A Message to ALL PvP Players (revised to save my hide)

Goldie · March 2015

Eldarth wrote: »

NadiusMaximus wrote: »

Just put your settings on low and play a game that looks worse than a 1996 fps.
Or crank it up to normal and play a power point presentation.

Really? Changing your CLIENT SIDE graphic settings removes the lag?
...so when are you getting a newer more powerful computer that can properly handle complex graphics?

A good lot of you all need to go back and play WoW one year after it's launch.
Then come back and whine some more.

This is extremely complex software -- if you want totally smooth gameplay, go play minecraft.

Sad.

timidobserver wrote: »

The OP is why ZOS usually just feeds us canned responses. You get a real response laying the problem out for you and the root cause of it, and you freak out and start feeling "betrayed." He should have just responded "we are working on it" as per ZOS usual.

Ive been here since beta son, and no I'm not "freaking out" I want the "WORKING" version of the game I paid for, not the version I get to play. Yeah, they say that they are working on things, but its been a year now, and things have only gotten worse. So the half hearted response from ZOS does make me feel a little betrayed. We have supported this game since launch and what do we get? A broken game with more bugs and exploits than you can count. We all KNOW what the problem is, AND the root cause of it, its poor coding and poor customer service. The "ZOS usual" isn't going to cut it anymore.

Jitterbug · March 2015

floorconub17_ESO wrote: »

I detect a thread that will be closed rather soon.

How dare you

There is NO lag, and this is NOT the Lag you are looking for (in best Yoda voice).

I wonder if you mean old Ben Kenobi...

GorraShatan · March 2015

I just wish they'd tell us what it was that changed from 1.5 to 1.6 that is making things worse.

Galalin · March 2015

GorraShatan wrote: »

I just wish they'd tell us what it was that changed from 1.5 to 1.6 that is making things worse.

The code

Eldarth · March 2015

Goldie wrote: »

Ive been here since beta son, and no I'm not "freaking out" I want the "WORKING" version of the game I paid for, not the version I get to play. Yeah, they say that they are working on things, but its been a year now, and things have only gotten worse. So the half hearted response from ZOS does make me feel a little betrayed. We have supported this game since launch and what do we get? A broken game with more bugs and exploits than you can count. We all KNOW what the problem is, AND the root cause of it, its poor coding and poor customer service. The "ZOS usual" isn't going to cut it anymore.

First MMO?

In WoW you couldn't even harvest resource nodes for 6 months after launch.
In Neverwinter Online there are over 100+ bugs in the Foundry Toolset alone TWO YEARS after launch, not even to mention the other 100s of bugs in the main game.

Welcome to online MMOs. I've been playing almost all of them since Meridian59 (the first). They are all like this for the first few years.

Sallington · March 2015

NadiusMaximus wrote: »

Does it really matter at this point?

They are "working" on it?

Just put your settings on low and play a game that looks worse than a 1996 fps.
Or crank it up to normal and play a power point presentation.

Client hardware has nothing to do with the game-breaking lag on the server side.

Draxys · March 2015

Eldarth wrote: »

Goldie wrote: »

Ive been here since beta son, and no I'm not "freaking out" I want the "WORKING" version of the game I paid for, not the version I get to play. Yeah, they say that they are working on things, but its been a year now, and things have only gotten worse. So the half hearted response from ZOS does make me feel a little betrayed. We have supported this game since launch and what do we get? A broken game with more bugs and exploits than you can count. We all KNOW what the problem is, AND the root cause of it, its poor coding and poor customer service. The "ZOS usual" isn't going to cut it anymore.

First MMO?

In WoW you couldn't even harvest resource nodes for 6 months after launch.
In Neverwinter Online there are over 100+ bugs in the Foundry Toolset alone TWO YEARS after launch, not even to mention the other 100s of bugs in the main game.

Welcome to online MMOs. I've been playing almost all of them since Meridian59 (the first). They are all like this for the first few years.

neither of those bugs sound like they made them game literally unplayable or extremely close to it

TheBucket · March 2015

MMO's have bugs. It's a way of life. Nothing will change that.

Maybe I understand because I'm a programmer myself. People don't seem to understand that they fix thousands of things in each patch. Just like any other MMO does. So, for some things to break is understandable to me. I'll take the the 1:5 ration of fixes/breaks any day.

Thanks Zenimax for the hard work.

NukeAllTheThings · March 2015

I guess the MMO crowd is used to paying for crap for a few years hoping a company will get it right eventually. Quick question....does the performance of these MMO's you speak of get worse and worse and worse over the years like this one? I would be ok with it if there were gradual improvements over the year. ESO continues to get worse and worse and we even have them them telling us that the cause of it is us playing the game the way that advertised it and sold it.

AhPook_Is_Here · March 2015

Goldie,

So you are saying there is some parallax between the marketing perspective and the developer perspective?

jena420 · March 2015

I never pots on the forums but hopefully this will help:

There are several "aesthetic" effects and animations that you have in place in Cyrodil that take performance memory and resources including:

1. The stones that play a humming sound when you get close
2. Resources spawn (you could remove this all together, we don't really go to Cyrodill to mine or collect flowers)
3. The mages at the corner of the keep that continuously cast something.

Non-aesthetic issues that I have noticed:

1. AOE effects in large "stacked" groups are going to cause massive lag, ever since 1.6 the issue has becomes worse because with the lag you can spam the Ultimate button and the animations ARE visible over and over until the skill finally fires, I have seen stacks of 15+ standards on a flag that were all generated within the lag window not to mention multiple meteors. Even if only one of them is doing damage the particle effects are still there to contribute to the lag issue.
2. Reducing particle effects, we all love the "look" of our spells but I'm sure we would not mind a particle effect decrease if it meant better performance.

There is something that made the lag issue worse other than player numbers, we used to be able to battle over an outpost with large numbers and not experience the kind of game numbing lag we see today.

I know it's not easy to find fixes specially when there are thousands of possible causes and every fix you contemplate could possibly affect something else in a way you did not expect it, not to mention the fact that you have to account for PVE impact as well as PVP; however, if your answer is to spread out over the map then you are not doing your job.

Rune_Relic · March 2015

IxSTALKERxI wrote: »

What upsets me most about this is that at launch I remember having epic 200 man battles fighting over a scroll without lag. It's really frustrating that the pvp experience has degraded overtime instead of improving. Actually I think I might even have footage of a 200 player fight from beta that had no lag.

Was that client side combat calcs or server side combat calcs ?
It changed around 1.2 1.3 from what I can gather on the threads.
This allowed peole to basically inject their own results ...true or not.

Everyone doing their own combat calcs is much faster than waiting for the server to do the calcs for everyone.

Rune_Relic · March 2015

GorraShatan wrote: »

I just wish they'd tell us what it was that changed from 1.5 to 1.6 that is making things worse.

AoE damaged players increased from 6+ to 50
New AoE skills added.

Aldul · March 2015

Lava_Croft wrote: »

There's two distinct problems here:
The Alliance War is basically unplayable because of the lag. Any other bugs and balance issues don't even matter because the lag trumps them all.

ZOS keeps advertising ESO as a game with epic, large scale PvP. The trailer for Tamriel Unlimited contains almost nothing but CGI of epic, large scale battles.

Your so *** right!

Goldie · March 2015

TheBucket wrote: »

MMO's have bugs. It's a way of life. Nothing will change that.

Maybe I understand because I'm a programmer myself. People don't seem to understand that they fix thousands of things in each patch. Just like any other MMO does. So, for some things to break is understandable to me. I'll take the the 1:5 ration of fixes/breaks any day.

Thanks Zenimax for the hard work.

The hard work? This game was better at Beta! NO focus has been put on PvP gameplay, they only care about pushing the crown store on people so they can turn a buck!

If the game is this bad for consoles we are going to see it flop bigger than free willy!

Console gamers will NOT put up with the lag and rollbacks, they will take about 5 minutes to eject the disc and play something else, let alone pay for the trash!

coolermh · March 2015

I'm not an expert but I think the OP breaks some rules...I understand your frustration though.

Goldie · March 2015

AhPook_Is_Here wrote: »

Goldie,

So you are saying there is some parallax between the marketing perspective and the developer perspective?

If by Parallax you mean, the effect whereby the position or direction of an object appears to differ when viewed from different positions, then no.

I see this:

"The Elder Scrolls Online features the largest PvP battles seen in a major online RPG. The game supports hundreds of onscreen players in epic battles. Swords and axes collide, spells and powers illuminate the ground and sky, and fires rage on embattled stronghold walls. Will you survive these epic battles? Can your overwhelming force take the keep, or will you be forced to retreat?

The Elder Scrolls Online is built to accommodate hundreds of players onscreen at once."

and we get this:

1. Unplayable lag
2. Glitched and buggy quests, doors, walls, landscape, critters, sound, music, abilities, lighting, resource nodes, horses, enlightenment, and on and on...
3. Hundreds of exploits.
4. Excuses.

Maybe the Devs see it one way, but ALL of us see it another, so yeah, maybe some sort of Parallax. Marketing and Development are definitely not on the same page.

Oughash · March 2015

Don't forget the "in combat" bug. That has been around for >6 months.

Ghostbane · March 2015

Goldie wrote: »

TheBucket wrote: »

MMO's have bugs. It's a way of life. Nothing will change that.

Maybe I understand because I'm a programmer myself. People don't seem to understand that they fix thousands of things in each patch. Just like any other MMO does. So, for some things to break is understandable to me. I'll take the the 1:5 ration of fixes/breaks any day.

Thanks Zenimax for the hard work.

The hard work? This game was better at Beta! NO focus has been put on PvP gameplay, they only care about pushing the crown store on people so they can turn a buck!

If the game is this bad for consoles we are going to see it flop bigger than free willy!

Console gamers will NOT put up with the lag and rollbacks, they will take about 5 minutes to eject the disc and play something else, let alone pay for the trash!

The game was a completely different game at beta. Add on a years worth of functionality/player requests of class balance, utility changes ( player feedback, bot control, exploit prevention ) etc

Everyone is min/max, everyone has every performance heavy ability going X per second, blah blah

Completely different game.

I believe you'll get a better experience on console than PC/Mac. Not that more worth has been put into the port, but that specific version only will be used with certain configurations.

Goldie · March 2015

Ghostbane wrote: »

Goldie wrote: »

TheBucket wrote: »

MMO's have bugs. It's a way of life. Nothing will change that.

Maybe I understand because I'm a programmer myself. People don't seem to understand that they fix thousands of things in each patch. Just like any other MMO does. So, for some things to break is understandable to me. I'll take the the 1:5 ration of fixes/breaks any day.

Thanks Zenimax for the hard work.

The hard work? This game was better at Beta! NO focus has been put on PvP gameplay, they only care about pushing the crown store on people so they can turn a buck!

If the game is this bad for consoles we are going to see it flop bigger than free willy!

Console gamers will NOT put up with the lag and rollbacks, they will take about 5 minutes to eject the disc and play something else, let alone pay for the trash!

The game was a completely different game at beta. Add on a years worth of functionality/player requests of class balance, utility changes ( player feedback, bot control, exploit prevention ) etc

Everyone is min/max, everyone has every performance heavy ability going X per second, blah blah

Completely different game.

I believe you'll get a better experience on console than PC/Mac. Not that more worth has been put into the port, but that specific version only will be used with certain configurations.

Well, considering that beta ended at 8am EST, this morning... maybe ur right.

Goldie · March 2015

Ishammael wrote: »

Don't forget the "in combat" bug. That has been around for >6 months.

Along with about 100 other bugs and glitches that could have been fixed numerous times by now!

Aldul · March 2015

AhPook_Is_Here wrote: »

"The Elder Scrolls Online features the largest PvP battles seen in a major online RPG. The game supports hundreds of onscreen players in epic battles. Swords and axes collide, spells and powers illuminate the ground and sky, and fires rage on embattled stronghold walls. Will you survive these epic battles? Can your overwhelming force take the keep, or will you be forced to retreat?

The Elder Scrolls Online is built to accommodate hundreds of players onscreen at once."

and we get this:

1. Unplayable lag
2. Glitched and buggy quests, doors, walls, landscape, critters, sound, music, abilities, lighting, resource nodes, horses, enlightenment, and on and on...
3. Hundreds of exploits.
4. Excuses.

Maybe the Devs see it one way, but ALL of us see it another, so yeah, maybe some sort of Parallax. Marketing and Development are definitely not on the same page.

copy. paste -> repeat

Winnamine · March 2015

"Actively, we are looking at changing the behavior of the players to remove incentives for large groups to stay in the same area."

That's your fix ZOS?

My tv broke the other day, if you try to change the channel it just turns itself off. It's still under warranty so I called the manufacturer. They told me not to change the channel anymore. Fixed!

Ok, that story's not true - because I didn't buy my tv from ZOS.

Sylvyr · March 2015

Dear @ZoS_PaulSage I understand the difficulties and appreciate the communication.

What I'm hearing from you is that not much can be done to fix it other than not having people bunch up in certain areas. 2 main points to this
1) Prerelease and post-release, I was in 3 way battles with 300+ players easily and experienced NO lag.
2) Incentivizing players not to play in bunches is counter productive to AvAvA large scale battles

Expanding on #1. If it wasn't a problem in the past, why is it a problem now? The lag started around the time of the lighting revamp, which I see others have been posting as well. I heard that around the same time much more anti-bot code went in (but don't remember an official announcement). So if it was fine then, what was introduced that has caused the issues and why can't it be reverted in Cyrodiil to code that was working? I think it's not only disappointing that it is not working, and has been in such bad shape going on months now, but I think it's very very very confusing that it was working fine.

Expanding on #2. The biggest draw for me, honestly, was large scale AvAvA PvP. I love TES and so many other aspects of this game but I can say what made me go "Wow!" was Cyrodiil. I see suggestion for small scale 4v4 or whatever battlegrounds and that's great for some but I've had my time with unreal and quake and counterstrike. For me the sum of that experience compared to large scale is "meh". Cyrodiil is 90% of my endgame. Take it away, or don't fix it, and there will be a time where I will lose interest in this game especially as next gens come out. Don't take that as a threat or a demand but just a natural course of things.

I understand conflicting deadlines, shuffling resources, and all, but you started out with a gem and it's sad the way it's gone. I realize you probably didn't hit your marks on PvP population when the game started (went from double digit servers to the few now) but realize a lot of people were leveling PvE at the time (because it was more lucrative that leveling in Cyrodiil). Then bugs hit and a lot of people left and/or didn't want to deal with Cyrodiil. If you fix it, there will a lot of interest.

Here's a suggestion:
Cyrodiil also seems to have been designed to be a PvE in PvP zone. Which is a cool alternative to the traditional "PvP server" variant. Maybe your packing too much in? Are all these Dolmens and Delves and such dragging down the server? What about getting rid of or reducing the PvE in the zone and go back to the core of what it is, keep and territory battles, for now and then figure out how to bring back PvE if possible?

xDOVAHKIINx · March 2015

Why the revision? be like our fellow PVP players, banned for "saying it how it is". Better to be Banned from the forums standing on your feet, than be welcomed to the forums on your knees.

OrangeTheCat · March 2015

Be careful OP. ZOS seems to be much more sensitive and quick with the banhammer on these forums than before B2P. If I actually played any more (came back here to see what, if anything, had changed) I might care.

k2blader · March 2015

It is ridiculous which is why I see no reason to stay subbed. The xp gain would be nice but it's not worth it.

Jauriel · March 2015

How about ZOS start taking seriously the multiple reports sent daily about specific players lagsploiting and running obvious exploits and dare I say scripts? My 20 guys were capping bleakers the other day and 5 ep showed up at the breech. I watched with my own eyes as they balled up and spammed and 12 of us crashed to desktop and had to hard boot our computers to even close the frozen launcher. Now please. I will vomit if even one ep shill comes here and claims it isn't happening or to get better hardware. Enough excuse making ZOS! Kick the cheaters. And fix the server. In that order. What you're asking is ludicrous. You're asking one side or another to willingly walk away from a battle that could cost them a home keep or a scroll. Unacceptable.