Does Zenimax needs to improve the servers?

Devilhand · February 2018

The game has more then 3 years now and no improvements what so ever have been made to the game servers, every day that passes the lag in both PvE and specially PvP is getting worse and worse. Do you think Zenimax should invest in improving the servers and deal with the lag, which cant be tolerated in an online game.

Instead of wasting more time (3 years now) in new mounts, skins, and decoration. Please improve what the game needs the most, new or better servers so we players can enjoy the game, specially in primetime...

Agree or disagree, Discuss below.

[Edited to turn a petition into a discussion]

MakoFore · February 2018

The problem with zos is- the see this sentence:
"this would be the best game ever- if the server performance was good"
as a compliment, rather than a criticism.
over the past 3 years theyve done nothing to improve server performance, its only gotten worse. the fact that they refuse to addres it directly - and instead go on having end of year review speeches that say nothing of their perofrmance- but back slap and haul out new costuems , dyes and crown crates shows this is a company that has their head in the sand and hands in its pockets. im not going to be renewing my subsciption in a month. not being able to play in a trial today - people plan their lives around this crap- because of server performance - was the last straw.

xeNNNNN · February 2018

MakoFore wrote: »

The problem with zos is- the see this sentence:
"this would be the best game ever- if the server performance was good"
as a compliment, rather than a criticism.
over the past 3 years theyve done nothing to improve server performance, its only gotten worse. the fact that they refuse to addres it directly - and instead go on having end of year review speeches that say nothing of their perofrmance- but back slap and haul out new costuems , dyes and crown crates shows this is a company that has their head in the sand and hands in its pockets. im not going to be renewing my subsciption in a month. not being able to play in a trial today - people plan their lives around this crap- because of server performance - was the last straw.

Though I dont agree with everything you said I think we agree on one thing, saying "we're working on it" for 3 years isn't exactly reasonable. Especially with little too no concrete improvements beyond band aid fixes.

I've heard (and I can't be certain of this) that the reason the server preform so badly or one of the reasons is that some time ago they changed the way their servers exchange information.

(note; the two things listed below are just hearsay I am not saying these are the actual reasons or at all 100% accurate)

As too the extent of the problems that would cause well, if its done in an inefficient way, calculations done by the servers processors can end up taking long and causing lag. I.e It would take 0.1s to get from A to B before but it now takes 1.0s to get from A to B all the meanwhile various people are connected to the server and transmitting and receiving their own data at the same time which would likely cause some stalling or something like that as far as I am aware I am probably over-simplifying.

The other problem that Ive been told is that the servers have a lack of good P2P code, which would also explain a lot.

Anyway, guys PLEASE do not let this thread die. We cannot let them just let this get buried. PvPers are part of this community too and WE ARE customers. We just want too play the game the same as you but without the stress of horrible performance due to things outside of our control. Do not let them forget about this thread. This is important.

Anotherone773 · February 2018

The servers are just the start of it. I shouldnt find this many bugs in a live game. And they arent minor bugs. I have abilities that double fire, abilities that dont fire, i keep attacking long after i stop pushing buttons, i dont attack despite pushing buttons. Abilities fire late, sync issues cause me to be standing in the bad ichy stuff giving me boo boos but i dont realize it because nothing is syncing. During all of this the game says im running 50-80 FPS and 100-150ms ping. Tonight in a dungeon i dodged nearly a full 2 seconds after tapping the key. Half the time i cant get roll dodge to work.

All of these problems are really bad in instances, especially dungeons.... wait is the ZOS way of making dungeons harder?

Bhaal5 · February 2018

Id liked to know who put "no"??

VoiDGhOs7 · February 2018

Would be nice but server improvements ain't going to happen. As someone somewhere said for ZOS its not worth to increase performance because for them its better to milk the whales by pushing new Crown Store stuff.

eso_lags · February 2018

Its a giant FACEPALM that this post, and all the others like it, even has to exist at this point.. These last 2 weeks have a been a nightmare on xbox.

Iccotak · February 2018

Honestly I have college internet so this has never been a problem

method__01 · February 2018

cyro last night....nowhere to spawn

Azurya · February 2018

they should consodering to put PvP on an extra server, can imagine that would solve a lot of probs

coplannb16_ESO · February 2018

there is no third option sadly...

the problem is not the hardware, its the server and too many server-side calculations. The game was smooth even with 1000 people pvping at the same time 2+ years ago due to a lot of client-side calculations. Then came the cheaters and cheat-engines. ZoS moves most of the stuff to the server and here we are.

think about it this way:
1 big server cluster say 128 Cores with hyperthreading -> 256 Threads in parallel

1000 players with at least a quadcore without HT > possible 4000 Threads

now also think about this: gaming CPU cores are most of the time stronger/faster than server CPU cores (higher clock-frequency)

its a fundamental flaw in the game engines architecture. higher security lead to bad performance. there are plenty ways to refactor and fix this. But it is not me who is getting paid for it so...

edit: to clarify my second paragraph talks about "server" there I mean the server-side code / server game engine, not the hardware

Zbigb4life · February 2018

Unfortunately they will never fix it. All they care about is more mounts, houses, dyes and costumes so they can get easy money without any effort. One would think by now they have earned enough money to upgrade their servers.

greylox · February 2018

Shouldnt even be asked, of course they need sorting.

Banana · February 2018

And one for the lower portion of the planet where the other people live.

Mady · February 2018

Idk man.... every MMO I played had *** servers. Looks like this is just normal.
I never played an MMO where it didn't lag especially in PvP. They were all unplayable at prime time.

Anotherone773 · February 2018

Mady wrote: »

Idk man.... every MMO I played had *** servers. Looks like this is just normal.
I never played an MMO where it didn't lag especially in PvP. They were all unplayable at prime time.

Eve Online. Its nothing like ESO because its a space game. Battles with thousands of players in them at a time. They use a shard system. You seamlessly get transferred between shards. Nodes( blades?) can be reinforced when you are expecting a big fight( if you are taking another alliances territory for example and expect them to put up a fight). You just tell the GMs 24 hours ahead of time so they can reinforce the node at the next downtime( 15 minutes downtime every morning).

If the fights get to big in one area they use something called time dilation. So if the server cant handle all the processes fast enough, it has a time dilation program. What this does is slow everything down on the server to a speed it can process everything. So during time dilation everything takes longer. A 45 minute fight might take 3 hours but its slowed to the same speed for everyone no lag spikes for you then those guys over there and then that group coming in. No random crashing or getting booted. You just play in slowmo until the server catches up or you leave the area( shard/node).

And its the best game for pvp, Hardcore pvp with real losses and potentially real wins. Dying has meaning because you lose stuff permanently when you die.

I wish they made a fantasy medieval mmo like it. I get tired of playing space games.

ZOS_Ragnar · February 2018

We have removed some posts that were not conducive to a productive discussion. We can understand that this is something that many of you care about and want to discuss. Please remember to keep your comments meaningful, constructive and inline with our community rules.

Elsonso · February 2018

coplannb16_ESO wrote: »

the problem is not the hardware, its the server and too many server-side calculations. The game was smooth even with 1000 people pvping at the same time 2+ years ago due to a lot of client-side calculations. Then came the cheaters and cheat-engines. ZoS moves most of the stuff to the server and here we are.

Before Sage left, he commented along the lines that the problem in Cyrodiil was not to be solved by throwing hardware at the server.

So, I think the above is right on. Each Campaign is probably running on a dedicated physical "box", loaded up with CPU and memory. ("box" would be an HP Blade mounted in a blade enclosure, last we knew) Cyrodiil performance issues will be resolved in software, as they are probably capped by what the hardware can do.

This why they have not fixed anything. It would be cheap and easy to throw hardware at the problem, if that was the solution.

frausty · February 2018

coplannb16_ESO wrote: »

there is no third option sadly...

the problem is not the hardware, its the server and too many server-side calculations. The game was smooth even with 1000 people pvping at the same time 2+ years ago due to a lot of client-side calculations. Then came the cheaters and cheat-engines. ZoS moves most of the stuff to the server and here we are.

think about it this way:
1 big server cluster say 128 Cores with hyperthreading -> 256 Threads in parallel

1000 players with at least a quadcore without HT > possible 4000 Threads

now also think about this: gaming CPU cores are most of the time stronger/faster than server CPU cores (higher clock-frequency)

its a fundamental flaw in the game engines architecture. higher security lead to bad performance. there are plenty ways to refactor and fix this. But it is not me who is getting paid for it so...

edit: to clarify my second paragraph talks about "server" there I mean the server-side code / server game engine, not the hardware

I like this explanation as it will hopefully explain to non-technical people the kind of issues we are talking about. As I've previously posted, there are so many factors to consider that it most likely not just a server issue although I expect that this is at least 40-50% of the problem. You also need to look at the coding and underlying SQL design and factor in the changes that are required need to be made across all platforms not just PC - which makes client side processing also a lot more complicated.

However, if Zenimax want to offer me a job I'm open to an offer

greyman · February 2018

Anotherone773 wrote: »

Eve Online.

True, but it took many many years of game crippling lag before CCP got on top of things. In addition, I don't think a time dilation system would be acceptable to people playing ESO.

dennissomb16_ESO · February 2018

Hard to know where the issues meets between under performing hardware and actual game code issues. My guess is that it is really mostly code issues (which wont easily get fixed) and less of hardware being insufficient

Katahdin · February 2018

Devilhand wrote: »

The game has more then 3 years now and no improvements what so ever have been made to the game servers, every day that passes the lag in both PvE and specially PvP is getting worse and worse. Do you think Zenimax should invest in improving the servers and deal with the lag, which cant be tolerated in an online game.

Do you have a spy in ZOS to know that they have never upgrade any hardware to support this conspiracy theory?

Despite claims to the contrary, they know this is a problem and have made changes and tests to try and improve it.

I rarely have crippling lag in Cyro now. Used to happen in every big battle and ESO is not the only game this happens in.

I'm pretty sure the servers are high end equipment. It would be pretty stupid to run the game, as big of an investment as it is, on a server equivalent of a hamster on a wheel.

It may very well be a coding problem which is not easy to fix or it could be they underestimated the strain the game would put on hardware and Internet infrastructure.

Also people are always so quick to blame the server. If it's the server then how is it that we are on the same server at the same time, right next to each other; you have lag and I dont?

If it was the server, everyone would lag at the same time

jerj6925 · February 2018

This is why nothing will be done, they don't have to and they know it.

1) What other game out there is like this on counsel? there is not so they really don't have any direct competition.

2) When you complain about the lag in the servers you have way to many fan boys lecturing you on your post about how you don't understand how the internet works and its more likely many other factors like your isp, modem, router, weather... they make up every excuse in the book why its you and not the servers (I swear they are applying for a job). Zenimax\Bethesda see this so it reinforces their position to do nothing. Side note: its up to game manufactures to understand how all the above examples work to ensure their game functions as intended and marketed not the consumer. If they cant deliver then they should market it. You watch some one will jump on this defending Zenimax\Bethesda even thought they will say they are not defending them.

3) Zinimax is one entity, the player base is thousands and thousands and just try to organize that to function as one entity to try and get them to do something... What happen with star wars battlefront 2 was a freak of nature in the gaming world when the player base finally took a stand, they held back the MONEY. This shows it can happen but again by the way Zinimax conducts its self shows they are not afraid of it happening here.

4) No one complains to Sony about this, Sony needs good games functioning on their counsel otherwise people go else were or just wont buy the PS4. There is leverage here but people need to know that, complain to Sony enough and they will start to put pressure on companies to clean up there act.

5) If everyone would simply log off for one week in protest to make the point... Zinimax\Bethesda would jump, if everyone would not buy anything for one month... HOLD BACK THE MONEY they would do more than jump they would make changes. but people *** and game on and pay on and Zenimax\Bethesda just smile and say "ok" and continue to collect your money while you continue to collect their virtual money. To address the point if even after a month they did nothing to fix the server issue well then people need to leave it and not go back and let it die.

I like how Bethesda took digs at EA about the loot box situation, If I was EA I would have fired back, at least our servers can handle the game mechanics and its playable.

Tandor · February 2018

I continue running solo/cooperative PvE on the PC EU server without any performance issues, as has been the case since launch. The fact that I don't do PvP and trials or use add-ons doubtless plays a part in that but networking issues and poor internet services also play a large part especially in respect of NA players seemingly as well as those connecting from the other side of the world.

jerj6925 · February 2018

coplannb16_ESO wrote: »

there is no third option sadly...

the problem is not the hardware, its the server and too many server-side calculations. The game was smooth even with 1000 people pvping at the same time 2+ years ago due to a lot of client-side calculations. Then came the cheaters and cheat-engines. ZoS moves most of the stuff to the server and here we are.

I wish the counsel makers (Ps4 and Xbox) would go back to banning the the unit and refuse reactivating it ever. really hit the cheater in the pocket book and you really reduce cheating. but now days it seems like cheating is just accepted so suck it up and game on... wrong attitude to have.

Hurtfan · February 2018

method__01 wrote: »

cyro last night....nowhere to spawn

This is double suck, because the map usually looks like this after I've been disconnected and log back in, usually dead. And then you go to spawn somewhere and can't see where you can spawn. You can click on where a keep should be and if your alliance owns it, you can spawn there without seeing it, it's just a pain in the backside.

The map will eventually come back.

Elsonso · February 2018

Katahdin wrote: »

I'm pretty sure the servers are high end equipment. It would be pretty stupid to run the game, as big of an investment as it is, on a server equivalent of a hamster on a wheel.

The megaserver included, last we saw pictures of it, several racks of HP BladeSystem c7000 enclosures. Each rack was holding 4 or 5 enclosures. Each enclosure can hold up to 16 half height or 8 full height blade servers, each of which is an individual server computer. Half height servers can have 2 multicore CPUs while the full height ones can have up to 4 multicore CPUs. Specs according to Wikipedia. I don't do HP hardware, personally.

So, yes, high end equipment.

KanedaSyndrome · February 2018

Client trust and post processing anti-cheat validation is what we need.

Kuramas9tails · February 2018

I personally don't know how it works behind the scenes as far as servers and such. Would be cool to see behind the scenes of an MMO company.

Devilhand · February 2018

Katahdin wrote: »

Devilhand wrote: »

The game has more then 3 years now and no improvements what so ever have been made to the game servers, every day that passes the lag in both PvE and specially PvP is getting worse and worse. Do you think Zenimax should invest in improving the servers and deal with the lag, which cant be tolerated in an online game.

Do you have a spy in ZOS to know that they have never upgrade any hardware to support this conspiracy theory?

Despite claims to the contrary, they know this is a problem and have made changes and tests to try and improve it.

I rarely have crippling lag in Cyro now. Used to happen in every big battle and ESO is not the only game this happens in.

I'm pretty sure the servers are high end equipment. It would be pretty stupid to run the game, as big of an investment as it is, on a server equivalent of a hamster on a wheel.

It may very well be a coding problem which is not easy to fix or it could be they underestimated the strain the game would put on hardware and Internet infrastructure.

Also people are always so quick to blame the server. If it's the server then how is it that we are on the same server at the same time, right next to each other; you have lag and I dont?

If it was the server, everyone would lag at the same time

Sorry mate, but as far as i know and hearing from all the people i play with, EVERYONE lagging. And every day that passes it gets worse and worse.
We are not in the same room, city, state or in some cases country. Yet, we all lag to the point skills dont go off, huge delays of +4 seconds.

So, if you dont lag? Well, good for you. I dont believe it.

The lag in cyrodiil during primetime has come to a point you cant do anything at all. People getting disconnected by trying to get to a keep (talking about +24 people getting disconnected at the same time). So tell me, its not the servers?

Keep enjoying the hats, dyes and costumes mate! The rest of us believe this is a huge issue that has to be solve before any more DLC comes out. Whats the point of having new content if you cant play it right?

And keep in mind as ZOS demands people now to upgrade their PC's (no longer support X32 client), then we expect the same from them. Either bad coding from them (related to all the bugs and broken stuff around, that they are inneficient to solve) or a phsycal issue that requiere new and better servers to handle all the information.

Im_MegaDeath · February 2018

yes

The Elder Scrolls Online

Does Zenimax needs to improve the servers?

Does Zenimax needs to improve the servers? 853 votes