Lol I hope not

They are working on it. They aren't giving up coding. In the mean time they are simply trying to mitigate the problem. They know it is not a solution but its what they can do now in the short term. Expect more effort in this area as console settles down, not that they aren't putting effort in now.

I do think that the zone should be treated more like a pvp active zone without as much emphasis put on keep capture etc. I like the keeps and resources, but they are just too valuable in comparison to everything else in the zone.

Take it for what its worth. Its a code issue, not a hardware issue. Ask yourself, what is the likelihood that they will invest serious capital in rewritting core code for their game engine. Maybe if enough players quit and it has a serious impact on their bottom dollar. Otherwise, don't count on it. Megaserver technology doesn't deliver as hyped and promised. Cyrodil on Thornblade and Chillrend has been unplayable in the past few days and this was on offpeak hours.

ZOS_PaulSage wrote: »

Hello everyone,

Our Cyrodiil performance is something we are very aware of. Performance drags when there are numerous players in the same place at the same time. This is why performance in Cyrodiil is fine for much of the day, but gets worse during more popular times. We are currently investigating ways in which we can reduce the spike of performance loss. We added in some features for Update 6 which we hoped would help, but ultimately did not. This is not a situation where we can just add more hardware. Player population in a given area hurts the performance and the more people that are in one area, the more performance is going to be hurt.

Actively, we are looking at changing the behavior of the players to remove incentives for large groups to stay in the same area. We want to do this by providing larger incentives for Alliances to split up and take on multiple-challenges in Cyrodiil. We’ll continue to work on this. We are also asked by players if there is anything they can do to help. In this situation, the best thing you can do is split off to different objectives when you notice performance going down. Cyrodiil is a big place with lots of different things to do. And thank you for asking.

It's been a problem since forever with online games and there remain limits to how many people can be in one place at one time and be properly and continually updated on what everyone else is doing and the effect each person's actions have on everyone else.

Even legendary games like Eve Online switch to movement at half speed during those multiple thousand ship fleet battles. You can do that in a space game or even an air combat game.

You can run interpolation code in those kinds of game too, taking the control input information and game simulated physics to predict likely player positions despite latency. But that doesn't work so well with terrestrial combat games. No code can predict what abilities a player is going to use or is using when you're not getting real time updates.

The maddening thing here, for both players and developers, is that this game was handling it at one time better than any online game had.....EVER. My god, some of those moments during the beta and soon after release were so smooth and so epic - in the true sense of the word, epic - with massive numbers that it was such a disappointment and an ongoing mystery when it changed.

Everyone has their theories of course focusing on this or that thing that changed. But it was WAS WORKING. Thus one hopes and has reason to hope it will again work.

Raash wrote: »

Have z-max really stated they cant fix megaserver coding and asked that people should find other things to do in cyrodiil then the large scale battles?
I would like to see a link to where this is said and see/hear this for myself first handed.

I really hope there is no truth in this statement, because if it is that would mean the game is so broken that they cant fix it.

Yeh, I guess this is the conclusion you could draw from Paul Sage's post if you basically just ignore everything he said and come up with your own narrative.

Tankqull wrote: »

bellanca6561n wrote: »

It's been a problem since forever with online games and there remain limits to how many people can be in one place at one time and be properly and continually updated on what everyone else is doing and the effect each person's actions have on everyone else.

Even legendary games like Eve Online switch to movement at half speed during those multiple thousand ship fleet battles. You can do that in a space game or even an air combat game.

You can run interpolation code in those kinds of game too, taking the control input information and game simulated physics to predict likely player positions despite latency. But that doesn't work so well with terrestrial combat games. No code can predict what abilities a player is going to use or is using when you're not getting real time updates.

The maddening thing here, for both players and developers, is that this game was handling it at one time better than any online game had.....EVER. My god, some of those moments during the beta and soon after release were so smooth and so epic - in the true sense of the word, epic - with massive numbers that it was such a disappointment and an ongoing mystery when it changed.

Everyone has their theories of course focusing on this or that thing that changed. But it was WAS WORKING. Thus one hopes and has reason to hope it will again work.

thats not true there are games a decade old that were and are capable to handle alot more players simultaniously without any issues than ESO ever was.
your mentioned EVE, DAoC, UO were all capable of handling 500-1000 players on screen without killing the servers or using technologies like EVE time dilation. but since 2006 all MMO developer are using an engine created by someone else to spare money wich quite were not even capable to handle an MMO IE SWTOR, Warhammer Online.

Here's Warhammer Online showing its inability to handle players:




You know, 2008 awful Warhammer Online was not the same 2013 Warhammer Online.

Cazic wrote: »

They didn't litrraly say they couldn't fix it. Its an ongoing effort and what they've been doing so far hasn't quite worked as well as they'd hoped. They're introducing new things in cyrodiil now to help spread people out which will alleviate some of the issue, but they are still continuing to work on the core problem.

This^^^^ I think they have hit a wall but still looking for a way to fix it, in the mean time they are offering ideas and band aid fixes so we can a least still play, I know there is still massive lag and not al the ideas work, I have no problem trying to work with zos until they get a fix, at least they opened up and told us what the problem is when large amount of players gather in one area, I hope they can find a fix soon®

I don't know if they actually KNOW it's when large groups of players gather together. I think that's just a SWAG. I've seen videos of about 20 people fighting in the middle of nowhere have issues.

Gidorick wrote: »

I don't know if they actually KNOW it's when large groups of players gather together. I think that's just a SWAG. I've seen videos of about 20 people fighting in the middle of nowhere have issues.

And we've all experienced being one person in the middle of nowhere and having server issues.

Different problems I imagine...it's easy to imagine lots of things

joshdm2001_ESO wrote: »

Take it for what its worth. Its a code issue, not a hardware issue. Ask yourself, what is the likelihood that they will invest serious capital in rewritting core code for their game engine. Maybe if enough players quit and it has a serious impact on their bottom dollar. Otherwise, don't count on it. Megaserver technology doesn't deliver as hyped and promised.

I do not think that megaserver technology has much to do with this, other than you don't have to log out of the game and into a different server to switch Campaigns. The megaserver provides channels and layering so that multiple PVE servers are not needed. I do not think that this applies in Cyrodiil.

I think that for performance reasons, all the players on Thornblade (for example) are collected together and not spread out all over the megaserver. It might actually be on one physical box, which is why throwing hardware at it will not fix anything. They have already done that. If the pictures are right, the servers are already running some serious hardware, and quite a bit of it.

What is failing here is the whole massive combat dynamic, the idea that hundreds of characters, each spamming abilities, can be at the same location at the same time and not have lag. Megaserver or not, it is a challenging problem tracking each character and what effect it has on every other character in the area and then communicating this to the clients that need to know. There are a ton of places where this can fall apart: abilities, server, internet, and client.

This is why the deer and insects are gone. It removes the need for anyone, client and server, to have to spend any time at all dealing with them. The server does not have to track where the deer are, what they are doing, what happens to them, and communicate this to the clients, who no longer need to worry about displaying them, keeping them up to date on your screen, and people interacting with them. This is not a fix, but it certainly is a way to reduce the problem.

Spreading people out is much the same. Beyond a certain range, the need to track and update clients drops off. The server spends less time trying to coordinate a large number of players. It is not a fix, but it certainly reduces the problem.

Banning people who span abilities is also not a fix, although it might reduce the problem. The deer did not protest much when they were banned from Cyrodiil, and the income that they provide to the game will probably not be missed. Players are a different story. It is a distinct possibility that people are taking advantage of this to intentionally lag the server, but intent is hard to prove. While I would shed few tears over banning someone who intentionally tries to lag the server, banning someone who is unwittingly causing lag is something that should not happen.

What tells me that ZOS is actively trying to resolve the lag is that they are not banning people who might be causing it. At least, people are not flooding the forums complaining about being banned. As long as ZOS thinks they can fix it on their end, they will not wield that stick heavily. When they start banning people for causing lag, then they are done fixing things.

Meanwhile, the people who cause lag are allowed to play because ZOS would rather fix the problem than ban people for doing it.

So, yes, I do think they are working on lag, exactly as they have said. I think that they believe that they can fix it, or at the very least, have not thrown in the towel yet.

In Related News: Blackwater Blade, NA server, Friday and Saturday night, DC vs EP, several keeps and outposts taken, and retaken, and I was standing by the flag several times. The game did not lag out for me. I saw nothing in Zone that indicated people were lagging, being disconnected, or having problems in the areas that I was in. I'd really be interested to know if players along the northern part of Lake Rumare was having problems at those times.

@lordrichter

lordrichter -

You covered it damned well....when I think of the large scale online battles I remember best and most fondly, they were not hundreds of players in the same place at the same time. Rather it was hundreds of players engaged in the same mission in different places with the key battle unknowable by design and by player expectation.

Best example which will illustrate the point was an Air Warrior Big Week mission.

Compressed map of Europe. Players split into groups each with a different role.

8th AF B-17s launching from various airfields in England. Short, medium, and long range escort fighters launching from different fields in England. New players serving as gunners aboard the B-17s as crew - multiplayer vehicles....solves lots of problems.

Luftwaffe, broken in different Jagdgeschwaders flying different fighter types (mostly 109s and 190s) again coming up from different airfields not knowing what the Allies' target of the day was.

Spread out because it was a very different sort of game and because the "lore" in this case was history and spreading players out was expected and, from a technical and game design viewpoint, ideal.

I cannot convey the emotional chill you felt as you crossed the English Channel looking at empty sky, knowing that hundreds of enemies were out there. Suspense was huge selling point in a game like that. Head on a swivel, scanning the sky, both sides. One side hoping like hell nothing happened but stress sweating the entire time.

Yes, it came down to HUGE air battles but it was never all players in one place at one time.

How the hell do you spread people out naturally in a game setting like this without it feeling contrived?

Cazic wrote: »

They didn't literally say they couldn't fix it. Its an ongoing effort and what they've been doing so far hasn't quite worked as well as they'd hoped. They're introducing new things in cyrodiil now to help spread people out which will alleviate some of the issue, but they are still continuing to work on the core problem.

This.

ZOS is having a hard time fixing anything at this point and they are just trying to spread people out in PvP to alleviate some of the issues.