How do we determine if issues are game coding related or server capacity related?

Donny_Vito · April 2020

And what does it matter if we, the player base, determine it's one way or another. You act like this information is all of a sudden going to change the fact that you are playing this game.

Atherakhia · April 2020

It's quite simple.

If a problem persists for more than a couple weeks, a month max, it's not hardware related. Hardware is easy to change and upgrade when issues are identified. Companies also have a great deal of motivation to resolve these types of issues as they can literally be solved by throwing more money at it.

Software problems on the other hand are not as easily resolved. If they hang around for a few months then chances are they will never be fixed as the cost involved in recoding them are not feasible.

I'll let you all decide which scenario we're in here.

precambria · April 2020

It's the servers, if you log on right after they clean the server tubes the game plays totally fine and than degrades throughout the week or as prime times hit. You can feel the difference especially in PvP of when it is overloaded and choking on calculations, they are probably struggling with memory leaks which is why it seems to build up over time.

It really does not seems like more people are playing now than before, especially in places with capped populations or in small instance like a BG or 4 man dungeon, there used to be way more campaigns and queue times for PvE were much faster than they are now which pretty well indicates there are NOT more players now but the game runs worse. Sadly it seem like server resources have been divested, or they have degraded, or there are significant memory leaks server side in the recent patches.

Realistically it's not going to get better, upgrades would be to expensive for a game with limited potential for growth or it's simply a infrastructure problem they can't fix because it is out of their hands. Basically we should be happy there is even new content being produced and that it is being *somewhat* supported still.

Uryel · April 2020

Atherakhia wrote: »

Hardware is easy to change and upgrade when issues are identified. Companies also have a great deal of motivation to resolve these types of issues as they can literally be solved by throwing more money at it.

I've worked in IT for years. Take my word on that if you will : companies have NO motivation to solve an issue when the way to fix it is throwing money at it. They will wait as much as they can, stall as much as they can, and when they can't anymore they will spend the smallest amount they can.

Last company I worked for, a server broke and needed replacing. *** happens, no problem, and we had a backup server. A very much underperforming virtual machine running on a physical server that was already overloaded because the previous broken server had never been replace, because cost. We in IT could very well see how that server wouldn't be able to bear the load. And, funny stuff, the server that had broken was the one with all the financial data, all the informations about stocks and shipments, basically everything that allowed the company to make money. If we had lost the backup, we would have lost almost 100 million euros.

We rang the alarms, called for immediate purchase of a new server. Didn't even need to be a big one, we found one that would do nicely for 5 000 euros. We had to battle for a whole day to be allowed to buy it, because it was "too expensive".

that's how stupid people who manage money can be, they'd rather risk everything than spend a few bucks to fix something that can be easily fixed. And yeah, 5 000 euros isn't "a few bucks" for the average household, but for a company that makes 80+ millions per quarter, it's nothing.

evoprimes · April 2020

Uryel wrote: »

Atherakhia wrote: »

Hardware is easy to change and upgrade when issues are identified. Companies also have a great deal of motivation to resolve these types of issues as they can literally be solved by throwing more money at it.

I've worked in IT for years. Take my word on that if you will : companies have NO motivation to solve an issue when the way to fix it is throwing money at it. They will wait as much as they can, stall as much as they can, and when they can't anymore they will spend the smallest amount they can.

Last company I worked for, a server broke and needed replacing. *** happens, no problem, and we had a backup server. A very much underperforming virtual machine running on a physical server that was already overloaded because the previous broken server had never been replace, because cost. We in IT could very well see how that server wouldn't be able to bear the load. And, funny stuff, the server that had broken was the one with all the financial data, all the informations about stocks and shipments, basically everything that allowed the company to make money. If we had lost the backup, we would have lost almost 100 million euros.

We rang the alarms, called for immediate purchase of a new server. Didn't even need to be a big one, we found one that would do nicely for 5 000 euros. We had to battle for a whole day to be allowed to buy it, because it was "too expensive".

that's how stupid people who manage money can be, they'd rather risk everything than spend a few bucks to fix something that can be easily fixed. And yeah, 5 000 euros isn't "a few bucks" for the average household, but for a company that makes 80+ millions per quarter, it's nothing.

+1

Maxx7410 · April 2020

Its time for The Elder Scroll Online 2 working edition

TineaCruris · April 2020

As consumers who have invested in the game, and are considering further investing in the game, we deserve to know if the poor performance is the result of actual coding issues, or if the company is simply not investing in the server support needed for this many players. So long as the problems are worse when more players are on, people are, reasonably, going to wonder if Zenimax is simply not investing into the necessary recurring cost of server capacity. For instance, why is it always worse during prime time and weekends? This is generally due to not enough server capacity. If it was the result of coding issues, the issues would persist with the same frequency at all times, not just during prime time. Right?

I started this thread because I want to be able to make this determination with confidence on my own. I don't want to have to trust the company to be honest. They should show us they are working on fixes by things getting fixed. Things are not getting fixed, so what is going on exactly is the question.

BackStabeth · April 2020

TineaCruris wrote: »

Since I started playing ESO I've been amazed at how fantastic of a game it is. But I've also been stunned by how much the performance changes based on factors like the time of day we play, the day of the week we play, and the number of players in the zones we are playing in. To me, this feels more like server load issues than it does game coding issues.

As players, as end users, how do we determine if the issues we are having are sever load related vs. game coding related?

I'm assuming that all these issues are a combination of some degree of both coding and server load, but how do we as users determine with confidence what is causing our many in game issues? (sorry, I'm not the kind of person that takes companies on their word, I have to have verification when things delivered aren't as advertised. So how do we verify the lag isn't mainly just server capacity overload?)

If anything is server load related, that means that the server is not running code that distributes the server load correctly. And/or that the server does not have enough resources to handle the load (hardware issue)

So what it seems you really are asking is how do we determine if the problems that exist are "Hardware" or "Software" related.

Here is your answer. It doesn't matter if the issues and problems that people complain about are related to hardware or software. The problems we experience are because of another far more insidious issue. ZoS takes your money and that money goes to pay the salaries of top management, people who have no clue about the game at all. The rest of that money goes to people who invested in the company, stock holders. The only other part of what you pay ZoS that goes into the game is only what is absolutely necessary to keep the game going and making a profit.

When a car builder finds they have an issue that can cause serious problems with cars so that it puts people's lives at risk, they don't fix those issues right away, they do an assessment first. They figure out how many people might die, how many of those might sue, and how much the cost will be to pay those legal fines, lawyers, etc. If that cost is lower than the cost to fix those issues then they don't fix them.

ZoS I'm sure does an assessment of their own. They look at how many people sub, they look at how many people leave because of the hardware and software issues they have not fixed. They look at lost revenue and how much revenue they make by releasing new chapters instead of fixing issues and problems. If fixing the problems costs more than the money they make by just keeping the game going and adding new content to purchase, then they will never fix the problems and issues.

[snip]

And how can you tell that is true? Easy. [snip]. Might be in buying out skyshards, or buying out chapters so you don't have to re-do them, etc. But in all those things you are able to buy once you unlock them, not one of them are bugged. If you sub, you will find no issues or problems with your craftbag it works perfectly with no issues ever. There are no problems with the crown only pets, the crown only houses, the crown only mounts, the crown only motifs. There are no bugs or issues with any of the things you can buy with crowns.

[snip]

[edited for bashing and conspiracy theories]

Gprime31 · April 2020

TineaCruris wrote: »

Since I started playing ESO I've been amazed at how fantastic of a game it is. But I've also been stunned by how much the performance changes based on factors like the time of day we play, the day of the week we play, and the number of players in the zones we are playing in. To me, this feels more like server load issues than it does game coding issues.

As players, as end users, how do we determine if the issues we are having are sever load related vs. game coding related?

I'm assuming that all these issues are a combination of some degree of both coding and server load, but how do we as users determine with confidence what is causing our many in game issues? (sorry, I'm not the kind of person that takes companies on their word, I have to have verification when things delivered aren't as advertised. So how do we verify the lag isn't mainly just server capacity overload?)

It’s more of an effort required vs money made problem.

Kadoin · April 2020

You would be able to do it if you had knowledge of computer science...though some bugs are very obvious. That same knowledge helps you to think of ways to break the game, and more often than not, you will be able to break the game with bugs that stem from common mistakes in computer programming.

Ex. Elfbane + BSW causing BSW's burn to infinistack is a bug I predicted because:

ZOS uses floating point values on skill duration and doesn't floor or ceil the values yet, meaning there is a case where a comparison can bug out if the floating-point value truncates and an exact value is required, and/or a larger value can enter the variable they use to track duration than the variable supports. That's literally the most likely reason this bug occurs, but hey I am not on the dev team so I have no idea what code issue exists that causes it, but I do know it is bugged and that was my method for guessing the bug would exist before it was even found, and it does exist and works as predicted.

Truncation of floating values actually seems to cause many bugs in this game believe it or not. I cannot say any more because I wouldn't want to help an abuser find out the more serious bugs that have not been fixed in years...(maybe not possible)

But someone else posted "why would you care?" He is right, unless you like that kind of thing, there is no reason to care because you gain nothing from reporting bugs and if you abuse them you will get banned...

Pinja · April 2020

I mean on part of the problem is that the server code could run fine, but get overloaded with players. Than they try to optimize it to fit more players by making it skinnier so the servers process less, but then that breaks things and now you have coding issue. The coding issues become apparent as they remain constant for several seconds/minutes/hours while latency acts in hiccups. Pretty much when you see a gli tch vs seeing la g. This is by know means a rule but I thought about it and it should fit generally.

Kadoin wrote: »

You would be able to do it if you had knowledge of computer science...though some bugs are very obvious. That same knowledge helps you to think of ways to break the game, and more often than not, you will be able to break the game with bugs that stem from common mistakes in computer programming.

As an outsider you'd still probably need to know what the servers are running. Most people can't change or see the code from the side lines. You could see the data being sent and received and take a guess at the calculations required to make that data but... there'd be alot of guess work. Unless you have a hot tip on how to get the figures?

Also I think knowing the difference would help. Someone in another thread posted.

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

You know I'm not ZOS protector, but steam ESO population doubled due to covid, it is wonder that servers are working at all:
https://steamcharts.com/app/306130

Suggesting it is partially if not mainly capacity. I'd also suggested this in my own thread.

Though as plenty have said in the past they seem to want to tackle coding over capacity. Though Pve is now tearing at the seams, and pvp is its usual self.

I looked at some clips and it looks like the work put in to prevent desyncs is timing out player abilities, and canceling them. Or the server is overloaded and not registering them, but one person said they were playing in low pop. I don't know what work put in with the desyncs makes it happen but in order to stop them the ability either needs to be canceled, or the receiving client needs to be given extra time to respond before the death calculation. Causing players to appear to take no damage until it registers for them (as we've seen in the past,) or their abilities being canceled (as we see now.) Which didn't fix desync in some patches, meaning they're trading devels.
Not waiting for an opponents client to respond, just going off the servers timer that gives fair connections a moment to input may be the best option. Again only taking guesses

Shantu · April 2020

This is all conjecture. The fact is that performance continues to degrade despite an ongoing program of performance updates. I don't care what or who's responsible. My money just wants it fixed.

csparks1 · April 2020

I found the Solution

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If I had known 2 years ago what I know now about their continual promises being outright LIES I would have saved myself HUNDREDS of Dollars. I'm looking at this as an investment in my future.

Banana · April 2020

You just have to accept this is how it is and it ain't getting better

Elsonso · April 2020

Banana wrote: »

You just have to accept this is how it is and it ain't getting better

This. The game is what it is. It is not an investment. If you are satisfied today, you buy today. You don't buy today hoping it will get better tomorrow. If it does get better, then yay, but if it does not, nothing lost.

Pinja · April 2020

Elsonso wrote: »

Banana wrote: »

You just have to accept this is how it is and it ain't getting better

This. The game is what it is. It is not an investment. If you are satisfied today, you buy today. You don't buy today hoping it will get better tomorrow. If it does get better, then yay, but if it does not, nothing lost.

Well that sucks... Is the game no longer an investment for Zos. If we the community buy today we expect game play today. If we don't buy today someone will cut losses and say the game had a nice run. Some will retire, some will sell, some will continue to TES VI which wont move nearly as much money being a one time purchase with DLCs.

I expect ZOS wants to have a tomorrow. And tomorrow requires hoping for a better future. Better severs, a diversity of technicians, and Pinja.

eKsDee · April 2020

The two aren't mutually exclusive. You can have code that just doesn't scale well with numbers, regardless of the numbers the servers themselves can handle, and I firmly believe that a large part of the performance problem, especially in Cyrodiil, is this.

A simple test is to measure performance when players are clumped up in a gigantic blob with heals and buffs going, and measure again when players are spread out more with the same heals and buffs going.

If performance gets better as players spread out, there's a code-related bottleneck somewhere that only arises with numbers.

If performance doesn't change, the servers themselves are likely overloaded, and desperately need to be upgraded to handle more players.

BackStabeth · April 2020

Don't sub, if enough people do not sub then maybe ZoS will get it, maybe ZoS will start to understand that things have become so bad that people no longer listen to their messages of "we are working on fixes" or the absolute silence in regards to the community asking for answer to lag issues, bugs, problems with the game for literally years.

Don't sub, you speak far more clearly and loudly by not giving ZoS your money. They are suppose to be providing an entertainment service and not delivering what they should. If they stated that there are known problems, bugs, issues, lag, etc as a warning before you purchased your crowns, or sub, would you have bought in? Then why do you continue to do so now?