Game crashes during combat with certain enemies/during Battlegrounds/PVP

LadyAzura · July 2020

Hello all.

Ever since the Midyear Mayhem started I have been having somewhat constant game crashes during combat with certain enemies and specifically during Battlegrounds.

I must preface this in saying that I have never had the game crash prior to Midyear Mayhem starting, and I have a new computer that has been handling ESO very smoothly on very high settings for the past few months since I got it. (I will put more details on my computer and game specific stuff below.)

The crashes seem to happen during big PVP battles or boss battles, and I think they are happening in Battlegrounds/pvp when being hit with a knockback attack, or being interrupted while casting and ability yourself. I am not 100% certain this is what is causing it, but it tends to be the case when it does happen. Of course I'm sure you can imagine how frustrating this is during battlegrounds, especially when my team is winning. It also tends to crash when fighting NPCs that have necromancer abilities, like liches.

I have been testing different fixes on the lich boss 'Satagna' in the Ruins of Kardala in Craglorn. I have tried disabling all addons, lowering all settings to the absolute minimum, have updated my graphics driver and everything else I can possibly think of. None of these fixes have worked, as the game still crashes when being attacked by the lich, and during Battlegrounds.

I have only been experiencing these crashes on my main, who is a sorcerer. I have been testing things on another, lower leveled necromancer character I have and have not had any game crashes at all. I was wondering if this may be a class-specific bug, or something else is causing it, since my friends do not seem to be having these issues.

I have also asked a few people in zone chat if they are experiencing crashes during combat too, and a few people said they have.

I have of course logged two bug reports in game.

If anyone is curious, or doubtful that I may be experiencing these crashes due to software/hardware these are the specs of my computer. I am also playing on PC on the NA server
Acer Nitro 7
Windows 10 Home
Intel Core i7
16GB Ram
Nvidia GTX 1660 Ti

Dovakhan · July 2020

Getting freezes ever since Greymoor. I have to reboot my PC to regain control of it.

Please post everyday till the issues are fixed, as I'm doing as well. It's the only way they're gonna bother doing anything.

LadyAzura · July 2020

Dovakhan wrote: »

Getting freezes ever since Greymoor. I have to reboot my PC to regain control of it.

Please post everyday till the issues are fixed, as I'm doing as well. It's the only way they're gonna bother doing anything.

Yes, it's getting very frustrating at this point. I really have been enjoying battlegrounds and it's an easier way to get event tickets for Midyear Mayhem there than doing stuff in Cyrodiil, and it is making even the normal PvE content unplayable at points as well.

Like I mentioned before, I have logged two bug reports but I feel like posting on the forums might be a quicker way to get them to fix it.

LadyAzura · July 2020

Update:

Me and my friends have been experimenting with attacks and purposefully trying to trigger game crashes during 1v1 duels.

We have deduced that it is definitely necromancer abilities that cause the game to crash, particularly the 'Flame Skull' ability. The game crashes when being hit with the flame skull while casting attacks, jumping and sprinting. I have been able to replicate the crashes on 3 of my characters, all different classes and races.

I am not sure if any other abilities/classes are causing these crashes as well, but I can definitely say the necromancer class is broken.

Please fix this Zenimax, as it is making the game somewhat unplayable for me.

arturius · July 2020

Similar here (PVE).
Boss lich melee attacks instantly crash the game.
It uses a kind of spiral blue spell attack. Always crahsh if I'm facing the lich..
I have to run around keeping a distance an fighting with ranged weapons.
Not practical at all for a tank.

LadyAzura · July 2020

People are still having these issues and there have been multiple threads made, but no acknowledgement. Not even a "hi the devs have seen this and are working to fix it". Quite annoying since I want to play battlegrounds but can't because my game crashes every time there is a necro on the opposing teams.

Necoriban · July 2020

Edit1: It's 2 months i can't do my dailies nor do any battleground at all. I could understand if it was a minor bug, but this is literally making certain parts of the game unplayable for some people.
Edit2: 22/7/2020 -- still not fixed, seems worse than before. 4 bgs, 4 freeze in the first 30 sec/minute.

Hi,
I have the same problem since 26th may (Greymoor update), thought it was on my end since everyone i talked to in the first weeks didn't have the problem. Now it seems it's getting known. So it was not my problem after all.
I too also did some tests to see what triggers the freeze and i've got to the same conclusions.
Let's say i main a sorcerer too, so i thought at first it was something with my class (since every other person i knew who wasn't a sorc didn't have the problem). The freeze happened(and still do) always in battlegrounds during big battles, so on a deathmatch it always happen, while on bgs where you avoid battles for most of the time (crazy king etc) it's rarer.
I thought it had something to do with too many particles on screen, so i removed particles settings, nothing changed.
Then lowered every graphic setting to minimum (always played on ultra without problems) , nothing changed.
Thought it was an add-on problem (since most of them were outdated because of greymoor launch) so i deleted them, nothing changed.
Then i thought it had to do with my Lightning ability, since it seemed to happen every time the lightning exploded on <20% hp enemies, stopped using that ability, still happens. (though i'm still positive that the lightining explosion may be ONE of the triggers)
Then i focused on Stuns/knockdowns (if you are the one getting hit) --- That also may be a trigger from what i've experienced.
I didn't think about the Necromancer flaming orb but it definitely makes sense as a trigger since i clearly remember some of them coming towards me in every freeze screen.
So on conclusions : the freeze happens when you are the one getting hit by certain abilities, using them on others (for now) never caused a freeze.
Flaming skull is one of them. Abilities that stun/block or do any effect on your character may be too. Mage's fury (the sorc lightning) when it explodes on <20% may be a trigger too.

I only experienced the freezes on pvp for now. (Since i'm mostly questing/exploring on pve, so i avoid battle most of the times and never do bosses) so i can't comment on pve freezes, but since from what i read it happens during battles with enemies that use variations of the player's skills, it's the same. ----> the problem is in the skills/abilities.

garlicking · August 2020

Game just crashed while fighting a lich in Stormhaven. It was one of those random daedra/vampire spawns, the first part of the battle went fine but then the lich shot this green fiery skull at me and the game froze. Completely crashed the OS/window system as well.

Not the first time this has happened; at least one other time fighting a lich, and another time fighting a necromancer during the Reaper's March zone quest.

RawBrightSilver · September 2020

Same problem and only noticing it during larger battles with multiple enemies in both PVP and PVE settings (Imperial City and Craglorn Group areas).

Tested on 2 toons: Nightblade and Dragonknight.

Can't get crash dumps because the freeze locks up my system requiring a reboot.

This makes certain aspects of the game unplayable for me.

thelast111 · September 2020

LadyAzura wrote: »

Hello all.

Ever since the Midyear Mayhem started I have been having somewhat constant game crashes during combat with certain enemies and specifically during Battlegrounds.

I must preface this in saying that I have never had the game crash prior to Midyear Mayhem starting, and I have a new computer that has been handling ESO very smoothly on very high settings for the past few months since I got it. (I will put more details on my computer and game specific stuff below.)

The crashes seem to happen during big PVP battles or boss battles, and I think they are happening in Battlegrounds/pvp when being hit with a knockback attack, or being interrupted while casting and ability yourself. I am not 100% certain this is what is causing it, but it tends to be the case when it does happen. Of course I'm sure you can imagine how frustrating this is during battlegrounds, especially when my team is winning. It also tends to crash when fighting NPCs that have necromancer abilities, like liches.

I have been testing different fixes on the lich boss 'Satagna' in the Ruins of Kardala in Craglorn. I have tried disabling all addons, lowering all settings to the absolute minimum, have updated my graphics driver and everything else I can possibly think of. None of these fixes have worked, as the game still crashes when being attacked by the lich, and during Battlegrounds.

I have only been experiencing these crashes on my main, who is a sorcerer. I have been testing things on another, lower leveled necromancer character I have and have not had any game crashes at all. I was wondering if this may be a class-specific bug, or something else is causing it, since my friends do not seem to be having these issues.

I have also asked a few people in zone chat if they are experiencing crashes during combat too, and a few people said they have.

I have of course logged two bug reports in game.

If anyone is curious, or doubtful that I may be experiencing these crashes due to software/hardware these are the specs of my computer. I am also playing on PC on the NA server
Acer Nitro 7
Windows 10 Home
Intel Core i7
16GB Ram
Nvidia GTX 1660 Ti

thelast111 · September 2020

I am having the same problem in Cyrodiil and Battlegrounds and it also happened to me since Midyear Mayhem. I also experience gamecrash when I battle the lich in Crypt of Hearts 1

r.obdoggrwb17_ESO · December 2020

2020 almost over and still no fix, I notice it also crashes sometimes when fighting Giants in The Rift, with or without necromancers.
[snip]

[Edited to remove Bashing]

dave6783 · February 2021

3 battles in a row, over multiple days... ysmgar battle freezes up.
what's up? why are so many things broken?

Vandellia · February 2021

If the crash outs' were just combat related id still be upset However for me after every patch the game has been increasingly unstable, I can be doing normal things like doing craft dailys', then when I access a craft station I cant not craft ( I can still move around(for a bit) then I crash to desktop. Another scenario i have completed a quest or daily set and I do a turn in go to next npc and attempt to communicate with them and bang, no response from then npc if I wait a bit I will eventually ctd. as of the last minor update its gotten so bad I can Log into game try to access a npc or a task board and end up non-responsive with a CTD to follow. Sometimes the game is a little more forgiving and I can port to a new location and attempt to do some combat and if I do nothing else but go directly to the harrow/boss and do combat I stand a 25 percent chance to not disconnect during the combat and logback in dead. If I want to be able to complete a harrow/wb I almost need to get to location log completely out then log back in at that location to stand a very good chance to successfully complete the kill. Porting into or out of a house is also problematic sometimes I can port to a house leave it and do things afterwards some times its port in and attempt to leave house and crash out/disconnect. Overall what is happening for what ever reason is that my client is being disconnected from the server following some sort of interaction with the game environment. T he problem can show it self immedately or after a session in one local for a half hour or so before the disco happens...

Vandellia · February 2021

Additionally I have done the following to investigate potential causes.
1. Run with No add-ons still get disconnected from the "lobby" during word object interaction.
2. Deleted shader chache (per some technical researched suggestions) followed by a reboot and repair game session
3. Run Repair following a game crash
4. tried multiple different video drivers. (AMD), yes with some games some versions of drivers are er um more compatible(read stable) with a game and others not as stable
5. Checked bandwidth (ran bandwidth test) immediatley after a ctd.
6. turned on and watch fps/latency in game meter. This revealed some interesting data which is suggestive to me of a server side issue more then a client side issue
a. High fps and low latency yet interaction with npc/object is followed by a ctd.
b. Occasional latency spikes that are not shown on meter and all object interaction is disabled followed after some time buy a huge spike (red latency numbers) and then a resumption of normal interactivity or sometimes a ctd
c. Monitoring (ie close visual) of loading screen during porting Indicates quite often that a disconnect from the server will occur by observing the numbers High fps then a dip and a recovery( several) seem to indicate a normal ie successful port , if however, the fps does not dip (indication of memory loading/usage) then you will get a disconnect.

what i believe from my side is that there is a handshake issue on the server side that is being overly stringent on some response and is choosing to disconnect.