Why Does Lag Effect the Opposing Faction to the Zerg More?

Iskiab · December 2019

There’s one thing that really bothers me and I’m not sure what the cause is.

When an enemy faction zergs with 100+ players your abilities stop working.

As lag gets worse the first to go are targeted aoes hitting multiple people, then melee abilities dependent on range, then healing abilities.

I’ve read lots of crazy theories about what causes lag in cyrodiil from cross healing, etc... but that doesn’t match up with reality. The biggest culprit seems to be enemy players in your vicinity.

VaranisArano · December 2019

As someone who tries to fight at hotly contested keeps and regularly crashes on the way inside or within view of the keep walls, I'd like to blame the members of the opposing faction's zerg for causing me to crash to the login screen.

JK.

I'm actually pretty sure that its the large mass of players on my faction fighting the large mass of players on the other faction that causes the crashes.

So yeah, I'd agree that large numbers of players fighting in one spot tends to create major performance issues. I'd just make the caveat that I'm not sure faction matters in those large battles. Instead, in my experience, I see more crashes during or approaching large battles period.

(I fight mainly during primetime, so I see a lot of even fights. YMMV if you play at times when you are usually outnumbered by a wide margin.)

Iskiab · December 2019

Well tonight we had ~24 people and were fighting around 100. In situations like that it’s when abilities stop working.

Oddly enough, if it’s 100v100 the lag might even be better. I’ve also noticed when it’s 100 players on your side the lag isn’t nearly as bad, it seems to be opposing players that cause more lag.

VaranisArano · December 2019

Iskiab wrote: »

Well tonight we had ~24 people and were fighting around 100. In situations like that it’s when abilities stop working.

Oddly enough, if it’s 100v100 the lag might even be better. I’ve also noticed when it’s 100 players on your side the lag isn’t nearly as bad, it seems to be opposing players that cause more lag.

I've read some theories that it has to do with loading in large numbers of players at once. So if you are riding with a large group, you've already loaded those players. If you then meet a group of the opposing faction, that's like a wall of incoming stuff you have to load. (Which would also explain my situation of crashing on the way to a large fight, as I'm trying to load ALL the players, regardless of faction.)

That being said, I fully admit I don't have the technical expertise to say if that explanation is correct or not.

Iskiab · December 2019

VaranisArano wrote: »

Iskiab wrote: »

Well tonight we had ~24 people and were fighting around 100. In situations like that it’s when abilities stop working.

Oddly enough, if it’s 100v100 the lag might even be better. I’ve also noticed when it’s 100 players on your side the lag isn’t nearly as bad, it seems to be opposing players that cause more lag.

I've read some theories that it has to do with loading in large numbers of players at once. So if you are riding with a large group, you've already loaded those players. If you then meet a group of the opposing faction, that's like a wall of incoming stuff you have to load. (Which would also explain my situation of crashing on the way to a large fight, as I'm trying to load ALL the players, regardless of faction.)

That being said, I fully admit I don't have the technical expertise to say if that explanation is correct or not.

That sounds right to me. Thinking about it, then as people are rendering it’s bottlenecking and dropping packets?

Major_Lag · December 2019

VaranisArano wrote: »

I've read some theories that it has to do with loading in large numbers of players at once. So if you are riding with a large group, you've already loaded those players. If you then meet a group of the opposing faction, that's like a wall of incoming stuff you have to load. (Which would also explain my situation of crashing on the way to a large fight, as I'm trying to load ALL the players, regardless of faction.)

That being said, I fully admit I don't have the technical expertise to say if that explanation is correct or not.

There seems to be a grain of truth to this. You might well be correct about it.

I've seen it numerous times during the huge sieges at Bleakers or Aleswell, when my faction is defending:

As long as I'm already at Ales/Blk before the siege starts, this is perfectly fine and I don't have any loading issues, other than random loadscreens (which seem to affect everyone, anyway). And of course the usual lag, but that's another story.

But trying to port to those locations when there's already 40+ enemy players sieging the MG (during the short window of opportunity before the MG goes below 50% health), now that's just outright impossible.

What always happens in those latter cases, is that I either get disconnected outright in the middle of the (extremely long) loading screen, or I miraculously manage to load in... but it's a hollow victory, because I end up loaded into a "zombie land" where everyone is standing around like lemons, I have 999+ ping, can't mount or cast any abilities, and invariably get disconnected about half a minute later.

Nordic__Knights · December 2019

Was fighting in an 4v4 having no issues we had been going for id say 6 to 8 minutes then an group of maybe 60 or more showed up and all 4 of my alliance froze and looked to be 3 of the other because they the 3 stopped attacking when we froze but 60 man rolled all 4 of us and that was the end of that one
So with what your saying it sounds like you mite be right on why this happens

Iskiab · December 2019

Nordic__Knights wrote: »

Was fighting in an 4v4 having no issues we had been going for id say 6 to 8 minutes then an group of maybe 60 or more showed up and all 4 of my alliance froze and looked to be 3 of the other because they the 3 stopped attacking when we froze but 60 man rolled all 4 of us and that was the end of that one
So with what your saying it sounds like you mite be right on why this happens

Wait, do you mean that the small group of who you were fighting of the same faction as the Zerg didn’t freeze?

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO · December 2019

The reasons the "zerg" of players are less affected are as follows:
1) they are running together so their characters have all loaded in each other's clients.

This is why players closing in on a large keep fight crash (because the game tries to load too much at once and drops connection as a result) if you close in on a keep slowly. Ideally from one factions side so that you load that faction partially then a bit more and finally start to load the rest it doesn't crash (can tell this because your ping will spoke whilst you are loading players at the keep. If you don't get any closer and wait for the ping to settle often you can proceed - might need to do this a couple of times).
A good way to prevent issues is to have a medium render distance. This allows only partial areas of the keep & players to render. 0 is worse though as it will generally cause everything to render at once when you get too close.
If you do crash set your view distance to 0 before logging back in and often you can get back in and start to load stuff more slowly. Additionally never take a camp outside of render range in these fights. If you do so go back very slowly as taking the camp drops your render list.

2) player effects are suppressed for allies. This means that as a smaller group vs the zerg you have to show all their effects and abilities cast causing more strain on your system than their own.

VaranisArano · December 2019

Iskiab wrote: »

Nordic__Knights wrote: »

Was fighting in an 4v4 having no issues we had been going for id say 6 to 8 minutes then an group of maybe 60 or more showed up and all 4 of my alliance froze and looked to be 3 of the other because they the 3 stopped attacking when we froze but 60 man rolled all 4 of us and that was the end of that one
So with what your saying it sounds like you mite be right on why this happens

Wait, do you mean that the small group of who you were fighting of the same faction as the Zerg didn’t freeze?

Nordic_Knights can correct me if I've misunderstood, but I read that as saying that 3 of the 4 opposing small group also appeared to freeze because they stopped attacking at the same time as the freezing happened. Then they got rolled by the 60 man.

nesakinter · December 2019

You are a regular member of HOMICIDE the zergiest guild of ESO PvP. You should be the last person to say this.

Iskiab · December 2019

nesakinter wrote: »

You are a regular member of HOMICIDE the zergiest guild of ESO PvP. You should be the last person to say this.

Seriously? You must be one of the delusional ‘small scalers’ who pvp with 6 other small scale groups around in a Zerg of 60.

Homicide went big to counter DC and EP faction stacks when we started in no-CP cyrodiil. Most players are completely delusional about how they really play the game. Btw, if you’re in a group of 12ish and are fighting side by side with 4 other guilds you’re not small scale.

We regularly fight 4x our number. Stop making excuses for getting rolled.

Anyone who intentionally goes to EP in CP Cyrodiil on PC-NA is a zerger - period. It doesn’t matter how many players are in your group.

Nordic__Knights · December 2019

Iskiab wrote: »

Nordic__Knights wrote: »

Was fighting in an 4v4 having no issues we had been going for id say 6 to 8 minutes then an group of maybe 60 or more showed up and all 4 of my alliance froze and looked to be 3 of the other because they the 3 stopped attacking when we froze but 60 man rolled all 4 of us and that was the end of that one
So with what your saying it sounds like you mite be right on why this happens

Wait, do you mean that the small group of who you were fighting of the same faction as the Zerg didn’t freeze?

Seemed 3 mite of but 1 for sure didn't

ThePedge · December 2019

I'm not sure as I haven't been paying attention, but maybe some can confirm or I will check tomorrow.

But animations and AoEs of friendly players do not always show. It's definitely this way outside of PvP, you can't see a friendly grothdar as you don't need to. Enemy abilities and AoEs need to be loaded so you know what is going to damage you. The more enemies, more animations, more lag.

Faction with more players has less showing as more are friendly, and less being returned.

Again, may not be the same in PvP, I know I can see some abilities you usually can't of friendlies, like Blockade. (Imagine 12 blockades trying to render over eachother in a trial, ew)