ESO Game Performance Work Communication

ZOS_JessicaFolsom · June 2020

Hi everyone,

We wanted to share with you an update on our plans for communicating upcoming ESO game performance-related work. Starting with Update 27, we will post a preview of the game performance work that is going live with the next update. This forum post will be similar in spirit to the quarterly combat updates (you can see the Update 26 one here). It will include a greater level of technical detail and development context than our previous game performance article, and will be focused on the most immediate upcoming game update. You can expect to see these posts a few days before each update goes live on the PTS, so the Update 27 one will be next month.

In between the quarterly updates, we will continue to ask for and read feedback, investigate issues raised by the community, and provide answers where and when we are able. We also have a cross-discipline group digging into the longstanding problems specifically in Cyrodiil, and how to best address them. This team is actively working on long-term Cyrodill performance analysis and planning for changes/fixes.

We will continue to reach out to individual players for more specific details about issues or areas in need of improvement that we’re actively investigating. Once each update is live, we’ll also check back in with everyone to ask how the improvements feel and gather more data. We often need to see game performance work in action on the live servers to gauge if the results match the goal, and if additional work is needed. When the Update 27 improvements go live on the PTS in July, we encourage everyone on PC/Mac to hop in give us your feedback on the PTS forums.

Thank you!

QuantumPie · June 2020

Thank you for being willing to communicate these issues with us! I've seen many games die off from the dev teams unwillingness to fix longstanding issues and communicate what they are doing. I can clearly see that this isn't the case with ESO and work is being done, it just takes time.

VaranisArano · June 2020

Looking forward to "a greater level of technical detail and development context."

Also?
"We also have a cross-discipline group digging into the longstanding problems specifically in Cyrodiil, and how to best address them. This team is actively working on long-term Cyrodill performance analysis and planning for changes/fixes."

About time!

Alienoutlaw · June 2020

so every 3mths we going to get the "its on target" speech but yet to see any of that translate into the game?
i think what players would really like is some communication in regards to current issues and why they seem to be so difficult to fix and maybe a hint as to why they are even in the game? performance has gotten consistently worse with every patch and the weekly updates seem to be getting more and more of a major issue.

Celephantsylvius_Bornasfinmo · June 2020

Ah, this is good news. Let's abide by this post and move forward together!

its_Chalman · June 2020

Not excited at all.. What is the diference to have a pc pts.. when stuff goes live in console.. the performarce is actually worst the before???

I keep getting lags and desync for the game.. for more then a monthe.. I couldnt even play 10 minutes this week that i start to see everbody teleporting.. and crashes..

You submit a ticket.. and they just tell me to look for xbox suport..

UNtil we dont have a console pts.. we wil alwasy keep experimenting new bugs and issues and have to deal with all of themm during a whole patch time..

But.. a bug in crown store???? Next day the servers are down to fix it

figueroa · June 2020

Thank you for this post and update. I hope this stays on track and everybody is kept in the loop

furiouslog · June 2020

It this is true I am looking forward to seeing it.

UppGRAYxDD · June 2020

Honestly after all the deleted threads, ignored feedback, and aimless direction pertaining to customer needs....
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Thoragaal · June 2020

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Hi everyone,

We wanted to share with you an update on our plans for communicating upcoming ESO game performance-related work. Starting with Update 27, we will post a preview of the game performance work that is going live with the next update. This forum post will be similar in spirit to the quarterly combat updates (you can see the Update 26 one here). It will include a greater level of technical detail and development context than our previous game performance article, and will be focused on the most immediate upcoming game update. You can expect to see these posts a few days before each update goes live on the PTS, so the Update 27 one will be next month.

In between the quarterly updates, we will continue to ask for and read feedback, investigate issues raised by the community, and provide answers where and when we are able. We also have a cross-discipline group digging into the longstanding problems specifically in Cyrodiil, and how to best address them. This team is actively working on long-term Cyrodill performance analysis and planning for changes/fixes.

We will continue to reach out to individual players for more specific details about issues or areas in need of improvement that we’re actively investigating. Once each update is live, we’ll also check back in with everyone to ask how the improvements feel and gather more data. We often need to see game performance work in action on the live servers to gauge if the results match the goal, and if additional work is needed. When the Update 27 improvements go live on the PTS in July, we encourage everyone on PC/Mac to hop in give us your feedback on the PTS forums.

Thank you!

Can we please have more specific information about what these upcoming changes are intended to do?
Saying things like "this will increase performance" isn't enough. People want to know if it's:
1) Server side performance improvement.
2) Client side performance improvement.
3) If it's adressing desyncs.
4) If it's lowering the real latency.
5) If it's meant to increase FPS.

All of the above is "to increase performance", but they are achieved completely differently and will impact the individual player differently. Stating the purpose of said change with more precision would be greatly appreciated.
Speaking of latency, it's time to update the shown latency in game; it's not reliable and only shows an avarage latency over a specific time period.

technohic · June 2020

So it's still a quarterly update effectively talking plans of things to come. Nice and all but it leaves a couple months of postmortem that really is killing a lot of our friends lists and community.

I really am not trying to be toxic. I'm just pleading with you to please acknowledge specific ongoing issues as it feels sometimes like you're pushing on ahead and view the past fixes as working and they dont feel like they are working. Too early of reflection like Mats last note are nice but they hit before the dust settles. If you add them about a month before next release like your plan describes, people are already lost.

Just my two cents.

idk · June 2020

Thanks for the communication on how Zos plans to communicate with us on performance issues going forward. It is also good to hear what seems to be Zos putting a more focused effort into resolving the performance in Cyrodiil.

Asdara · June 2020

Thanks for communicating on this, really THANK YOU.
I hope my post got a little of weigh in the balance of re-establishing communication after the long winter of covid.
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/534167/we-are-exploring-better-ways-to-keep-you-updated-snip/

Djiku · June 2020

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

In between the quarterly updates, we will continue to ask for and read feedback, investigate issues raised by the community, and provide answers where and when we are able. We also have a cross-discipline group digging into the longstanding problems specifically in Cyrodiil, and how to best address them. This team is actively working on long-term Cyrodill performance analysis and planning for changes/fixes.

[/url].

So you are basically saying that you made little to no progress since the disaster that was U25. The desynchs and delay are still there and you are still in the analysis phase? Wow!
I don't wanna come across rude, because I appreciate that you are trying to communicate with us, but this situation has been gonig on since february.
How about an off-cycle PTS where you show us what fixes you got for the performance problems? You invite the players to the PTS with a nice incentive. I am not talking about a pet or something like that. Something that has worth, that a lot of players would say "Hey, if I participate in this, this thing I get is really nice, I want that". Then you can test the fixes in a better environment then your internal servers.
You need to fix these problems asap! Don't wait for update 27 to release another attempt that might fail again. Seize the opportunity to do something now!

SmukkeHeks · June 2020

That team. Is it only investigating na?

gp1680 · June 2020

Well here we go again. Another post that states they are looking at performance. These kind of posts from the devs have occurred regularly for the last three years, culminating late last year in what they called a “performance plan”. Well how did that work out?

I am certainly going to remain optimistic that THIS time they are for real, but I’ll wait to see actual results.

Destai · June 2020

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Hi everyone,

We wanted to share with you an update on our plans for communicating upcoming ESO game performance-related work. Starting with Update 27, we will post a preview of the game performance work that is going live with the next update. This forum post will be similar in spirit to the quarterly combat updates (you can see the Update 26 one here). It will include a greater level of technical detail and development context than our previous game performance article, and will be focused on the most immediate upcoming game update. You can expect to see these posts a few days before each update goes live on the PTS, so the Update 27 one will be next month.

In between the quarterly updates, we will continue to ask for and read feedback, investigate issues raised by the community, and provide answers where and when we are able. We also have a cross-discipline group digging into the longstanding problems specifically in Cyrodiil, and how to best address them. This team is actively working on long-term Cyrodill performance analysis and planning for changes/fixes.

We will continue to reach out to individual players for more specific details about issues or areas in need of improvement that we’re actively investigating. Once each update is live, we’ll also check back in with everyone to ask how the improvements feel and gather more data. We often need to see game performance work in action on the live servers to gauge if the results match the goal, and if additional work is needed. When the Update 27 improvements go live on the PTS in July, we encourage everyone on PC/Mac to hop in give us your feedback on the PTS forums.

Thank you!

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom Thank you. This is a step in the right direction.

I'd like to add the following feedback:
1. What will the between-quarter feedback process look like? One of the points of frustration for the community is the orphaning of threads. Case in point, the last update from Matt Firor was started and then official communication was dropped. That's the pattern that results in players losing trust and getting toxic.
2. Similar to the class rep idea, I think it'd help the community to identify improvement-area reps like a player rep on PVE performance, Dungeon Performance, etc. Identifying those functional areas I think will give you guys targeted feedback.
3. Since PTS is focused on the PC, what can console players do to voice their concerns and ensure that specific technical needs are being met?
4. What will the post-launch feedback loop look like for each update?
5. Are you entertaining AMA's following each update so that players can more readily ask questions?

Again, thanks for recognizing the issues and addressing our concerns. I hope that this kind of communication is here to stay. It's a good point to start from.

Elsonso · June 2020

Djiku wrote: »

How about an off-cycle PTS where you show us what fixes you got for the performance problems? You invite the players to the PTS with a nice incentive. I am not talking about a pet or something like that. Something that has worth, that a lot of players would say "Hey, if I participate in this, this thing I get is really nice, I want that". Then you can test the fixes in a better environment then your internal servers.
You need to fix these problems asap! Don't wait for update 27 to release another attempt that might fail again. Seize the opportunity to do something now!

I don't know if that is going to help anything. Not enough people test on PTS to really get an idea of how the changes will perform on Live. It has to be on live. Besides, PTS is already active almost half of the time between updates, and this is going to result in player's simply ignoring PTS due to burn out.

It would probably be better to drop something on Live, evaluate it for 2 weeks, spend the next 2 weeks working up changes, then drop another thing on Live. That would put incremental performance changes out once per month, which is pretty aggressive for this team. The downside is that people would have to be more tolerant of failure than they are now, which is never gonna happen.

agegarton · June 2020

It's so hard to keep reading this stuff. It's not that I don't appreciate the communication (at last), but previous efforts to "improve performance" culminated in the worst ever performance in Cyrodiil, overspill of the worst of Cyrodiil into trials and DLC dungeons and some other group content, and the most disastrous chapter launch known to humankind.

Couple that with the unbelievably terrible performance of the EU server (clearly singular.......) and the gradual erosion of support for Mac users....... man, it's just depressing!

Anyway, if I can log on today after yesterday's "simple server restart" I'll go looking for the lead for The Heartland...... oh yeah, no I won't because several of the leads are confirmed to not actually be in the game.

YoshinJaa · June 2020

REALLY consider a console PTS version of the upcoming update so we can start submitting console-related bugs. I would gladly re-download the game to help shape up the future of console in a positive way.

Sephyr · June 2020

UppGRAYxDD wrote: »

Honestly after all the deleted threads, ignored feedback, and aimless direction pertaining to customer needs....

This. It's getting to the point where threads are heavily moderated where good information is literally just "[snipped]" away. I get that the moderation team has to enforce the rules/ToS, but they should also abide by proper moderation tactics that don't take out the relevant, and quite frankly, vital information that we as a community rely on more because we don't get any answers from developers. We can't even challenge anything at this point.

NoodleESO · June 2020

This is what we needed all along thank you Zos! Let us help you if you can't handle it all, you have a large loving community and most of us would be happy to support you in making ESO a better experience.

Destai · June 2020

Sephyr wrote: »

UppGRAYxDD wrote: »

Honestly after all the deleted threads, ignored feedback, and aimless direction pertaining to customer needs....

This. It's getting to the point where threads are heavily moderated where good information is literally just "[snipped]" away. I get that the moderation team has to enforce the rules/ToS, but they should also abide by proper moderation tactics that don't take out the relevant, and quite frankly, vital information that we as a community rely on more because we don't get any answers from developers. We can't even challenge anything at this point.

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_GinaBruno The point above is also crucial to the success of any communication.

idk · June 2020

Djiku wrote: »

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

In between the quarterly updates, we will continue to ask for and read feedback, investigate issues raised by the community, and provide answers where and when we are able. We also have a cross-discipline group digging into the longstanding problems specifically in Cyrodiil, and how to best address them. This team is actively working on long-term Cyrodill performance analysis and planning for changes/fixes.

[/url].

So you are basically saying that you made little to no progress since the disaster that was U25. The desynchs and delay are still there and you are still in the analysis phase? Wow!

That does not appear to be what she is saying at all. She is clearly saying they have a group that is specifically working on Cyrdiil's performance issues. Heck, she does not even allude to U25 or any changes they made in the past.

Firstmep · June 2020

I still wanna know how I'm not lagging during Midyear Mayhem when theres 2 40 man grps fighting right next to each other. Normally the server would've exploded by now.

Ragnarock41 · June 2020

I hope you can take advantage of the next gen console hardware and consider multi-threaded CPU optimizations to help take advantage of AMD processors that often come with 6 or 8 cores. With how much power PS5 has it should be a relatively painless process.

ZOS_Mika · June 2020

Greetings,

We wanted to take this opportunity to remind the community about our appeals process for moderator actions. Please remember that we are happy to review a specific moderation decision with you, but discussion of moderator actions or decisions on our forums is against our Community Rules.

If you have questions or concerns about a moderator action, please contact help.elderscrollsonline.com so that we can look into it for you.

Thank you for your understanding and for helping us keep this discussion on track.

technohic · June 2020

ZOS_MikaS wrote: »

Greetings,

We wanted to take this opportunity to remind the community about our appeals process for moderator actions. Please remember that we are happy to review a specific moderation decision with you, but discussion of moderator actions or decisions on our forums is against our Community Rules.

If you have questions or concerns about a moderator action, please contact help.elderscrollsonline.com so that we can look into it for you.

Thank you for your understanding and for helping us keep this discussion on track.

Problem is chief; the appeal takes longer than a suspension. What good is appealing a post deletion or edit if its days later and lost relevance?

Sephyr · June 2020

technohic wrote: »

ZOS_MikaS wrote: »

Greetings,

We wanted to take this opportunity to remind the community about our appeals process for moderator actions. Please remember that we are happy to review a specific moderation decision with you, but discussion of moderator actions or decisions on our forums is against our Community Rules.

If you have questions or concerns about a moderator action, please contact help.elderscrollsonline.com so that we can look into it for you.

Thank you for your understanding and for helping us keep this discussion on track.

Problem is chief; the appeal takes longer than a suspension. What good is appealing a post deletion or edit if its days later and lost relevance?

^This. There's also no effective way to report problem moderators. I have a list and I'd LOVE to have a conversation with a supervisor about this.

mav1234 · June 2020

This sounds good, but I would like to add to that the period between patches feels completely dead as far as communication on the state of the game and potential changes to it. Finding ways to communicate between when a DLC launches and when a pts goes up would be very welcome.

gronoxvx · June 2020

This is a start ZOS, which is great to see.

I just hope you dont drop the ball again and go silent on us for the 3rd or 4th time at least.