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Update on Cyrodiil Performance

  • chrissouza7ub17_ESO
    @ZOS_PaulSage

    564 replies and not a single response from a MOD on this since the initial thread in March 2015. 10 months and no communication. The community wants to know what the status is. Not very hard to pop in the Dev office say where we at with this issue. Response from Dev "Hey go climb under a rock, were busy here" or "Yeah were working that one now, changes we have made are positive" A weekly or by-weekly reply giving us a status update is not to much to ask for. Give us a carrot and stop stringing us along please.
  • pdebie64b16_ESO
    pdebie64b16_ESO
    ✭✭✭
    Even soloing is almost impossible, i dont like zergs or large scale pvp so i go to lesser populated areas to find some small scale action but even then as a Nightblade, ambush doest work, i keep standing on the spot were i execute the skill, lethal arrow doesnt work, i hit nothing, the target doesnt even notice i attack.

    With luck skills work only half with a delay on every skill, winning or loosing a fight is depending on lag nothing more :(

    Iam really thinking of canceling my sub if performance is not improved in Cyrodiil soon, i love ESO and pvp but its unplayable.

    And no you cant have my stuff...
  • Duukar
    Duukar
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    Ummmm Dark Age of Camelot from back in 2001 was a MMORGP with HUGE zerg warfare all the time. Id say even bigger than ESO.

    There was little to no server side lag. My graphics card sucked and chugged a bit which was solved by looking more downward. Are you guys admitting that Mark Jacobs and the team at DAoC had a leg up on you guys in 2001!!!!!??????

    Spread out guys? Is this a damn joke???

  • Duukar
    Duukar
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    Paul.... Please read!
    The 8 things you could do to improve pvp that would take you little to no time. Please read the whole post before you respond please.
    1) Remove Aoe caps, why were they a thing in the first place?
    2) create objectives in imperial city and questing Towns, even if It's a flag with a few npc's on it also it does not have to count towards the campaign score , although It would be nice if it was.
    3) You need to rework the damage, healing and shield nerf even if it is only by 10 percent less.
    4) Balance dk by increasing the percentage dragons blood heals you 50%? Increase the base damage of whip and make a Stan whip. Buff battle roar and work around the passives so dk get more base spell resist and physical resist, I know the already get 3k spell resist but they need more.
    5) Nerf the nb by reducing the base damage Of surprise stack and the mini stun from teleport strike. And finally nerf fear it is the most op stun in the game!!!!
    6) Templars need more base armor and spell resist and sorcs are very powerful but they have their weakness and with The other classes becoming balanced they will work them selves out.
    7) Add back dynamic ultimate regeneration not like 1.5 but something similar, we can sill gain ultimate of light attacks.
    8) With these changes people who want to Zerg can still Zerg. Solo and small scale pvp would have a place in Imperial city and the questing towns. The separation of people will reduce the lag, and people will not be upset that their class is under performing for the most part. Their will always be problems with pvp and exploits but with these few changes 99% of people will be happy, if you agree Or disagree let me know and if you see this Paul let me know!

    Dude are you joking?

    Your 1st 3 points were good, but then you go into some BS points about class balance. This thread has ZERO to do with class balance and the warm fuzzy feeling your sorcs dmg shield gives you. You lost the picture..
  • Synthets
    Synthets

    Nerfing the nightblade is not the way to go.

    Give DK and Templar the possibility to morph more skills into stamina or magica=win

    Nerfing is always better than buffing, to avoid power creep influences.
  • Kalebron
    Kalebron
    ✭✭✭
    So tired of hearing people complain about things. This is a game that is massive. Let them work and do their job. Stop complaining. ZERGburgs are fun but who cares. It's about having fun playing a game. A GAME.
  • CtrlAltDlt
    CtrlAltDlt
    ✭✭✭
    Same ***, different day
    PC NA - jeazzy

    stamblade outnumbered pvp vol 1. youtu.be/h1ONYfpAJJ8
    Stamblade outbumbered pvp vol 2. No cheese youtu.be/rN4_aRVMvWw
  • Kalebron
    Kalebron
    ✭✭✭
    Kwivur wrote: »
    Paul.... Please read!
    The 8 things you could do to improve pvp that would take you little to no time. Please read the whole post before you respond please.
    1) Remove Aoe caps, why were they a thing in the first place?
    2) create objectives in imperial city and questing Towns, even if It's a flag with a few npc's on it also it does not have to count towards the campaign score , although It would be nice if it was.
    3) You need to rework the damage, healing and shield nerf even if it is only by 10 percent less.
    4) Balance dk by increasing the percentage dragons blood heals you 50%? Increase the base damage of whip and make a Stan whip. Buff battle roar and work around the passives so dk get more base spell resist and physical resist, I know the already get 3k spell resist but they need more.
    5) Nerf the nb by reducing the base damage Of surprise stack and the mini stun from teleport strike. And finally nerf fear it is the most op stun in the game!!!!
    6) Templars need more base armor and spell resist and sorcs are very powerful but they have their weakness and with The other classes becoming balanced they will work them selves out.
    7) Add back dynamic ultimate regeneration not like 1.5 but something similar, we can sill gain ultimate of light attacks.
    8) With these changes people who want to Zerg can still Zerg. Solo and small scale pvp would have a place in Imperial city and the questing towns. The separation of people will reduce the lag, and people will not be upset that their class is under performing for the most part. Their will always be problems with pvp and exploits but with these few changes 99% of people will be happy, if you agree Or disagree let me know and if you see this Paul let me know!

    This is what we all want for PvP!! LISTEN TO THIS GUY!! AND FENGRUSH AND SYPHER AND EVERYONE ELSE WHO HAS COMPLAINED ABOUT PVP!!!

    5) Nerf the nb by reducing the base damage Of surprise stack and the mini stun from teleport strike. And finally nerf fear it is the most op stun in the game!!!!





    Nerfing the nightblade is not the way to go.

    Give DK and Templar the possibility to morph more skills into stamina or magica=win

    I completely agree. As a magicka nightblade, I rely on teleport strike to gain some distance in a fight so I can use my siphon ability. Maybe stamina nightblades are too OP with this move, but it would really harm magicka nightblade and render them completely useless.
  • Wild_Monk
    Wild_Monk
    ✭✭
    No one sensible thinking person not thrust himself in this your "Cyrodiil".
    PvP? It's chaos, chopper, anarchy and lawlessness.
    Cyber-sport. The fight must take place strictly according to the rules as in tournaments or in the usual sports. I'm talking about the arena.

    What sense to pump your character , develop it in TESO - when in PvP zone are operating a gang of thugs, attacking from stealth?
    What are the chances of any gamer, when he is attacked by two killers, from the back ?
    I do not want to be a meat. It's clear.
  • RobbaYaga
    RobbaYaga
    ✭✭
    This is not a situation where we can just add more hardware.

    @ZOS_PaulSage

    Just to ask ... you cannot add more hardware because ZOS doesn't have the money ... or are you saying more hardware won't solve the problem, because if you're saying the latter, I'm really baffled as to how the game has been designed. Unless you're indicating that the problem is a player bandwidth issue and players are seeing a reduction in performance because their bandwidth cannot handle the massive increase in packets that comes with a large combat. If that is the case, I'm curious if someone with access to a massive connection actually sees significantly better performance that Joe Q. Public on their typical cable modem in a similar situation.

    Dragon kings, dying queens; where is salvation now?
  • Elsonso
    Elsonso
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    RobbaYaga wrote: »
    This is not a situation where we can just add more hardware.

    Just to ask ... you cannot add more hardware because ZOS doesn't have the money ... or are you saying more hardware won't solve the problem, because if you're saying the latter, I'm really baffled as to how the game has been designed. Unless you're indicating that the problem is a player bandwidth issue and players are seeing a reduction in performance because their bandwidth cannot handle the massive increase in packets that comes with a large combat. If that is the case, I'm curious if someone with access to a massive connection actually sees significantly better performance that Joe Q. Public on their typical cable modem in a similar situation.

    They might answer, but Sage has been gone from ZOS for a year now. Lambert is the new Sage. (ooh. double entendre)

    For what it is worth, my interpretation is that they have each Cyrodiil campaign localized to a single server box within the megaserver, and that this box is not a slouch. Now, I realize there are more 'servers inside the megaserver' that might be involved, like a 'server' for accounts and storing all the character information, and maybe one for storing the world database, and so forth, but in terms of processing players and player interaction, I think each Campaign is on a dedicated HP server blade with lots of CPU and RAM. I don't think they can just add hardware and split things between two boxes, call it done, and go home.

    From what they have said, and what they are talking about doing, the answer to the lag problem is obviously optimization, not hardware.

    That is how I interpret what Sage has said.
    XBox EU/NA:@ElsonsoJannus
    PC NA/EU: @Elsonso
    PSN NA/EU: @ElsonsoJannus
    Total in-game hours: 11321
    X/Twitter: ElsonsoJannus
  • philb16_ESO6
    philb16_ESO6
    ✭✭
    In heavy combat situations, there are 3 modes of 'lag' you are likely to be experiencing, and it is unlikely that network bandwidth at your end is contributing to it unless you have someone else in your home sharing the same connection.

    Firstly, there is CPU utilisation. A low end CPU might suffer from this in heavy combat, and this might be aggravated on any computer regardless of CPU if you have other processes running and eating up CPU cycles. If you have a second monitor, you can always bring up task manager (on Windows) to keep an eye on things.

    Secondly, there is GPU utilisation. If your graphics card is slow in rendering the scene, your frame rate will drop through the floor. This usually only happens on low-end and the bottom of mid-range cards and can be resolved simply by upgrading. If you don't have issues with bandwidth flooding and your CPU isn't overloaded, this is a likely cause for issues affecting just a few people in the battle.

    Thirdly, there is server-side latency, generated because the server/servers are overloaded, and this type of lag affects everyone in the battle. If everyone experiences the lag, this is the cause. It is well known that with forty or more people in a flag room spamming AoE's that frame rates plummet and for some people FPS can go negative, that is to say that instead of getting a number of frames per second, they can measure the number of seconds between frames.

    There is a solution for the third type, and I have been trying to contact the dev's for a year now without success. I'm not sure whether they are ignoring me or my attempts at contact are being fielded by their support teams, but leaving messages on their profile pages, here on the dev forums, through bug reports, feedback and technical support have all failed to get their attention.

    They say they read these forums. If so, they can pull my email address from from my account details and open a dialogue with me, It won't hurt to hear what I have to say, and may prove useful.
    To err is human. To moo, bovine.
  • Mulcibur
    Mulcibur
    ✭✭✭
    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.

    Almost a year since this post. Nothing has changed.
  • Lifecode666
    Lifecode666
    ✭✭✭
    They should be ashamed.

    Up the hornz
  • pfalzer
    pfalzer
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    Hmm what about the lag in wrothgar craglorn wayrest. Wayrest use to have no lag back went undaunted was in its full swing. Something has changed the make up of the game causing the lag and i dont believe its player population/congregation.
    Edited by pfalzer on February 24, 2016 11:44AM
  • philb16_ESO6
    philb16_ESO6
    ✭✭
    Lot of things have changed, from combat mechanics to abilities, armour buffs and debuffs etc. all of which require the game engines to have code changes.
    To err is human. To moo, bovine.
  • TheLordSoth
    TheLordSoth
    ✭✭
    Here is a thought. Provide reduced AP for large groups. This should make groups smaller. Also for Zerg or multiple groups on Same keep, reduce AP Output. This way smaller groups attacking and defending single keeps.
  • _adhyffbjjjf12
    _adhyffbjjjf12
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    'the best thing you can do is split off to different objectives when you notice performance going down.'

    this is tail wagging dog and smacks of poor awareness and knowledge. in World v World humans congregate in groups (Zerg actually means army in this context), its natural, we want to do it, we enjoy huge battles, in fact the game was sold on this basis. Trying to split people up to avoid the problem is not an answer, changing the game engine and hardware to cope with the volume of traffic and calculations is the answer.
  • WillhelmBlack
    WillhelmBlack
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    Can't you just make the mega server, lots of mega servers?

    I'm sure that 1 million would have been better off for the game if it had been spent towards the servers. It's like what everyone complains about in this game, lag.

    It is a server issue right? Not a game issue.
    PC EU
  • philb16_ESO6
    philb16_ESO6
    ✭✭
    When lag is experienced by everyone (in the same approximate location), then it's a server-side issue. Mega-server doesn't refer to one huge physical machine, rather a network in the standard fashion with a single database, allowing everyone to connect to the same playground. Note that like most sharded games, ESO has zones and instances. The individual servers in the network may be seperate units or more likely, blade servers or a similar tech.

    As for reducing lag in Cyrodiil, I know exactly how to do that, but ZOS don't seem to want to talk to me, even though I have successfully used the technique before. On the offchance that a ZOS employee reads this message, please feel free to dig out my email address from this account and contact me.
    To err is human. To moo, bovine.
  • Bam_Bam
    Bam_Bam
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    This thread was posted one year ago. It would be nice to start seeing some action being taken. As mentioned above, the action should NOT impact the players (such as limiting group size). A better way for a start would be to offer more PvP options - limited group arenas (for groups of 1 - 10 per side).
    Another suggestion is to have reduced animations for skill effects (explosions, caltrops, area effects lighting effects etc etc) to be reduced temporarily by toggle. For example, I toggle the reductions ON and I see less caltrops, explosion-type effects).
    Joined January 2014
    PC EU - PvE & BGs & PvP (Vivec)
    Grand Master Crafter

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  • phillyboy7897
    phillyboy7897
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    1 year later lag is not fixed. Players are offering thier help free of charge because they care about the game.

    Probably will get ignored.

    [snip] is going on? U broke it u fix it. We didn't break it by playing it the way you showed us to play it.

    [edited for profanity bypass]
    Edited by ZOS_Icy on June 2, 2024 11:41AM
  • CossackHD
    CossackHD
    ✭✭
    How about semi-P2P netcode system with queued asynchronous verification?
    Reduce main server precision, add P2P netcode elements, add verification for shady stuff, refine until works or scrap it :neutral:

    Basically, client side will do a lot more calculations, including P2P packet sending, and a parallel (support) server will verify the information. Main server will control player positions with lower tickrate, and if something looks suspicious (passing through an obstacle) it can request movement history from the player, analyze it and rubber band if neccessary. Fear not! Assuming the obstacle/movement analysis and history verification works fine, rubber banding should only occur to hackers who tried to fake their movement.

    Downsides of this approach: ping depended attack success, uncontrolled variables, mind-bending p2p ping relations. But I'd still go with these issues as long as they don't bring as huge problems as "4K ping" gaming.

    My suggestions sound like a lot of engineering. DICE have a lot of experience making Frostbite 3 netcode work properly. Care to take a look at how they did it? They have visibility based netcode prioritising ensuring higher tickrate on what's in front of camera and lower tickrate for what is a lot less likely to affect each individual player.
    Edited by CossackHD on March 19, 2016 10:03PM
  • aLi3nZ
    aLi3nZ
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    Why not remove lighting patch?
    Why not remove bot checking patch and rely on players to report bitters?
  • philb16_ESO6
    philb16_ESO6
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    Removing the lighting patch won't really do much at all except for low-end computers with low to bottom of mid-range graphics cards. Remember that the problem isn't on the client-side, it is server-side.

    The netcode idea is interesting, but a mammoth task to implement, and with the number of players in a battle (upwards of 100) could easily create as much latency as it resolves.

    There is a much simpler solution, and one that can be added incrementally with each increment providing huge latency savings, at least in the first dozen patches. This also affects the rest of the game, not just Cyrodiil. It is relatively straightforward to implement, and after the first patch it gets a lot easier and cheaper to do. It really is a magic bullet and can reduce lag in Cyrodiil by 30-80%. It can help improve code isolation through it's modular structure, is purely server-side and removes all latency associated with AoE's by reducing them to almost the same processing penalty as single-target attacks.
    To err is human. To moo, bovine.
  • CossackHD
    CossackHD
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    Does the server check whether or not a player is in a possible AOE zone before looking into player/AOE positions more carefully?
    Breaking up space in sectors for rough estimations can help a lot. If player and AOE are in same zone, then proceed and calculate properly.
    Does netcode offer lower positional precison for players who are further away? If player is a target for a ranged attack, server can be kind and give the client a more exact position, which will be helpfull if the target is half-hidden behind a cover.

    Also, if server is too fed up, it should priroritize a lot. For example, if somene casts their attack on someone else (if I'm not selected target), then it's not worth to send me information about that guy's actions, his attack is irrelevant as long as it doesn't affect me. Assuming this approach will double the performance in ultra zerg situations, I see this as a reasonable tradeoff. Of course this [snip] approach shouldn't be active when performance is good enough, it's all for extreme situations when ping is over 750 ms.

    If there's a tight group running around, only the players in edge of the group are visible, so I don't need to know what people people inside/on the other side of the zerg are doing exactly - just send me their movement info, shield and health. I only need to have to see full animation set of people who are in front of me.

    Also, if server fed up to 4K ping, I probably don't even need to know who attacks whom, so even if attack is done on someone else, my client side doesn't need to know anything else than how much health remains on victim player and which effect is applied on him after attack. Sure it can make the game look like people don't attack each other and people simply take damage, but this should be balancing with the current server performance, until like some reasonable part of information is tossed away (so that some part of players, the closest ones or who stay away from zergs will still look like they deal/receive proper attacks). If there's a huge high-density zerg causing performance loss, I don't need to know what each individual in that zerg is doing unless "that one guy's" actions affect me or a guy whom I can heal or protect by shielding.

    [edited for bashing]
    Edited by ZOS_Icy on June 2, 2024 11:43AM
  • philb16_ESO6
    philb16_ESO6
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    ESO does indeed use grids to determine a list of potential people within an AoE, eliminating the need to test everyone's proximity. This was explained in one of the ESO Live shows.

    When you mention a ping of 4k (ouch), bear in mind the issues with ping. Firstly there is absolute ping and real ping.

    Absolute is the time it takes for a ping to echo back to you when your ping is the only thing it needs to handle. This measures the 'distance' between you and the server in terms of network latency, the time it takes for the round trip.

    Real ping is the time it takes to echo back to you regardless of what else the server is doing. To do a ping, the server must be running a ping server, which is software dedicated to the task or incorporated within the game engine code. This measures the distance (like absolute ping) plus the time it takes for the server to get around to processing the ping. This means you can measure how laggy the server has become.

    You only get absolute ping when the server is primarily idle, that is to say the event queue is empty when your ping arrives and the previous event has completed processing.

    Reducing lag is simply (said with tongue formly embedded in cheek) a matter of emptying the event queue fast enough that you can ensure no more than say (for an arbitrary number) 3 events are in the queue at any one time. There is a way to achieve this without sacrificing any feature of the game; see my notes in posts above.
    To err is human. To moo, bovine.
  • phillyboy7897
    phillyboy7897
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    What is the solution and why would they not know it already?

    Why haven't u just posted it here?

    Is it some kind of proprietary information you could get in trouble for releasing, or something of your own u don't want everyone to know?

    I am asking bc I mentioned ur post and someone said u are wrong b/c there is nothing one dude can do about or something along those lines. They then threw out a bunch of jargon I only understood partially.
  • Rakkul
    Rakkul
    ✭✭✭
    I recall playing Aion with similar problems when we had large scale fort battles. At its' height this could be hundreds on either side.
    This of course caused a problem with the number of characters being rendered on screen.

    The solution? You could turn off player visuals, with just the players names showing. You could still pick individual players out, if you had the time :-) and you would still see the player visuals in your own group.

    When the fort battle finished, you'd switch back to full character visuals and carry on playing as normal.

    Now it wasn't ideal by any means just to see a mass of player names, but it did solve a problem when you had say 200 v 200 in close proximity. (There were times when it was quite higher than this).

    I've dug out a youtube video showing what it was like. For some, the removal of the player visuals would ruin the battle experience. For others, it was a fix that allowed hundreds of players to be in the area without lagging.

    Anyway, here it is :-)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AO7Y_36Rt3g
    Edited by Rakkul on March 21, 2016 11:45AM
  • philb16_ESO6
    philb16_ESO6
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    As I have mentioned before (not sure if it was in this thread), I have over 30 years of experience as a professional programmer, and over the last 6 years have used the technique to resolve similar issues in multiplayer games.

    I never suggested that 'one dude' could fix the issues, but explaining the technique to them would enable them to get working on the solution.
    Is it some kind of proprietary information you could get in trouble for releasing, or something of your own u don't want everyone to know?
    It's not proprietory at all, it's a technique that has been used to great affect in business for over a decade. The reasons I haven't posted it here or elsewhere on the forums are:
    a) I need to know they are listening, and I'm not convinced they are reading these posts
    b) I don't want every other game to employ this technique, I want this game to use it and become more popular

    Is it a silver bullet? Note entirely, but it is certainly a silver plated one.
    To err is human. To moo, bovine.
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