What's this "Lighting Patch" everyone keeps bringing up

GnGEmpire · October 2015

I've heard many people bring it up, saying it caused all kinds of problems, streamers are saying that it's one of the biggest mistakes ZOS has implemented, but I have no idea what anyone's actually talking about.

Can someone explain what the patch was, and what were its consequences?

Thanks

Tandor · October 2015

Some time last year ZOS upgraded the ingame lighting effects, for example the way the light shines in through a building's windows. It enhanced the graphics but some players reported performance issues as a result of the change and every time there's an issue these days someone mentions the lighting patch - personally I never had any issues before or after the upgrade.

NewBlacksmurf · October 2015

When the game first released there was no lighting as seen today inside buildings and such.
When the patch added this, a lot of new issues seem to have come with

This was a summer 2014 patch I believe

Frawr · October 2015

The pvp performance nose-dived on the day of this patch and has been the same ever since.

It had no noticeable impact on the pve game as far as I am aware.

tinythinker · October 2015

Yes, it was summer 2014 (June 25th), and some folks decided that since it got named the lighting patch (a.k.a. Update 1.2) because that feature was emphasized that somehow the actual changes to lighting were to blame. Others think anti-exploit/cheating measures were quietly added and that this impacted performance. And still others accept ZOS's official statements that the bugs from that patch were fixed and any further association of performance issues and the patch in question are erroneous.

Zinaroth · October 2015

It was patch 1.2 and introduced improved lightning in certain areas and increased particle effects.

It made the game more beautiful but affected some areas of the game where a lot of particle effects are shown on the screen at once. Mainly major AvA battles and Trials.

It made these two virtually unplayable for a long time, and when ZOS finally got around to adressing the issue they did it in form of bandaid patches reducing campaign populations and removed unneeded elements in Cyrodiil like the neutral wildlife, instead of rolling back the patch like they should have.

PvP and Trials have never been as smooth as they were prior to this patch.

Elsonso · October 2015

tinythinker wrote: »

Yes, it was summer 2014 (June 25th), and some folks decided that since it got named the lighting patch (a.k.a. Update 1.2) because that feature was emphasized that somehow the actual changes to lighting were to blame. Others think anti-exploit/cheating measures were quietly added and that this impacted performance. And still others accept ZOS's official statements that the bugs from that patch were fixed and any further association of performance issues and the patch in question are erroneous.

I am one of those that think that Update 2 was the patch that added sooper secret security and client integrity code. I have no proof and have not actually seen anything that would indicate that any botters were inconvenienced by something in that patch.

I do know that shortly after that, the problems with gold sellers and bots that had driven me away from the game in May started to become resolved. I think that Update 2 is why I am playing the game today.

I do not think that the lighting change itself had anything to do with PVP/Cyrodiil lag, at least not any more than the FOV slider that was also included in Update 2.

It is clear to me that if there was something in Update 2 that caused the PVP/Cyrodiil lag, that something is so important and so critical to the operation of the game that they would rather have performance issues, lag, and disconnections than remove it. They would rather take other steps to mitigate the effects of this change, like removing insects and animals, reducing campaign sizes, and tuning LOS and physics. That says a lot about whatever this change was.

danno8 · October 2015

It is called "The Lighting Patch" but ZoS stated the fps problems, especially in Cyrodiil, were caused by new anti-cheat measures introduced with the same patch.

The effect dropped fps down to 1-2 after a few minutes in Cyrodiil. They tried to fix it several times, finally getting it done after the third try.

I have dug up and quoted the ZoS employee several times in many threads through the months since but people still blame the lighting.

So really it should be called "The Anti-Cheat Patch" for clarity.