PvP Lag is now Unbearable

hamgatan · May 2015

Firstly let it be said I am not usually one to whinge and *** like this but the PvP lag I experienced this morning in Cyrodiil was unacceptable.

Ping was in red, the whole time. At certain points it hit 999+ on the meter. Chillrend was a nightmare, I would be running through a field and suddenly Death Recap before I could even blink. Set up a meatbag to fire at an AD Zerg Brigade, next second they're on the other side of the keep.

The server booted me four times during this, I logged back in only to cop a Fire Ballista in the face and get one shotted within a second. It was like Ron Jeremy had yelled 'surpriiiiiise' and given me a good turkey slap. Even logging back in failed numerous times and I had to keep plugging away.

Secondly let it be said, it isn't me. These problems have only begin since you went to a F2P model. This is what I was dreading.

My connection is sustained by a Cisco 1941 Series ISR, carefully NAT'ted and has not been a problem till now. I used to ping around 250 before F2P launch. I wen't off and tested the link speed as well this morning - 15.39mbps. To double check I disconnected my desktop from the main core network and plugged directly to my 4G LTE router just to ensure it wasn't that - 25.24mbps and still the same amount of lag.

My point here Zenimax is:

For someone who is paying and subscribing for the service still with ESO Plus, it is UNACCEPTABLE that you are not providing priority bandwidth these subs.

The game is UNPLAYABLE in this state. Noone actually gives a toss about crowns. What we are about is stable reliability and actually being able to play the game. Incidentally - I just resubscribed for another 6 months. Tell me why I did that again when I can't play the game as it's meant to be played? I don't mind not having priority queuing as some people have suggested - but I DO mind when I can't play the game because you fail at load balancing.

What you need to do is change the Routes for ESO Plus subscribers. Now I'm assuming you're running some kind of gateway load balancing but as a part of the post authentication stage of the connection, following a successful authentication.. ESO Plus accounts can be re-routed at your core switch level. For example, Plus accounts may be RADIUS authenticated (or similar protocol) to trigger a Dynamic VLAN Tag ID which you can then use to create dedicated Ingress/Egress routes for a dedicated path through the FC Switches, and then a dedicated physical NIC on the chassis itself.

(i.e. if you're running Cisco UCS Chassis's for example set native VLAN for one of the physical NIC's to the ESO Plus Subscriber base - Not a VNIC within vSphere/H-V!). Not to mentioned - dedicate more resources (cores) to ESO Plus!

We (the remaining paid subscriber base) have shown you enough good faith to keep subscribing, how about you show us some good faith and actually provide the service we pay you for?

technohic · May 2015

Sounds like Thornblade right before the exodus.

Cry_Wolfe · May 2015

this isnt just a PvP issue, last 24 hours this has been hitting PvE maps as well.

when the lag spikes hit i ask in /zone and sure enough, other people are getting it as well.

Woolenthreads · May 2015

I just got kicked from the game and even the launcher is having connection issues

Valymer · May 2015

Yeah today was really bad in general. I was getting +999 spikes in both PvE and PvP.

Beesting · May 2015

On the eu server we only had lag this evning when a ep guild with 4 bombsquads (100 people) decided to play on azura,s for 2 hours, spamming meteors on us while we (35 ad) were stacking , as were they,

before and after it was absolutely fine.

Forztr · May 2015

Today I had 5000-7000ms inside Glademist after respawning from dying outside Ales. There were no big fights showing on the map and certainly no action near Glade.

My death just prior was me seeing a guy whilst on horseback so i clicked dismount. Nothing happened 2-3 seconds later i was knocked off my horse and was dead after taking 5 hits before hitting the ground. I guess I was already lagging and he actually saw me first and the client was just catching up with what he did whilst I was lagged out.

Tempted to suggest a cut down skill list for PVP that removes all abilities that strain servers.

Or maybe the PVP team could do an armchair developer stream talking about the problems from their perspective. You never know they might get an idea or two from the community that could help. Anything is worth a try at this point.

PKMN12 · May 2015

Cry_Wolfe wrote: »

this isnt just a PvP issue, last 24 hours this has been hitting PvE maps as well.

when the lag spikes hit i ask in /zone and sure enough, other people are getting it as well.

yup, today on my Imperial Dragonknight, was into a town and preceded to get MASSIVE lag spikes a lot for a bit, then crashed right out of the game a bit later.

bosmern_ESO · May 2015

at certain points you hit 999+ ping? lucky you.

its rare for me to ever drop below 999+

Rasimir · May 2015

/signed

A lot of people around me are playing just out of habit, not because it is fun. I fear they all will leave as soon as they find something more appealing.

I understand that the console launch is the top priority now, it can't be delayed again without seriuous consequences. But from what I see ZOS may lose the pc pvp player base soon if nothing changes.

Bouvin · May 2015

It's funny, played in Azura Star all day for a break.. no lag even in big fights with 2+ full raids on both sides.

Goto Chillrend and it's constant lag all night and desync issues.

So.. what's the different between Chill and Azura?

kkravaritieb17_ESO · May 2015

All EU campaigns last night were unplayable with a re diculous amount of ping. If you want to trully pvp you must do it between morning and afternoon.

Cinbri · May 2015

kkravaritieb17_ESO wrote: »

All EU campaigns last night were unplayable with a re diculous amount of ping. If you want to trully pvp you must do it between morning and afternoon.

And sadly this is only solution.

hamgatan · May 2015

PBpsy wrote: »

I'd give you the pleasure of a response, however as you can see I'm still waiting on Zenimax's Server lag to catch up...

Jitterbug · May 2015

Beesting wrote: »

ep guild with 4 bombsquads (100 people)

Yeah, that does sound better than "mindless zergs" :P

Yolokin_Swagonborn · May 2015

I wish to continue discussing this topic so further contribution to this existing thread is a good way to ensure that the topic of PvP lag remains relevant and ALWAYS discussed on the general forums instead of being pushed in a corner or otherwise censored.

We had another good thread with lively constructive discussion at the top of the forums but it was closed by moderation.

Note that I am merely stating a known fact and do not intend to "discuss" my opinion of the moderation action because that is also against the CoC.

Please take a moment to read the Code of Conduct and the Community Vision thread to better understand what types of things can be used as ammunition to close threads and please avoid doing those things as it is very easy to unintentionally violate the loosely worded rules and get a healthy thread closed due to one bad apple.

If you intentionally violate the rules to get a thread closed that you disagree with, then you are hurting this community and are the worst kind of troll i.e. not the fun kind. A clever troll aggrivates others by skirting the rules until someone gets angry and breaks the rules by lashing out at said troll. That closes the thread. Effective tactic is effective so watch out for it.

So, here's where we left off:

@Bodybuilder asked the following

Hello everyone, i haven''t been on the forums very long.
i was wondering if anyone could tell me why the lag in cyrodiil pvp isn''t being fixed/hasn''t been fixed yet.

I have been playing this game like 9 months ago, and i remember much bigger groups of people being able to play vs eachother with less lagg than today.
(imagine 150 people fighting eachother vs 40 people the day today)

A lot of us who play PvP wonder the same thing. Why hasn't this been fixed? It's been over one year. Here is my best response.

ZOS has acknowledged the lag but their explanation of the cause, (and why they let it persist in various states and degrees for a whole year) is severely lacking and intrinsically unsettling.

This leaves us to speculate and wonder whether ZeniMax Media Inc, the engine they rely on, the developers writing the netcode, or the servers hosting the game can ever deliver on the very premise of open world PvP combat promised to us since the game's beginning.

Here is the claim and promise of multiplayer combat in cyrodiil taken straight from: http://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-gb/game-guide/the-alliance-war:

Featuring three-sided Player vs. Player (PvP) gameplay, The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited supports hundreds of players on screen at once in an open world fight for control of Cyrodiil.Seize, hold, and control the resources of massive strongholds. Utilize massive siege weapons to crumble fortress walls and smash through fortified gates. Conquer the Imperial City, and your alliance's top player could even be crowned Emperor!

[Emphasis Added]

Here is the gameplay delivery of that promise with far less that 'hundreds" of players:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdMvMDYLd8A

Footage thanks to @pppontus I cry everytime.

Here an excerpt of the official reponse from @ZOS_PaulSage in this thread. http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/157157/update-on-cyrodiil-performance/p1
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.

[Emphasis added] You can read the whole response at the link provided.

Basically his response is that the game lags because it features "hundreds of players on screen at once in an open world fight for control of Cyrodiil."

So in essence, the game lags when it is played the way it was designed to be played.

It seems that by ZOS's own admittance, the very architecture of the game is what causes the lag, not something to do with an individual's computer, router, or internet connection.

Discuss.

@pppontus @Garion @Sallington @WebBull @Gorthax

daemonios · May 2015

You guys still PvP?

Seriously, though, I personally quit PvP since about January because it simply wasn't fun any more. Lag is more or less a constant, bugs turn up under every stone (horse mounting/dismounting, keep door use, siege weapon use, skill use) with or without said lag, exploits abound and are only slowly acted upon... What tipped me over was actually a good couple months' period when I really put an effort into winning a 30-day campaign for my faction only to see scores tipped outrageously in favour of alleged "underdogs" who systematically painted the map with one color while getting a huge bonus. This was reported extensively and in great detail, and ZOS did nothing for months on end.

I don't count on ZOS fixing anything about PvP anymore. I just hope PvE will be able to hold my interest for a time.

Yolokin_Swagonborn · May 2015

daemonios wrote: »

You guys still PvP?

Seriously, though, I personally quit PvP since about January because it simply wasn't fun any more. Lag is more or less a constant, bugs turn up under every stone (horse mounting/dismounting, keep door use, siege weapon use, skill use) with or without said lag, exploits abound and are only slowly acted upon... What tipped me over was actually a good couple months' period when I really put an effort into winning a 30-day campaign for my faction only to see scores tipped outrageously in favour of alleged "underdogs" who systematically painted the map with one color while getting a huge bonus. This was reported extensively and in great detail, and ZOS did nothing for months on end.

I don't count on ZOS fixing anything about PvP anymore. I just hope PvE will be able to hold my interest for a time.

I still PvP. Even though it is unbearable. I admit this is irrational for multiple reasons. If i am dissatisfied with the abysmal quality of the ESO PvP experience, and don't think that ZOS is either willing or able to fix the problems, I should vote with my feet and leave.

However, the more people that leave shrinks the PvP population and causes PvP issues to be more and more marginalized, pushed into only the alliance war forums and either ignored or censored by ZOS.

The PvP concept in this game, and the Elder Scrolls world in which it resides has so much potential. There was a time where PvP was actually working before that god awful lighting patch and the introduction of the snoozeworthy craglorn content.

I think it is possible to return to those days but we have to get PvP back to the forefront of peoples minds. PvP was the ONLY endgame content at launch. It was meant to be endgame content and the PvP portion of the game was heavily marketed by ZOS.

Then Craglorn happened and there was a palpable shift internally. PvE content started to take priority and PvP languished in memory leaks and single digit framerates for a month. PvP has never fully recovered from that betrayal from its own creators.

But I still have faith. Irrational faith but still there. We need to make PvP the focus of all attention on this game. Sunlight is the best of disinfectants.

nagarjunna · May 2015

hamgatan wrote: »

What you need to do is change the Routes for ESO Plus subscribers. Now I'm assuming you're running some kind of gateway load balancing but as a part of the post authentication stage of the connection, following a successful authentication.. ESO Plus accounts can be re-routed at your core switch level. For example, Plus accounts may be RADIUS authenticated (or similar protocol) to trigger a Dynamic VLAN Tag ID which you can then use to create dedicated Ingress/Egress routes for a dedicated path through the FC Switches, and then a dedicated physical NIC on the chassis itself.

(i.e. if you're running Cisco UCS Chassis's for example set native VLAN for one of the physical NIC's to the ESO Plus Subscriber base - Not a VNIC within vSphere/H-V!). Not to mentioned - dedicate more resources (cores) to ESO Plus!

We (the remaining paid subscriber base) have shown you enough good faith to keep subscribing, how about you show us some good faith and actually provide the service we pay you for?

I like your idea... The alternative here would be to apply DSCP markings and prioritise the subscriper traffic using QoS/COS, cheaper and less hassle.

Also of course you should realise that this will be an ISP type loading - which means that every link is over-subscribed and traffic density is calculated as an average per link.

Let's play with the concept to give you an idea of what's going on... Assume that each player link has 1Mb bandwidth allocated to it... that means that for 1 1Gb link there are 1000 customers playing through that link and each will have 1Mb of bandwidth allocated. Not all of these connections are going to be active at any one time. This means that you can overload the link and not cause any huge issues; so, for example, that means that you might have 2000 customers subscribed to a link and in general they all can play without causing any problems - unless everyone decides to be active at once!

How do you fix these issues? You provision more links and assign customers to them AND migrate customers off the overloaded links - and that costs money!

drschplatt · May 2015

PvE content started to take priority

If the current state of PvE is what happens when it's given priority, then we're in bad shape overall.

hamgatan · May 2015

nagarjunna wrote: »

I like your idea... The alternative here would be to apply DSCP markings and prioritise the subscriper traffic using QoS/COS, cheaper and less hassle.

Also of course you should realise that this will be an ISP type loading - which means that every link is over-subscribed and traffic density is calculated as an average per link.

Let's play with the concept to give you an idea of what's going on... Assume that each player link has 1Mb bandwidth allocated to it... that means that for 1 1Gb link there are 1000 customers playing through that link and each will have 1Mb of bandwidth allocated. Not all of these connections are going to be active at any one time. This means that you can overload the link and not cause any huge issues; so, for example, that means that you might have 2000 customers subscribed to a link and in general they all can play without causing any problems - unless everyone decides to be active at once!

How do you fix these issues? You provision more links and assign customers to them AND migrate customers off the overloaded links - and that costs money!

correct, there will be an oversubscription model for sure - plus it makes sense given the load balance between various timezones (australia/asia vs north america peaks) - however whilst bandwidth does cost money, you would think that they would somehow be able to find this within the existing ESO Plus subscription.

Say $2 of every sub per month.. lets be conservative and say theres 50,000 subscribers still. Thats $100K a month to throw on bandwidth. They could beef up multiple 10gbit pipes with that kind of dosh, possibly dozens.

This is a business no brainer. You frustrate players who loyally still subscribe, they cancel their subs and you lose all revenue. You keep them happy but you still retain 90% of that monthly revenue.. and yes QoS would be a better model also imho.

Rasimir · May 2015

I'm pretty sure the cause is neither lack of bandwith nor computing power on the server side. There are periods where everything works even with large battles going on. There are other periods where even small battles don't work at all. "Samll" here means me against a few npcs around a dolmen with nobody else nearby.

The suggestions ZOS gave us don't work. Spreading out like Paul Sage told us doesn't help. The incentive for doing delves doesn't help.

The last few days were exceptionally bad. The lag spikes come and go within minutes. We play for half an hour without significant lags, and then boom at some battle some groups rush in and we have lags where nothing seems to work. Some of these lags appear just too convenient for one sone to be "natural". These have a lot in common with a denial of service attack. You want to take a scroll? Beware, lag comes for defense. Take the last emperor keep either to get an emperor or to dethrone the current one? You can bet there will be lag. You want to turn a flag but don't have the numbers to fight off all defenders? Lag helps (sometimes), its a gamble in these situations.

I guess all people playing veteran pvp know some names of people they associate with lags. "XYZ is here, prepare for lags" is quite common in the group chat.

In my opinion it is not possible to fight these lags on the technical front alone. Defenders in a security war can only be at known hot spots, while attackers (intentionally or not) can be everywhere. Administrative actions can do a lot more. Have some GMs and devs be visible in the campaigns and monitor what is going on. Have them be called by the players to the hot spozts, provide them with tools to measure and monitor the player actions. And don't forget the mighty ban hammer for those actively and intentionally lagging the game if there are any such players.

olemanwinter · May 2015

I thought Thornblade was too empty so I rehomed to Azura Star yesterday. It was bad, but I suffered through.

Today I gave up playing after 10 minutes. Ping spikes to 1400+.

Now I remember why I sought out low pop servers to start with.

GUIDE TO ESO PVP

1) Lag

2) Caltrops (Helps slow enemies down when everything is jumping around....you look like a bolt of lighting and they stand still so you can hit them)

3) Meteor and Magica Detonation (Helps induce lag)

4) AoE Spam skill (So you can hit without targeting)

5) Batswarm (Alternate ultimate instead of Meteor that doesn't require targeting for after lag is already induced)

6) RESTO STAFF (Cause when you're not lagging the *** out of stuff, you can spam heals and farm that AP baby)

Iyas · May 2015

Maybe after console

Yolokin_Swagonborn · May 2015

Iyas wrote: »

Maybe after console

If they still remember there were PC players after they cash out on console. I am curious to see if PvP performs better on console due to hardware standardization or if it is riddled with the same issues as PC is.

If console PvP is better, won't that cause a mass migration of PvP players to console, and even further shrink the PvP player base on PC and the near non-existent priority it currently holds?

Junkkis · May 2015

ESO pvp need friendly fire and aoe heals heal enemy players too.Currently its mindless zerg.
Team that has most players win, its just all about numbers.

Yolokin_Swagonborn · May 2015

Junkkis wrote: »

ESO pvp need friendly fire and aoe heals heal enemy players too.Currently its mindless zerg.
Team that has most players win, its just all about numbers.

Lol all the endless battles when everyone is spamming healing springs.