Pandorii wrote: »

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Playstyle vs. Population vs. What constitutes that population, is the crux of what we have been tackling with performance. The main focus is to keep the population steady/full and improve on the play experience without sacrificing or compromising the warzone game-play of Cyrodiil or combat in general. This includes well organized groups vs. non-organized groups and finding how to optimize/prioritize information going to the server and back to your PC/Mac/Xbox/PS4. It's not as easy as turning on this switch or turning off that one (as much as we'd like it to be), as every week we look at the data logs and combat situations by playing in Cyrodiil and Imperial City ourselves. We look at what hits the server the hardest and tackle them with either code or data solutions as fast as we can with proper testing, and appreciate your patience in the rolling out of these fixes.

Keep us posted about the performance in both the EU and the US, and on all platforms with each update, hot-fix, and incremental we do! It is greatly appreciated!

So if we are solo PvPers, you classify us as "non-organized" groups? Well that explains a lot. It's no wonder PvP has become zerg or die.

If you're a solo PvPer, you're probably not being classified as a "group". However, I would guess that a collection of ungrouped players in one area are classified as a "non-organized group" for ZOS's data collection purposes, and Wheeler's distinction here makes sense to me.

There is a lot of speculation about what exacerbates the performance issues, and a lot of people believe that larger, organized groups make the lag worse through their behaviors; they are synchronizing their ultimates to drop at the same time, throwing down lots of heals and buffs and purges and such... My understanding is that he's saying they're looking at organized group data in addition to performance in spots and times when it's mostly a scattering of the population doing their thing in small groups or solo groups, and figuring out if there's a difference, which could help them track down specific sources of lag more effectively.

(Back in the day, you could build ultimate from spamming healing springs on a group outside of combat. You'd get ult whenever your heals crit; you would slot Magelight and bust out your resto staff and your group would blast off your springs while you were waiting at a keep or moving from place to place, to have your ults ready for the next fight.

At that time, people would see Crystalized's group-- a large, organized group-- marching down the road, spamming healing springs as they walked, and they'd cry out in zone about how they're doing that weird thing with their healing springs to lag out the server again!!! Frickin hackers!!!

Theorycrafting causes for lag has always been a thing, and it definitely lends itself to the tinfoil set, so I'm glad they're looking at these distinctions in their analyses.)

Pandorii wrote: »

@heystreethawk so it's a variable that they use when running their statistical analysis? In that sense, it makes sense. It's just the word choice that seemed suggestive. It doesn't seem like an objective term. Large group and small group seems to have less bias than organized and non-organized.

How do they differentiate between a zerg formed by a coordinated guild and a zerg formed by smaller groups of people sticking together?

To be fair, you did say solo player which means that you inherently would get classified as non organized group because you are likely not organizing with the other players near you.

They don't, there is no difference between a zerg of small groups and a coordinated zerg aside from the coordinated zerg will likely be more successful due to more people following instruction from a single source.

I wouldn't rely too much on any of the ping meters available (through the game interface or addons). They refresh only every 5-10seconds or so and your ping can fluctuate by alot in the meantime. Sometimes my ping shows 300-400ms but I get 2 seconds weapon swaps and my experience with this game tells me that my ping might actually be above 1k ms. I wish the ping would refresh every second instead.

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Population caps were not adjusted this patch.

Working awfully late .

Also to add Mr Wheeler Sir , about 5:20 PM PDT on TrueFlame North America. , abilities did not fire while fighting at Nikel . I pressed the keys and heals , cloaks wouldn't not go off . If you could look at that data at that time perhaps you find something you're looking for .

@console players:

Dont have any hopes. The game will never run smoothly for us. Its not a lag issue for us, but a fps. Even in 1vx on a low pop campaigb fps on ps4 under 30 (assuming 20-25).

In big battles i dont have lag with abikities, but with 10fps its no fun.

I'm really glad other people are getting better performance, but for me it is undoubtedly worse.

The inbuilt lag reading has remained a steady 300, but never before have I experienced this delay in skills firing. It is super hard to describe what is happening, but it's a combination of other players teleporting around my screen (1-5meters) and skills (most noticeable on DBoS) having a weird delaying before firing. Even dropping in the middle of a large group from stealth and I'll hit 1 person, it's very frustrating. In 1v1's the combination of skill delay and teleporting just causes everything to miss all the time. I've probably missed for ults then I've hit today.

I know my lag was terrible to begin with (I've learnt to play with it), but since the update the weird skill delay and teleporting is making pvp really difficult.

I wonder if whatever changes they've made have increased performance for those with lower latency (better synchronization), but at the same time decreased for those with bad ping. I say this because pre-patch I would often get stunned before I see the skill fire on my screen (so the msg that I'm stunned comes before the msg to do the animation?), so if they improved synchronization, it would explain these delays and jumpiness for people with high ping as the server skips things in order to keep it synced?

Glad most others find it better, I wish I could join you.

Edit: Playing NA PC from Australia

Edit 2: Had 2 cases of instant death also today when solo v groups of 6+. Didn't see anything land, ice comet only displaying after I'm dead (even though it was like the third last thing to hit me). This did happen pre-patch, but twice in 6 hours is highly unusual.

bob.ellisonb16_ESO wrote: »

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

The big thing we're looking for is combat responsiveness in battles. Are you pressing action keys and they're not firing for several seconds? Are abilities "storing up" and unleashing all at once because no inputs from you went through? Is chat not taking message inputs for several seconds? All of these bits of information help us nail down server performance. As you're reporting sometimes that latency meter is acting wonky, so any reports about how combat is going as opposed to "my meter went red" is very helpful!

Yes.

I notice no difference since the last major overhaul you did @ZOS_BrianWheeler a few months(?) ago. My ping is always between 80-120 , YET the repressiveness in fights and even 1v1 is often very poor. Abilities are sluggish, unleash, get stuck and are overall unpredictable. To me this is worse then actual lag because the game does not feel right, it leads to button mashing and hoping the server figures it out, or pre-mashing where you simply try to pre-use abilities before you should actually use them. Nothing is crisp...

I get the impression that abilities miss or act very weird because what's on my screen is not what's on the other players screen, the server is having a hell of a hard time figuring out which one to pick.

For example: Last night someone rode by me on a horse and I jumped then with ambush/dawnbreaker/suprise attack - all three abilities missed, he then jumped off his horse and my next 3 attacks missed..I was not able to hit him and yet he was able to hit me. I logged because this happens often and is very frustrating, it's clearly a server issue, my pink was 90 and fps was 100.

I have gone so far as to diagnose my computer /network and packets, but my conclusion is the servers checks and balances are just bad as this point and the ping has zero indication on actual game latency.

All this started to happened with the cheat engine changes went into place and the quality of game play has gone down a lot.

If you recall people in DAOC were intentionally flooding packets to cause lag in fights, this isn't that bad , but the feeling is similar.

If what I'm doing on my screen is not actually happening accurately on the server, then you have a major issue on your hands.

This is exactly my Pvp experience.

The best place to hide from lag is to 1v1 in IC on a non CP server, right?

So my buddy and I made alts and did exactly that.

It was off peak time, the entire district was empty, and we fought in a room away from ads, on Black Water. At the time of the fight, Cyrodiil was on zero bars for all three factions in BWB.

Perfect conditions, we figured.


Many attacks were missing or stacking then releasing at once.

It was pretty messy and I wasn't entirely sure what was happening most of the time.

I managed to win (somehow) and my "kill cam" showed my opponent crit rushing into me then exploding in impact and dropping dead. LoL.

Turns out a dark flare cast about 5 seconds before that I thought had missed finished him off.

Also his health went from about 80% to zero upon the arrival of his crit rush.

His death report showed that about 4 of the skills that I had though missed, actually hit him, and his health was just desynced on my screen.

On his screen, it was a completely different output and he never crit rushed me!


To give some perspective, I play from Japan on Ps4 NA. 100 down on my internet. Good router, ports forwarded etc.

I have had the game since launch. Up until IC DLC I was 1vXing people on Black Water with no champion points all the time. It was responsive and crisp (even with a higher ping from Japan). It was great. But it makes me wonder now, we're the people I was wrecking all experiencing game breaking lag? lol

I watch a lot of streamers, and it often seems like people are standing still or responding incredibly late while the likes of Feng and Blabs etc. shred them down. Maybe I should move to Texas

In any case... PVP used to function really well for me.

My set-up hasn't changed, but the state of play has deteriorated significantly.

I'm happy to discuss my experiences with customer support or the dev team if it helps.

I do love this game, and I want to see it perform well!

Bromburak wrote: »

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

The big thing we're looking for is combat responsiveness in battles. Are you pressing action keys and they're not firing for several seconds? Are abilities "storing up" and unleashing all at once because no inputs from you went through?

@ZOS_BrianWheeler

Often it's reproducable during you flip a keep or just porting to a "new area" (keep or outpost).
As soon new environment is being loaded or as more people are joining your location there is a high chance you run straight into that issue.

Sometimes it can be helpful paying attention to your hardrive, as soon you realize loading and swapping it's just a matter of time until the gamble starts with responsivness. (Do you remember the tiny reload peak and very short harddrive swapping sound in DAOC that actually was an indicator that enemies are near by?) That's exactly the moment in ESO when your responsiveness could fail or stack up skills. It's not always reproducable but there is a high chance it happens in the above described scenarios.

The hitch in DAOC you are referring to is players being loaded into your view range basically. They made your actual viewable area shorter then this range but you could still notice it even if it was subtle.