since the last update.

Ad.Absurdum · October 2014

i have the same problem, most often in high populated zones - mainly pvp but often enough also for pve. i do not bother to send any tickets anymore since for the last one i got only copy&past answers (crashes in cyrodiil which were and still are caused by bad coding). when looking at when those lags occur, it can only be assumed that they saved money on the hardware of their server combined with bad coding.

Woolenthreads · October 2014

My connection has been bad since 1.3.5. I know it's the actual connection though to EU, somewhere along the line I get packet loss which can lead to serious desyncing issues. I tried an experiment where I played only during EU early morning hours and everything was passable. That's been my policy for weeks, EU only on weekends because the lag and desyncing is shocking for me during EU daylight hours.

WebBull · October 2014

magnusnet wrote: »

Are you using a 56kb connection?

Are you living in Fantasy Land? Everything the OP stated is true for many if not most players.

drkeys143 · October 2014

Problem has actually got worse throughout the evening, just given up now. Am surprised that devs don't seem to be taking this on board, it is getting pretty ridiculous now, have spoken to several players tonight, both in guild and zone chat, all confirming these problems. If new content is going to continue to be delivered before these issues are addressed, then I fear it can only get worse.

æxæ · October 2014

Find it hard to believe that the server migration end of july 2014 to Frankfurt am Main (Germany) was the reason for us Europeans facing the problems we are having now.

Moreover, strongly believe that the ongoing patches have caused lag issues in pve. I do experience those as well up to complete freeze and disconnect which I never had even when the servers where still located in the U.S.

Quit playing pvp a while ago due to unbearable performance issues in cyrodiil but that's a different story.

And I wholeheartedy can sympathize with players saying they are fed up sending in bug reports or filing cs tickets. Sent approximately 30-35 of them with half of them being left unanswered. Thought we had a beta? Oh, right
that phase was for those mmo hoppers to have a freebie.

rysc · October 2014

I was noticing this today. Haven't really had lag/delay issues before but all day playing had delays in response on everything from breaking down glyphs to attacking npcs.
My wife was playing beside me (both on higher end gaming rigs with a 60mb connection and yes I did a speed test when I first noticed the issue. memory usage was nominal.) I could watch her attack a watcher and kill it while on my screen I couldn't do anything and the watcher and her weren't fighting. Suddenly it was superspeed catch up. A little bit later it was her watching me fight on my screen but her screen shows me standing still. Even if one of us logged out the other would still get the delays in response. (and yes doors and talking to npcs are the worse it seems)