Does Zenimax needs to improve the servers?

Kanar · February 2018

The game was originally designed with significant client-side computation. However they overlooked cheating and then had to move a lot of the calculations to server-side,which was never intended to do that.

The root cause is a core design issue and likely the ZoS ESO team no longer has the development talent necessary to fix it, nor the support of product management to spend 2+ releases working on technical improvements.

Has nothing to do with hardware.

It's my understanding that they also have to use cloudflare to protect from ddos attacks, which will add significant latency to the network connection.

Fasold666 · February 2018

No!
I don`t have lags. More crown crates pls!!!

CrazYDunm3r · February 2018

Fasold666 wrote: »

No!
I don`t have lags. More crown crates pls!!!

Watch out my comment got removed for similar trolling

You can only be "constructive" if you neglect the problem without the humor.

SGT_Wolfe101st · February 2018

ZOS_RyanM wrote: »

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.

Once again the only response from a MOD is to play nice, nothing about addressing the concerns of the community.

Wildberryjack · February 2018

I've been having massive latency spikes for a bit over a month now and I live about 2 hours from the NA server. I understand the lines between me and the server can be an issue in latency but it is odd that I'm so close and wasn't having trouble till very recently. Now I get lag spikes over 400 about every five minutes. Sometimes they are 999+. Not only that but I also have random disconnects that I did not have before. Something changed. And dolmen runs, just wow. Good luck just getting an ability to fire off at all.

SGT_Wolfe101st · 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

Not sure your platform or region but the lag is terrible in PVP, terrible in Trials, The fact that you don't have issues is clearly the minority, 92% want something done, at the very least respond with some sort of time line or process they are working through. They rarely if ever even stop by and comment.

Invincible · 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.

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]

Renting better server space would cut too much in to their profits or else they would have done it years ago. I know the 1999 connection lag sucks but zeni is corporation, their only responsibility is to themselves.

Katahdin · February 2018

SGT_Wolfe101st wrote: »

ZOS_RyanM wrote: »

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.

Once again the only response from a MOD is to play nice, nothing about addressing the concerns of the community.

Because a moderator moderates forums.
They don't make decisions on game direction or necessarily know the specific details of what the developers are doing to address issues

xbobx · February 2018

ZOS_RyanM wrote: »

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.

its kind of insulting when you mods come into an important topic like this and make comments like that without addressing the issue.

Paying customers here.

so how about you delete the posts and say nothing or actually make a valuable contribution to the topic.

SGT_Wolfe101st · February 2018

Katahdin wrote: »

SGT_Wolfe101st wrote: »

ZOS_RyanM wrote: »

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.

Once again the only response from a MOD is to play nice, nothing about addressing the concerns of the community.

Because a moderator moderates forums.
They don't make decisions on game direction or necessarily know the specific details of what the developers are doing to address issues

Not Ryan or Gina or Kat P but someone from ZOS should come in and say something.

jerj6925 · February 2018

Katahdin wrote: »

SGT_Wolfe101st wrote: »

ZOS_RyanM wrote: »

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.

Once again the only response from a MOD is to play nice, nothing about addressing the concerns of the community.

Because a moderator moderates forums.
They don't make decisions on game direction or necessarily know the specific details of what the developers are doing to address issues

You clearly missed his point by... a lot...

QuebraRegra · February 2018

issues with server performance are NOT restricted to PVP. Those that have been playing for a while will recognize the obvious performance degradation even in PVE... if you just got here and think crap is the norm, then I guess not.

adeptusminor · February 2018

Low ping, optimized performance trials and endgame content in my ESO? The dream.

Etrella · February 2018

I see alot of post saying, "All they care about is Mounts, dyes etc etc", but who are the ones buying them? US!. We are honestly part of the problem, I even feel guilty myself. If we were to band together and stop buying and supplying them with money, then maybe and only then will they see the point and see that we are fed up and need improvement in this game that takes a decent amount of time in our lives. Just a thought.

beetleklee · February 2018

The past week or so have been awful running trials. nHoF and vMoL I was dipping to 5 fps during fights. Though last night in vSO my fps was fine. It's not on my end, I have a powerful PC and other games run smoothly. This performance is usually inconsistent, and if I have bad lag, usually other people in my group do too.

I barely play PvP anymore due to the lag in Vivec. The other campaigns are usually dead especially by the time I get home from work.

Kanar · February 2018

Etrella wrote: »

I see alot of post saying, "All they care about is Mounts, dyes etc etc", but who are the ones buying them? US!. We are honestly part of the problem, I even feel guilty myself. If we were to band together and stop buying and supplying them with money, then maybe and only then will they see the point and see that we are fed up and need improvement in this game that takes a decent amount of time in our lives. Just a thought.

It's not like the employees making mounts and costumes (artists) would have any role in fixing server performance issues. Zos has some level of desire to fix the performance, as shown by some previous efforts and tests. The reason they don't fix it is because they are incapable of fixing it: the team remaining that works on ESO just does not have the technical skills.

Maybe the devs have some ideas but they are not 100% certain it will resolve the issue nor cause new issues, and so the business (product management) will not take the risk.

Kode · February 2018

Scale back the PvP. shrink cyrodiil, reduce the campaign caps, encourage people to split up over multiple campaigns, implement mechanics to break the zerg up. Reduce groups to 12 man from 24 man.
Increase the strength of siege; add an area knockdown that ignores CC immunity.
Change keep layouts to encourage more small objective taking rather than one big zerg to the flags.

This game has amazing small scale pvp, they need to capitalize on that and leave the large scale stuff alone. The game can't handle it, and other games are coming that are dedicated to that type of play. Don't choose to play in an arena that you can't be competitive. Change the focus of the PvP aspect to small scale skirmishing.

vamp_emily · February 2018

I'm sure most of you are not aware of this but we do have professionals who created and maintaining this game. I'm not trying to be rude, but i'm so glad most of you are just users. I've seen very few suggestions that would make this game better.

From my experience I do lag sometimes when they have the test server up, but most times i'm lag free. Even when i am in the middle of 50 enemy players.

If you are lagging all the time then there is a good chance it is not Zeni's fault. It could be your super cheap computer or bad connection.

Rev Rielle · February 2018

They really do.
I get 350-450 ms latency playing ESO, all other MMOs are around 250-300 ms.

zaria · February 2018

lordrichter wrote: »

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.

You can brute force stuff. An blade is not very strong.
http://www.supermicro.com/products/system/7U/7089/SYS-7089P-TR4T.cfm
This is a bit better, up to 224 cores, with 1000 players in campaign each core just has to deal with 5 players

And it will set you back far more than $100K if maxed out.
Found it while researching server for an client

And no the solution would probably be more in the line of unloading more work on the client like it was, however to avoid cheating do an server check on client calculations, rng is solved with fix seed rng given by server, server does not have to do this real time and it you will just sample players, focus on the ones with lots of exceptions, to many and you get an disconnect, then you log in again all your calculations will be run on server and you can enjoy an 0.2 second ping if lucky, if unlucky you get an 3 day ban and account is flagged so server will check you far more often

SJD_Phoenix · February 2018

I’m really sorry but anyone that thinks the state of the game performance is acceptable is on crack.

Cyrodiil needs desperate attention

Skullstachio · February 2018

What ZOS Really need is to add some "Optional" settings into the game settings that would allow one to lower certain graphic qualities in order to bolster game performance at the expense of lower game quality.

(I can only imagine the lag spike when Dragon Bones decides to make its debut on console, because remember when Morrowind came out, oh boy were the servers packed to the point where some players couldn't login at all.)

Draxys · February 2018

They should try moving some of those calculations back to client side, and simultaneously drive a harsh anti-cheating policy. Hit each and every cheater with a perma ban (such as botting and manipulating the game- exploiting a broken mechanic is borderline cheating, but not instant perma ban worthy imo). If the vendetta campaign against cheaters doesn’t discourage them and they still pop up, the go back to the crap show we have now. But they need to try something like that, it’s the only way to improve performance- their code and servers are never going to get better.

Bhaal5 · February 2018

xbobx wrote: »

ZOS_RyanM wrote: »

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.

its kind of insulting when you mods come into an important topic like this and make comments like that without addressing the issue.

Paying customers here.

so how about you delete the posts and say nothing or actually make a valuable contribution to the topic.

We all want answers and more so we want results, but keep in mind that the "mods" are the middle men (and ladies) not the tech engineers. So they can only give us information when they have it.

Plus everyone here is a paying customer

Vaoh · February 2018

I don’t subscribe nowadays and it’s 100% due to this. I also no longer purchase costumes, mounts, etc. I’ll only purchase or sub for a DLC release.

If they don’t care about server performance I don’t see a reason to invest more than I need to into ESO anymore. There has legit been zero improvements to performance since console launch, with FPS issues/lag actually increasing quite a bit if anything.

Turelus · February 2018

I don't think the servers are the only issue.

From my understanding of what ZOS has said it's more about the number of calls the servers are getting due to how many different layers there are to a calculation of "I use my skill on these people" which gets worse when two large groups fight.

I'm not saying there wouldn't be some improvement with upgraded servers, but I don't think it's the silver bullet everyone thinks it is, if it was they would have done it because this is a persistent embarrassing issue for them.

Vaoh · February 2018

Turelus wrote: »

I don't think the servers are the only issue.

From my understanding of what ZOS has said it's more about the number of calls the servers are getting due to how many different layers there are to a calculation of "I use my skill on these people" which gets worse when two large groups fight.

I'm not saying there wouldn't be some improvement with upgraded servers, but I don't think it's the silver bullet everyone thinks it is, if it was they would have done it because this is a persistent embarrassing issue for them.

Honestly, I feel more lag now despite Morrowind gutting sustain (way more heavy attacks vs skill casts) and friendly AoE effects being invisible. The performance is getting *worse* almost every patch, not staying the same or improving. I’m convinced ZOS doesn’t care at this point tbh

Turelus · February 2018

Vaoh wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

I don't think the servers are the only issue.

From my understanding of what ZOS has said it's more about the number of calls the servers are getting due to how many different layers there are to a calculation of "I use my skill on these people" which gets worse when two large groups fight.

I'm not saying there wouldn't be some improvement with upgraded servers, but I don't think it's the silver bullet everyone thinks it is, if it was they would have done it because this is a persistent embarrassing issue for them.

Honestly, I feel more lag now despite Morrowind gutting sustain (way more heavy attacks vs skill casts) and friendly AoE effects being invisible. The performance is getting *worse* almost every patch, not staying the same or improving. I’m convinced ZOS doesn’t care at this point tbh

I don't see many big groups in Cyrodiil doing just heavy attacks, additionally anyone attacking with a lightning staff is still going to be effectively doing the same as throwing an AoE skill.
Friendly AoE effects is a visual/graphical change, that's aimed at your client and your machine.

I think ZOS does care because this is a huge black mark for them, however people are expecting things which a lot of games have never been able to produce. We could take more checks away from the servers and place them back on the client (as per pre-lighting patch apparently) however then you'll also giving bots and CE users more powers again.

Lysette · February 2018

I voted yes, because it is pretty annoying when the connection to the server is lost once or twice during a quest - especially when it ruins my stealth. Ok, the server gets me back into crouch mode when I log back in, but of course the location of the enemies has changed meanwhile and so all the effort put into my stealth approach is eventually ruined by it.

Vaoh · February 2018

Turelus wrote: »

Vaoh wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

I don't think the servers are the only issue.

From my understanding of what ZOS has said it's more about the number of calls the servers are getting due to how many different layers there are to a calculation of "I use my skill on these people" which gets worse when two large groups fight.

I'm not saying there wouldn't be some improvement with upgraded servers, but I don't think it's the silver bullet everyone thinks it is, if it was they would have done it because this is a persistent embarrassing issue for them.

Honestly, I feel more lag now despite Morrowind gutting sustain (way more heavy attacks vs skill casts) and friendly AoE effects being invisible. The performance is getting *worse* almost every patch, not staying the same or improving. I’m convinced ZOS doesn’t care at this point tbh

I don't see many big groups in Cyrodiil doing just heavy attacks, additionally anyone attacking with a lightning staff is still going to be effectively doing the same as throwing an AoE skill.
Friendly AoE effects is a visual/graphical change, that's aimed at your client and your machine.

I think ZOS does care because this is a huge black mark for them, however people are expecting things which a lot of games have never been able to produce. We could take more checks away from the servers and place them back on the client (as per pre-lighting patch apparently) however then you'll also giving bots and CE users more powers again.

But is that even a risk? Who cares at this point.

We already see bots anyway. If ZOS gets a few gamemasters to play those bots will become extinct or very chose to it. All of those client-side calculations that fight bots need to be moved server-side. That alone would be a massive improvement to game performance everywhere.

As for server side calculations that prevent Cheaters..... well whatever they did can certainly be implemented better. There’s always a way, especially when it has hindered game performance so badly. Even if there are Cheaters why not just individually ban them instead of ruining the entire game for everyone?

The Cheaters are definitely much tougher to stop. However, hurting the game to stop bots which are still extremely prevalent is a clear example of laziness. Idk what else it could be.

In any case, ZOS might just be too scared to touch the old code fearing they might break the game further.