trials unplayable

Elsonso · August 2020

BazOfWar wrote: »

God knows what it has been like for all you veterans that have been here since the beginning, it's a real shame though because i love this game.

For me, not as bad as it sounds from reading the forum. Forum users are a small minority of players, mostly people having problems. The days of just going to the forum to talk about the game, which is why I came here, are long gone.

Today, this game is not nearly as bad as it has been in the past. It is nowhere even close to a low point on the PVE side. There are so many bugs and performance problems that have been fixed over the years that I can't even start to list them all.

That does not mean that everything is jolly good, but having been here for a long time also gives me more perspective on what is going on.

I expect them to have problems after an update. ZOS has picked a development and deployment method that places the players much closer to the active work than with other games. People who describe the game as being in "Beta" are really not far from the truth, and that is basically the decision. If a player is looking for a game that has been developed and tested for a few months before launching, this is not the game. Here, they develop for months, test for weeks, release what they have, and fix in place.

That means disruption for a period of time following an update.

Yes, I do think they have QA issues that could addressed to help prevent that, mainly along the lines of better automated regression testing, but a game this size is tough to automate testing. Also, automated testing only catches the problems that are expected, not the ones that are completely unexpected.

So, I am used to them releasing with bugs, some of them they knew about before launch, some were undiscovered until after launch. I am used to them fixing them over the patches that follow, or at least the bigger ones. Not every bug gets fixed, and I expect that for all software, not just games.

Right now, the trial bug is a problem. I know this is not limited to trials, but trials are where it is most obvious. I expect, like with the Harrowstorm desync, that this will be addressed.

These things don't bother me nearly as much as the tone deaf decisions about perfected weapons and Vigor. In both cases, there were better ways to handle it that would have accomplished what they wanted, and not been so divisive. They know that people are going to be unhappy, but rather than finding the solution that does what needs to be done, while making more players happy, they just Leeroy Jenkins their way through the problem.

Shokti · August 2020

NeillMcAttack wrote: »

I know how to get aknowledgement to these issues.

*ahem*

This patch is great, me and my guildies got ‘Godslayer’ title last night because the bosses weren’t even summoning adds, and when they did the adds were just spinning around in circles and didn’t attack.
Statues just walked so slowly over to the OT we could just burn the boss before they did anything. We didn’t even have to fight the eternal servant, she spawned top but didn’t cast any spells. It was great.

Thanks ZOS.

LMFAO

Pyr0xyrecuprotite · August 2020

Aznarb wrote: »

Started Tanking on my fun Tank in Unhallowed Grave then Today in the new Stone Garden.
Geezz, before I notice lag I was thinking "damn why mob just spin around and HM boss hit through my block, Am I so bad at Tanking ?"
Then all group started complaining about delay on animation, bar who don't swap, skill who don't fire, etc.. Oooff, was happy in a way to understand that what not me xD
When it stopped to be laggy we have done them easily.

I don't know what they did every time they "fix" perf.
I mean, before the patch all was fine, never have ping or fps issue, why changing all ? Now it's just so boring.. I just can't do difficult content because I'll just die of frustration being killed by lag..

I can confirm this lag issue is not just affecting trials, but also some instances of dungeons, e.g. normal Stone Garden. Anytime you are in combat, the whole group suddenly ends up playing in slide show mode - you just have to hope that your skills are going to fire off; sometimes you end up double casting skills to make sure, etc. It's survivable in normal but I would not want to do vet dungeons at the moment. I really hope they figure out a fix soon.

Elsonso · August 2020

Pyr0xyrecuprotite wrote: »

I can confirm this lag issue is not just affecting trials, but also some instances of dungeons, e.g. normal Stone Garden. Anytime you are in combat, the whole group suddenly ends up playing in slide show mode - you just have to hope that your skills are going to fire off; sometimes you end up double casting skills to make sure, etc. It's survivable in normal but I would not want to do vet dungeons at the moment. I really hope they figure out a fix soon.

This seems to also be causing problems in public dungeon boss fights. Fortunately, that just makes them more challenging, not fatal.

According to the stream yesterday, they think they found a reason why this is happening and are working on a fix. Whether it makes it into the next patch depends on how fast that happens, and whether it passes QA.

emilyhyoyeon · August 2020

SidraWillowsky wrote: »

vMoL is borked too... one of our tank's stam would drop to zero when she wasn't even moving- look at the stam bar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdrFarVVmgY

And no, it wasn't just a visual drop- she was literally at zero stam.

Other tonk was getting hit with random 300,000 hits despite doing everything right. Desyncs galore... DD skills not firing; we were hitting about half of what we normally hit because nothing would cast.

The drain to 0 stam happened to me too. I was in HRC and can confirm it isn't just a UI glitch. My block was dropped

SweepsAllClowns · August 2020

emilyhyoyeon wrote: »

SidraWillowsky wrote: »

vMoL is borked too... one of our tank's stam would drop to zero when she wasn't even moving- look at the stam bar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdrFarVVmgY

And no, it wasn't just a visual drop- she was literally at zero stam.

Other tonk was getting hit with random 300,000 hits despite doing everything right. Desyncs galore... DD skills not firing; we were hitting about half of what we normally hit because nothing would cast.

The drain to 0 stam happened to me too. I was in HRC and can confirm it isn't just a UI glitch. My block was dropped

I assume this is some genius resource management addon feature, while having it on players don't need to worry about their annoying resource bars at all anymore, they can be certain they have exactly zero stamina all the times, this means they are able to concentrate in actually playing instead of staring some boring stamina bar.

Pinja · August 2020

Hey @ZOS_Finn

Have you heard of the more hardware solution?

Instead of spreading trial and dungeon instances out across already occupied servers, you'd do the opposite and dedicate trials and dungeons to more of their own servers.
Instead of a server doubling down on the loading the behavior of different NPCs and map grids, It would need load only the one set of references of the one instance model preferably for one instance.

I think the current issues are a good example of what one server can't handle. It looks like Graymoor launch.

Elsonso · August 2020

Pinja wrote: »

Hey @ZOS_Finn

Have you heard of the more hardware solution?

Instead of spreading trial and dungeon instances out across already occupied servers, you'd do the opposite and dedicate trials and dungeons to more of their own servers.
Instead of a server doubling down on the loading the behavior of different NPCs and map grids, It would need load only the one set of references of the one instance model preferably for one instance.

I think the current issues are a good example of what one server can't handle. It looks like Graymoor launch.

So, your idea is to take a powerful server, run it at less than full capacity, and run only one trial on it? That might work. ZOS could use cheaper hardware, but more of them.

Pinja · August 2020

Elsonso wrote: »

Pinja wrote: »

Hey @ZOS_Finn

Have you heard of the more hardware solution?

Instead of spreading trial and dungeon instances out across already occupied servers, you'd do the opposite and dedicate trials and dungeons to more of their own servers.
Instead of a server doubling down on the loading the behavior of different NPCs and map grids, It would need load only the one set of references of the one instance model preferably for one instance.

I think the current issues are a good example of what one server can't handle. It looks like Graymoor launch.

So, your idea is to take a powerful server, run it at less than full capacity, and run only one trial on it? That might work. ZOS could use cheaper hardware, but more of them.

Maybe. They could also use the same type of server, double up on them, then half the number of trial instances on the server. They would want to be efficient in three dimensions. The amount of hosting they can get out of one server, cost, and the quality they can get out of that server. Both dimensions are under cost efficiency, but you'd want a 2d slider to ensure the quality vs the cost. If the efficiency of the quality varies inversely with the efficiency of Hosting, It'll all be on the same graph. They need to gauge quality and improve it.
Once the gauge has been established the math can be done.

Say quality is accessed in 10 levels with 10 having no lag at max burden. In order to be scientific you'd keep the burden the same and see how quality drops as you add more instances. Say max burden would be 12 players with 23 trillion HP in Sunspire, spamming different AoE abilities that each leave a distinctive DoT, wearing proc sets on a room of NPCs that are also given ridiculous amounts of health so they don't die during the test. See how quality drops as you assign instances, assign levels from ten to one.

Elsonso · August 2020

Pinja wrote: »

Maybe. They could also use the same type of server, double up on them, then half the number of trial instances on the server.

So, just for the sake of argument, what if they are already doing that? This all sounds suspiciously like something they were working on going into Update 27.

SidraWillowsky · August 2020

It's not just trials- happening in overland...

https://youtu.be/IDhLX3Pe55s

Elsonso · August 2020

SidraWillowsky wrote: »

It's not just trials- happening in overland...

Yes. I was doing a public dungeon today and it was quite... interesting.

Lava · August 2020

You know things are bad when you get 2 consecutive prayer phases in vMoL without conversion. That trial was all kinds of fun.

Side note: If you don't have colors yet at the start of prayer phase in vMoL, you die the same on either side. Mystery solved!

Pinja · August 2020

Elsonso wrote: »

Pinja wrote: »

Maybe. They could also use the same type of server, double up on them, then half the number of trial instances on the server.

So, just for the sake of argument, what if they are already doing that? This all sounds suspiciously like something they were working on going into Update 27.

Well there's a lot of hypotheticals that come up. I'm kinda split with my time to review all them, but if they are making headway on buying servers that's good.

What I think they did in update 27 was spread out the server resources and kinda standardized the lag. A good sign that they needed more servers in the first place. The changes they made increased strain on generally less combative open world zones. Watching what happened at Graymoor suggests that even though lag isn't typically a fuss in these zones that does not mean it didn't persistently exist in them before the extra strain. Openworld NPCs were slow and dimwitted and every now and again one would get stuck in animation, but you wouldn't really care cause easy go. I had asked some important questions about what metrics they were using to assess lag. Whatever they used to determine the strain on the servers before merging them may have failed them. On top of the compounding strain they didn't account for in hosting two or more different zones on the same server. Thus trials got worse.
In other words they're flying without instruments and flight engineers.
Needless to say in merging the servers they asked to much out of one server.
Avoiding going deep into hypotheticals servers dedicated to certain maps would have a lighter memory strain than what they did. Add more servers to the combat instances. Do not forget to divide Cyrodiil into three servers as a special campain. And observe the improvement.

SidraWillowsky · August 2020

Elsonso wrote: »

SidraWillowsky wrote: »

It's not just trials- happening in overland...

Yes. I was doing a public dungeon today and it was quite... interesting.

LOL yeah, some of it's interesting and funny. I also found this in some logs from nSO last night while I was having a crisis about my DPS numbers dropping hugely (a bit of hyperbolic melodrama there, but my favorite thing to do in the game is work on my DPS). Group DPS on the Ozara fight:

And the Serpent:

Group DPS dropped to zero several times when we were, in fact, DPSing during those periods. I did the math and it literally DID register as zero (vs. a display issue). If I calculate total group DPS = (time when DPS wasn't zero * group DPS during that time) + (time when DPS was zero * 0 [so just....zero]) I get the overall group DPS displayed, which was much lower than usual. If I look at group DPS during the time that it WASN'T zero, the numbers match what we usually see, more or less.

This appears to be the case for some other group logs too- it's all over the board though- some groups appear to have normal DPS, others have drops to zero at other times, etc....

Parasaurolophus · August 2020

There are official comments on why the performance is very poor all week at EU?

SeaUnicorn · August 2020

BrownChicken wrote: »

There are official comments on why the performance is very poor all week at EU?

Only that they are looking into it. No official message of any sort. Kind of frustrating.

SweepsAllClowns · August 2020

SeaUnicorn wrote: »

Only that they are looking into it.

When I see comments including "looking into" or "magic bullet" for example, I know it's guaranteed complete comedy category content again.

ZOS_Finn · August 2020

Update: We have made some adjustments on the back end which have so far shown some improvements (looking at PC EU prime time feedback). Please feel free to continue to provide feedback regarding your experiences in Dungeons and Trials. Also note, these adjustments are not exhaustive as we have more potential fixes in testing as well.

Thanks as always for your patience

irswat · August 2020

Thanks Mike! Don't mind the haters. We believe in the zos team to get it done

ItsJustHashtag · August 2020

irswat wrote: »

Thanks Mike! Don't mind the haters. We believe in the zos team to get it done

Lol

JinMori · August 2020

ItsJustHashtag wrote: »

irswat wrote: »

Thanks Mike! Don't mind the haters. We believe in the zos team to get it done

Lol

I mean, in many years they didn't fix the actual problems, so is it hater, or just being realistic? They're not gonna fix it.

What's the point of communication if at the end of the day you are not gonna do what you are saying, or you do some bs, and say that "pet improvements" are performance patches, like come on, so far i haven't seen any impactful change to the server performance for the better. If anything it gets worse and worse each patch. This is the reality of the situation.

The reality of the situation is that the game needs improvements, especially on the performance side, but also in the general gameplay and "vision" of the game, because this game is getting real stagnant really fast, i really cannot bring myself to play this game for more than a few weeks at a time at this point, and then leave for even months to sometimes even a year or so.

Honestly, rather than talking and then not doing it would be better to just shut the *** up. Or even worse, passing things that are miscellaneous as "performance patches" and then saying, but we actually did do what we said we would, but honestly, passing pet changes as performance patches is kinda disgusting, because you clearly know what you are doing here, it's marketing, and the results are clear anyway for anyone that has eyes.

And when they actually do something that could increase performance, they do it in a way that actually damages the gameplay of the game, which means they are not willing to invest money into either new servers, new devs etc to keep up with the work that needs to be done.

CyberOnEso · August 2020

ZOS_Finn wrote: »

Update: We have made some adjustments on the back end which have so far shown some improvements (looking at PC EU prime time feedback). Please feel free to continue to provide feedback regarding your experiences in Dungeons and Trials. Also note, these adjustments are not exhaustive as we have more potential fixes in testing as well.

Thanks as always for your patience

Thank you very much for this, we do really appreciate this and the communication. Please communicate with the players as much as possible, it is so much better to hear this information from someone at ZOS directly rather than having whispers on the wind from some special players.
Just tell us what you are doing, we really appreciate any communication.

UrQuan · August 2020

I'm assuming the back-end adjustments probably happened this morning?

As of Saturday vMoL was super buggy:

All the bosses and mobs were chasing their own tails instead of coming to the tanks who were taunting them.
There was a 2-5 second delay between when you'd hit a mob with chains and when they would actually get pulled to you (made it really difficult to keep the kitties in the first boss fight off the healers, and made burning down the adds in the twins/dance fight really annoying).
During the prayer phase on the twins the bosses kept getting up and moving around instead of staying in place like they're supposed to.
People got colours they shouldn't have gotten (ie. at the start 6 people were close to 1 boss, 6 people were close to the other with plenty of room between the groups, and yet someone in the middle of the light group got dark colours and blew everyone up & vice versa).
About 3/4 of the way through the twins fight they just stopped giving anyone colours and everyone could attack either boss for the rest of the fight with no problems.
There were tons of issues with skills not firing & weapon swaps not happening.
For some reason the final boss fight was the least buggy out of any of them - I didn't notice any issues during that fight other than skills not firing and weapon swaps not happening, and an occasional brief tail-chasing moment.

Kaysha · August 2020

ZOS_Finn wrote: »

Update: We have made some adjustments on the back end which have so far shown some improvements (looking at PC EU prime time feedback). Please feel free to continue to provide feedback regarding your experiences in Dungeons and Trials. Also note, these adjustments are not exhaustive as we have more potential fixes in testing as well.

Thanks as always for your patience

Good to see that dungeons and trials have been improved. Cyrodiil is still completely unplayable and a waste of time.

abzdeman · August 2020

Thank you ZOS, VSS unplayable yet again had to end trials short due to so many issues.

Some people can't even get into the trial!!! crash upon crash upon crash, Abilities double casting lmfao

The crown store always works fine though hmm i wonder.

Why do we even subscribe to this mess?

What shame, one of the best MMO's is plagued with so many basic issues so embarrassing.

irswat · August 2020

some of the issues will undoubtedly require a client patch. They have fixed issues after patches that break things, but if you know anything about programming you will understand that debugging, writing fixes, testing/QA, and implementation take time.

Elsonso · August 2020

[outdated]

AgaTheGreat · August 2020

This has the be the first time PS4 patch is being released one week after the PC.

Looking at the history of terrible patches in last few years, I'm sure we're not only getting all the problems listed in this thread but also many more.

I think everyone still remembers the November 2019 PS4 patch and three months of blue screens. Great.

SweepsAllClowns · August 2020

ZOS_Finn wrote: »

Update: We have made some adjustments on the back end which have so far shown some improvements (looking at PC EU prime time feedback). Please feel free to continue to provide feedback regarding your experiences in Dungeons and Trials. Also note, these adjustments are not exhaustive as we have more potential fixes in testing as well.

Thanks as always for your patience

As much as I've criticized lately, I can still give positive feedback also when there's a reason for such. Must admit I checked this just to see some "nonconstructive" comment being removed again or something like that, but instead it's an informative and respectful post overall, after reading it I could easily believe that something is actually being done. Sadly many have lost their patience long ago myself included.

I give you my vote for the community manager!