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Why is the game so unplayable right now?

D3x
D3x
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As the title states, what exactly is the issue? Is can I not play cyrodill without getting 250+ ping.
Currently playing EU PC and sure while I did start because of corona vaction, and people are arguing that the bad performance is due to extra population but that is not true because I used to play the game on Xbox eu around 5 years ago and it is exactly still the same. I can not kill a single person in peace, I can upload clips if requested but I think you all witness the same everyday. So back to my question why exactly is it so bad? Does zos not have enough resources to deploy actually quality servers or what exactly is the issue. I personally would agree and understand if I was told that zos's revenue is not enough to deploy high quality servers, I feel like that would be somewhat of a logical reason but in that case I don't mind the game being a subscription model like wow, I don't mind paying extra at all, I totally love the game and would like to actually play and enjoy it, please ZOS tell us what exactly is the issue.
  • zvavi
    zvavi
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    D3x wrote: »
    please ZOS tell us what exactly is the issue.

    We are getting performance updates this year. :trollface:
    Edited by zvavi on April 13, 2020 2:37AM
  • SillyGT
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    This so god awful on console it’s sad
    SillyGT on ps4 and Sleepin on PC.
    I have way to many hours on this game 27k to be exact. 99% of it has been in Cyrodiil (Dec. 2024)
    Currently have 15 Grand Overlords and like to role play as a stealthy assassin.
  • fred4
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    zvavi wrote: »
    D3x wrote: »
    please ZOS tell us what exactly is the issue.

    We are getting performance updates this year. :trollface:
    Pretty much this. ZOS are "working on it", but they've only managed to accidentally make things worse, so far.

    The following is complete speculation. They worked on block, because they noticed a lot of server-side processing related to block. I don't know whether performance was the primary motivation or whether it was their general (IMO unwarranted) combat overhaul. At any rate, it seems that block feels more unresponsive now. I mostly play magicka shielding characters, so it's not very noticeable to me, but it's what I read. I do notice more glitches though, where a character floats backwards in weird ways. These are likely due to positional server desyncs.

    A possible explanation is that they're trying to cut down on network traffic and this includes less frequent positional updates. A lot of issues IMO arise from positional desyncs. Pure speculation, but it might explain some of what's happening. Performance problems are difficult to troubleshoot. Their programmers may be trying to pick low-hanging fruit and failing. They may not have a correct analysis of where the performance problems lie yet or the company may be unwilling to commit enough human and hardware resources.
  • Elekest
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    Purely speculation here but I imagine ZoS has the funding for better servers. Again, I could be wrong but I just assume they are making a killing off of this game. The problem is, even when this game launched in 2014, they were using old and outdated, unstable servers even back then and haven't upgraded to new ones. ZoS SHOULD be able to afford new servers, they just don't want to.

    I suppose it IS possible they are running with a much smaller crew currently due to the pandemic, but even still. Servers have never been stable. It's always been an issue, it's just more noticeable now with so many people being at home using internet and ESO servers being overrun.
    Founder & Guild Master of the Mystic Wolves
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  • idk
    idk
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    Elekest wrote: »
    Purely speculation here but I imagine ZoS has the funding for better servers. Again, I could be wrong but I just assume they are making a killing off of this game. The problem is, even when this game launched in 2014, they were using old and outdated, unstable servers even back then and haven't upgraded to new ones. ZoS SHOULD be able to afford new servers, they just don't want to.

    I suppose it IS possible they are running with a much smaller crew currently due to the pandemic, but even still. Servers have never been stable. It's always been an issue, it's just more noticeable now with so many people being at home using internet and ESO servers being overrun.

    The pandemic has nothing to do with the performance of the servers since that has been an issue well before all this started.

    While you are correct that Zos has made a substantial profit from this game you are incorrect in the assumption that simply upgrading the servers would solve everything. Performance has degraded over time due to mismanagement of the game. Zos has added more load to the servers over the years and probably bit off more than they could handle with the mega server design they chose.

    In the end, the issue is more complex than hardware.
  • Dracane
    Dracane
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    Companies usually try to invest as little as possible to gain as much as possible.
    Auri-El is my lord,
    Trinimac is my shield,
    Magnus is my mind.

    My debut album on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Gleandra/videos
  • IndianaJames7
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    They say they are trying to fix it but I doubt anyone actually believes that anymore. For a company as big as zenimax/Bethesda they could easily throw some money at this issue and fix it if they wanted to.

    Can you imagine if a game from a different ‘AAA’ game like fortnite consistently had 3 second+ delays for skills to fire and most of the time you pressed an ability button in combat nothing happened? The fact that they are pretending this is an important issue to them is just insulting. Someone in their company has obviously done the math and believes that eso can make more money without making any actual investments so that’s exactly what they plan to do.

    And this has nothing to do with coronavirus. PVP was unplayable since before everyone started getting quarantined.
  • fred4
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    For those who are saying new servers ... while I wouldn't discount that could help, I wouldn't be surprised if performance was bottlenecked on a single thread for each zone / instance. I don't write complex game software, but I have to troubleshoot network / database performance issues in my job from time to time. As a programmer, when you initially write the software, it can be difficult to tell which parts you need to optimise for performance. A lot of code can be written in inefficient ways and it's perfectly fine, because it's not on a critical path and doesn't get executed all the time. The first rule is to write reliable code, not performance optimised code. However, in the cases where I subsequently had to optimise performance, 5x to 10x performance increases have been common. Single-threaded hardware performance has not increased by that margin over the past decade. I think you're more likely to get big performance increases out of refactoring code, but it's more difficult than simply throwing new hardware at the problem.
  • GerStyler
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    ZO$ will destroy Eso Step by Step more.
    I hope from the buttom of my hear, that eso lose all players to new World.
    Couse that is what they earned.

    @ZOS_GinaBruno look how far it has gone and how the Community thinks about ZO$
  • idk
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    GerStyler wrote: »
    ZO$ will destroy Eso Step by Step more.
    I hope from the buttom of my hear, that eso lose all players to new World.
    Couse that is what they earned.

    look how far it has gone and how the Community thinks about ZO$

    @GerStyler

    ESO will lose very few players to New World. New World does have an interesting design but it is catering to a very different crowd than ESO. NW is very much PvP focused with very little PvE. The PvE it does have is not very well designed from a sandbox MMORPG basis. ESO is mostly PvE and offers a much wider range of activities to draw in a larger crowd. Also, combat have a much more basic design in NW vs ESO.

    If you have played NW during alpha or beta this would be evident.
  • darthgummibear_ESO
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    Their last "performance update" made it worse, along with having a free to play event, during the anniversary event, immediately following the release of the prologue for the coming expansion, during a time when the majority of the world is stuck at home without adding any server support.

    Big shocker that things are performing so poorly.
  • ku5h
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    They cut huge portion of the game with last performance patch.
    They probably deleted half of core code.
  • TheRealDrRat
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    It really has been bad lately, so much so that it's making it very hard for me to play my role. It's most likely due to all the patch maintenance that has been going on lately.
  • Dominion_Nightblade
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    I just don't understand how they made it worse when they were supposed to make it better... It makes me so sad.
  • D3x
    D3x
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    I just don't understand how they made it worse when they were supposed to make it better... It makes me so sad.

    :(
  • Mancombe_Nosehair
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    After the eu server fell over last week, I suspect that Zos has lowered performance levels to ensure that it can handle the increase in numbers.

    It would explain the guild store and bank being so slow lately.
  • Tsunahmie
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    Not just store and bank but CAN WE TALK about CHATLAG?! holy moly is the chat lag bad as well!
  • Killum
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    Simple answer - Too many players, not enough servers.
  • Rowjoh
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    @idk

    just want to ask if you have played New World (beta/alpha or other) ?

    I'm very interested in this game. The design looks amazing with an interesting premise and core mechanics, so could be a viable alternative to eso in some respects (especially as it evolves), though not necessarily a direct rival.

    What do you think ?
    Edited by Rowjoh on April 13, 2020 9:53AM
  • Athrys5
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    Imho it is a server performance issue. I've tried PC/NA and (as expected since i live in EU) the ping is high however it's very stable therefore playable compared to EU. Same code, different hardware/population.
    EU - PC

    Athryss
  • SgtSilock
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    Is it normal for game to run buttery smooth but drops frames when in towns where there’s lots of people?
  • Rowjoh
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    SgtSilock wrote: »
    Is it normal for game to run buttery smooth but drops frames when in towns where there’s lots of people?

    Depends on the game and if it's 'prime time' or not, but it is in ESO I'm afraid.

  • Nerouyn
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    I've passed through Cyrodiil recently so can vouch for problems there.

    But in regular open world PvE and also dungeons, no problems.
  • Faulgor
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    zvavi wrote: »
    D3x wrote: »
    please ZOS tell us what exactly is the issue.

    We are getting performance updates this year. :trollface:

    You've been getting constant performance updates last year, too!

    If that didn't help, maybe we can finally put the ongoing demands to "focus on performance instead of content" to rest, because evidently it didn't work, and people will never be happy with the performance of this game.
    Alandrol Sul: He's making another Numidium?!?
    Vivec: Worse, buddy. They're buying it.
  • KingMagaw
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    This is a simple issue really.


    Too many computations are being done server side. ZOS are now systematically stripping values from the game to decrease the resources required.

    Personally it was a mix of old coding, old hardware, incompetent team who continued to expand upon a broken foundation. We seen many things but dodge chance was a big value to take out.

    ZOS will continue to strip ESO to eek the tiniest performance gains from it. CP was a huge mistake. There has been many mistakes over the years.
  • jadarock
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    Nerouyn wrote: »
    I've passed through Cyrodiil recently so can vouch for problems there.

    But in regular open world PvE and also dungeons, no problems.

    How do you just pass through cyrodiil? And no I've had plenty of instances lately while leveling new characters in overland pve where skills and heals weren't working or were delayed 2-5secs same goes for dungeons....
  • idk
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    Rowjoh wrote: »

    just want to ask if you have played New World (beta/alpha or other) ?

    I'm very interested in this game. The design looks amazing with an interesting premise and core mechanics, so could be a viable alternative to eso in some respects (especially as it evolves), though not necessarily a direct rival.

    What do you think ?

    @Rowjoh

    I sent you a PM.

    It would not be right for me to post such information openly in the forums.
    Edited by idk on April 13, 2020 10:59AM
  • valeriiya
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    They let it go for so long that they don't know how to fix it now
  • fred4
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    KingMagaw wrote: »
    This is a simple issue really.
    From a programmer who has to fix it point of view, I would say: Nope.
    Too many computations are being done server side.
    Now that you say that, I believe they had to move a lot of stuff server side from when the client was first released, due to bots and exploits. This makes sense. For example it is known that Windows spends as much as 40% of CPU time validating that 3rd parties aren't doing anything invalid. When you think about it, though, if the client performed more work in the past and this had a big performance impact, that could mean some of the code could or should already be parallelized and throwing more CPU cores at the problem could be part of a solution. Hmmmm.
    ZOS are now systematically stripping values from the game to decrease the resources required.
    I have that impression too, but what's remarkable is how little success they've had with that, which means they're either unwilling or unable to perform a sufficiently in-depth analysis and are therefore just randomly trying stuff, which is very disappointing.
  • Muizer
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    fred4 wrote: »
    ZOS are now systematically stripping values from the game to decrease the resources required.
    I have that impression too, but what's remarkable is how little success they've had with that, which means they're either unwilling or unable to perform a sufficiently in-depth analysis and are therefore just randomly trying stuff, which is very disappointing.

    What concerns me is that they have actually said there is no silver bullet. I don't know about you, but when optimizing performance, there often turns out to be a silver bullet. It migth just be a combination of things that is hard to diagnose. Yet to come out and say there isn't one to me kind of suggests they know of some fundamental weakness that's beyond a mere code refactor, and that they are now limited to optimizing anything they can that comes on top of that. Like plugging leaks in a hull that's structurally unsound, in the hope of riding it out to the nearest port (which is when they stop producing new content/make money off of ESO). I think that is certainly an impression a lot of us have. In short, I'd be encouraged if they said "we don't know what's causing the problems, but we're working on it". To say "there's no silver bullet" is saying "we know what's wrong and we can't fix it".
    Edited by Muizer on April 13, 2020 1:21PM
    Please stop making requests for game features. ZOS have enough bad ideas as it is!
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