No Lag Fix in 1.5.7, Still Not a Priority Evidently

ZOS_JessicaFolsom · December 2014

We're currently working on a fix for some ability particle effects that linger on player characters longer than they should. This should help reduce some of the latency in large-scale PVP situations. This fix will likely go into the first incremental patch in January. Improving game performance in Cyrodiil (and overall) is still an ongoing effort.

Weberda · December 2014

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

We're currently working on a fix for some ability particle effects that linger on player characters longer than they should. This should help reduce some of the latency in large-scale PVP situations. This fix will likely go into the first incremental patch in January. Improving game performance in Cyrodiil (and ovreall) is still an ongoing effort.

I think Jessica may be getting tired of these lag threads. She doesn't usually make typos. We're tired of the lag threads too and wish we didn't have to make them.

Sallington · December 2014

Weberda wrote: »

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

We're currently working on a fix for some ability particle effects that linger on player characters longer than they should. This should help reduce some of the latency in large-scale PVP situations. This fix will likely go into the first incremental patch in January. Improving game performance in Cyrodiil (and ovreall) is still an ongoing effort.

I think Jessica may be getting tired of these lag threads. She doesn't usually make typos. We're tired of the lag threads too and wish we didn't have to make them.

I don't think that's a typo. Maybe it's just the Canadian spelling. Liker Center and Centre?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

ZOS_JessicaFolsom · December 2014

Weberda wrote: »

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

We're currently working on a fix for some ability particle effects that linger on player characters longer than they should. This should help reduce some of the latency in large-scale PVP situations. This fix will likely go into the first incremental patch in January. Improving game performance in Cyrodiil (and ovreall) is still an ongoing effort.

I think Jessica may be getting tired of these lag threads. She doesn't usually make typos. We're tired of the lag threads too and wish we didn't have to make them.

Sorry, fixed!

I blame cold fingers.

LonePirate · December 2014

Yay! Only a month or so until we receive the next possible lag fix. Oh wait ...

Agrippa_Invisus · December 2014

This just cements my current decisions concerning my account status and my current in game activity level.

By the way, there's still a lot of GREAT games on Steam, MMOs even, if you want to play something different.

The Telltale Games Game of Thrones interactive story game is fantastic.

Civilization: Beyond Earth is phenomenal.

Dragon Age: Inquisition (Origin service, not steam) is quite good as well.

Samadhi · December 2014

KBKB wrote: »

The issue is;

We were promised " A lag free AvAvA experience" That's why we paid the high (by MMO standards) box fee on top of our subs.

Conclusion: We have been cheated and lied to.

...

We had it for a little while, then they broke it.

Garbrac · December 2014

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

This just cements my current decisions concerning my account status and my current in game activity level.

By the way, there's still a lot of GREAT games on Steam, MMOs even, if you want to play something different.

The Telltale Games Game of Thrones interactive story game is fantastic.

Civilization: Beyond Earth is phenomenal.

Dragon Age: Inquisition (Origin service, not steam) is quite good as well.

It's bad form to go to an official board run by a game and advertise other games. Especially in the game's specific section of the forums.

***********************************

I wouldn't say the lag issue isn't a priority for ZOS. It's just not something that can be fixed as fast as other things. Lag issues are always a priority for game developers, if you can't play and enjoy their game, they've lost you as a consumer, which is bad business.

Not every issue can be fixed by carrying over the one. It's not just simple mathematics. They need to go through the insane amounts of feedback reports they get, organize them into "piles" so they can see which issues are most commonly being reported. This isn't even the time consuming part.

The hardest part is replicating the issue, and finding out EXACTLY what is happening when the lag is starting, and what is happening when it disappears. Then they need to prioritize the code, and try and think of better ways to visually represent stuff (which can lead to getting the art team to redesign spell effects) then it gets reprogrammed, and tested internally.

It's most definitely a priority, it's just not something we as players can see being done.

A great example of how we don't see things getting done is look at the Justice and Champion Systems. We've only heard of these in the last few months and now they are pushing it to PTS in January, so obviously they've been those two teams ragged but we had no clue.

I feel bad for some of the ZOS people because they work hard on fixing this lag issue, and I'm sure the programmers who are doing it, have had a congratulatory moment where they thought they fixed it, only to see their patch go live and hours later people posting about how bad the lag is.

Agrippa_Invisus · December 2014

Garbrac wrote: »

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

This just cements my current decisions concerning my account status and my current in game activity level.

By the way, there's still a lot of GREAT games on Steam, MMOs even, if you want to play something different.

The Telltale Games Game of Thrones interactive story game is fantastic.

Civilization: Beyond Earth is phenomenal.

Dragon Age: Inquisition (Origin service, not steam) is quite good as well.

It's bad form to go to an official board run by a game and advertise other games. Especially in the game's specific section of the forums.

***********************************

I wouldn't say the lag issue isn't a priority for ZOS. It's just not something that can be fixed as fast as other things. Lag issues are always a priority for game developers, if you can't play and enjoy their game, they've lost you as a consumer, which is bad business.

Not every issue can be fixed by carrying over the one. It's not just simple mathematics. They need to go through the insane amounts of feedback reports they get, organize them into "piles" so they can see which issues are most commonly being reported. This isn't even the time consuming part.

The hardest part is replicating the issue, and finding out EXACTLY what is happening when the lag is starting, and what is happening when it disappears. Then they need to prioritize the code, and try and think of better ways to visually represent stuff (which can lead to getting the art team to redesign spell effects) then it gets reprogrammed, and tested internally.

It's most definitely a priority, it's just not something we as players can see being done.

A great example of how we don't see things getting done is look at the Justice and Champion Systems. We've only heard of these in the last few months and now they are pushing it to PTS in January, so obviously they've been those two teams ragged but we had no clue.

I feel bad for some of the ZOS people because they work hard on fixing this lag issue, and I'm sure the programmers who are doing it, have had a congratulatory moment where they thought they fixed it, only to see their patch go live and hours later people posting about how bad the lag is.

It's bad form and poor service to leave the game in the state it's been for this long.

Ever since the lighting patch, the performance in PVP has never fully recovered. on top of that it gets worse with each and every patch.

ZOS has been the keystone cops of development teams.

Cody · December 2014

ThatHappyCat wrote: »

Or maybe it's a complex issue that requires time to remedy.

Yes it is frustrating, but raging at the Devs probably isn't going to make things any easier for them. It's easy to lose sight of this with the anonymity of the internet, but please remember that devs and programmers are people too, with human feelings and motivations.

I have no doubt that they want this game to succeed as badly as we do (they'd be out of a job otherwise), and are under immense pressure to fix these lag issues for us. Let's not make things even more difficult for them. They know the issues exist, give them some space to figure it out.

they have left the lag unchecked for almost 6 months now.....

d*** right people are going to rage at the devs!!! what are we paying a sub fee for??

Rylana · December 2014

#FixLagXMas2014

WebBull · December 2014

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

We're currently working on a fix for some ability particle effects that linger on player characters longer than they should. This should help reduce some of the latency in large-scale PVP situations. This fix will likely go into the first incremental patch in January. Improving game performance in Cyrodiil (and overall) is still an ongoing effort.

Sorry folks, but this means they have no idea how to fix it.....or can't fix it.

LonePirate · December 2014

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

ZOS has been the keystone cops of development teams.

Agrippa, as a fellow and loyal member of the Pact, let me say thank you for co-opting my description from last week, although I targeted someone else.

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/comment/1410451/#Comment_1410451

Dreyloch · December 2014

roechacca wrote: »

Dreyloch wrote: »

ThatHappyCat wrote: »

They know the issues exist, give them some space to figure it out.

Space? I'm sorry, but it's been over 6 months now. I know of no other MMO I've ever played that would let this go for so long. Someone needs to be fired or go back to school. IDK, but something needs to be done. There isn't much if any communication from the devs except to pat themselves on the back showing us new content. Rather than fix the issue 100's of us deal with everyday in Cyrodiil.

WOW
SWG
EVE
SWTOR
The Secret World
Guild Wars
Warhammer
Age of Conan

All plagued by lag for lengthy amounts of time . Some were able to eventually manage it after years and system revamps , some never .

Wouldn't know about any of those except AoC. But back then I wasn't doing PvP. I was raiding PvE. Lag wasn't much of an issue. But then again, in PvE here it isn't much either.

Dreyloch · December 2014

ThatHappyCat wrote: »

Dreyloch wrote: »

Someone needs to be fired or go back to school. IDK, but something needs to be done.

Typical human mentality. It won't do anything to help but SOMEONE has to be punished!

Have some empathy, people.

I work on electro-mechanical devices. I'm basically customer service, On-site, fixing these devices. If I had one that I couldn't fix for 6 months, don't you think I'd be fired?!?!?!? When someone is paying for a costly contract for the thing to run right,wouldn't you want someone else to try and fix it? Wouldn't you bark up that service companys' corporate tree screaming for someone to make it right?

This is a business agreement we've entered into with ZoS. They need to fix their customers, by fixing their product. It's not personal, so no. Empathy has nothing to do with it. It's money.

Agrippa_Invisus · December 2014

Dreyloch wrote: »

ThatHappyCat wrote: »

Dreyloch wrote: »

Someone needs to be fired or go back to school. IDK, but something needs to be done.

Typical human mentality. It won't do anything to help but SOMEONE has to be punished!

Have some empathy, people.

I work on electro-mechanical devices. I'm basically customer service, On-site, fixing these devices. If I had one that I couldn't fix for 6 months, don't you think I'd be fired?!?!?!? When someone is paying for a costly contract for the thing to run right,wouldn't you want someone else to try and fix it? Wouldn't you bark up that service companys' corporate tree screaming for someone to make it right?

This is a business agreement we've entered into with ZoS. They need to fix their customers, by fixing their product. It's not personal, so no. Empathy has nothing to do with it. It's money.

We had an issue with a vendor providing data center services for my business. They let a Citrix farm get infected with a virus and then, instead of taking the whole thing down and restoring the entire system from backup, chose to try to implement incremental fixes slowly. All the while the virus was never fully eradicated.

When they finally cleaned it about a month after the initial infection (and many many many hours of lost worker productivity due to system outages, slow performance, and errors) and we had a clean image from each server we could work with -- we fired them and provided the server images to a new data center host.

One month was not acceptable in a production environment for my employer. I agreed with their decision and helped with the implementation of it.

Seven months with my personal money being burnt is beyond unacceptable.

WebBull wrote: »

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

We're currently working on a fix for some ability particle effects that linger on player characters longer than they should. This should help reduce some of the latency in large-scale PVP situations. This fix will likely go into the first incremental patch in January. Improving game performance in Cyrodiil (and overall) is still an ongoing effort.

Sorry folks, but this means they have no idea how to fix it.....or can't fix it.

Agreed. They're throwing darts at a board at this point, hoping something sticks.

Not acceptable. Not worth paying for. They can guess on their own dime.

Lfehova · December 2014

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

Dreyloch wrote: »

ThatHappyCat wrote: »

Dreyloch wrote: »

Someone needs to be fired or go back to school. IDK, but something needs to be done.

Typical human mentality. It won't do anything to help but SOMEONE has to be punished!

Have some empathy, people.

I work on electro-mechanical devices. I'm basically customer service, On-site, fixing these devices. If I had one that I couldn't fix for 6 months, don't you think I'd be fired?!?!?!? When someone is paying for a costly contract for the thing to run right,wouldn't you want someone else to try and fix it? Wouldn't you bark up that service companys' corporate tree screaming for someone to make it right?

This is a business agreement we've entered into with ZoS. They need to fix their customers, by fixing their product. It's not personal, so no. Empathy has nothing to do with it. It's money.

We had an issue with a vendor providing data center services for my business. They let a Citrix farm get infected with a virus and then, instead of taking the whole thing down and restoring the entire system from backup, chose to try to implement incremental fixes slowly. All the while the virus was never fully eradicated.

When they finally cleaned it about a month after the initial infection (and many many many hours of lost worker productivity due to system outages, slow performance, and errors) and we had a clean image from each server we could work with -- we fired them and provided the server images to a new data center host.

One month was not acceptable in a production environment for my employer. I agreed with their decision and helped with the implementation of it.

Seven months with my personal money being burnt is beyond unacceptable.

WebBull wrote: »

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

We're currently working on a fix for some ability particle effects that linger on player characters longer than they should. This should help reduce some of the latency in large-scale PVP situations. This fix will likely go into the first incremental patch in January. Improving game performance in Cyrodiil (and overall) is still an ongoing effort.

Sorry folks, but this means they have no idea how to fix it.....or can't fix it.

Agreed. They're throwing darts at a board at this point, hoping something sticks.

Not acceptable. Not worth paying for. They can guess on their own dime.

They're not even trying to test fixes the right way. Here's a metaphor.

Fixing the lag is like solving the holiday traffic problem. Except they're changing traffic lights around empty mall parking lots, then expecting those same fixes to work when it's Christmas Eve. It's freaking idiotic. Whatever you theorized may or may not work until you test it on game day.

WTB load testing

Gooey · December 2014

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

We're currently working on a fix for some ability particle effects that linger on player characters longer than they should. This should help reduce some of the latency in large-scale PVP situations. This fix will likely go into the first incremental patch in January. Improving game performance in Cyrodiil (and overall) is still an ongoing effort.

If you played your PvP, you'd know what the issue is.

Samadhi · December 2014

Gooey wrote: »

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

We're currently working on a fix for some ability particle effects that linger on player characters longer than they should. This should help reduce some of the latency in large-scale PVP situations. This fix will likely go into the first incremental patch in January. Improving game performance in Cyrodiil (and overall) is still an ongoing effort.

If you played your PvP, you'd know what the issue is.

Even just observe PvP while it is happening.

Agrippa_Invisus · December 2014

Samadhi wrote: »

Gooey wrote: »

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

We're currently working on a fix for some ability particle effects that linger on player characters longer than they should. This should help reduce some of the latency in large-scale PVP situations. This fix will likely go into the first incremental patch in January. Improving game performance in Cyrodiil (and overall) is still an ongoing effort.

If you played your PvP, you'd know what the issue is.

Even just observe PvP while it is happening.

Just watch any random Twitch.TV stream of the events going on and you can see the lag. Try to play in it and you feel it down to sluggishness of weapon swap.

cozmon3c_ESO · December 2014

Jess, at this point people need to be fired and a new team brought on, this has been going on for this long and i see no end in sight. is this particle thing going to fix the lag, server slow downs? what is the plan if this fails? why does it feel like no one at zos plays pvp at prime time and just does there tested from 7-4 before the *** really hits the fan. these people should be on 4pm-12am schedules tweaking this stuff until its fixed, i know at my job i would not go home until *** was fixed, no dinner, no sleep. (military life). if i can do it, then these people who are payed well should stay late and not do guess fixes in hopes that they fixed it because they go home before prime time.

Elsonso · December 2014

They must not have a Cyrodiil lag problem in the Console release.

I don't think that this is even an option. The Console edition cannot have Cyrodiil lag out of the gate. This is not going to be something that they fix after the fact. They will be crucified by the reviewers if they do that and it will take years to recover, if it ever recovers.

They get one more chance with the Console. Therefore, if there is a Cyrodiil lag issue that is currently plaguing the Console, it will be corrected prior to Console release.

In no manner do I think that they are ignoring the problem. They are very well aware of it. I am critical of their quality management and communication, but I have no doubts about their dedication. What they can do, are able to do, and can afford to do, are still unknown, but if they can see a way to fixing it, I am sure that is what they will do.

Komma wrote: »

They need to house cyrodiil on a separate server than the rest of the game. When cyrodiil lags you can feel the waves in pve land although not as bad. Its just more stain than the server can bare.

They call it a 'megaserver' but it is not one server. It is a network of computers linked by a high speed LAN that, collectively, become the megaserver. It is very possible that the Campaigns are already on separate and dedicated hardware in order to reduce the internal network traffic required to coordinate all of the players.

If adding server hardware was the fix for this, the lag would already be gone. Hardware is an easy fix for those willing to pay the price.

cozmon3c_ESO wrote: »

Jess, at this point people need to be fired and a new team brought on, this has been going on for this long and i see no end in sight

This is what people like me call 'ensuring failure'. Aside from the fact that the company would be replacing a team of experts with exactly the opposite, it would significantly increase the time-to-fix. By the time it was fixed, the better business decision would have been to simply reassign the team (instead of firing them) and stop trying to fix the problem.

purgation · December 2014

WebBull wrote: »

Sorry folks, but this means they have no idea how to fix it.....or can't fix it.

This.

I do have empathy. Really. Trying to deliver good performance for something like this is extremely difficult. I don't think people fully appreciate how difficult problems like this can be to solve.

Having said that, I think the real frustration is the general sense that not much focus or effort is being devoted to addressing the issue, or to supporting PvP in general.

A steady stream of tangible fixes and improvements to PvP would go a long way towards rebuilding goodwill with this portion of the playerbase.

Rasimir · December 2014

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom‌ Sorry, but ... particle effects? Please, these things may surely help with client performance, and help with fps problems. But we have a different kind of problem now: the server doesn't respond to our commands, and I really fail so see how particle effects come into play here, at least how they could possibliy contribute as a major factor.

Some time ago there was an invitation to the devs to play with some of the organized raids during prime time. Maybe this would help you to understand what we are talking about.

cozmon3c_ESO · December 2014

[quote="This is what people like me call 'ensuring failure'. Aside from the fact that the company would be replacing a team of experts with exactly the opposite, it would significantly increase the time-to-fix. By the time it was fixed, the better business decision would have been to simply reassign the team (instead of firing them) and stop trying to fix the problem.

[/quote]

By keeping a team on that has failed for 6 months on end is ensuring failure imo. If I were the boss of these people and they didn't deliver results in a month I would have fired these guys an found someone else. 6 months of bleeding subscriptions is an unacceptable loss as a company. Everyone is replaceable, including you at whatever job you do.

Columba · December 2014

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

We're currently working on a fix for some ability particle effects that linger on player characters longer than they should. This should help reduce some of the latency in large-scale PVP situations. This fix will likely go into the first incremental patch in January. Improving game performance in Cyrodiil (and overall) is still an ongoing effort.

If you really wanted to fix this, you would penalize players who spam impulse, bats and healing springs. pretty simple.

Jaerlach · December 2014

cozmon3c_ESO wrote: »

[quote="This is what people like me call 'ensuring failure'. Aside from the fact that the company would be replacing a team of experts with exactly the opposite, it would significantly increase the time-to-fix. By the time it was fixed, the better business decision would have been to simply reassign the team (instead of firing them) and stop trying to fix the problem.

By keeping a team on that has failed for 6 months on end is ensuring failure imo. If I were the boss of these people and they didn't deliver results in a month I would have fired these guys an found someone else. 6 months of bleeding subscriptions is an unacceptable loss as a company. Everyone is replaceable, including you at whatever job you do. [/quote]

This is only true if you have a plentiful labor market and a relatively easy onboarding process.

MMO design and administration has neither. Its an extremely specialized field, trained staff are hard to find, and the onboarding process is not instant.

If they fired the entire team that ran ESO's network today, the replacements probably wouldn't be hired, trained in how ESO works and ready to work until April, maybe March if you are lucky, and they would still make all the mistakes the last team did over because they would lack the institutional knowledge needed to succeed quickly.

You either don't have any management experience/training, or have only managed in an industry with short onboarding and readily available labor (ie restaraunt, retail, etc).

That's not how it works in jobs like these.

There's probably someone out there who's job is on the line, but it will be one or two people. You don't fire an entire team for failure if you hired the right people to begin with. You probably replace a lower level or middle-level leader.

jamesharv2005ub17_ESO · December 2014

Can someone show me where it was "promised" that the pvp in this game would be lag free?

Spangla · December 2014

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Weberda wrote: »

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

We're currently working on a fix for some ability particle effects that linger on player characters longer than they should. This should help reduce some of the latency in large-scale PVP situations. This fix will likely go into the first incremental patch in January. Improving game performance in Cyrodiil (and ovreall) is still an ongoing effort.

I think Jessica may be getting tired of these lag threads. She doesn't usually make typos. We're tired of the lag threads too and wish we didn't have to make them.

Sorry, fixed! I blame cold fingers.

Not as tired as we are of playing in the lag trust me!

stylepolice · December 2014

Talcyndl wrote: »

I'm glad they fixed lethal arrow at least.

Probably got abused in PvE - if it was only a PvP issue you would have either gotten a knee-jerk nerf (like FCs, Fiery Chain, etc.) or it would have been ignored.