EU Server Performance - Update from Matt Firor

zvavi · June 2019

Peekachu99 wrote: »

Jamdarius wrote: »

Peekachu99 wrote: »

Thank you for the update, @ZOS_JessicaFolsom This was exactly the info that I was looking for in the AMA and I know that architecture changes like this aren’t easy to implement so I appreciate you keeping us in the loop on larger scale development plans. 6 months isn’t too long of a wait for better tools and performance.

You have totally forgotten PC EU was already suffering from those issues for 6 months at least (around before Murkmire release if you ask me but whatever lets say it was just 6 months and not 9 QQ).

meaning they tell us that we should wait another 6 months to a total of at 12 months IF THEY WILL ACTUALLY FIX THE DAMN THING. So far I see nothing but empty promises...

You realize that a vast majority of players experience next to no issues at all, right? I’ve crashed maybe once in the last six months in 4-6h of playing across weekends and peak times. Anecdotally, performance has gotten better (PS4 Pro). So your experience is not empirical. If you’re playing on a base console or crap PC that’s your first issue. Also data server location is another, but that will affect you in every major online game depending on where you live.

U r aware this is a post about pc and not ps, right?

Haenk · June 2019

Peekachu99 wrote: »

You realize that a vast majority of players experience next to no issues at all, right? I’ve crashed maybe once in the last six months in 4-6h of playing across weekends and peak times. Anecdotally, performance has gotten better (PS4 Pro). So your experience is not empirical. If you’re playing on a base console or crap PC that’s your first issue. Also data server location is another, but that will affect you in every major online game depending on where you live.

"PS4" obviously means, you are not on the crumbling PC EU server. This might explain, why you and your Friends are not experiencing any issues. You are simply a minority playing on just-another-server. Meanwhile the majority suffers on the "main server". Or at least the smoking pieces, formerly called server.

(On a technical side, I assume a central database server, surrounded by "instance"-servers. Adding more instance server will allow for more logged in players, the database server being a bottleneck, which cannot easily be scaled up.)
But yeah, fix the client. (I really have no problem at all with the client. I couldn't think of anything that would need a fix right now.)

KoultouraS · June 2019

Never ceases to amaze me the fact that modern game industry has come into a point, where you literaly
buy promises and thin air .

What do u expect we should do Matt?
Really I just want to know what would YOU(ZOS) guys do as a paying customer of your product...

Nerftheforums · June 2019

This is the type of communication your customers would love to have more of! Thank you very much for speaking to us, continue like this!

sionIV · June 2019

Imagine if your internet provider told you: "I know you've had horrible performance the last half a year, but we've just started looking into it, you'll have to wait at least an additional 6-8 months before we can do anything about it. Oh by the way, we're releasing a few new cool features on our homepage, please take a look at those!"

Ankael07 · June 2019

KoultouraS wrote: »

Never seizes to amaze me the fact that modern game industry has come into a point, where you literaly
buy promises and thin air .

What do u expect we should do Matt?
Really I just want to know what would YOU(ZOS) guys do as a paying customer of your product...

When we buy ESO its not as a product but ''access to online service''. Thats why they can wave their hands around throwing false promises of acceptable game performance. No one can take them to the court

twev · June 2019

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Hi everyone,

Today, members of the ESO team are participating in a Reddit AMA over on the ESO subreddit. We have seen your questions and concerns about EU server performance, server capacity, and issues with the Activity Finder, and wanted to make sure we addressed them in the AMA and here. Below is a response from Game Director Matt Firor.

Hello! I suspect we'll get questions about performance more than a few times today, so I prepared a description of what we have going on to address performance concerns - on a number of fronts.

Even though there is very little new information here, we definitely could be doing a better job of keeping everyone appraised of how things are going while we are in process. We will be better messengers in the future keeping everyone up to date on longer-term fixes and updates.

First, server capacity. As we all know, we had server capacity issues a few months back, especially on the PC EU servers. We were forced to temporarily cap the number of concurrent users on PC EU and put up a queuing system to enforce it. We got the new capacity online for PC EU in a week, and added that same capacity for PC NA (which was very close to experiencing the same problems). We took the queuing system down, and we can now support the concurrency demand we are seeing.

Second, the looking for group system. As we posted last week, we are working on a 100% revamp of this system, which is mostly used for Dungeon and Battleground queuing. We have a version done that we are testing in-house, although it will be a while before it goes live. We want to make sure that the solution we have scales correctly and will support the now massive numbers of players that are using the system. We are planning for revamped LFG system to be in Update 24, depending on how testing is going. Until then, we will continue with the only solution we have (which we posted about last week in the LFG update) - cap the number of players in the queue. We know it is extremely frustrating to not be able to queue for dungeons and BGs and get "cannot join queue" when you try, but at least now once you get into a queue successfully, you should be able to join the dungeon or BG.

Third: overall performance. Rich talked about this in his end of year message six months ago: we are currently implementing sweeping optimization and memory management client architecture changes that should improve client performance and especially client stability. These optimizations will be most noticeable on lower-spec PCs, base Xbox, and base PS4, but overall everyone should notice better stability and performance. This is scheduled for Update 24. Additionally, we have another set of optimizations scheduled for Q1 next year that will reduce the client "footprint" requirements and should speed up loading times.

Fourth: Longer term, we are in the beginning stages of combat system performance improvements that should improve overall game performance in Cyrodiil and Trials. Stay tuned for updates on this.

Obviously if anything else crops up, we'll investigate. I know that it can seem like it takes an inordinate amount of time to address performance problems, but we need to take our time and make sure that we don't introduce new issues while we do this. Thanks for your patience, and we will keep you updated.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/bwdb0r/welcome_to_the_elsweyr_update_22_aua/epwuxj0/

You'll find more details in our PC-EU Server Update thread from April here.

This was posted at 2:15PM today, and I logged in over there as soon as I saw it on the forum (5:15PM the same day, 3 hours later) and this is one of the first pieces of info I see:

Welcome to the Elsweyr & Update 22 AUA
AUA Ended

EDIT: It's now 3pm, and we're going to wrap up. Thank you to everyone who came out today! We'll continuing answering a few more questions later today as time allows, but for now, off to more meetings and creating awesome things. Elsweyr hype!

Thanks for the advance notice.

ynimma · June 2019

I stay unsubbed and un-Elsweyred and un-anythinged you push out as future DLCs until the game will come up to a "fit for purpose" standard. Which is the basic term of the backbone of honest trading.
The game needs proper server background.
Until that's done and dusted I'll pay no attention to words and so called "communication".
ZOS has the finances but not the will.
As much as I have the money to sub or buy DLCs but not the will.
Your turn.

Merlight · June 2019

Hyzock wrote: »

Fourth: Longer term, we are in the beginning stages of combat system performance improvements that should improve overall game performance in Cyrodiil and Trials. Stay tuned for updates on this.

You're in the "beginning stages" of fixing an issue of something that has been a major issue for about 5 years? Matt is telling us they've been doing literally nothing about cyro performance for the past 5 years? CP pvp has been unplayable during prime time for the past 5 years 4 years and 2 months and only now they're in the "beginning stages"? I don't even know what to say anymore.

FTFY. Other than that, on spot!

lemonizzle · June 2019

Can you responsible at zos add the option to pay for elsweyr not immediately, but sometimes in the future (as it takes time to earn cash so I have to make sure my credit card works). I'll get the dlc, and will keep you updated on when will I transfer the money, which may or may not come after all.
It's your profits on the line not the players'.

SilverPaws · June 2019

They are not serious right ?

PvP is unplayable for so long time and they are now telling us we need to wait even more for fix that maybe even won't come ?
This is unaceptable...

Killum · June 2019

Personally, after reading this post, I am disgusted with the lack of action being taken to correct, fix or improve the faults/problems we are faced with on the PCEU server.

I was about to re-new because I had an offer from marketing that would give me an extra month if I resubscribed. This will not happen now.

After the patch today it took me over 3 hrs of trying to log in (twice thrown back to log-in screen for inactivity before getting to character select screen), 3 hrs? Ridiculous!

I may resubscribe after you have completed the work necessary to make this game playable at any time of the day, but I am not holding my breath.

jircris11 · June 2019

[removed quote]

Adding a change to a core feature is not as easy as most people on here think. They. Need to make sure the game does not implode on its self. Honestly most the people made about it taking so long will be the same ppl complaining they should have tested it.

fred4 · June 2019

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

First, server capacity ... we can now support the concurrency demand we are seeing.

Extremely worrying to read that this is what you think. Why all this talk about the client? You're working on irrelevant stuff, as far as I can see. I guess the real problems are too tough to tackle. The last couple of months have been really bad. In no way is server capacity truly fixed nor was it ever truly capable of coping with prime-time Cyrodiil on PC EU.

Iluvrien · June 2019

Peekachu99 wrote: »

Jamdarius wrote: »

Peekachu99 wrote: »

Thank you for the update, @ZOS_JessicaFolsom This was exactly the info that I was looking for in the AMA and I know that architecture changes like this aren’t easy to implement so I appreciate you keeping us in the loop on larger scale development plans. 6 months isn’t too long of a wait for better tools and performance.

You have totally forgotten PC EU was already suffering from those issues for 6 months at least (around before Murkmire release if you ask me but whatever lets say it was just 6 months and not 9 QQ).

meaning they tell us that we should wait another 6 months to a total of at 12 months IF THEY WILL ACTUALLY FIX THE DAMN THING. So far I see nothing but empty promises...

You realize that a vast majority of players experience next to no issues at all, right? I’ve crashed maybe once in the last six months in 4-6h of playing across weekends and peak times. Anecdotally, performance has gotten better (PS4 Pro). So your experience is not empirical. If you’re playing on a base console or crap PC that’s your first issue. Also data server location is another, but that will affect you in every major online game depending on where you live.

Thank you for giving us your feedback on completely the wrong platform. I am sure it is very useful to... someone.

In the mean time, I would suspect that the client side fixes are taking place because ZOS already has a team at HQ that handles similar things. The reason the server performance upgrades will not take place is because it would require too much investment (further hardware, people etc.) for a game that ZOS is probably considering in terms of maintenance (now) and sunsetting (when the new game arrives).

Banana · June 2019

Im pretty sure the human race will be extinct before any performance updates will happen for this game.

Gnozo · June 2019

Fourth: Longer term, we are in the beginning stages of combat system performance improvements that should improve overall game performance in Cyrodiil and Trials. Stay tuned for updates on this

So, Cyro Performance is one of the hottest topics since Launch (5 years ago btw) and you are NOW in the BEGINNING of improvements for cyro Performance?????????????????

This is a joke right?

Miswar · June 2019

Haenk wrote: »

Peekachu99 wrote: »

You realize that a vast majority of players experience next to no issues at all, right? I’ve crashed maybe once in the last six months in 4-6h of playing across weekends and peak times. Anecdotally, performance has gotten better (PS4 Pro). So your experience is not empirical. If you’re playing on a base console or crap PC that’s your first issue. Also data server location is another, but that will affect you in every major online game depending on where you live.

"PS4" obviously means, you are not on the crumbling PC EU server. This might explain, why you and your Friends are not experiencing any issues. You are simply a minority playing on just-another-server. Meanwhile the majority suffers on the "main server". Or at least the smoking pieces, formerly called server.

(On a technical side, I assume a central database server, surrounded by "instance"-servers. Adding more instance server will allow for more logged in players, the database server being a bottleneck, which cannot easily be scaled up.)
But yeah, fix the client. (I really have no problem at all with the client. I couldn't think of anything that would need a fix right now.)

The ps4 performance have been disgrace for longtime now and been getting worse and worse.

I don't know what the poster you are refering to since that is not true.

The lag in cyrodiil, trials etc is beyond joke to 9 out 10 people (the 1 person been the ultra fanboys that will defend zos no matter what).

Just thought I correct that statement with is absurd.

Fix the damn pc servers and also fix the damn console servers that are disgrace to any game using online mode.

As for the this so called update. Have heard it all before and nothing has changed... nor do I believe that anything will. Just another stack of empty promises from ZoS while they make more problems appear.

Takanami · June 2019

TL;DR: "we might fix things in 2020

"

Vapirko · June 2019

My issue with this? We have heard this exact rhetoric in years past. None of the changes have done much of anything. It’s so far past time. Another year+ of performance as it has been? Idk. I understand not everyone may be have the same game performance but PvP around prime time has been so god awful since Elsweyr it’s reaching unprecedented levels for me. Last night I was experiencing ping in Vivec ranging from 130 to 300 constantly. I could not play. That’s from the East Coast on PC/NA. To put this in perspective, I play from two very different locations. Thailand and the US. I swear that my performance off hours from Thailand, 2-3 bars across in Vivec, is far better than my performance during prime time in the US. To me that’s insane. The servers or the game or whatever is in really bad shape. What capacity changes were made did nothing except maybe to allow more people in to further bog down the servers.

Van_Winkle · June 2019

Is this a joke? We are already waiting for 5 years until this game will work not like early beta! And where gone previous optimizations? They actually worked, but until the first 'hotfix' - then they disappeared.

Tasear · June 2019

casparian wrote: »

We will be better messengers in the future keeping everyone up to date on longer-term fixes and updates.

I hope so, but if I had a nickel for every time y'all have said this, I would be able to subscribe to Plus for the remaining lifetime of the game.

^ this is scary true.

Alcast · June 2019

"and we can now support the concurrency demand we are seeing"

Knootewoot · June 2019

Oh, it's one of those auto generated: "we are working on it" posts to keep pvp people on a leash.

We heard this before and after that years of silence. Every update, every patch performance went downhill (at least on PC-EU, I don't play the others)

Remove deers? Yes, we also reduced performance while doing that.

How long will it take before people snap. I mean I did after elsewyr dropped. I did like the changes, but the performance was so sad in pvp.

gepe87 · June 2019

We are a bit tired hearing that everything is pushed to next update and so on.

Numerikuu · June 2019

Takanami wrote: »

TL;DR: "we might fix things in 2020 "

This. Sorry, but you've known about these issues for a long time now but elected to ignore them, and now that you address them you're not expediting the issue?...

As we all know, we had server capacity issues a few months back

Also lol at the 'had'... it's 'have' actually, and still do, and have done, for a long time now. Christ.

Words won't save you now. Actions will. Asking an already extremely pissed off and fed up user base to be patient and wait for over half a year longer after they've already waited a long time to even be heard is asking too much imo. And we've all heard the same *** before. We wait, nothing changes, things continue to deteriorate, and we're told to wait again.

Well, we will wait... we just won't give you another cent until we see results. Not that you care, because you'll continue to pump out new content in order to attract new players for new revenue, because that's the biz.

I really hope things do improve though. TES 6 is already in a negative light after the disaster that was FO76. ESO's degradation doesn't need to add to that worry.

gronoxvx · June 2019

I understand that these things take time, but having to wait until end of 2019/q1 2020 is crushing. Especially since its literally the biggest complaint when it comes to this game.

Not a post about quitting the game or anything, but if this is pushed out any further you will see your numbers dwindle. Especially those outside of the US. So i really hope you can deliver like you can with game content. I love this game and you certainly deliver content wise, but geez you really need to step it up on QOL. Especially if you keep advertising a broken game in the australian/oceanic market like you have for elsweyr as word does spread.

Banana · June 2019

Someone else clearly needs to take over this circus

twev · June 2019

Takanami wrote: »

TL;DR: "we might fix things in 2020 "

"we might fix (some)thing(s) in 2020

"

Audrena · June 2019

gronoxvx wrote: »

I understand that these things take time, but having to wait until end of 2019/q1 2020 is crushing. Especially since its literally the biggest complaint when it comes to this game.

Spare a thought for us Australian players, whose latency has skyrocketed from ~200 to a massive 350ms as a best case. 27 pages on the forum thread about that one, and ZOS has not even been decent enough to throw out a "we're looking into it" - they're completely ignoring it, and we not only have no timeline for a fix, we don't even have the vague promise of one.