Cyrodiil, to lag or not to lag, I may have a solution.

DeLindsay · March 2015

TL;DR - Remove all non-essential NPC's/Crafting nodes from Cyrodiil to test if that's the issue.

To preface this thread, I personally do not experience the lag issues many do, for the most part. Every once in a while I get the dreaded 999+ Latency problem and the only time I've ever had what I'd consider low FPS was well before 1.6 when I was in a sizable group breaching a keep wall and the moment we crossed the wall's line several Oils came down on top of us, I dropped to 17 FPS for a few seconds. Normally my FPS is 50+ everywhere in Cyro, regardless of what's going on. I'm not going to turn this into what PC, Video card, settings, etc do we all use as there's plenty of those threads already.

Onto my idea that at the very least would be a great test to see what exactly the problem is with many Players having lag that keeps them from an enjoyable PvP experience.

Remove ALL NPC's that are not part of a Quest hub (Quest givers plus target location) or PvP area (Keeps, Resources, Gates, etc).
Remove ALL Crafting nodes in overland Cyrodiil, every Runestone, every Clothing node, every Alchemy plant, every Water, every Wood node and every Ore node.

After ZoS removes all nodes and non-essential NPCs from overland Cyrodiil they leave it that way for 1-2 weeks to allow Players to thoroughly test it. ZoS could even make an official post as a "Call to Cyrodiil Weekend" during that time asking as many Players as possible to jump in and PvP to stress test it. Once the time period is over and the data is in, IF doing the above reduced the lag for the majority then ZoS can start adding in 1 group type at a time until the almighty lag monster starts to creep up again. So maybe they start by adding in just overland Bears, then Wolves (what's left at least), then Mammoths, etc. Once they reintroduce all non-essential NPC's they can then move onto Crafting nodes 1 at a time. This should give them a very good test of what may or may not be causing some folks to lag out while others have little to no issues.

Also, as a side note, I know of 1 way to possibly diversify PvP in Cyrodiil that may at the same time help with lag in overland Cyrodiil. If during this test ZoS decides not to add back overland Crafting nodes, why not add many more to each Delve, since they're instanced anyway. I'd also like to see them increase XP from NPC's in Cyrodiil's Delves (not much, maybe 10-20%). Adding more Crafting nodes to Delves and increasing the XP gain via enemies inside the Delves would open up more opportunities for small group PvP and since they would be instanced from Cyrodiil it wouldn't impact lag there.

CMG138 · March 2015

I don't see how removing resource nodes would improve it. As far as NPCs, I thought you were on to something, until you said keep the ones in PvP areas. If those NPCs were to be removed, small groups would then become a viable option again, and players would have to guard their keeps, resources, and outposts. By them doing that, they would be spread thin, which would make zergs less likely to pop up. Or it may not work at all and everyone would get roflstomped a bunch.

HeroOfNone · March 2015

Might be alright, but a few issues I see is unless the remove or lock up the skyshards, caves, etc. It would be used as a time to run out and easy mode discover everything.

Unfortunately I think one way to test this won't happen, which is to get a large scale group of us onto PTS, remove what you said, have use cast specific abilities as directed, and see the impact. They probably do this small scale already, and we have tested out large scale battles before, but identifying the specific issues seems to require specifics and numbers. Maybe for the reward of a couple crowns? Eh who knows.

CMG138 · March 2015

Do you think ZoS would even go along with this? What I am suggesting isn't exactly a fix to the lag issue, it just has the possibility of encouraging other behaviors that generally wouldn't cause lag.

DeLindsay · March 2015

I don't see how removing a ton of non-essential NPC's and Crafting nodes wouldn't effect lag in Cyro. Every item in every Zone takes up computing resources, every tree, clump of grass, Crafting node, barrel, NPC, etc. I'd be willing to bet there's at last 500 Crafting nodes across overland Cyrodiil and probably at least 150-200 non-essential NPC's that do nothing more than add realism to Cyro. Surely removing all of those would improve response time and it's not like ZoS couldn't just add them all back if they found nothing changed.

HeroOfNone · March 2015

Now that I think about it, one thing they could do is implement a different day/night cycle in cyrodiil so the peak hours then become night time, non-keep npcs shutter away and lock themselves away for the night and wild life numbers decrease. This would reduce the number of pve players in the major campaigns, reduce your npc number, and keep folks out of certain areas. Not a 100% of what you want, but a possible cleaver reduction in npcs to process.

KBKB · March 2015

Remove all guards bar gate, then have them spawn when a wall is it.

Joy_Division · March 2015

No. Mostly because I already know it won't do any good. But also because before I was level 50, I very much valued the ability to collect resources such as birch and ebony. And right now the I appreciate it as a place to gather provisioning mats. And I also value the ambiance of a living, breathing world...Elder Scrolls stuff.

If you want to try a radical solution, roll back the lighting patch on the PTS and invite 1000 players to partake in a "let's see if the theories of the lighting patch and lag are correct" night.

snipeopsub17_ESO · March 2015

I suspect (but can't prove) that the problem is 3rd party programs operating server side (hacks). I only notice it when certain groups of players are nearby and when they leave, so does the lag.

Rune_Relic · March 2015

DeLindsay wrote: »

I don't see how removing a ton of non-essential NPC's and Crafting nodes wouldn't effect lag in Cyro. Every item in every Zone takes up computing resources, every tree, clump of grass, Crafting node, barrel, NPC, etc. I'd be willing to bet there's at last 500 Crafting nodes across overland Cyrodiil and probably at least 150-200 non-essential NPC's that do nothing more than add realism to Cyro. Surely removing all of those would improve response time and it's not like ZoS couldn't just add them all back if they found nothing changed.

But they are not all loaded at the same time.
Run across cyrodiil and look at the carpet of flowers appearing about 20 meters or so in front of you.
All of this is loaded on demand and only when within range.

Removing something 100m away will do squat for performance as its not in memory anyway.

johndawntb14_ESO · March 2015

I would suggest something mildly less drastic.
Keep all crafting mats (although adding more underground is always a good thing)
Take out all nonessential NPC's, meaning everything not involved with quests, skill shards, and PvP locations. (So mostly as suggested in OP, get rid of bears, wolves, misc imperials, etc.)
Instance the cyrodiil spawns (so the crafting stations, afk's, and people purchasing armor etc aren't counted)<--- should be permanent if implemented

heystreethawk · March 2015

But I can't build my ultimate up between fights w/o tapping those crafting nodes

I just need a few nodes between keeps I don't ask for much

Takuto · March 2015

Crafting nodes and NPCs aren't the cause of Cyrodil lag, the ability queue is. Specifically, when the queue is full of abilities which have non-trivial processing times when cast on large groups of players. *cough*healing springs*cough*

Etaniel · March 2015

There is no way that the lag in Cyro is caused by NPCs or nodes. It's just nonsense. Just look at blackwater, locked every night these days, no lag. What's the difference between non vet and vet campaigns? Abilities. Low levels don't have as much access to higher lvl abilities. The result is that we see a significant lesser amount of aoes being used, healing springs, impulse, caltrops, meteors and so on, and those are exactly what the lag is coming from : large number of players using aoes in small areas, and as long as ZOS doesn't improve the servers and the loads they can handle, they will only be able to make small adjustments to performane

Skafsgaard · April 2015

Dont touch my bugloss!

DeLindsay · April 2015

Etaniel wrote: »

There is no way that the lag in Cyro is caused by NPCs or nodes. It's just nonsense. Just look at blackwater, locked every night these days, no lag. What's the difference between non vet and vet campaigns? Abilities. Low levels don't have as much access to higher lvl abilities. The result is that we see a significant lesser amount of aoes being used, healing springs, impulse, caltrops, meteors and so on, and those are exactly what the lag is coming from : large number of players using aoes in small areas, and as long as ZOS doesn't improve the servers and the loads they can handle, they will only be able to make small adjustments to performane

Not to nitpick but Healing Springs (the morph of Grand Healing) is available as low as Level 2 Resto Staff. Would you like to try again? Also every single Character in the non-Vet Campaign can easily have all but maybe Meteor, but even then you can get that by Character Level ~25 or so by doing little more than reading Lore books. Caltrops also wouldn't be that difficult to obtain before VR. I do agree that there are less usage of AOE's in non-Vet and certainly that's probably part of the lag in Cyrodiil. But do please explain how PvE is lagging out so bad since 2.0 all while NOBODY is casting ANY ability. To top that off Meteor isn't an issue AT ALL in PvE, even Trials when multiple Players use Ice Comet and the Valkyn Scoria set.

And I just gotta lol at all the people who are mad at the very idea of ZoS removing Crafting nodes to see if that helps. As if your access to a few sparse Crafting nodes in the vastiness of Cyrodiil trumps SOOOO many Players who are experiencing lag. Besides I did suggest significantly increasing Crafing nodes inside Cyrodiil Delves, which would satisfy your greed.

Lastly, why would ZoS remove various NPC's (yes Deer and Torch Bugs are NPC's) if they didn't think that would improve the lag situation. Obviously the people who created the game see extraneous NPC's and "environmental fluff" as part of the problem. Having them remove all the rest of the non-important NPC's/nodes/etc to "test" if that helps and then RESTORE them if it doesn't wouldn't harm anyone and might actually improve Cyrodiil. But hey, all the arm-chair experts on the forums who think it can't possibly the problem and have likely never coded anything in their entire life must be right.

Skafsgaard · April 2015

Well, when it lags too much in keep fights (and Im soloing) I tend to gather runes and flowers - looking for nice small encounters along the way

And it was also partly a joke