Why is this game so unresponsive?

Heromofo · May 2015

Dixa wrote: »

Heromofo wrote: »

wrlifeboil wrote: »

WoW also had four datacenters across the U.S. (now down to two) and that improved the chances that you were closer to the datacenter thus lowering your latency depending on which realm you played on.

ZOS has one datacenter in the U.S. down in Dallas so if you're east or west coast U.S. or playing internationally from Australia, add a thousand miles or so more. That added distance increases latency by a bit but more importantly increases the chance that your isp's routing might run into problems.

This Is Where ZOS Is Killing Off Us Aussies
Yeah but that is a problem i feel like they dont want customers outside the US because i am in Australia and the lag can be really bad at points. It's why a oceanic server should be brought in because unlike our pals in NZ we dont even have our nbn.
So our speeds are terrible heck alot of us are still on copper wire lines that are not meant to support the net. Got a mate who is lucky to get 512kbps at points i am on cable net and i get 2 mbps if im lucky. Zos quickly killed my mates off ESO without a server our side especially because unlike other mmos the combat is real time almost as in block the attack style.

there are not that many games companies which can afford to have a separate oceanic data center.

Yeah and for games like swtor its fine but in eso with the way combat works its really hard sometimes.

SlayerTheDragon · May 2015

Come to think of it, lag might be the key here. Take this example:

I run up to a door and press E, on my client I am standing right in front of the door, but on the server I am still out of range which could be why it is not opening. The same theory holds true to mounting right after you run out of a no-mount-area, as well as limited range abilities (not yet in range of the target on the server).

If this is the case I think ZOS went from a full-client-trust model to a zero-client-trust model. This is not right either, there should be a safe balance.

What also kills me is how holy they are about their animations, yet we can cancel them. They should just make animations not able to be cancelled - combat sorted.

granty2008cyb16_ESO · May 2015

DonoVDV wrote: »

A lot of the guys on the forum really seem to know a bit more about this game than ZOS themselves, so here is the question: why is this game so unresponsive? What design flaw is at the root of this?

Take WOW for example (although any other MMO will work). Anyone who has played a rogue will know that the only restriction is the speed at which you can press the keys - your fingers are the bottle neck.

Now look at ESO, combat is a disaster compared to any other MMO, you hit a skill which sometimes does not fire - then you need to wait for the animation before pressing the next button. Weapon swaps are a 50/50.
Outside of combat I constantly need to press E 2-3 times before I can open a door. Sometimes I press H, and wait... then press H again. My character then mounts and dismounts directly. I mostly cannot speak to an NPC on my mount. Sometimes I need to spam E to talk to an NPC.

WTF is this about? I assume that the developers went for some animation trigger rather than the proper event driven triggers? Can something like this be fixed, or is this the product we will have to live with. I have been playing since beta, and this drunken lethargy feeling of the game is really growing annoying. I feel very tempted to join WOW again to experience the fast paced glory of arena matches again.

its a dream now if you played before, yes is annoying when weapons don't swap in time and you die there is still a delay that needs to be addressed i think we have just learned to live with it. :-(

Julianos · May 2015

i got 200 ms usually but its ok in mmos. But interaction with the world casting and swaping weapons still so sluggish and its the worst thing in any game. I would choosen the bots instead of lagy and sluggish game

Razzak · May 2015

Axorn wrote: »

i got 200 ms usually but its ok in mmos. But interaction with the world casting and swaping weapons still so sluggish and its the worst thing in any game. I would choosen the bots instead of lagy and sluggish game

I have to agree with you. Bots rarely affect me, personally, but unresponsive game does.

Tandor · May 2015

It certainly sounds like a latency issue if there's a delay in doors opening etc. I don't do PvP but I've never had any such problems. If you're playing from South Africa have you tried the other megaserver to the one you're on purely to see whether performance is any better?

Valymer · May 2015

Dixa wrote: »

look to your rig, OP. I have none of the problems you are complaining about.

The only time I get ability lag in most mmorpgs is when there is server lag. This has NOTHING to do with the design of content and I really wish people would educate themselves on the difference between poor framerates, latency and how mmorpg ui's interact with it all.

Too many around posting who learned all they know about the interwebs from call of duty voice chat.

Nope.

Cherryblossom · May 2015

Dixa wrote: »

look to your rig, OP. I have none of the problems you are complaining about.

The only time I get ability lag in most mmorpgs is when there is server lag. This has NOTHING to do with the design of content and I really wish people would educate themselves on the difference between poor framerates, latency and how mmorpg ui's interact with it all.

Too many around posting who learned all they know about the interwebs from call of duty voice chat.

Obviously your game runs at the same speed you do, so you don't notice that nothing happens when you press a button.
As mentioned earlier, its not a latency issue otherwise it would effect all interaction and it doesn't, someone did point out you can block like a boss but casting that heal when you need it, it's based on luck!
To ignore the games failings and blame other peoples PC's is a troll attempt to me...

stefan.gustavsonb16_ESO · May 2015

Cherryblossom wrote: »

As mentioned earlier, its not a latency issue otherwise it would effect all interaction and it doesn't, someone did point out you can block like a boss but casting that heal when you need it, it's based on luck!

The block animation and the activation of "blocking" status for the player is one of the few things in the game which appear to be done entirely on the client side, which would explain its responsiveness. Abilities, on the other hand, are executed on the server side and become sluggish during high latency or lag. Door and container activation is also sent to the server for processing before anything happens on the client.

Lilarna · May 2015

What's very frustrating with this is that they are not even trying to implement small things weekly to help improve the situation. And they very seldom respond to offers made from big guilds to run tests for them where they could monitor stuff and see.

Last time something was tweaked around, as in making small adjustments to try out stuff, for helping with Lag in Cyrodiil was maybe the deer. Sure it didn't work, but at least something was attempted.

But I hear that lag is starting to happen in trials, so maybe some new things will be tried out. But I still have a hard time beleiving this version of the game is going out on console. It will be a huge mess.

pWn3d_1337 · May 2015

The problem is that the UI and / or input handling is badly implemented, it can happen that you get stuck.
Eso does have a cooldown, I tink it's about 1second, it also must have because otherwise you could macro spam one attack per frame^^.
The animation is just a visual thing, the game logic does only care about durations. Eso seems to either have a bad input queueing or a badly performing script engine that handles the ui.

Heromofo · May 2015

Lilarna wrote: »

What's very frustrating with this is that they are not even trying to implement small things weekly to help improve the situation. And they very seldom respond to offers made from big guilds to run tests for them where they could monitor stuff and see.

Last time something was tweaked around, as in making small adjustments to try out stuff, for helping with Lag in Cyrodiil was maybe the deer. Sure it didn't work, but at least something was attempted.

But I hear that lag is starting to happen in trials, so maybe some new things will be tried out. But I still have a hard time beleiving this version of the game is going out on console. It will be a huge mess.

Agreed but the polished version of the console after launch should find its way to the pc side including the new lfg system with any luck.

pWn3d_1337 · May 2015

stefan.gustavsonb16_ESO wrote: »

Cherryblossom wrote: »

As mentioned earlier, its not a latency issue otherwise it would effect all interaction and it doesn't, someone did point out you can block like a boss but casting that heal when you need it, it's based on luck!

The block animation and the activation of "blocking" status for the player is one of the few things in the game which appear to be done entirely on the client side, which would explain its responsiveness. Abilities, on the other hand, are executed on the server side and become sluggish during high latency or lag. Door and container activation is also sent to the server for processing before anything happens on the client.

The blocking status is very likely not done entirely on the client, because it's required in damage calculation and an MMO will do these server side. The animation is shown instantly but the server does not get it instantly. Blocking is just implemented to override actions you are currently doing (you can cancel a cast time spell) so it looks very smooth.

Emma_Overload · May 2015

BuggeX wrote: »

yea absolut, better have some botzergs right here...

https://youtube.com/watch?v=xeBIvNuwheY

and this in every dungeon,
uppercarg would be a epic mess to just farm 1 mat

Gold sellers would be back
cheap China acc would be back...
yea lets have wow 2.0

Yeah, I remember that era, and you know what? Those guys caused me exactly ZERO problems. The guy who made that video, on the other hand, is just exactly the kind of busybody who spends his time worrying about what OTHER people are doing instead of playing the game. Thanks to all the busybodies whining about bots or exploiters or whatever, we now have laggy netcode and crap XP inside delves.

Nice going!

BuggeX · May 2015

Emma_Eunjung wrote: »

BuggeX wrote: »

yea absolut, better have some botzergs right here...

https://youtube.com/watch?v=xeBIvNuwheY

and this in every dungeon,
uppercarg would be a epic mess to just farm 1 mat

Gold sellers would be back
cheap China acc would be back...
yea lets have wow 2.0

Yeah, I remember that era, and you know what? Those guys caused me exactly ZERO problems. The guy who made that video, on the other hand, is just exactly the kind of busybody who spends his time worrying about what OTHER people are doing instead of playing the game. Thanks to all the busybodies whining about bots or exploiters or whatever, we now have laggy netcode and crap XP inside delves.

Nice going!

Joined Januar 2015

ZeroInspiration · May 2015

Emma_Eunjung wrote: »

BuggeX wrote: »

yea absolut, better have some botzergs right here...

https://youtube.com/watch?v=xeBIvNuwheY

and this in every dungeon,
uppercarg would be a epic mess to just farm 1 mat

Gold sellers would be back
cheap China acc would be back...
yea lets have wow 2.0

Yeah, I remember that era, and you know what? Those guys caused me exactly ZERO problems. The guy who made that video, on the other hand, is just exactly the kind of busybody who spends his time worrying about what OTHER people are doing instead of playing the game. Thanks to all the busybodies whining about bots or exploiters or whatever, we now have laggy netcode and crap XP inside delves.

Nice going!

Yeah because it was great to enter into a delve just to watch the boss get killed in 2 seconds by a mob of bots before you could even get a shot.

Dixa · May 2015

Cherryblossom wrote: »

Dixa wrote: »

look to your rig, OP. I have none of the problems you are complaining about.

The only time I get ability lag in most mmorpgs is when there is server lag. This has NOTHING to do with the design of content and I really wish people would educate themselves on the difference between poor framerates, latency and how mmorpg ui's interact with it all.

Too many around posting who learned all they know about the interwebs from call of duty voice chat.

Obviously your game runs at the same speed you do, so you don't notice that nothing happens when you press a button.
As mentioned earlier, its not a latency issue otherwise it would effect all interaction and it doesn't, someone did point out you can block like a boss but casting that heal when you need it, it's based on luck!
To ignore the games failings and blame other peoples PC's is a troll attempt to me...

it's not a failing that is unique to this game. you will get latency in ANY online game you play at some point. hell my old text based MUD occaisonally has some.

if this is not acceptable to you, time to stop playing on the interwebs.

i find it hilarious that you think i play slowly so i would not notice these things. maybe you should stop trying to run ESO on a Tandy™.

technohic · May 2015

I make use of animation cancelling and attack weaving; which is of course officially part of the game, but it does call for you to push the envelope on timing. Problem is, that timing changes depending on the lag spikes and also different spells have different levels of chunkiness to them than others (also a reason macros do not work despite people who want to believe they help people somehow). So they officially make it part of the game, but the game is inept at making that work smoothly.

qsnoopyjr · May 2015

Combat unresponsive?
Maybe in PvP
It does seem very sluggish in PvE too.

Sorry to interject, but its not only combat mechanics that are unresponsive.
Simple things like a banker not showing, a woodworking station not showing, etc. Than you wait for them to appear... But they DO NOT appear. The game is literally unresponsive that you have to LOG OUT completely and LOG BACK in.

That's how bad the unresponsiveness is. Banker not showing? Game not being responsive?
Log out and log in. That's how bad this game is designed.

Run to woodworking station... Its not there. Log out log back in.
Than I run to the bank and banker isn't there. Log out log back in.
I'm expecting mail from guild trader, its been 5 hours. Log out log back in.
PvPing, its been 8 hours, that hireling was due to give you something 6 hours ago. No mail? Unresponsive?
LOG OUT LOG BACK IN

LOG OUT LOG BACK IN
LOG OUT LOG BACK IN
LOG OUT LOG BACK IN

TERRIBLE designed game.

Look up Francis review on Elder Scrolls Online. The one with hastag GETREKT
12 MONTHS LATER
STILL ACCURATE DESCRIPTION OF CURRENT STATE ESO.

Sidenote:
DID YOU KNOW???
This game was given a 200 Million (200,000,000) dollar budget?
source, http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2014/01/02/predicting-the-biggest-disaster-of-2014-the-elder-scrolls-online/

Only other game I know with a MASSIVE budget, was SWTOR.
Both games. FULLY VOICE ACTED.
Fully Voice Acting >>>> Coding.

My thoughts on how they spent there money?
Give those voice actors 150 Million.
Give those graphic editors 45 Million
Them coders, just spent 5 Million on them. Voice Acting is too important.

I mean lets be real here.
Anybody can do coding.
But can anybody do voice acting? Haha. Nah, you gotta spend 150 million on that.

The rival MMO to ESO I would consider GW2.
GW2 is partially voice acted.
People tend to believe 15-50 million was spent on that game.

You tell me which game is looking better right now.
ESO with its 200 million dollar spent
GW2 with its 15-50 million dollar spent

davedesigns · May 2015

I agree with OP - the game in general has felt clunky and sluggish from the beginning and while 1.6 made it feel somewhat more smooth, it also introduced a bunch of new little bugs that are obnoxious at best and totally game breaking at worst.

Allow me to list some of these issues:

Keep doors in Cyrodiil unresponsive during combat - getting killed while trying to enter a keep
Cannot mouse wheel zoom into map on bringing it up. Must right click, then click back into the current map to zoom
Mounting unresponsive - must press H several times - mount/dismount/'cannot mount in this location'/mount again
Textures loading incredibly slowly or not at all - indoor textures/geometry completely missing for several seconds upon entering any building
Bankers taking several seconds to load onto screen
Enemy players in PVP not loading onto screen until after my death
Player characters in Cyrodiil slingshotting around while moving - no smooth movement animations
Sometimes become stuck in knocked down animation and can't recover or use abilities
Glitchy landscape textures/geometry in Cyrodiil - landscape will flicker while riding over a long distance
White square tile still pops up while mounting in Cyrodiil
Set down siege equipment and then can't use it or pick it back up
Ability and attack animations are still just too slow - can't tell wtf I'm doing in a large battle
Sound effects triggering late or not at all - caching all sound effects until after the battle then playing them all at once
Ultimate ability icons are messed up on my skill bar - can't tell how much Ultimate I have
Sneaking animations got changed or something - doesn't really feel like sneaking anymore, just a color change and sound effect?
Bringing up inventory/skills/character menus cause an extreme FPS drop to ~10FPS - menus feel extremely sluggish
Quickslot item menu will not scroll down sometimes - keeps popping back to the top
When killed by a boss in Cyrodiil - death music keeps playing until relog
Looking for Group search never works

There are more I'm sure but I don't have time to list them all. These are the kind of bugs I wish would get fixed - yes fix the quest bugs and make sure abilities are working correctly, that should be a given. But where the game is currently an entire YEAR after launch, it should have been working like this back in Beta so they could polish it to a finished product by now...

I know I know - AFTER CONSOLE...

Davadin · May 2015

DonoVDV wrote: »

I do get a flat 250ms latency from any line I use (from South Africa). I get the same latency for GW2, WOW, FFXIV, and my brief time in WIldStar, and not one of them have that stuck in the mud feeling that ESO has. It's as if events are not firing or getting lost, or overridden for some reason.

Why do I have to press E 2-3 times to go through a door?

I think there is something wrong with the client > server relationship. Its as if the server is doing work which the client should be doing. This will also explain the server lag. The client should open the door and tell the server of my new location, not ask the server to open the door and give the client my new location!?!

don't trust the in-game latency tool.

but for the record, i'm at worst around 150 90% of the time. usually 100-120.

i don't have that door issue EXCEPT in cyrodiil. u could be playing from ZOS office and will still lag in cyro.

the skill animation thing, that's answered by the others above. i do want more faster-paced combat but i don't want WoW/LOTRO auto-attack thing... or skill cooldown. I prefer global animation-delay cooldown.

Davadin · May 2015

DonoVDV wrote: »

Dixa wrote: »

Razzak wrote: »

Sharee wrote: »

WOW has cooldowns for abilities, TESO does not. If you could spam abilities as fast as you can hammer the button, it would be a mess.

Most of the perceived unresponsiveness comes from trying to use an ability too soon after another was used. For example if you hit the bolt escape button twice in rapid sucession, you will only bolt once, because the second keypress happened while the first animation was still going on. There is a delay between abilities, and you have to account for it.

Another matter is entering doors, mounting etc - that is mostly caused by lag, and usually only seen(at least for me) in PvP.

How does animation cancelling factor into this?

age of conan has animation cancelling. it's not unique to this game.

could be worse - in age of conan, male players swing faster than female.

Animation cancelling... what does that tell you about this "AAA" title? FFS.

what DOES it tell you?

it tells me it's just like any other MMO. animation cancelling is fine and approved.

retyler3_ESO · May 2015

BuggeX wrote: »

yea absolut, better have some botzergs right here...

https://youtube.com/watch?v=xeBIvNuwheY

and this in every dungeon,
uppercarg would be a epic mess to just farm 1 mat

Gold sellers would be back
cheap China acc would be back...
yea lets have wow 2.0

Wow, I forgot how bad the bots were. They were one of the original reasons I stopped playing when the game was released. Thanks for the video.

Preyfar · May 2015

stojekarcub18_ESO wrote: »

You wrote a lot...and I'd be willing to read it all...

but as soon as you said, : Take WOW for example....

He has a valid point though. WOW's system queues up attacks (at least last I played it). In ESO, that doesn't appear to be the case. There are times when I can hit an ability 3-4 times and it does NOTHING. I can't attack, I can't respond to a situation... I just kind of stand there. Sometimes I die, sometimes I live. This applies to PVE and PVP equally.

There is nothing more infuriating than dying because you have zero control over your character/actions.

Molsondry · May 2015

Anyone in here saying this game is Responsive is lying Haha ....

Animation canceling , inconsistance in animation, weapon swaps ... and I pass cmon...

I have 90 ping a 3ghz six core i 7 16 gig of ram windows 8.1 64 bit running on a ocz SSD and a R7970 3gb ddr5 graph card.
Im not even running my game in ultra. I have mostly 90 + FPS in dungeon.

And this game is... inconsistant and squechy. Bad coding Id say.

Emma_Overload · May 2015

ZeroInspiration wrote: »

Emma_Eunjung wrote: »

BuggeX wrote: »

yea absolut, better have some botzergs right here...

https://youtube.com/watch?v=xeBIvNuwheY

and this in every dungeon,
uppercarg would be a epic mess to just farm 1 mat

Gold sellers would be back
cheap China acc would be back...
yea lets have wow 2.0

Yeah, I remember that era, and you know what? Those guys caused me exactly ZERO problems. The guy who made that video, on the other hand, is just exactly the kind of busybody who spends his time worrying about what OTHER people are doing instead of playing the game. Thanks to all the busybodies whining about bots or exploiters or whatever, we now have laggy netcode and crap XP inside delves.

Nice going!

Yeah because it was great to enter into a delve just to watch the boss get killed in 2 seconds by a mob of bots before you could even get a shot.

You know how I dealt with that? I became a faster shot than the bots! Now you can kill bosses whenever you want, of course, for NO reward and PUNY XP.

Valymer · May 2015

Dixa wrote: »

Cherryblossom wrote: »

Dixa wrote: »

look to your rig, OP. I have none of the problems you are complaining about.

The only time I get ability lag in most mmorpgs is when there is server lag. This has NOTHING to do with the design of content and I really wish people would educate themselves on the difference between poor framerates, latency and how mmorpg ui's interact with it all.

Too many around posting who learned all they know about the interwebs from call of duty voice chat.

Obviously your game runs at the same speed you do, so you don't notice that nothing happens when you press a button.
As mentioned earlier, its not a latency issue otherwise it would effect all interaction and it doesn't, someone did point out you can block like a boss but casting that heal when you need it, it's based on luck!
To ignore the games failings and blame other peoples PC's is a troll attempt to me...

it's not a failing that is unique to this game. you will get latency in ANY online game you play at some point. hell my old text based MUD occaisonally has some.

if this is not acceptable to you, time to stop playing on the interwebs.

i find it hilarious that you think i play slowly so i would not notice these things. maybe you should stop trying to run ESO on a Tandy™.

Your ignorance is staggering.

TheBull · May 2015

DonoVDV wrote: »

A lot of the guys on the forum really seem to know a bit more about this game than ZOS themselves, so here is the question: why is this game so unresponsive? What design flaw is at the root of this?

Take WOW for example (although any other MMO will work). Anyone who has played a rogue will know that the only restriction is the speed at which you can press the keys - your fingers are the bottle neck.

Now look at ESO, combat is a disaster compared to any other MMO, you hit a skill which sometimes does not fire - then you need to wait for the animation before pressing the next button. Weapon swaps are a 50/50.
Outside of combat I constantly need to press E 2-3 times before I can open a door. Sometimes I press H, and wait... then press H again. My character then mounts and dismounts directly. I mostly cannot speak to an NPC on my mount. Sometimes I need to spam E to talk to an NPC.

WTF is this about? I assume that the developers went for some animation trigger rather than the proper event driven triggers? Can something like this be fixed, or is this the product we will have to live with. I have been playing since beta, and this drunken lethargy feeling of the game is really growing annoying. I feel very tempted to join WOW again to experience the fast paced glory of arena matches again.

ESO has the best combat compared to any mmorpg imo. It's not even close imo.

That's simply not true. Not remotely true.

BuggeX · May 2015

Emma_Eunjung wrote: »

ZeroInspiration wrote: »

Emma_Eunjung wrote: »

BuggeX wrote: »

yea absolut, better have some botzergs right here...

https://youtube.com/watch?v=xeBIvNuwheY

and this in every dungeon,
uppercarg would be a epic mess to just farm 1 mat

Gold sellers would be back
cheap China acc would be back...
yea lets have wow 2.0

Yeah, I remember that era, and you know what? Those guys caused me exactly ZERO problems. The guy who made that video, on the other hand, is just exactly the kind of busybody who spends his time worrying about what OTHER people are doing instead of playing the game. Thanks to all the busybodies whining about bots or exploiters or whatever, we now have laggy netcode and crap XP inside delves.

Nice going!

Yeah because it was great to enter into a delve just to watch the boss get killed in 2 seconds by a mob of bots before you could even get a shot.

You know how I dealt with that? I became a faster shot than the bots! Now you can kill bosses whenever you want, of course, for NO reward and PUNY XP.

Why are you trying to argue about bots? your acc was created jan 2015, the major problem with bots where fix this time.
so i assume that you know nothing about bots in eso back then and just watched vids or picked the infos up in forums.
Or you got 2 Acc and 1 was banned baucaus you used bots to.

Aeowyn · May 2015

Agreed with OP. Sure, there are global cool downs on some abilities, sure there's lag in Cyrodiil and sometimes in PvE, but there are also times where a bar swap or ability is pushed and it just doesn't register in game. Sometimes srendarr will even pick it up, acknowledging the click, but the ability doesn't fire, the taunt doesn't go off, etc. The disconnect between server and client matters more in a game with such a smooth and interactive combat design. I imagine it's because it works so well 80‰ of the time that when the abilities don't trigger it is all the more noticeable and frustrating. We get used to gaming on such a thin margin of responsiveness that when this occurs people can miss their heal and die or a boss can get over taunted with the panic spam when the first one or even two don't go off.

While certainly better than a year ago, it's frustrating to have this clunky behavior while you hand over your subscription and try to wait for your turn for the developer's attention. I imagine consoles won't have as much if an issue without needing so many checks for bots, I just really hope @ZOS_GinaBruno ZOS can get this onto their radar to correct. After a while it gets tiresome fighting the client instead of NPCs or other players, and the game will stale even more quickly.