Bug: All veteran trials are broken due to freezes, disconnects and framerate slowdowns

apri · December 2017

Hello,

I would like to point out a problem that occurs since the release of Clockwork City, maybe longer, and highly affects the endgame trial community of this game. Each trial in veteran difficulty we have played for the past weeks has had serious issues. Not a single one did not have at least one person dropping out because of a frozen screen, crash of the game client or comparable issues. It happens in different groups with dozens of different players. It is not player-related, everyone can be under the curse of these problems and it seems to be totally random. However who is affected, seems to struggle during the ongoing trial more likely again than others may. It also seems that once the first person drops out of the instance, it makes the overall performance for the rest better.

Platform: PS4 and PS4 Pro
Server: Europe

It may be PS4-related or not. I don't know and would like to learn if it is, thus posting the problem in the general bug forums.

To give a more detailed description of the problem, this is what happens usually:

We group up for the encounter, take our positions, each role does their contribution, AOEs, DoTs, HoTs etc are in place and it won't take long and the framerate of each player decreases tremendously and in the end likely one person or more will have a frozen screen while the voice chat is still running. Just the screen is frozen and does not react anymore, no matter how long you wait. In some rare cases the framerate slows down until it almost freezes and recovers again. And in even more rare cases the whole game just plain crashes and brings the affected player to the main menu of the console.

It does not matter which trial is played, it can happen anywhere anytime, be it mob pulls, bosses in Aetherian Archive, Hel Ra, Sanctum Ophidia, Maw of Lorkhaj, Hall of Fabrication, Asylum. It can happen in normal and veteran trials but it's more likely to occur in organized veteran situations. There are some scenarios where it is more likely to happen than in others. Hard stacks, for example. This may indicate that a lot of ground effects, high dps and many skill calculations cannot be coped by the console or game client anymore for some reason.

I highly encourage you to have a look into it because these issues thin out the already pale PVE endgame community on PS4 EU.

Lark82 · December 2017

This happens on PC EU as well.

Every raid night we get disconnects, freezes and fps drops doesn't matter which trial, it happens on them all.

It is really frustrating, especially when trying for score runs.

The endgame raiding community is shrinking here too and these problems if not fixed will not help.

Finitom · December 2017

Yes, its really a big problem with this fps drops, freeze screens and client errors. As people say below it can be with all people and maybe at least with one or nobody. And we cant understand whats the problem is. People wanna solve this problem and we are trying to refresh internet connection, change our speed, buy static ip, clear save data files on ps4 and ps4 pro, but it doesnt work. So this way its goona be problem with server issues i think. As all of us remember on CWC patch long load time screen in cyrodil, ZOS done two maintenance and patch, after this its gonna work right, but in cyro. And in PVE we still get long load time screen and its named freeze! Its unreal to complete trials for achievements, for ex. speed runs. And each time u go trials or another hard content u dont know who can be bugged or dc or freeze. Important thing is that we cant solve this problem for ourselves and we are waiting and waiting a new patch for complete this or another high end game content, which we can done times ago without theese problems.

Plz, have a look into theese problems for more understanding what we can do to solve them.

PS4 EU server.

Machgun94 · December 2017

I feel strongly about this post. Performance is absolutely horrible. There has been notable bug fixes and maybe slight improvements, but these performance issues are honestly game breaking. Zenimax should take the time to maybe run these trials themselves on console during prime-time hours, or even on regular days to see how bad these performances are.

Only the most dedicated elite players can achieve such highscores. One can argue by saying "git gud", but that won't explain why the endgame community in PS4 EU, is dead. Anticipating and getting use to a 2 second bar-swap, is no excuse that such a workaround exists. The health of this game needs to be monitored heavily with serious optimization patches.

I do hope ZOS reads this and don't throw this post in a pile of "common complaints", I love the game, there are great people in this game - but it's heartbreaking to see people leave because of the game performance.

Cheers.

FYI: I run trials almost everyday.

Sarah_Flare · December 2017

We have a lot of disconnects as well on PS4 NA. I don't think there's been a trial where we've not had at least one person disconnect. Most of the time it's 2 or 3 people in a single trial. Most of the time it's where the camera disconnects and the screen is frozen. We've "kinda" made a work around for it that works 60-70% of the time. We load up Netflix and then go back to ESO before it disconnects you. It sends you into a load screen but you don't have to restart the app completely. Other times it's a straight blue screen and you have to restart app.

Lag is a definite issue as well. There are very specific places where we encounter more lag than others. 4th boss of vhof. And Olms fights in vas. Those are the two that stick out the most because I literally cannot make a barswap or cast skills fluidly. I know those two fights specifically have large arenas and there's more to render and load, blah blah blah.

We've not noticed it being specific people, often times it's random. People with PS4 originals and PS4 Pros. People with poop internet and people with 1gb DL speeds. People with and without external hard drives, etc.

eco_TR · December 2017

ps4 pro user here on PS EU server.

Some other issues in my mind as an addition to the above mentioned are:
- blue screen on ps4pro (might be related with Sony and ps4 itself)
- In Vmol, twins fight, location bug, or whatever you name it.
It is like; after a wipe, on your own screen you stand up after being dead, and walk to the entrance of the room next to the door/wall (position A) and join your group while you are in that ghost like form, waiting your char to get back to the normal, however all other people and the boss sees you somewhere else in the room (position B ) usually close to the boss, and as soon as your char changes back to normal from that ghost mode, the fight starts. The same very often happens also at the last boss of falkreth.
- Saint Felms resets at VAS, when someone gets dc (which usually happens) and re-enters to the fight room after re logging.

It was almost impossible to play when the last patch was released, and it is recently much better after the rollback. However it is still a big headache as the op mentions, and very discouraging for the score runs etc... Some of our friends just gave up on vet trials because of this. Hope all will be fixed soon.