With all the money Zenimax is making, why not invest in some new server upgrades?

Neonisys · April 2020

I mean, instead of just writing stuff in patch notes and pretending it being written there magically improves performance in the game.

Can't even sign in. What fun.

Hurbster · April 2020

Probably spent all the money on turning Fallout 76 into a game that people might actually want to play.

Elsonso · April 2020

Neonisys wrote: »

I mean, instead of just writing stuff in patch notes and pretending it being written there magically improves performance in the game.

Can't even sign in. What fun.

To address the title...They apparently do actually upgrade the servers, when they need the additional capacity. Server capacity is apparently not the problem.

Previous discussions in here basically blame poor server software, which is not easily fixed by just throwing money at it.

idk · April 2020

Poorly organized code just plain runs poorly. OP is clearly making an assumption that Zos has done everything right and new hardware will solve our problems. Heck, they are making an assumption it would make a notable difference.

rexagamemnon · April 2020

Yes new server upgrades,

....that also allow cross platform play or character server transfers

MartiniDaniels · April 2020

idk wrote: »

Poorly organized code just plain runs poorly. OP is clearly making an assumption that Zos has done everything right and new hardware will solve our problems. Heck, they are making an assumption it would make a notable difference.

Somehow that poor organized code was running fine until March 2019 and then it was running more or less ok until February 2020. Also when player's complains reach peak levels (like it was when undaunted event failed), somehow system becomes more stable relatively fast.
I bet they are dynamically re-distributing server capacity according to their targets to reduce costs etc
Of course there are exceptions, but from my experience, poor code runs fine if system capacity is in abundance and good code runs poorly when system is overloaded.

mairwen85 · April 2020

rexagamemnon wrote: »

Yes new server upgrades,

....that also allow cross platform play or character server transfers

Those aren't technology restricted options. It isn't the server architecture that has determined the position on cross-play and character transfers. There were/are business decisions behind those choices, and purse strings that bind them.

GeorgeBlack · April 2020

Because people keep spending money at crown store.
If your boss told you "you dont have to come to work from now on, but Ill keep paying you" would you go and work for him/her?

ArchMikem · April 2020

Do you know the exact figures? Profits? Expenses? Or is this just another emotionally fueled assumption.

FrancisCrawford · April 2020

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

idk wrote: »

Poorly organized code just plain runs poorly. OP is clearly making an assumption that Zos has done everything right and new hardware will solve our problems. Heck, they are making an assumption it would make a notable difference.

Somehow that poor organized code was running fine until March 2019 and then it was running more or less ok until February 2020. Also when player's complains reach peak levels (like it was when undaunted event failed), somehow system becomes more stable relatively fast.
I bet they are dynamically re-distributing server capacity according to their targets to reduce costs etc
Of course there are exceptions, but from my experience, poor code runs fine if system capacity is in abundance and good code runs poorly when system is overloaded.

I'd rather say that ZoS has needed all three of:

Bottleneck Whack-A-Mole.
Selective refactoring.
Willingness to pay for more servers.

Not coincidentally, I think your claim that performance used to be fine is exaggerated to the point of being misleading. For example, bank and store transaction performance has always been horrible, and attempts to fix it have had very partial success at best.

But yeah -- when, for example, Maelstrom Arena performance plummets, that's something that could surely be averted with little more than a willingness to use more servers.

LeGrandeShekel · April 2020

Nothing is going to happen, ESO is being run like a political party looking for imminent re-election, not like a dev team with a vision. You've seen politicians, they focus on the short-term so that you throw them your vote, rather than thinking about what they can do now that's in your best interests much further down the track.

There is no obvious long-term vision at ZOS. Making large performance changes would encourage more people to play the game, and over time will improve their revenue. However, as long as lots of money is being made off the existing players through the crown store and ESO Plus subscriptions, there will be no reason for them to make any large changes until the current player base further reduces in size - and then by the time they react, it will be too late, we'll all have moved on and there'll be no reviving it.

Lord_Hypnos · April 2020

They don't want to make long term investments since they themself don't have faith in this game.
And it would take "too long" to make some profit out of it.

Tandor · April 2020

Because it's a software issue, not a hardware one.

Neoealth · April 2020

Tandor wrote: »

Because it's a software issue, not a hardware one.

I keep hearing this, for a long time now. But do you have any evidence to back that claim up? I'm not challenging your claim, just a genuine question because I'm intrigued. We have seen lots of patches and even a huge software update which required the entire game to be re downloaded just recently, yet we still have major issues.

People generally go from their own life experience of knowing that you can perform maintenance on your PC for example, you can tweak software, install better software for your hardware. But everyone knows if you want real change in your system, nothing ever beats an entire hardware upgrade.

If you have any information which clearly shows it's exclusively a software problem, then please pray tell.

Tandor · April 2020

Neoealth wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

Because it's a software issue, not a hardware one.

I keep hearing this, for a long time now. But do you have any evidence to back that claim up? I'm not challenging your claim, just a genuine question because I'm intrigued. We have seen lots of patches and even a huge software update which required the entire game to be re downloaded just recently, yet we still have major issues.

People generally go from their own life experience of knowing that you can perform maintenance on your PC for example, you can tweak software, install better software for your hardware. But everyone knows if you want real change in your system, nothing ever beats an entire hardware upgrade.

If you have any information which clearly shows it's exclusively a software problem, then please pray tell.

Just the various statements and fixes detailed by ZOS.

Neoealth · April 2020

Tandor wrote: »

Neoealth wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

Because it's a software issue, not a hardware one.

I keep hearing this, for a long time now. But do you have any evidence to back that claim up? I'm not challenging your claim, just a genuine question because I'm intrigued. We have seen lots of patches and even a huge software update which required the entire game to be re downloaded just recently, yet we still have major issues.

People generally go from their own life experience of knowing that you can perform maintenance on your PC for example, you can tweak software, install better software for your hardware. But everyone knows if you want real change in your system, nothing ever beats an entire hardware upgrade.

If you have any information which clearly shows it's exclusively a software problem, then please pray tell.

Just the various statements and fixes detailed by ZOS.

Very vague. They have made a lot of statements, at this point they all roll into a blur of confusion, as for the fixes thus far I think it's clear they have been mostly unsuccessful.

Elsonso · April 2020

Neoealth wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

Neoealth wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

Because it's a software issue, not a hardware one.

I keep hearing this, for a long time now. But do you have any evidence to back that claim up? I'm not challenging your claim, just a genuine question because I'm intrigued. We have seen lots of patches and even a huge software update which required the entire game to be re downloaded just recently, yet we still have major issues.

People generally go from their own life experience of knowing that you can perform maintenance on your PC for example, you can tweak software, install better software for your hardware. But everyone knows if you want real change in your system, nothing ever beats an entire hardware upgrade.

If you have any information which clearly shows it's exclusively a software problem, then please pray tell.

Just the various statements and fixes detailed by ZOS.

Very vague. They have made a lot of statements, at this point they all roll into a blur of confusion, as for the fixes thus far I think it's clear they have been mostly unsuccessful.

They have made several comments over time indicating the general area where problems are, and have even once stated that Cyrodiil performance is not hardware related. These are tidbits that have been collected over time, from different specific sources, and in different locations. These things come from interviews, streams, and even random Discord and Twitch comments.

Since ZOS is not going to come out and tell us, in public, exactly what is up, this is as good as it gets.

Mancombe_Nosehair · April 2020

They shot a video by Matt, just under a year ago, saying that they had bought new servers for pc n.a. and eu. Judging by his body language saying it, he knew it wouldn't fix much, if anything.

If zos could have fixed the problem, they would have done so by now. It's been pretty obvious since last year.

It is what it is. I would suggest either accepting its limitations, or move on. It's not worth the anger.

JanTanhide · April 2020

Hurbster wrote: »

Probably spent all the money on turning Fallout 76 into a game that people might actually want to play.

Yep. Started playing it when they added Wastelanders. Fun game now!

Reverb · April 2020

A huge amount of their money is funding the team working in the new game. ESO is still the only title Zeni has ever released, and they have an entire team of infrastructure specialists, devs, a PM, marketing, etc. that are pure overhead on a game that is still a year out from release.

But I think the bigger answer to OPs question is this: If they are making this much money without having to invest in infrastructure, why bother with that expense? The game performance is not a problem for the huge number of people who throw money at their chapters and crown store items.

I personally have stopped giving them money due to the performance issues, I didn’t buy any crowns during the recent sale, and I’m not buying the chapter for the first time (rather, I did buy it but cancelled my pre order and got a refund due to the ongoing broken combat since U25). But I’m a single data point, and not one that matters much to Zeni. Many many people continue to stock up on crowns, and the Skyrim chapter is drawing more attention than any previous release.

So again, if they’re this successful while delivering crap performance, why bother changing?

Neoealth · April 2020

Elsonso wrote: »

Neoealth wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

Neoealth wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

Because it's a software issue, not a hardware one.

I keep hearing this, for a long time now. But do you have any evidence to back that claim up? I'm not challenging your claim, just a genuine question because I'm intrigued. We have seen lots of patches and even a huge software update which required the entire game to be re downloaded just recently, yet we still have major issues.

People generally go from their own life experience of knowing that you can perform maintenance on your PC for example, you can tweak software, install better software for your hardware. But everyone knows if you want real change in your system, nothing ever beats an entire hardware upgrade.

If you have any information which clearly shows it's exclusively a software problem, then please pray tell.

Just the various statements and fixes detailed by ZOS.

Very vague. They have made a lot of statements, at this point they all roll into a blur of confusion, as for the fixes thus far I think it's clear they have been mostly unsuccessful.

They have made several comments over time indicating the general area where problems are, and have even once stated that Cyrodiil performance is not hardware related. These are tidbits that have been collected over time, from different specific sources, and in different locations. These things come from interviews, streams, and even random Discord and Twitch comments.

Since ZOS is not going to come out and tell us, in public, exactly what is up, this is as good as it gets.

Indeed, as I say though, it's all very vague. I would urge caution to players just out right believing them though, after all their track record of getting a grip on the performance issues is not impressive and peoples patience is getting very stretched.

Amunari · April 2020

ArchMikem wrote: »

Do you know the exact figures? Profits? Expenses? Or is this just another emotionally fueled assumption.

This is such a really good point.

I think players often forget that we devs generally are not in charge of development budgets etc, and that the producer is generally in charge of these things. People think that just because ZoS makes money that they get to spend it, and its just not the case.

A_Silverius · April 2020

They are making a new IP with the money. https://mmos.com/news/zenimax-online-studios-hiring-new-unannounced-mmo-based-new-ip

Amunari · April 2020

I have heard people on discord blame the bandwidth and servers, but to be honest this (bandwidth) has not been a problem for a decade or more.

I suspect that something in the overall make up of the game (how it was structured in code) is responsible. Do you know what leads me to that conclusion?

You get random "dead zones" in the game, and the previous changes to "heal over time effects" massively improved cryodiil pvp. This seems to suggest that it is something that is being processed that is responsible. You could say it is bad written code, unoptimized code, or what have you but it seems to be largely related with the cpu in some way. So it is definitely down to either hardware upgrades or code, and if what is true in this thread (that servers recently got hardware upgrades) either those upgrades were not enough, or the code itself is the problem.

I would like to know if those hardware upgrades did help in any significant fashion.

Narvuntien · April 2020

I think part of the problem is that server load is super fluctuating, with large numbers of players turning up for new chapters and all the year events and then disappearing for weeks or months between.

I suspect there is not the required server flexibility to allow for this ebbing and flowing of server load, they probably use some kind of median server load as a guess of how much they need when, but that doesn't reflect the reality of the situation at all.

ZOS_Lunar · April 2020

Hello! We've removed some comments given their bashing nature.

It’s okay to disagree and debate on the official ESO forums, but we do ask that you keep all disagreements civil, constructive, and on-topic.

Sanctum74 · April 2020

Neoealth wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

Because it's a software issue, not a hardware one.

I keep hearing this, for a long time now. But do you have any evidence to back that claim up? I'm not challenging your claim, just a genuine question because I'm intrigued. We have seen lots of patches and even a huge software update which required the entire game to be re downloaded just recently, yet we still have major issues.

People generally go from their own life experience of knowing that you can perform maintenance on your PC for example, you can tweak software, install better software for your hardware. But everyone knows if you want real change in your system, nothing ever beats an entire hardware upgrade.

If you have any information which clearly shows it's exclusively a software problem, then please pray tell.

I think the evidence would be the fact that the performance gets worse with each patch which would indicate a software issue, unless you’re suggesting they are downgrading their hardware with each patch which is very unlikely.

samiz1 · April 2020

ZOS can you please provide an other answer than "we've removed some comments" about server performance ?

Mancombe_Nosehair · April 2020

samiz1 wrote: »

ZOS can you please provide an other answer than "we've removed some comments" about server performance ?

Apart from the mods, nobody at zos is listening. Who would, with all [snip] that goes on here?

If more people acted in a mature manner here, perhaps things would be different. [snip]

[edited for bashing].

Neoealth · April 2020

Sanctum74 wrote: »

Neoealth wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

Because it's a software issue, not a hardware one.

I keep hearing this, for a long time now. But do you have any evidence to back that claim up? I'm not challenging your claim, just a genuine question because I'm intrigued. We have seen lots of patches and even a huge software update which required the entire game to be re downloaded just recently, yet we still have major issues.

People generally go from their own life experience of knowing that you can perform maintenance on your PC for example, you can tweak software, install better software for your hardware. But everyone knows if you want real change in your system, nothing ever beats an entire hardware upgrade.

If you have any information which clearly shows it's exclusively a software problem, then please pray tell.

I think the evidence would be the fact that the performance gets worse with each patch which would indicate a software issue, unless you’re suggesting they are downgrading their hardware with each patch which is very unlikely.

I don't know about it getting worse and worse. The game has always seemed clunky and slow. To my eye and experience I would say there is a strong link between the amount of players online actively engaged in taxing the servers and performance. I would think that is obvious to anyone who has played Cyrodiil on a busy night or even more so during a mid year mayhem event.

Universe · April 2020

Why do you ask the forum members ?
This is a question that ZOS should answer.
What good does it serve to speculate about their budget plans we know nothing about ?