ESO and Yosemite—better FPS, but frequent crashes.

lecarcajou_ESO · October 2014

They say there's always something, and there is. After ESO's patch four, I experienced severe fps drops, which could be remedied by playing in windowed mode. It wasn't ideal, but an acceptable interim solution. With the arrival of Yosemite, decent frame rates are back in fullscreen mode, but now I'm experiencing frequent crashes—at least once per play session (on average 1-2 hours).

Has anyone else been having this issue?

My system in a nutshell: 27" iMac, 3.4 GHz Core i7, 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX 2048 MB, running OS 10.10

Calmyron · October 2014

My FPS is down with spikes in the single digits. And the Mac event flood is killing the enjoyment of the game.

lecarcajou_ESO · October 2014

Mac event flood? What's that?

Recoba86 · October 2014

@lecarcajou_ESO‌ chech this topic for Event Flood!
http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/125382/complete-loss-of-character-control-on-a-mac#latest

bigbaddaboom0 · October 2014

Yeah. Crashes are way up on my Mac after the last patch. Especially in Cyrodiil. I have 4 or 5 per night, with around 2 hours play time. I was having maybe 1 per night before the patch.

Suntzu1414 · November 2014

i have a macbook pro (2014) - 2.3GHz i7 w/8GB memorty & Intel HD graphic 4000.

I have to say...i found the same solution (without previously seeing this thread).

Previously, i put ESO in window mode, and it "significantly improve FPS". When i mentioned this to ESO support staff... their response was --- "of course, it requires less screen space...". I was wondering WHY they didn't mention this previously. After repeat complaints...

Now, I'm getting sever spikes, -- the games goes from FINE to CRASH, for no apparent reason. Like crafting today---wtf.

at least now, I'm not alone

ST

KhajitFurTrader · November 2014

In a recent article, German Mac magazine Mac & i reported about graphics problems with dual graphics cards in MacBook Pros (especially in the 2012 model) and OS X 10.10 Yosemite, based on a lengthy thread in the Apple support forums. The article implies that any Mac with dual GCs (e.g. the latest Retina iMac) might be potentially affected.

The gist is to disable graphics card switching: in Apple Menu > System Preferences... > Energy Saver uncheck the option Automatic graphics switching. This will of course be detrimental to battery life in mobile Macs, but when gaming this shouldn't be an issue, as this is usually done on grid power anyway.

lecarcajou_ESO · November 2014

Well, I'm on an iMac, so Energy Saver settings (at least battery-related ones) are not relevant. But I do notice that I have fewer crashes after disabling most of my add-ons... except for SkyShards.

Windshadow_ESO · November 2014

i don't think the 5K iMac has any sort of dual graphics chipset
this is what about this mac shows for mine (that said i have not yet tried hooking up an extra monitor)

chris.dillman · November 2014

Suntzu1414,

Running ESO in windowed mode should not give it "significantly improve FPS".
A window 90% the size of the screen should get a small boost at best.

You should see the FPS go up as you make the window smaller and smaller.

Now in the ESO's graphics settings you can always change the screen resolution. This will have the same speed up effect as running in a window.

Can you /fps and give post some numbers of what you are actually seeing?

>i have a macbook pro (2014) - 2.3GHz i7 w/8GB memorty & Intel HD graphic 4000.

Is this a 15" MBP Retina?
The first Gen all have 2 GPUS.
The 4000 is the low power GPU.

The 13" MBO-R has a 4000.

There was an Apple bug a year or so back where the High Speed GPU stopped turning on. Resetting PRAM etc would fix that.

If you have 2 GPU you can tell which one is running by….
Run ESO, switch to windowed mode, chose About this mac in the finder.
( this should works on 10.8 or better )
You have to bring up the about box after you run ESO or any OpenGL app.

creme-delacreme · November 2014

When you say "crash", what exactly do you mean? With Update 5, I experience the game just completely disappearing in one nano sec….gone. like I've never even opened the app. no error, nothing. I'm on an older iMac and have separate threads going for both Update 4 and Update 5.

lecarcajou_ESO · November 2014

My ESO crashes usually involve a brief lockup of the game. The screen is typically still frozen when the error report panel pops up, but disappears shortly after.

chrisfowler99 · November 2014

I've been experiencing two different types of crashes with update 5 on Yosemite.

1) Lockup/crash, black screen, Zos bug report tool pops up.

2) Complete crash, app closes, Apple bug report tool pops up.

The former happens about once every hour or two. The latter about once a day or so.

This is much more frequent in Update 5 than in Update 4, not that Update 4 was the most stable thing ever.

I see it happen most of the time when I do one of two things:

1) Use a wayshrine

2) Talk to a merchant or banker

I don't recall seeing it on typical screen loads or when talking to non-merchant/banker NPCs.

Suntzu1414 · November 2014

I completely understand and agree with the original post.

THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG, since Yosemite.
The funny part... my bug menu (in game), is bugged -- and won't let me report bugs.

even typing (/bug) with no add-ons. Doesn't work.

I've had two serious system crashes, during Undaughted Pledges.
That have left my guildies high and dry...I've additionally experience 6 other crashes.

This has only started since Yosemite (to be fair Update 5 happen around the same time). I have reported bugs (4x) on-site (since on-line is no longer an option) and haven't heard back, yet.

For your kind review.
ST

lecarcajou_ESO · November 2014

Ok. Two crashes within less than five minutes? There's no need for this to happen. You know how many times WoW crashed on my Mac, or GW2? I don't know either—because I can't remember it ever happening. Even Rift ran more reliably than this, and that was on Crossover, for crying out loud. I tried hard to love you, ESO, but you're like that pretty girl who is absolutely, irreparably mental. We are done here.

KhajitFurTrader · November 2014

@Suntzu1414‌,

please take a look at my answer over here.

lecarcajou_ESO · November 2014

The crashes just go on. Here's the most recent crash log—generated after less than 10 mins of playing. I'm not sure if I'm interpreting all of this data correctly, but the character listed in the original report was not the one I was playing when the crash occurred—nor was I in Auridon, but in Deshaan.

Also, my system again:

27" iMac, 3.4 GHz Core i7, 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX 2048 MB, running OS 10.10

ï»¿[reporter]
version = 0.01

[extra]
ProductName = eso
Version = eso.live.1.5.2.1076342
char.account = XXXXXX
char.alliance = 1
char.name = XXXXXXX
client.executablebits = 32
client.mode = inworld
client.renderertype = OPENGL
client.session_start_timestamp = 2014-11-09T03:23:42.332Z
client.time_since_load = 510
client.timestamp = 2014-11-09T03:33:43.878Z -frme 20490-
client.uptime = 601.6
computer.name = XXXXXX
computer.user = XXXXXX
cpu.count = 4
data.depotid = 4000
data.dir = /Applications/Games/Launcher.app/game_mac/pubplayerclient/eso.a
data.syncm = databuild
data.version = 0.win.0.live.1076342
exe.buildnum = 1076342
exe.opt = release
exe.reltype = public
exe.type = client
gfx.description = NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX OpenGL Engine
gfx.deviceid = 0.0.0
gfx.driver = 2.1 NVIDIA-10.0.43 310.41.05f01
gfx.vendorid = 0
globby.address = 198.20.200.25
globby.port = 24503
loc.wloc = 233 219681 10694 411852 346.53
loc.world = Auridon
loc.worldid = 233
loc.zone = Auridon
login.address = 198.20.200.25
mem.current = 1673
mem.peak = 1705
mem.physical = 8192
os.platform = mac
os.version = 14A389
realm.depotid = 0
realm.id = 4000
realm.name = NA Megaserver
reportfield.ver = 3