How should ZOS deal with the game freezes?

fred4 · May 2018

Since the Summerset patch, the game has been plagued by freezes. For me these occur most frequently in heavily populated areas or when approaching other players in PvP. I am not sure whether overall performance is improved. Maybe lag in Cyrodiil is better, I don't know. However the game is now plagued by this new problem, with freezes lasting anything from a fraction of a second to 1.5 seconds. It is my guess that they are occurring as a side-effect of ZOS' "performance" enhancements. How should they deal with this?

Tandor · May 2018

I am not affected by this problem.

For me this only happens on the approach to Vulkhels Guard, so it really isn't a problem to me. It was a bit more noticeable more generally immediately after Summerset launched, but I think they've done something already to improve it and I'm happy that they've acknowledged it and are on it.

danno8 · May 2018

Keep the performance enhancements. It's still better this way / I can live with it i

You can change it yourself by setting RequestedNumWorkerThreads = 1 in your UserSettings.txt file. That will prevent any multicore hand-offs and stop the 1s hitching.

No sense in having them go backwards, better to keep going forwards and they can refine and fix the hitching.

Gilvoth · May 2018

Keep the performance enhancements. It's still better this way / I can live with it i

yes i get freezes where i did not get them before, but the game is better.
i get much better FPS, the game runs much better for me and my rig.

fred4 · May 2018

danno8 wrote: »

You can change it yourself by setting RequestedNumWorkerThreads = 1 in your UserSettings.txt file. That will prevent any multicore hand-offs and stop the 1s hitching.

No sense in having them go backwards, better to keep going forwards and they can refine and fix the hitching.

Yes, that answers my question. Excellent. No need for ZOS to do anything when we can choose what suits us best in the interim. I am going to try this.

idk · May 2018

I am not affected by this problem.

Clearly if it is an issue Zos should fix them in the best way they can. No one in this thread will have the information required to make an informed decision.

Imryll · May 2018

How do y'all know it's the performance enhancements that are causing the freezes? Those aren't the only changes introduced by Summerset, and it's hard to have an opinion about interim measures without knowing the precise cause of the problem.

fred4 · May 2018

Imryll wrote: »

How do y'all know it's the performance enhancements that are causing the freezes? Those aren't the only changes introduced by Summerset, and it's hard to have an opinion about interim measures without knowing the precise cause of the problem.

I did not, until danno8 suggested changing the UserSettings.txt. I presume he has tested his solution. In that case it seems clear it is the multi-core enhancements causing this.

I will do some experiments. I run a really old, but top-shelf at the time, CPU (and it's overclocked). This CPU is really two dual-cores in a single package, with 2 separate level 3 caches. I will play around with processor affinity in Task Manager and see what that yields.

Azurya · May 2018

I am not affected by this problem.

I thought it was due to hate towards outlanders in summerset, I thought they kicked me all the time of their silly disneyland island

Gargath · May 2018

I also had a few freezes, some of them ended with CTDs, which is quite annoying.
Also annoying is the screen that appears after CTD, to destribe situation before crash, possible reason.
Like anyone at ZOS would really care.

danno8 · May 2018

Keep the performance enhancements. It's still better this way / I can live with it i

Imryll wrote: »

How do y'all know it's the performance enhancements that are causing the freezes? Those aren't the only changes introduced by Summerset, and it's hard to have an opinion about interim measures without knowing the precise cause of the problem.

fred4 wrote: »

Imryll wrote: »

How do y'all know it's the performance enhancements that are causing the freezes? Those aren't the only changes introduced by Summerset, and it's hard to have an opinion about interim measures without knowing the precise cause of the problem.

I did not, until danno8 suggested changing the UserSettings.txt. I presume he has tested his solution. In that case it seems clear it is the multi-core enhancements causing this.

I will do some experiments. I run a really old, but top-shelf at the time, CPU (and it's overclocked). This CPU is really two dual-cores in a single package, with 2 separate level 3 caches. I will play around with processor affinity in Task Manager and see what that yields.

ZOS_AlexTardif wrote: »

ramasurinenpreub18_ESO wrote: »

The massive freezes feel like a thread collision related to player character model loading, where the main game thread passed off the loading to other cores, but they weren't ready with results when asked for them. The freezes happen most often and severely when approaching wayshrines, especially in Artaeum and Alinor, where a lot of people tend to go AFK.

I've been messing with the UserSettings.ini settings for multicore, restricting the number of threads a bit. The freezes are definitely coming from the "WorkerThreads" line, as setting it to 0 removes them entirely, but at the loss of a little fps in general, while setting them to 8 turns the entire game into a near constant slideshow. With the settings below I have managed to completely remove all the freezes and stutters, in Alinor and everywhere else. Framerate now seems to be about the same as pre-patch. Smooth as silk. Maybe give these a try until they get a proper fix in.

SET MaxCoresToUse.4 "8" (if you have a quad core hyperthreading cpu, if not use "4")
SET RequestedNumJobThreads "4"
SET RequestedNumWorkerThreads "1"

Also, setting GPUSmoothingFrames to "0" or "1" can be very helpful with general smoothness and microstutters, as well as input lag and responsiveness if you have a high end GPU. "0" is best if you can get away with it.

Cheers.

You're correct! The momentary freeze is indeed because of some processing that runs on a worker thread, so you may well see that issue occur less frequently (or not at all) by doing what you've stated, however the impact of reducing your worker thread count to 1 means that only a single thread is able to perform all of the background work that the game demands. This means you would have longer load times, slower in-game streaming, and potentially lower frame rate than you would have otherwise. This is because much of the work done for this patch was to offload main thread work to worker threads so that it wouldn't slow down your framerate. The new stutters are situations when the main thread finds itself waiting on something a worker thread is doing, which is not good, and didn't show up in our internal testing environment. We have a number of fixes for these situations on the way, so we recommend changing those settings back after we patch these fixes in to see if it improves your experience.

@Imryll @fred4

The quote from ZOS_AlexTardif is from thecrather huge thread below:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/414161/multi-core-performance-update-improvement-or-deterioration/p7

AlienatedGoat · May 2018

Revert the performance enhancements until a solution to the freezes can be found.

Definitely revert until fixed. The stuttering is getting to be really bad.

Lucky28 · May 2018

i've been getting random FPS drops since summerset. stable 50-60 FPS then 1 FPS. i don't know why.

MLGProPlayer · May 2018

Keep the performance enhancements. It's still better this way / I can live with it i

Keep it an fix it. Why would you want them to revert a progressive change like this one? The game might not be running better yet, but at least it's a step in the right direction.

They are aware of the current issue and are working on a fix. The stutters aren't that frequent either. You can change your user settings in the meantime if it's a huge issue for you.

Sparr0w · May 2018

Keep the performance enhancements. It's still better this way / I can live with it i

Loads of freezes on Xbox but it seems to be when your UI quickly changes (navigating from Skills to Inventory in less than a second, loading into a zone then straight into another one or going thru a door etc...), taking it slow has kept the freezing to a minimum for me.

Not froze yet on PC, but have noticed the random X->1 FPS drops.

Anysra · May 2018

I am not affected by this problem.

No freeze yet on PC. But the FPS? It is not better.

Lysette · May 2018

I am not affected by this problem.

Since the last patch this problem is gone - at least I did not experience it anymore and these very frequent disconnects are gone as well - really nice to be able to concentrate on the game and not the issues it had.

Pixel_Zealot · May 2018

I am not affected by this problem.

I'm not affected by this, but I have picked up other issues. Sometimes I get this stuttering 'frame-loss' even though my frames and ping are running 100%. Also, sometimes, the sound freaks out for a second, sounds like an electronic turn-table screech, then continues as normal. But this could also be on my end.

Lysette · May 2018

I am not affected by this problem.

Lysette wrote: »

Since the last patch this problem is gone - at least I did not experience it anymore and these very frequent disconnects are gone as well - really nice to be able to concentrate on the game and not the issues it had.

The funny thing with it is - ZOS stated that a fix for it wasn't part of this patch - so what has fixed it for me then?

Aleris · May 2018

danno8 wrote: »

You can change it yourself by setting RequestedNumWorkerThreads = 1 in your UserSettings.txt file. That will prevent any multicore hand-offs and stop the 1s hitching.

No sense in having them go backwards, better to keep going forwards and they can refine and fix the hitching.

Hey i checked my settings. And by default it’s set at -1.. shoud i set it to 1? What if i set it to 4? Also what about the requestnumjobthreads. Should i put the same number on that as well?
Thanks

MLGProPlayer · May 2018

Keep the performance enhancements. It's still better this way / I can live with it i

Lysette wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

Since the last patch this problem is gone - at least I did not experience it anymore and these very frequent disconnects are gone as well - really nice to be able to concentrate on the game and not the issues it had.

The funny thing with it is - ZOS stated that a fix for it wasn't part of this patch - so what has fixed it for me then?

Placebo! It's still there. You probably just haven't played enough since the patch to notice. It took me a while to notice the first stutter when I logged into Summerset the first time.

Troneon · May 2018

Revert the performance enhancements until a solution to the freezes can be found.

I never had any performance issue before but since the patch micro stutters are occasional, not completely terrible all the time but often.

IF you are judging on pvp areas THEN DON'T, pvp optimization has always been crap and is a terrible test bed. Those issues are server side / poor optimization by ZOS.

danno8 · May 2018

Keep the performance enhancements. It's still better this way / I can live with it i

Aleris wrote: »

danno8 wrote: »

You can change it yourself by setting RequestedNumWorkerThreads = 1 in your UserSettings.txt file. That will prevent any multicore hand-offs and stop the 1s hitching.

No sense in having them go backwards, better to keep going forwards and they can refine and fix the hitching.

Hey i checked my settings. And by default it’s set at -1.. shoud i set it to 1? What if i set it to 4? Also what about the requestnumjobthreads. Should i put the same number on that as well?
Thanks

The "-1" setting for those particular settings mean "no limit" so the game will use the maximum number of cores/threads etc. I don't know what CPU you use but if you want to get rid of those 1 second freezes that are new with Summerset you can set the worker thread to "1" and keep job threads and max cores to "-1". This will limit the number of threads to "1" at a time and prevent any handoffs, that are apparently the cause of the freezes at the moment.

Remember that there are going to be fixes coming so don't forget to periodically check the patch notes and then change it back to "-1" at that point, otherwise you will be hamstringing future performance benefits.

fred4 · May 2018

My CPU is a quad core without hyper-threading. I am experimentally limiting eso64.exe to Cores 1, 2 and 3 using the Set Affinity... option in Task Manager whenever I play now. I don't know if it is this or ZOS' hot fix already included some improvements, but stutters are quite rare and less severe now. I'll only know for sure at prime time over the weekend though. I've been playing at odd times, so that's another thing. This was just a quick and easy thing to play around with. Maybe there's something to it, maybe not.

The theory behind omitting Core 0 is that, I think, on some WIndows versions certain parts of the OS (kernel drivers - not sure) only run on that Core. I could be way off base and out of date, but anyway. I've also been wondering whether there is some priority inversion going on.

MinarasLaure · May 2018

Revert the performance enhancements until a solution to the freezes can be found.

Voted for revert the changes.
I mean, they did it already (and we're still waiting lol)

fred4 · May 2018

fred4 wrote: »

I am experimentally limiting eso64.exe to Cores 1, 2 and 3 using the Set Affinity... option in Task Manager whenever I play now. I don't know if it is this or ZOS' hot fix already included some improvements, but stutters are quite rare and less severe now.

Forget this. Stutters are back today. Seems to depend on the number of characters on the screen. Now trying changes to UserSettings.txt.

Raideen · May 2018

Revert the performance enhancements until a solution to the freezes can be found.

I am guessing it could have something to do with the spyware they implemented on the 25th of may
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/416267/zos-integrated-spyware-red-shell-into-eso-faq-howto-block-it#latest

Klixen · June 2018

Since Summerset I've been plagued by these freezes. Sometimes they're so bad the game either crashes (with an error message) or I have to ctrl > alt > del.

So I'm going to try the changes to UserSettings.txt. I just need a little clarification.

My UserSettings.txt looks like this:

SET RequestedNumWorkerThreads "-1"

Should I change it to just "1" or "=1" ?

Edit: Just read through the whole thread. I'll change it to "1". Thank you @danno8

Kimba_Do · June 2018

I've only noticed momentary stutter and very rarely at that. I do see occasional ping jumps, but that's a lot tougher to say it's the game. I do have a pretty gnarly system though, so maybe it's powering through them. Either way, playability is fine, for me.

I would suggest observation and reproduction to attempt to identify any possible factors - as mentioned above, does it only happen when there's a lot going on? A specific zone? These are the types of details that can aid in a fix. Also, when sending in a ticket on this, don't forget to post your full system specs, and it wouldn't hurt to give your Winblows build number also. Unless you're on a console, 'cause then that last one won't help much.

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How should ZOS deal with the game freezes?

How should ZOS deal with the game freezes? 64 votes