Take away from today's twitch stream

Lysette · May 2020

essi2 wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

Dark_Lord_Kuro wrote: »

Why is it on test server if not to fix what the can before going to live?

This, but also to balance gear, quests, monsters, and the like before going live.

newtinmpls wrote: »

BackStabeth wrote: »

1. It was stated several times that the people employed at ZoS play the game.

I suspect that what this means was to please quit pointing out in the forums that ZoS does not have much understanding of just how frustrating the game is. I say that because I'm not hearing much in the way of detail, such as:

Did they mention when (primetime?)

Did they mention how often (daily/weekly)

Did they mention what kind of content (Overland/Battlegrounds/Vet Undaunted/Maelstrom?)

Most people just throw out "they don't play their game" in frustration. I doubt they seriously believe it. There is too much easy evidence to the contrary. However, since you asked, my internet search on the last question turned up this for 2020.

Lambert:
He has completed vet Maelstrom at 590k. Looks like he does VMA with both magicka NB and stamplar. I assume has earned multiple VMA weapons.

He has Selene's Savior from Lair of Maarselok.

He has Cold-Blooded Killer from Icereach

In PVP his character is a Prefect.

I am sure there is more stuff out there, but this was the easy to get stuff.

This proves nothing for a guy, who has unlimited access to the database and can give himself any rank he wants and any achievements he wants just by changing the database entries. Same for gear and resources - i doubt that any of them is actually playing their game - it is work, why would they want to play it in their spare time.

Just a friendly reminder that conspiracy theories are prohibited by the forum ToS @Lysette

I didn't say he does that - i just said he could do it - and that is the plain truth, he could.

Elsonso · May 2020

Lysette wrote: »

This proves nothing for a guy, who has unlimited access to the database and can give himself any rank he wants and any achievements he wants just by changing the database entries. Same for gear and resources - i doubt that any of them is actually playing their game - it is work, why would they want to play it in their spare time.

Seriously? That is where you are going to go? They cheat?

Nanfoodle · May 2020

BackStabeth wrote: »

Nanfoodle wrote: »

[Snip]. Stop making content is the fastest way to kill an MMO. Yes they need to fix stuff but a different set of people are making new content. How people don't get this blows my mind.

[Edited for bait]

When you manage a company you look at figures like labor percentage, man hours to profit margin you know? So imagine a spreadsheet, and in that spreed sheet there is a column for how many hours of labor they pay for each month. Call those hours, resources. On a different column it shows profit for that month. They in yet another column is gross profit, what percentage of profit was spent on labor, etc etc etc.

If all the "resources" or labor hours/coding hours, are spent on new content, and those managing cannot go above a certain labor percentage then all your resources are spent on creating new content and none are left over for fixing bugs.

How do you not understand this? It's really simple. I have to be careful how much I spend in labor, so I try to keep my labor percentage lower than 7%, that allows me to pay my employees a living decent wage, and yet allows me to pay the rest of the bills and have a small profit.

With ESO, ZoS has to figure out investor percentage, labor percentage, upgrades, building costs, and on and on and on. Point is, they can't spend more on labor because something else suffers, like paying their investors for example. So where do the labor hours come from to fix the problems and issues? They are not coming from the labor hours that are spent creating new content, nor are they coming from the labor hours spent to fix the bugs related to the new content. It was announced that the next update will include fixes to bugs found in the un-released content. In other words, ZoS is fixing bugs related to the new release, but not fixing bugs, issues and problems related to bugs, issues and problems that have existed for 6 years.

Are you starting to understand and see the full scope of the problem? It matters where the money spent on labor is being spent, not that the people creating are different than the people fixing.

And another side note here. The people who create the code for new content? Well, they comment the code so they can go back later and understand what it is they were doing better. It's always better to have the person who created the code, to fix it as well. EVE Online ran into this problem where the programmers who created the original code no longer worked for them, so they had to re-code entire systems and scrap older systems instead of revamping them, because the people who came after had no idea how to alter the old code.

ESO will experience the same issues if they do not fix the older code before introducing new code. And yes, they need the people who wrote the original code to fix the problems, they are far better educated in that particular code than someone who didn't write it.

They don't need to manage how many people are working on content. Problem areas, they already have a plan in place and rolling out updates. Problem is they seem ineffectual or even counterproductive. Keep the developers working on content. They are really good at keeping us playing a buggy game. Instead just drop the cash on server farms. Amazon and Microsoft both really good at this. Taking away anything from game development would be a huge mistake.

[Edit to remove bashing]

Lysette · May 2020

Elsonso wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

This proves nothing for a guy, who has unlimited access to the database and can give himself any rank he wants and any achievements he wants just by changing the database entries. Same for gear and resources - i doubt that any of them is actually playing their game - it is work, why would they want to play it in their spare time.

Seriously? That is where you are going to go? They cheat?

Just from my own experience with modding games - you never do the grind if you can avoid it and just tweak a few numbers. Seriously, why would they waste time on several hours of grind if it can be avoided by just tweaking a few numbers - and certain gear, why go for the RNG grind if you can just assign this gear directly to your inventory - this is just how it is done when you have dev access to the game. And that is not playing the game, when you just tweak a few numbers and assign any gear you want instantly to your inventory.

Why do you think that a game like skyrim has commands like player.additem f 900 to give the player character 900 gold - of course this is used during development to achieve effects quickly and avoid grind or tedious gameplay. And if you have this power you are using it with excuses like "well, I could have earned it by ...." - but you didn't - this is pretty typical for someone having access to these features. As a result you aren't playing the game, but are raisin picking game content and don't suffer through the tedious grind and your experience is not like a player has it.

robertthebard · May 2020

Sarousse wrote: »

Input delay fixes are worked on and will be put on PTS.

That means they won't be tested.

So what will happen ? Next update will go out, input delay and lag will still be there.

Nothing new here.

That's the point of the PTS, to test things. Is it 100% going to catch everything? No, and it can't. Why? You're having input delays, but I'm not. How do you isolate a problem that isn't affecting everyone the same way, or even affecting everyone at all? If you have this solution, publish a book, it will make you rich, seriously. Game developers large and small will line up to buy it.

That's part of what a QA team tries to do, after all, reproduce bugs. If they can't reproduce it, they can't do anything to fix it. Even with that, there are a ton of unrelated issues that can cause input lag, and some of these are not anything a game developer can fix, unless they open up their own ISP, and have pipes that can't be bottlenecked. It's all well and good to rage quit a game, and then run a traceroute to see if you're bottlenecked, but, it's also not going to be an accurate representation of what happened when the input lag happened. For example, x number of people could have also rage quit at the same time, and cleared the bottleneck, so the traceroute won't find anything.

My old keyboard wore out, and some of the most common number/letter keys quit working, I mean I couldn't even type with it any more. But if I'm in game, and not aware, it sure looks like the game was broken/lagging because the input wasn't happening. Dead buttons on a controller are a thing, as are signal interruptions on a wireless controller, which is on the system itself, not the game. My controller's adapter for the PC has a tendency to quit working, this will cause input to quit functioning as well. A game developer can't fix that either. Lots of factors that can contribute to input lag that game developers can't fix, no matter how much they want to.

I'm not going to pretend that any of this is a root cause of issues, but since I'm not experiencing them with anything like the regularity that the forums indicate, I also can't rule them out. The most common issue I come across is not being able to loot, and having to roll dodge to fix it. I'm not sure when that started, and it's not like it's a constant thing either, I played a few hours this morning and it didn't happen at all. If I'm working QA how am I supposed to reproduce it, if it's not happening?

Phreeki · May 2020

Lol I have played with members of the ZoS team and they are all bad at the game which should tell you why they dont understand what's wrong in said game.

Artanisul · May 2020

Lysette wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

This proves nothing for a guy, who has unlimited access to the database and can give himself any rank he wants and any achievements he wants just by changing the database entries. Same for gear and resources - i doubt that any of them is actually playing their game - it is work, why would they want to play it in their spare time.

Seriously? That is where you are going to go? They cheat?

Just from my own experience with modding games - you never do the grind if you can avoid it and just tweak a few numbers. Seriously, why would they waste time on several hours of grind if it can be avoided by just tweaking a few numbers - and certain gear, why go for the RNG grind if you can just assign this gear directly to your inventory - this is just how it is done when you have dev access to the game. And that is not playing the game, when you just tweak a few numbers and assign any gear you want instantly to your inventory.

Why do you think that a game like skyrim has commands like player.additem f 900 to give the player character 900 gold - of course this is used during development to achieve effects quickly and avoid grind or tedious gameplay. And if you have this power you are using it with excuses like "well, I could have earned it by ...." - but you didn't - this is pretty typical for someone having access to these features. As a result you aren't playing the game, but are raisin picking game content and don't suffer through the tedious grind and your experience is not like a player has it.

This is exactly the point. Devs, in general, do not play the game like we do. They get items and "things" the way they want them....then play like we do. Like the quoted says, the console commands for games exist for a reason. They are used.

BackStabeth · May 2020

Nanfoodle wrote: »

BackStabeth wrote: »

Nanfoodle wrote: »

[Snip]. Stop making content is the fastest way to kill an MMO. Yes they need to fix stuff but a different set of people are making new content. How people don't get this blows my mind.

[Edited for bait]

When you manage a company you look at figures like labor percentage, man hours to profit margin you know? So imagine a spreadsheet, and in that spreed sheet there is a column for how many hours of labor they pay for each month. Call those hours, resources. On a different column it shows profit for that month. They in yet another column is gross profit, what percentage of profit was spent on labor, etc etc etc.

If all the "resources" or labor hours/coding hours, are spent on new content, and those managing cannot go above a certain labor percentage then all your resources are spent on creating new content and none are left over for fixing bugs.

How do you not understand this? It's really simple. I have to be careful how much I spend in labor, so I try to keep my labor percentage lower than 7%, that allows me to pay my employees a living decent wage, and yet allows me to pay the rest of the bills and have a small profit.

With ESO, ZoS has to figure out investor percentage, labor percentage, upgrades, building costs, and on and on and on. Point is, they can't spend more on labor because something else suffers, like paying their investors for example. So where do the labor hours come from to fix the problems and issues? They are not coming from the labor hours that are spent creating new content, nor are they coming from the labor hours spent to fix the bugs related to the new content. It was announced that the next update will include fixes to bugs found in the un-released content. In other words, ZoS is fixing bugs related to the new release, but not fixing bugs, issues and problems related to bugs, issues and problems that have existed for 6 years.

Are you starting to understand and see the full scope of the problem? It matters where the money spent on labor is being spent, not that the people creating are different than the people fixing.

And another side note here. The people who create the code for new content? Well, they comment the code so they can go back later and understand what it is they were doing better. It's always better to have the person who created the code, to fix it as well. EVE Online ran into this problem where the programmers who created the original code no longer worked for them, so they had to re-code entire systems and scrap older systems instead of revamping them, because the people who came after had no idea how to alter the old code.

ESO will experience the same issues if they do not fix the older code before introducing new code. And yes, they need the people who wrote the original code to fix the problems, they are far better educated in that particular code than someone who didn't write it.

They don't need to manage how many people are working on content. Problem areas, they already have a plan in place and rolling out updates. Problem is they seem ineffectual or even counterproductive. Keep the developers working on content. They are really good at keeping us playing a buggy game. Instead just drop the cash on server farms. Amazon and Microsoft both really good at this. Taking away anything from game development would be a huge mistake.

I agree, taking anything way from game development would be a mistake. An even bigger mistake is not fixing the bugs and issues that already exist, an even bigger mistake is adding more content with even more bugs without fixing the previous bugs and issues first.

With limited percentage of the profit spent on labor to create content and/or fixed bugs and issues, it would be a huge, gigantic mistake to spend those funds on creating new content with new bugs PRIOR to fixing the issues that have persisted and existed for 6 years.

Ideally, ZoS would get it in their head that investing whatever is required to fix the issues that have persisted for 6 years AND continue development would be their best course of action. Unfortunately the intent is profitability and not creating a stable gaming environment. It's that incorrect, wrong intent that has allowed for these problems to persist. It will also be the very reason why when there is more competition in the market, people will flee ESO and choose to spend their entertainment dollars in a different MMO. When that happens, there will not even be the choice for ZoS to spend funds on fixing issues to regain customer trust, they won't have the funds to spend.

MMOs have a life, after a certain amount of time they die. I feel that ZoS just doesn't care to spend what is required to fix the problems and issues so long as people continue to purchase the new content that is continually pumped out. Since their expected life span is not forever, I feel that whatever they can save on not fixing the problems is added to profit. I feel this is the real problem.

BackStabeth · May 2020

robertthebard wrote: »

Sarousse wrote: »

Input delay fixes are worked on and will be put on PTS.

That means they won't be tested.

So what will happen ? Next update will go out, input delay and lag will still be there.

Nothing new here.

That's the point of the PTS, to test things. Is it 100% going to catch everything? No, and it can't. Why? You're having input delays, but I'm not. How do you isolate a problem that isn't affecting everyone the same way, or even affecting everyone at all? If you have this solution, publish a book, it will make you rich, seriously. Game developers large and small will line up to buy it.

That's part of what a QA team tries to do, after all, reproduce bugs. If they can't reproduce it, they can't do anything to fix it. Even with that, there are a ton of unrelated issues that can cause input lag, and some of these are not anything a game developer can fix, unless they open up their own ISP, and have pipes that can't be bottlenecked. It's all well and good to rage quit a game, and then run a traceroute to see if you're bottlenecked, but, it's also not going to be an accurate representation of what happened when the input lag happened. For example, x number of people could have also rage quit at the same time, and cleared the bottleneck, so the traceroute won't find anything.

My old keyboard wore out, and some of the most common number/letter keys quit working, I mean I couldn't even type with it any more. But if I'm in game, and not aware, it sure looks like the game was broken/lagging because the input wasn't happening. Dead buttons on a controller are a thing, as are signal interruptions on a wireless controller, which is on the system itself, not the game. My controller's adapter for the PC has a tendency to quit working, this will cause input to quit functioning as well. A game developer can't fix that either. Lots of factors that can contribute to input lag that game developers can't fix, no matter how much they want to.

I'm not going to pretend that any of this is a root cause of issues, but since I'm not experiencing them with anything like the regularity that the forums indicate, I also can't rule them out. The most common issue I come across is not being able to loot, and having to roll dodge to fix it. I'm not sure when that started, and it's not like it's a constant thing either, I played a few hours this morning and it didn't happen at all. If I'm working QA how am I supposed to reproduce it, if it's not happening?

You are talking about the rare exception, not what is actually happening.

When everyone says the same thing, like for example a BOSS fears them into terrain, in a specific dungeon with a specific boss and it's never addressed that is not anything but ZoS not fixing a bug or issue.

What you suggest contradicts the mediocrity principle. Most of the bugs we experience are universal, not inclusive of only one individual. If one person is experiencing an issue, and another person states they are experiencing the same issue, it's probably almost always the same issue. Not a keyboard with bad keys a person doesn't know about, not an issue with their ISP or they spilled coffee on their processor, or the cat pissed on the cat5 cable, etc.

We all experience and report the same issues, ZoS has yet to address them, some in as many as 6 years. That is obviously not individual issues, that is global over the entire experience of all players.

Lets not pretend that what we are talking about here is anything but what it actually is. ZoS has yet to fix many, many problems, and is getting ready to add more new content which will add more bugs and issues. THAT is the problem.

robertthebard · May 2020

BackStabeth wrote: »

robertthebard wrote: »

Sarousse wrote: »

Input delay fixes are worked on and will be put on PTS.

That means they won't be tested.

So what will happen ? Next update will go out, input delay and lag will still be there.

Nothing new here.

That's the point of the PTS, to test things. Is it 100% going to catch everything? No, and it can't. Why? You're having input delays, but I'm not. How do you isolate a problem that isn't affecting everyone the same way, or even affecting everyone at all? If you have this solution, publish a book, it will make you rich, seriously. Game developers large and small will line up to buy it.

That's part of what a QA team tries to do, after all, reproduce bugs. If they can't reproduce it, they can't do anything to fix it. Even with that, there are a ton of unrelated issues that can cause input lag, and some of these are not anything a game developer can fix, unless they open up their own ISP, and have pipes that can't be bottlenecked. It's all well and good to rage quit a game, and then run a traceroute to see if you're bottlenecked, but, it's also not going to be an accurate representation of what happened when the input lag happened. For example, x number of people could have also rage quit at the same time, and cleared the bottleneck, so the traceroute won't find anything.

My old keyboard wore out, and some of the most common number/letter keys quit working, I mean I couldn't even type with it any more. But if I'm in game, and not aware, it sure looks like the game was broken/lagging because the input wasn't happening. Dead buttons on a controller are a thing, as are signal interruptions on a wireless controller, which is on the system itself, not the game. My controller's adapter for the PC has a tendency to quit working, this will cause input to quit functioning as well. A game developer can't fix that either. Lots of factors that can contribute to input lag that game developers can't fix, no matter how much they want to.

I'm not going to pretend that any of this is a root cause of issues, but since I'm not experiencing them with anything like the regularity that the forums indicate, I also can't rule them out. The most common issue I come across is not being able to loot, and having to roll dodge to fix it. I'm not sure when that started, and it's not like it's a constant thing either, I played a few hours this morning and it didn't happen at all. If I'm working QA how am I supposed to reproduce it, if it's not happening?

You are talking about the rare exception, not what is actually happening.

When everyone says the same thing, like for example a BOSS fears them into terrain, in a specific dungeon with a specific boss and it's never addressed that is not anything but ZoS not fixing a bug or issue.

What you suggest contradicts the mediocrity principle. Most of the bugs we experience are universal, not inclusive of only one individual. If one person is experiencing an issue, and another person states they are experiencing the same issue, it's probably almost always the same issue. Not a keyboard with bad keys a person doesn't know about, not an issue with their ISP or they spilled coffee on their processor, or the cat pissed on the cat5 cable, etc.

We all experience and report the same issues, ZoS has yet to address them, some in as many as 6 years. That is obviously not individual issues, that is global over the entire experience of all players.

Lets not pretend that what we are talking about here is anything but what it actually is. ZoS has yet to fix many, many problems, and is getting ready to add more new content which will add more bugs and issues. THAT is the problem.

Except that everyone's not saying it? I used my own experience as an example of that, in the very first lines of the post.

Being feared into terrain =/= input lag. Does it need to be fixed? Absolutely. Can they effectively reproduce it? Unknown, by me at least. I'm not on the QA team, or any team, for that matter. There's a reason that tech support always starts with "are your drivers up to date", etc. It may even be something as simple as my running a fresh install, since I had uninstalled the game to free up some drive space when I quit the last time. As I also said, I didn't attempt to lay out a definitive list of causes, just things that can contribute to the issue I was addressing, input lag. I even put a disclaimer in the post.

My main point was quite simply that they stated they were putting some potential fixes on the test server, and you claiming that meant it wouldn't be tested and just thrown on live. Now that's something that I've seen happen over the years with other things, in other games even, but that doesn't mean it's some sort of universal truth, despite what the more cynical amongst us may believe.

BackStabeth · May 2020

robertthebard wrote: »

BackStabeth wrote: »

robertthebard wrote: »

Sarousse wrote: »

Input delay fixes are worked on and will be put on PTS.

That means they won't be tested.

So what will happen ? Next update will go out, input delay and lag will still be there.

Nothing new here.

That's the point of the PTS, to test things. Is it 100% going to catch everything? No, and it can't. Why? You're having input delays, but I'm not. How do you isolate a problem that isn't affecting everyone the same way, or even affecting everyone at all? If you have this solution, publish a book, it will make you rich, seriously. Game developers large and small will line up to buy it.

That's part of what a QA team tries to do, after all, reproduce bugs. If they can't reproduce it, they can't do anything to fix it. Even with that, there are a ton of unrelated issues that can cause input lag, and some of these are not anything a game developer can fix, unless they open up their own ISP, and have pipes that can't be bottlenecked. It's all well and good to rage quit a game, and then run a traceroute to see if you're bottlenecked, but, it's also not going to be an accurate representation of what happened when the input lag happened. For example, x number of people could have also rage quit at the same time, and cleared the bottleneck, so the traceroute won't find anything.

My old keyboard wore out, and some of the most common number/letter keys quit working, I mean I couldn't even type with it any more. But if I'm in game, and not aware, it sure looks like the game was broken/lagging because the input wasn't happening. Dead buttons on a controller are a thing, as are signal interruptions on a wireless controller, which is on the system itself, not the game. My controller's adapter for the PC has a tendency to quit working, this will cause input to quit functioning as well. A game developer can't fix that either. Lots of factors that can contribute to input lag that game developers can't fix, no matter how much they want to.

I'm not going to pretend that any of this is a root cause of issues, but since I'm not experiencing them with anything like the regularity that the forums indicate, I also can't rule them out. The most common issue I come across is not being able to loot, and having to roll dodge to fix it. I'm not sure when that started, and it's not like it's a constant thing either, I played a few hours this morning and it didn't happen at all. If I'm working QA how am I supposed to reproduce it, if it's not happening?

You are talking about the rare exception, not what is actually happening.

When everyone says the same thing, like for example a BOSS fears them into terrain, in a specific dungeon with a specific boss and it's never addressed that is not anything but ZoS not fixing a bug or issue.

What you suggest contradicts the mediocrity principle. Most of the bugs we experience are universal, not inclusive of only one individual. If one person is experiencing an issue, and another person states they are experiencing the same issue, it's probably almost always the same issue. Not a keyboard with bad keys a person doesn't know about, not an issue with their ISP or they spilled coffee on their processor, or the cat pissed on the cat5 cable, etc.

We all experience and report the same issues, ZoS has yet to address them, some in as many as 6 years. That is obviously not individual issues, that is global over the entire experience of all players.

Lets not pretend that what we are talking about here is anything but what it actually is. ZoS has yet to fix many, many problems, and is getting ready to add more new content which will add more bugs and issues. THAT is the problem.

Except that everyone's not saying it? I used my own experience as an example of that, in the very first lines of the post.

Being feared into terrain =/= input lag. Does it need to be fixed? Absolutely. Can they effectively reproduce it? Unknown, by me at least. I'm not on the QA team, or any team, for that matter. There's a reason that tech support always starts with "are your drivers up to date", etc. It may even be something as simple as my running a fresh install, since I had uninstalled the game to free up some drive space when I quit the last time. As I also said, I didn't attempt to lay out a definitive list of causes, just things that can contribute to the issue I was addressing, input lag. I even put a disclaimer in the post.

My main point was quite simply that they stated they were putting some potential fixes on the test server, and you claiming that meant it wouldn't be tested and just thrown on live. Now that's something that I've seen happen over the years with other things, in other games even, but that doesn't mean it's some sort of universal truth, despite what the more cynical amongst us may believe.

Being feared into terrain has nothing to do with input lag, it's not clipping causing it, it's been discussed in the bug forums, it is not only reproducible but happens only with certain bosses.

I didn't claim anything would be just thrown on live, what I said is that regardless of whatever bugs and issues are resolved on the test server, there are unforeseen bugs and issues that come with every update that contains new content. That adds to the bugs and issues already not resolved currently in the game. Or allow me to say it differently for you. Since the test server is not really a good example of real game experience, there is no possible way for things that happen in real gameplay to be tested on the game server in relation to number of players playing at a given time. So this means bugs and issues will most certainly accompany any updates that include new content.

The potential fixes that are being discussed all relate to the new content, nothing is being addressed that has existed, and been complained about for 6+ years. The bug fixes are only in regards to new content. The other "fixes" that have been discussed is server optimization, client optimization, etc. That isn't fixing bugs or the issues that have existed since day one, never, not once has client or server optimization resolved any problems so far as I can tell by reading the bug support forum. The problem has a lot to do with the fact there are not enough server resources available, we know this, it's been discussed to exhaustion. Why ZoS does not throw the money required at the issue I have no idea, but it's a large part of the problem. The other part of the problem however is the fact that they are spending their labor resources on fixing bugs for new content, and not bothering to address the bugs and issues that already exist.

You might have all kinds of keyboard or computer problems, but you also must realize that if everyone is reporting the same issues, the same bugs for 6+ years, that if ZoS has in the past admitted that they are their issues, that it's not a keyboard problem, or a CPU problem, or a videocard problem, or an ISP problem, or your next door neighbor is hanging on your WIFI killing your bandwidth problem. It's a ZoS problem. We all know it is, pretending it's something else does not ever help the situation.

You can white knight ZoS all you want, but realize also that while doing so, ZoS themselves have killed any argument you might have to play captain-save-a-MMO you might entertain. They have already admitted the problem exists with them, up to 6 years ago and those same issues exist today.

If you would like, I can post some youtube videos of ZoS updates where people that work for, employed by ZoS admit to knowing about these issues and claim to be working on them. Then you can compare that to what has actually been fixed. Afterwards, perhaps you might realize how very wrong you have been about everything you have stated.

KBKB · May 2020

essi2 wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

Dark_Lord_Kuro wrote: »

Why is it on test server if not to fix what the can before going to live?

This, but also to balance gear, quests, monsters, and the like before going live.

newtinmpls wrote: »

BackStabeth wrote: »

1. It was stated several times that the people employed at ZoS play the game.

I suspect that what this means was to please quit pointing out in the forums that ZoS does not have much understanding of just how frustrating the game is. I say that because I'm not hearing much in the way of detail, such as:

Did they mention when (primetime?)

Did they mention how often (daily/weekly)

Did they mention what kind of content (Overland/Battlegrounds/Vet Undaunted/Maelstrom?)

Most people just throw out "they don't play their game" in frustration. I doubt they seriously believe it. There is too much easy evidence to the contrary. However, since you asked, my internet search on the last question turned up this for 2020.

Lambert:
He has completed vet Maelstrom at 590k. Looks like he does VMA with both magicka NB and stamplar. I assume has earned multiple VMA weapons.

He has Selene's Savior from Lair of Maarselok.

He has Cold-Blooded Killer from Icereach

In PVP his character is a Prefect.

I am sure there is more stuff out there, but this was the easy to get stuff.

This proves nothing for a guy, who has unlimited access to the database and can give himself any rank he wants and any achievements he wants just by changing the database entries. Same for gear and resources - i doubt that any of them is actually playing their game - it is work, why would they want to play it in their spare time.

Just a friendly reminder that conspiracy theories are prohibited by the forum ToS @Lysette

PUT THE COOL AIDE DOWN @essi2

YandereGirlfriend · May 2020

Re: the devs not playing their own game.

About a month ago I listened to an ESO podcast and they had a member of the ZOS team on. This was right when the off-PTS with the Light Attack changes was the latest controversy and they began discussing them. Universally they agreed that the changes were good but they were all prefaced with "I don't play DPS, but this won't hurt my healer/tank" etc. Further conversation indicated that nobody really did PvP and that several had not completed Maelstrom Arena.

Now, I don't bring this up to throw shade (quite the contrary, it was a very enjoyable episode) but rather to say that I'm sure that many of the devs do indeed play the game but that they likely do so at a casual level and with limited insights into all of the game's roles and complexities, especially in end-game content where balance decisions are most acutely felt.

robertthebard · May 2020

BackStabeth wrote: »

robertthebard wrote: »

BackStabeth wrote: »

robertthebard wrote: »

Sarousse wrote: »

Input delay fixes are worked on and will be put on PTS.

That means they won't be tested.

So what will happen ? Next update will go out, input delay and lag will still be there.

Nothing new here.

That's the point of the PTS, to test things. Is it 100% going to catch everything? No, and it can't. Why? You're having input delays, but I'm not. How do you isolate a problem that isn't affecting everyone the same way, or even affecting everyone at all? If you have this solution, publish a book, it will make you rich, seriously. Game developers large and small will line up to buy it.

That's part of what a QA team tries to do, after all, reproduce bugs. If they can't reproduce it, they can't do anything to fix it. Even with that, there are a ton of unrelated issues that can cause input lag, and some of these are not anything a game developer can fix, unless they open up their own ISP, and have pipes that can't be bottlenecked. It's all well and good to rage quit a game, and then run a traceroute to see if you're bottlenecked, but, it's also not going to be an accurate representation of what happened when the input lag happened. For example, x number of people could have also rage quit at the same time, and cleared the bottleneck, so the traceroute won't find anything.

My old keyboard wore out, and some of the most common number/letter keys quit working, I mean I couldn't even type with it any more. But if I'm in game, and not aware, it sure looks like the game was broken/lagging because the input wasn't happening. Dead buttons on a controller are a thing, as are signal interruptions on a wireless controller, which is on the system itself, not the game. My controller's adapter for the PC has a tendency to quit working, this will cause input to quit functioning as well. A game developer can't fix that either. Lots of factors that can contribute to input lag that game developers can't fix, no matter how much they want to.

I'm not going to pretend that any of this is a root cause of issues, but since I'm not experiencing them with anything like the regularity that the forums indicate, I also can't rule them out. The most common issue I come across is not being able to loot, and having to roll dodge to fix it. I'm not sure when that started, and it's not like it's a constant thing either, I played a few hours this morning and it didn't happen at all. If I'm working QA how am I supposed to reproduce it, if it's not happening?

You are talking about the rare exception, not what is actually happening.

When everyone says the same thing, like for example a BOSS fears them into terrain, in a specific dungeon with a specific boss and it's never addressed that is not anything but ZoS not fixing a bug or issue.

What you suggest contradicts the mediocrity principle. Most of the bugs we experience are universal, not inclusive of only one individual. If one person is experiencing an issue, and another person states they are experiencing the same issue, it's probably almost always the same issue. Not a keyboard with bad keys a person doesn't know about, not an issue with their ISP or they spilled coffee on their processor, or the cat pissed on the cat5 cable, etc.

We all experience and report the same issues, ZoS has yet to address them, some in as many as 6 years. That is obviously not individual issues, that is global over the entire experience of all players.

Lets not pretend that what we are talking about here is anything but what it actually is. ZoS has yet to fix many, many problems, and is getting ready to add more new content which will add more bugs and issues. THAT is the problem.

Except that everyone's not saying it? I used my own experience as an example of that, in the very first lines of the post.

Being feared into terrain =/= input lag. Does it need to be fixed? Absolutely. Can they effectively reproduce it? Unknown, by me at least. I'm not on the QA team, or any team, for that matter. There's a reason that tech support always starts with "are your drivers up to date", etc. It may even be something as simple as my running a fresh install, since I had uninstalled the game to free up some drive space when I quit the last time. As I also said, I didn't attempt to lay out a definitive list of causes, just things that can contribute to the issue I was addressing, input lag. I even put a disclaimer in the post.

My main point was quite simply that they stated they were putting some potential fixes on the test server, and you claiming that meant it wouldn't be tested and just thrown on live. Now that's something that I've seen happen over the years with other things, in other games even, but that doesn't mean it's some sort of universal truth, despite what the more cynical amongst us may believe.

Being feared into terrain has nothing to do with input lag, it's not clipping causing it, it's been discussed in the bug forums, it is not only reproducible but happens only with certain bosses.

I didn't claim anything would be just thrown on live, what I said is that regardless of whatever bugs and issues are resolved on the test server, there are unforeseen bugs and issues that come with every update that contains new content. That adds to the bugs and issues already not resolved currently in the game. Or allow me to say it differently for you. Since the test server is not really a good example of real game experience, there is no possible way for things that happen in real gameplay to be tested on the game server in relation to number of players playing at a given time. So this means bugs and issues will most certainly accompany any updates that include new content.

The potential fixes that are being discussed all relate to the new content, nothing is being addressed that has existed, and been complained about for 6+ years. The bug fixes are only in regards to new content. The other "fixes" that have been discussed is server optimization, client optimization, etc. That isn't fixing bugs or the issues that have existed since day one, never, not once has client or server optimization resolved any problems so far as I can tell by reading the bug support forum. The problem has a lot to do with the fact there are not enough server resources available, we know this, it's been discussed to exhaustion. Why ZoS does not throw the money required at the issue I have no idea, but it's a large part of the problem. The other part of the problem however is the fact that they are spending their labor resources on fixing bugs for new content, and not bothering to address the bugs and issues that already exist.

You might have all kinds of keyboard or computer problems, but you also must realize that if everyone is reporting the same issues, the same bugs for 6+ years, that if ZoS has in the past admitted that they are their issues, that it's not a keyboard problem, or a CPU problem, or a videocard problem, or an ISP problem, or your next door neighbor is hanging on your WIFI killing your bandwidth problem. It's a ZoS problem. We all know it is, pretending it's something else does not ever help the situation.

You can white knight ZoS all you want, but realize also that while doing so, ZoS themselves have killed any argument you might have to play captain-save-a-MMO you might entertain. They have already admitted the problem exists with them, up to 6 years ago and those same issues exist today.

If you would like, I can post some youtube videos of ZoS updates where people that work for, employed by ZoS admit to knowing about these issues and claim to be working on them. Then you can compare that to what has actually been fixed. Afterwards, perhaps you might realize how very wrong you have been about everything you have stated.

Again, not everyone is reporting this, and again, I laid out in my initial post, and subsequent post, that I'm not experiencing this issue. I guess it's ironic that you point to some examples of things that I laid out that can and have happened to insinuate that I'm having hardware issues, all while complaining about an issue that I'm not having, despite these hardware issues. It's the "all my friends" fallacy in full swing. Everyone in your bubble is reporting this, but no-one that I've talked to in game is experiencing it.

I had the random loading screen issue when I first came back, but since I went to windowed mode, I haven't experienced it again. Other than that, and the occasional "I can't loot" so I roll dodge to fix it, I'm not having all these issues. In fact, the last issue I had was just before the server crashed, but, and this may surprise you, the server crashed. I'd expect to have those issues then. InB4 "see they're so bad they can't even keep their servers online": That was the first crash I'd experienced since my return, and I have seen lots of MMO servers drop over the years. It happens.

BackStabeth · May 2020

robertthebard wrote: »

Again, not everyone is reporting this, and again, I laid out in my initial post, and subsequent post, that I'm not experiencing this issue. I guess it's ironic that you point to some examples of things that I laid out that can and have happened to insinuate that I'm having hardware issues, all while complaining about an issue that I'm not having, despite these hardware issues. It's the "all my friends" fallacy in full swing. Everyone in your bubble is reporting this, but no-one that I've talked to in game is experiencing it.

I had the random loading screen issue when I first came back, but since I went to windowed mode, I haven't experienced it again. Other than that, and the occasional "I can't loot" so I roll dodge to fix it, I'm not having all these issues. In fact, the last issue I had was just before the server crashed, but, and this may surprise you, the server crashed. I'd expect to have those issues then. InB4 "see they're so bad they can't even keep their servers online": That was the first crash I'd experienced since my return, and I have seen lots of MMO servers drop over the years. It happens.

If we are being technical not everyone is reporting anything, ever. However, if we are paying attention to what is really happening, if you read the support forums, if you read what people are complaining about, if you listen to what ZoS has admitted they are having issues with, then you quickly realize that the issues are the same, not all are different and the issues everyone is experiencing certainly have nothing, absolutely nothing, not one little tiny thing to do with anything they have control over except perhaps if they choose to uninstall the game or quit.

If the issues, the bugs experienced, the problems are the same? If ZoS has already admitted they are issues caused by something on their side. Well if it walks like a duck, craps like a duck, quacks like a duck then it's' a duck, not a chicken. You can continue to insist it's a chicken but it's simply not the case.

This has nothing to do with any friends, it has to do with reading a lot of material, paying attention to posts, and understanding what is going on with no intent to support an argument. You are trying too hard to support your own argument and not allowing yourself the opportunity to understand what has been pointed on in many, many posts over the course of 6 years.

The way the human brain works is like this, you formulate or postulate an opinion about something that you then own, you believe, we call this a bias because it's not proven so it cannot be a truth. Your brain conserves thought processing just like you optimize a server so it doesn't allow resource hogging. So once you have created this bias in your mind that you have been expressing, your brain filters everything else that doesn't match your bias, to conserve thought processing. That is what we call closed minded. So not only are you not accumulating information in your long term memory access because it's being filtered and never makes it to your long term memory access, but you don't have that information to them bring up into your short term memory access to decimate and think about. Your bias will even prevent you from seeking the truth in looking up information that is presented to you because you are not even considering it to begin with. This is a major problem with logical reasoning, people create a bias, are closed minded so they don't have all the information to logically think about any particular thing they are biased against.

You are disregarding all evidence and proof contrary to what you insist is happening. You are missing what is really happening. You can continue to pretend you are right, and prop up your argument with incorrect assumptions, I am basing what I have stated directly on what ZoS has stated themselves, and the many, many posts that have been talked about to exhaustion for over 6 years.

I want to ask you a very simply question. ZoS has admitted the problems, bugs, issues are theirs and have for 6 years. Do you believe what you claim to be the reason is more correct than what ZoS has stated many times? Are you or ZoS wrong?

robertthebard · May 2020

BackStabeth wrote: »

snip for clarity

I want to ask you a very simply question. ZoS has admitted the problems, bugs, issues are theirs and have for 6 years. Do you believe what you claim to be the reason is more correct than what ZoS has stated many times? Are you or ZoS wrong?

Sarousse wrote: »

Input delay fixes are worked on and will be put on PTS.

That means they won't be tested.

So what will happen ? Next update will go out, input delay and lag will still be there.

Nothing new here.

This is the post that "drew me in to" this dialog, and the one you responded to. My response was to point out that they are indeed working on fixes for input lag, and putting them on the test server. Your response was "they're only testing Greymoor". So, I'm going to ask you your own question, are you wrong, or is ZoS? I did, however, mistakenly claim that you made this post, which made going back to find it interesting, to say the least.

That's the nightmare of QA, when they know they're having an issue, but can't nail it down. It's also the nightmare of a test server environment, because it doesn't come anywhere near to duplicating what actually happens on live servers, even with something as simple as the population being too low. It's hard to test how 1,000 people making DB calls at once is going to affect server performance, when you only have 100 people doing it. Numbers are arbitrary, the essence is what matters. Even with 1000 players on the test server, what happens when there's 10,000 players doing it. This is how bugs "slip through the cracks". They can't do rigorous enough testing on it because they simply don't have enough data.

Input lag is a DB call. The real question here is why are you experiencing it, and I'm not? If QA could readily duplicate it, you'd be able to bet they'd be fixing it. I only use two addons, and I'm running on a relatively fresh install. I could, if I wanted to be reductive, simply point to those things as the cause of other player's issues. I don't, but it's something that did occur to me to ask about, but since some of the people that did respond to that query were on console, it sort of shot the addon theory in the foot.

Is it something that's only happening in large groups? Is it something that's only happening in certain areas? Is it something that's only happening on the second Tuesday of every week? <--- joke. There are a ton of variables that need to be checked and marked as "Not the cause" or "Possible cause". Those then need to be checked, and if they can't get a sufficient stress test, the population issues I indicated above included, there's not much they can do. If they hypothesize, and get it wrong, they're still "not doing anything" as far as the population is concerned, because they don't see any improvements, or, and this happens too, it gets worse.

Coding is a PITA. I was developing a module in Neverwinter Nights, and BioWare released a fix for some VFX issues that the game was having, and the fix broke all the auto close/lock scripts on my doors, none of which had any of the affected VFX attached to them.

RavemasterCrow · May 2020

Not trying to bait, merely making an observation:

I think most people are looking for a tangible reason to be mad and will take any and every opportunity to try and reinforce that. Because otherwise, their anger was unjustified and they were just being rude and exaggerated, and no one likes feeling like the ass that was mistakenly making a scene.

Observation over - I used to work at a tech company that made multi-million dollars every year. They did some pretty big work, yet had a fairly small IT department, and when I was first hired on as a paid intern, I inherited a list of nearly 1000 outstanding tasks that needed to be completed or worked on. Things as small as someone needing a new computer (which meant installing all the relevant programs and cloning their desktop and personal files onto it) to the more esoteric.

But one of the first things that got me called into my Supervisor's office was when I called someone that worked remotely from a different state to tell them not to get on their Virtual PC Link because I was doing updates to the physical computer they were piggybacking from at the office.

And he was fairly upset that I had done (what seemed like the right move to me), because of one key thing:

Now, if literally *anything* goes wrong with that computer - even something unrelated to the work I was doing to it. That person would be calling our offices non-stop to blame me for updating the PC.

I couldn't imagine having to put up with the work load that ZoS has, nor having to deal with the systems or spaghetti code that they have to. But most people who claim that they have "quick and easy" fixes or that they "should know what's causing issues" and they're just "sitting around" - very likely will never understand the frustration and defeat of trying to deal with something that you literally CAN'T find the information to solve.

Lysette · May 2020

RavemasterCrow wrote: »

Not trying to bait, merely making an observation:

I think most people are looking for a tangible reason to be mad and will take any and every opportunity to try and reinforce that. Because otherwise, their anger was unjustified and they were just being rude and exaggerated, and no one likes feeling like the ass that was mistakenly making a scene.

Observation over - I used to work at a tech company that made multi-million dollars every year. They did some pretty big work, yet had a fairly small IT department, and when I was first hired on as a paid intern, I inherited a list of nearly 1000 outstanding tasks that needed to be completed or worked on. Things as small as someone needing a new computer (which meant installing all the relevant programs and cloning their desktop and personal files onto it) to the more esoteric.

But one of the first things that got me called into my Supervisor's office was when I called someone that worked remotely from a different state to tell them not to get on their Virtual PC Link because I was doing updates to the physical computer they were piggybacking from at the office.

And he was fairly upset that I had done (what seemed like the right move to me), because of one key thing:

Now, if literally *anything* goes wrong with that computer - even something unrelated to the work I was doing to it. That person would be calling our offices non-stop to blame me for updating the PC.

I couldn't imagine having to put up with the work load that ZoS has, nor having to deal with the systems or spaghetti code that they have to. But most people who claim that they have "quick and easy" fixes or that they "should know what's causing issues" and they're just "sitting around" - very likely will never understand the frustration and defeat of trying to deal with something that you literally CAN'T find the information to solve.

Well, you are possibly right about this - but then again they are offering a service - and if they aren't able to provide this service they are paid for, then they are just in the wrong place. If you open a restaurant and are unable to serve good food, you are in the wrong place as well - their job is not just doing it somewhat, but to deliver a nearly perfect service. As much as I can understand your point from a per-person perspective - they offer a service and if they have problems to deliver the offered service, then they have to hire more or better people to make the service work properly. They got billions of dollars from us, there is no excuse for this service to be that bad.

furiouslog · May 2020

robertthebard wrote: »

This is the post that "drew me in to" this dialog, and the one you responded to. My response was to point out that they are indeed working on fixes for input lag, and putting them on the test server. Your response was "they're only testing Greymoor". So, I'm going to ask you your own question, are you wrong, or is ZoS? I did, however, mistakenly claim that you made this post, which made going back to find it interesting, to say the least.

That's the nightmare of QA, when they know they're having an issue, but can't nail it down. It's also the nightmare of a test server environment, because it doesn't come anywhere near to duplicating what actually happens on live servers, even with something as simple as the population being too low. It's hard to test how 1,000 people making DB calls at once is going to affect server performance, when you only have 100 people doing it. Numbers are arbitrary, the essence is what matters. Even with 1000 players on the test server, what happens when there's 10,000 players doing it. This is how bugs "slip through the cracks". They can't do rigorous enough testing on it because they simply don't have enough data.

Input lag is a DB call. The real question here is why are you experiencing it, and I'm not? If QA could readily duplicate it, you'd be able to bet they'd be fixing it. I only use two addons, and I'm running on a relatively fresh install. I could, if I wanted to be reductive, simply point to those things as the cause of other player's issues. I don't, but it's something that did occur to me to ask about, but since some of the people that did respond to that query were on console, it sort of shot the addon theory in the foot.

Is it something that's only happening in large groups? Is it something that's only happening in certain areas? Is it something that's only happening on the second Tuesday of every week? <--- joke. There are a ton of variables that need to be checked and marked as "Not the cause" or "Possible cause". Those then need to be checked, and if they can't get a sufficient stress test, the population issues I indicated above included, there's not much they can do. If they hypothesize, and get it wrong, they're still "not doing anything" as far as the population is concerned, because they don't see any improvements, or, and this happens too, it gets worse.

Coding is a PITA. I was developing a module in Neverwinter Nights, and BioWare released a fix for some VFX issues that the game was having, and the fix broke all the auto close/lock scripts on my doors, none of which had any of the affected VFX attached to them.

Excellent post. Here's what I see as the problem: ZOS does not take the steps necessary steps to identify the factors that will enable them to efficiently track down these bugs. Bug reports get submitted on the forums and in game. I know from personal experience that I and many others I play with have had input lag problems, as well as skills stopping entirely. I've submitted bug reports, as have my pals, but after a while you don't keep submitting reports because all you'd be doing all day is submitting reports. I can either play or type out what I was doing the 30th time that I got feared into a tent on WC1 or when a synergy didn't fire in vCR.

If it were me and a bug were identified as being "real", I'd put easily answered surveys out there that addressed all of the potential factors that could be driving it. I'd have logs that automatically collected all of the requisite information so that when a bug occurred, the factors ZOS would need to investigate were available and easily transmitted. And finally, I'd openly share early findings and uncertainties so that the root cause of the problem can be interpolated by a community that is totally willing to help the game to be better.

All of those things are possible to implement with minimal front end investment, and ZOS does none of them. The logs that get transmitted when a bug happens don't even have add-on information supplied in them. They do not engage the community or share information with them in order to find root causes. These are moves that suggest that ZOS knows what many of the issues are and don't want to invest the capital necessary to fix them because the likely strategy for this game is driven by the fact that it's in the sunset phase, and their primary resources and efforts are being focused on their new MMO. Anyone who would have left the game by now will have done so already.

We are collectively analogous to abuse survivors whose abuser knows that we will just continue taking it as long as we get presents and a ham-fisted acknowledgement now and then. "I'm sorry baby, you know I love you, here's a free crown crate. Here's an expansion. Now go do the dishes." I experience so many bugs every day that I just don't bother reporting them any more. I've also invested so much time in this game and developed so many in-game friendships that I don't want to lose that. At some point the unplayability of the game will become more important than retaining the value of that invested time and those relationships. In the meantime, there is money to be made off of me, and ZOS continues to court new players so that by the time I leave, there are plenty of new people who will replace my lost revenue stream. It's a cynical and unethical business model that appears to be working for them, and it's the real root cause of their QA problems - willful ignorance and a lack of financial incentive to behave otherwise.

EmEm_Oh · May 2020

SydneyGrey wrote: »

Greymoor hasn't been released yet. Of course it has bugs ... that's why it's on the test server right now, to fix them before it goes live. That's the whole point of the test server.

Bookmark me.

After realease date, all the "PTS testing" will have been pointless.

robertthebard · May 2020

furiouslog wrote: »

robertthebard wrote: »

This is the post that "drew me in to" this dialog, and the one you responded to. My response was to point out that they are indeed working on fixes for input lag, and putting them on the test server. Your response was "they're only testing Greymoor". So, I'm going to ask you your own question, are you wrong, or is ZoS? I did, however, mistakenly claim that you made this post, which made going back to find it interesting, to say the least.

That's the nightmare of QA, when they know they're having an issue, but can't nail it down. It's also the nightmare of a test server environment, because it doesn't come anywhere near to duplicating what actually happens on live servers, even with something as simple as the population being too low. It's hard to test how 1,000 people making DB calls at once is going to affect server performance, when you only have 100 people doing it. Numbers are arbitrary, the essence is what matters. Even with 1000 players on the test server, what happens when there's 10,000 players doing it. This is how bugs "slip through the cracks". They can't do rigorous enough testing on it because they simply don't have enough data.

Input lag is a DB call. The real question here is why are you experiencing it, and I'm not? If QA could readily duplicate it, you'd be able to bet they'd be fixing it. I only use two addons, and I'm running on a relatively fresh install. I could, if I wanted to be reductive, simply point to those things as the cause of other player's issues. I don't, but it's something that did occur to me to ask about, but since some of the people that did respond to that query were on console, it sort of shot the addon theory in the foot.

Is it something that's only happening in large groups? Is it something that's only happening in certain areas? Is it something that's only happening on the second Tuesday of every week? <--- joke. There are a ton of variables that need to be checked and marked as "Not the cause" or "Possible cause". Those then need to be checked, and if they can't get a sufficient stress test, the population issues I indicated above included, there's not much they can do. If they hypothesize, and get it wrong, they're still "not doing anything" as far as the population is concerned, because they don't see any improvements, or, and this happens too, it gets worse.

Coding is a PITA. I was developing a module in Neverwinter Nights, and BioWare released a fix for some VFX issues that the game was having, and the fix broke all the auto close/lock scripts on my doors, none of which had any of the affected VFX attached to them.

Excellent post. Here's what I see as the problem: ZOS does not take the steps necessary steps to identify the factors that will enable them to efficiently track down these bugs. Bug reports get submitted on the forums and in game. I know from personal experience that I and many others I play with have had input lag problems, as well as skills stopping entirely. I've submitted bug reports, as have my pals, but after a while you don't keep submitting reports because all you'd be doing all day is submitting reports. I can either play or type out what I was doing the 30th time that I got feared into a tent on WC1 or when a synergy didn't fire in vCR.

If it were me and a bug were identified as being "real", I'd put easily answered surveys out there that addressed all of the potential factors that could be driving it. I'd have logs that automatically collected all of the requisite information so that when a bug occurred, the factors ZOS would need to investigate were available and easily transmitted. And finally, I'd openly share early findings and uncertainties so that the root cause of the problem can be interpolated by a community that is totally willing to help the game to be better.

All of those things are possible to implement with minimal front end investment, and ZOS does none of them. The logs that get transmitted when a bug happens don't even have add-on information supplied in them. They do not engage the community or share information with them in order to find root causes. These are moves that suggest that ZOS knows what many of the issues are and don't want to invest the capital necessary to fix them because the likely strategy for this game is driven by the fact that it's in the sunset phase, and their primary resources and efforts are being focused on their new MMO. Anyone who would have left the game by now will have done so already.

We are collectively analogous to abuse survivors whose abuser knows that we will just continue taking it as long as we get presents and a ham-fisted acknowledgement now and then. "I'm sorry baby, you know I love you, here's a free crown crate. Here's an expansion. Now go do the dishes." I experience so many bugs every day that I just don't bother reporting them any more. I've also invested so much time in this game and developed so many in-game friendships that I don't want to lose that. At some point the unplayability of the game will become more important than retaining the value of that invested time and those relationships. In the meantime, there is money to be made off of me, and ZOS continues to court new players so that by the time I leave, there are plenty of new people who will replace my lost revenue stream. It's a cynical and unethical business model that appears to be working for them, and it's the real root cause of their QA problems - willful ignorance and a lack of financial incentive to behave otherwise.

I saw a post the other day talking about how people entering and leaving a zone was affecting the lag in the zone. This swings around to the DB call issues I listed above. It's easy to sit here and go with correlation equals causation, and it may even be accurate. So what would the solution then be? They can't reduce DB calls, that would make combat next to impossible, and I believe that people have come to that conclusion in Cyrodill already? There are certainly methods to streamline it, but some of those have been met with "but you can't do that to x".

As a player, I have no idea what measures are put in place to aid QA in running down these issues. I don't have access to the backend stuff that's going on, and, somewhat ironically, some of them may in fact be compounding the issues by adding more load to an already, apparently, overburdened system. Along the lines of what I mentioned about "making it worse". Tracking DB calls to find what's lagging them could very well cause more lag, as it's actually doing more DB calls on top of what's being done in the first place. If it were an issue that's affecting everyone, all the time, it would be much easier to track, but I'm not even having the constant "can't loot" or "random loading screens" issues frequently enough to be problematic, and the latter has ceased entirely since I swapped to full screen windowed mode, which also helps me with doing stuff on my second monitor while I'm playing.

So I can't say what they are, or aren't doing with any certainty. It would be easy to say "they're not doing anything", but as I pointed out, it could be as simple as what they are doing isn't working, or is making it worse. Trial and error to find and fix them, and it may be frustrating from here, where we all sit, but I'm not sure it's accurate to claim they aren't trying.

reiverx · May 2020

I think one of the big problems is that bugs get into the game that are so obvious they must have been noticed during the development and testing phase. Little things are going to fly under the radar, that can't be helped. Thing is, these are game-breaking but they get released anyway.

MEBengalsFan2001 · May 2020

MilkJugg24 wrote: »

As someone who has been hovering around the PC Technical Support forum a lot recently, there seems to be many issues that ZOS doesn't have information about or chooses not to talk about. I have a feeling that they are seeing these issues, but simply do not have a solution or clue as to go about solving them.

When the publisher is expecting a quota of content like we see with this year's timeline, the priority will always be pushing content over fixing existing systems. This problem is not exclusive to ESO as a live service game. It affects a lot of other titles out there, some are just more successful at mitigating these problems than others.

I do hope that this quarantine perhaps causes a shift in their priorities and gives them an excuse to work backwards for a bit. I think a large majority of players, including myself, wouldn't mind a half-year cycle of nothing but bug fixing or more. Some of that however takes time, and is not something that everyone working on the game can work on. I haven't seen much in regards to Quality Assurance positions becoming available. I would love to do some on-boarding, and work remotely with ZOS to help them.

New content = more revenue.
Fixing bugs = resource cost, system cost, etc... to fix the bugs.

Most updates has some bug fixes and new content which is a nice balance between the two to ensure revenue is coming in and some bugs get resolved.

As you pointed out there maybe bugs that the devs simply don't know the underling issue that is causing it and without knowing that issue they cannot resolve it. It maybe on their radar but on the back end of it as they cannot duplicate the issue or find what is causing it. As soon as they know what the root cause is they can work towards a solution.

I'm all for devs that do a bit a both. Fix older bugs and release new content.

furiouslog · May 2020

robertthebard wrote: »

As a player, I have no idea what measures are put in place to aid QA in running down these issues. I don't have access to the backend stuff that's going on, and, somewhat ironically, some of them may in fact be compounding the issues by adding more load to an already, apparently, overburdened system. Along the lines of what I mentioned about "making it worse". Tracking DB calls to find what's lagging them could very well cause more lag, as it's actually doing more DB calls on top of what's being done in the first place. If it were an issue that's affecting everyone, all the time, it would be much easier to track, but I'm not even having the constant "can't loot" or "random loading screens" issues frequently enough to be problematic, and the latter has ceased entirely since I swapped to full screen windowed mode, which also helps me with doing stuff on my second monitor while I'm playing.

Are you saying that you don't get any random loading screens at all in Cyrodiil during combat? I would not believe that, and if it's true, share your setup please.

I play in full screen windowed mode, and I get random load screens in a number of zones. No apparent cause or pattern.

Here is a list of things that have happened to me just in the past 2 weeks:

1. Feared into stairs in Wayrest Sewers.
2. Got stuck in keep wall in Cyrodiil.
3. 5-15 second mount times in Cyrodiil (I press "H" and the animation takes that long to load and put my toon on my mount so that it can move).
4. Multiple loading screens while playing in Cyrodiil, randomly outside of combat, and every time when approaching a keep in combat (I got killed nearly every time that happened - probably about 15-20 occasions).
5. My group could not rez me during a vBRP run at any point in the instance. I was untargetable.
6. During the final boss on a vSS run, the firestorm mechanic would wipe the group even though we were positioned behind the statue.
7. During the final boss on a different vSS run, the portals spawned well before they were historically supposed to and the downstairs boss wiped the party (until we figured that out).
8. Synergies would sometimes not appear in Cloudrest even with no other syngeries present (most notably, dropping hoarfrost).
9. Multiple instances of individual skills not firing when button pressed.
10. Multiple instances of skills entirely failing to fire for long periods of time (5-15 seconds) - this can apparently be reset with a roll dodge
11. Multiple instances of interactable NPCs and dungeon synergy mechanics not prompting an E or X (including looting).
12. Multiple sudden group wipes from unexpected or out of sequence one shot mechanics in multiple vet dungeons - what it looked like is the boss would warp and suddenly drop everyone at once.
13. Multiple group finder bugs (e.g. GF goes on forever even with full group).
14. Multiple server disconnections during gameplay.

That was all observable stuff. There are other things that probably happen that are unobservable. ESO feels and plays to me like a game in beta, after 6 years. If we've hit a ceiling due to a technical design issue and this is life in the game from here on out, ethically, they should tell us that so that we can choose to live with this or move on. If it's not an unaddressable technical limitation , they should come up with a way to identify and fix the root causes and do it.

I know they are apparently trying, but beyond some vague and deaf-tone posts referencing performance upgrades that are scrubbed over by an editor and legal team, there is no communication or community engagement. There is no meaningful public acknowledgement that they have a real problem at all. That causes distrust and cynicism, which has been justifiably expressed here time and again.

You appear to say that because you don't have these issues that it's probably not ZOS's fault. Am I getting that right? Because if it's not ZOS, what is driving my experience, and either way, do I not have the right to express my frustrations about that experience?

robertthebard · May 2020

@furiouslog I ignore Cyrodill, because it's not got anything to offer that I can't "live w/out", so I guess I don't get them there because I'm never there?

I had the random loading screens for a few days after my return, but I haven't had one since I swapped over to windowed mode, and I play with a controller, so it would be pretty obvious. My AV used to minimize me out of games a lot, which resulted in minimized games, and in some games, loading screens when I came back. But even when it didn't, such as running in windowed mode, I'd lose focus, and my controller would stop responding.

[Deleted User] · May 2020

Hello everyone,

With this thread continuing to have bait and flame after our previous intervention, we're going to go ahead and close it down. For further posts be sure to stay constructive and respectful with the Forum Rules in mind to avoid thread derailment or action on one's own account.

Thank you for understanding.