reducing group size to zero is the only fair measure and there are very good reasons for it.

if you limit healing to groups only then organized groups will become far to powerful vs non organized groups, which will lead to more organized groups but at the same time will drive many casual players who just like to hop in out of pvp since going foward they will likely be constantly facing organized groups.

considering that next month there will be new alternatives for transmutation stones i dont think its a very good idea to enhance already powerful groups while taking the feet out from under more casual pvp players.

after a little while youll end up with a few dominant groups going around cyrodiil trying to avoid fighting each other and all the transmutation hunters moved off to greener pastures.

dont believe? just discontinue tier 1 transmutation rewards in cyrodiil and see what happens.

relentless_turnip wrote: »

I think it's too early to tell and pc EU is still really bad, though instantly better when ball groups log off... It should definetly be part of the overall solution, but I still think we need a full skill audit and make as many single target as possible.

Please reduce the effectiveness of proc set stacking as well, its not fun at all...

The changes they are making plus this test show what needs to be done, they know what needs to be done here.
Reducing Group Size and removing the cross healing unless in a group. Biggest fix to lag in Cyrodiil.

I know Zenimax has been doing things, for example with the Buffs and Debuffs, what they did was change that and how that works and that will go live, what this will do is prevent it those buffs and debuffs from stacking at least. that would help if added onto the group size reduction and removal of cross healing.
Plus the changes they did last update with sets that effected other players to work only in groups that will help.
Reducing stacks in general should be done with sets and abilties, that way there is less calculation so I do agree they need to address that as well.

The game servers just cannot handle the amount of calculations they put out. It is the issue and anything they can do with that to reduce the number of calculations even if it sacrifices soo healing in Cyrodiil should be done. There as it is way to many calculations and most of the issue seems to be cross healing so those calculations are doing the worst on performance. The sooner they address this the better off game performance will be.

TX12001rwb17_ESO wrote: »

So Healers are the cause of the lag?

Well good thing that ROTPO is coming out.

Yeah it looks to me like yes Healers play a huge part of the lag, the cross healing basically effects so many players and each one effected is another calculation going off and worst is those heals stack on top of one another. Then the way it does the healing that also is a big contributor.
Not to mention healing and heal stacking, not only can reach so many players it can prologue fights to the point that it creates lag sinks. By removing cross healing what they will do is basically reduce like for example many of the overbearing calculations that are caused by healing alone. By having to be in a group to heal.

That would reduce the number of calculations as only that group is effected by the heals and not everyone outside of it that follows a group. So say you have two groups of twelve and like 25 solo players, those groups are not healing each other or all those tag along players. By removing the cross healing they remove the biggest contributor to Cyrodiil lag.
So its not aoe that is the cause its the healing that is causing a lot of the problem.

Biased poll much? Lol

EdmondDontes wrote: »

Can the OP explain why things worked so much better from 2014 to 2018 with cross healing and population caps at least double what they are now?

I'm pretty sure they just need to put the game back onto servers that can support it.

The problem is the game is growing more players are playing it and we just have two mega servers for each platform.
They moved so many calculations to server side to remove cheating and I'm guessing as well to add Stadia in. So the servers are doing all the combat calculations and not the client. lag has been a problem its just its gotten a lot worse over time.
People think the old days of lag are better then todays. I suspect a lot of contributors to why the server can't handle as many calculations is the servers have to do way to much, it has to load in monsters, it has to load in the landscapes, it has to do all the storage when it comes to stuff like ui stuff like the costumes, outfits and stuff like that. Then all the achievements that are not account wide but more character wide.

The new sets collection thing for the account would remove so much unneeded inventory clutter allowing you to safely delete stuff. Which should help when it comes to inventory management and allow the servers to store less on the database side.
The gist of what needs to be done.
1. Reduce Calculations obviously, and the cp system to be less impactful on performance.
2. Making achievements account wide and also make all those books and letters you collect for Eidetic memory account wide. This will remove a lot of achievement data that needs to be stored per account and by making the memory Eidetic account wide as well they can reduce the number of books in the database that has to be calculated by eidetic memory. Doing this would allow for them to add in many more character slots too. As it would reduce all that stuff that needs to be stored on their databases.
3. Condensing down the materials needed to craft things. This means like each style has their own unique way of building it. What they need to do is this, the more Daedric type armors that are crafted use daedric hearts. Reachman, Bosmer and other types of armors that use more of a bone theme use bones. By removing all the unneeded regents and condensing that down so each motif uses a shared regent one needs to craft that style, they can in fact reduce the worst of the clutter.
4. Making the older dlcs just base game after so long especially the dungeon dlcs. Since they tie into the group finder and that causes issues I'm certain. That would help remove unneeded calculations and help with number 1.
5.Outfits, instead of making them just one per character then buy ten each character, which is expensive they have one for each character slot you have, plus the ability to unlock ten more for your account. Why do this is that would help with not having to store all that information. So basically if they add more character slots and you buy one you get one more outfit slot. So got 17 characters you have 17 outfit slots plus the ability to make ten more. Since its account wide you can have the same outfit for multiple characters.
6. A cap on the Eso Plus crafting bag, a high one like 5000 or 7500. This would at least help make it so its not an infinite storage bag with unlimited storage for regents you forget about. Plus there is possibly people with tens of thousands of regents just sitting in their left abandoned. That would either get people to storage it somewhere on alts or just delete the excess or sell it.
7. Account wide mount feeding removing the need to have that data for each character and just having one version of the mount feeding system then one for each character that would not only be beneficial to reducing space but also be very alt friendly.

So if they were do all that I think it would help the servers and allow them to perform better then they are now. Plus it would allow the servers to handle many more players that are playing the game now.

Aww so cross heal is an issue because those heals save many casuals and solos from their small ball-group...! Cross heal is an issue, big groups were an issue, AOE Caps were an issue... Anything that doesn't fit their style or counters it, is an issue! What's even worse they want to force everybody into small groups too.

luen79rwb17_ESO wrote: »

Aww so cross heal is an issue because those heals save many casuals and solos from their small ball-group...! Cross heal is an issue, big groups were an issue, AOE Caps were an issue... Anything that doesn't fit their style or counters it, is an issue! What's even worse they want to force everybody into small groups too.

Well I'm neutral on this one I don't do pvp in Cyrodiil as much.
The thing here is that there really is an issue with performance. Certain playstyles in fact contribute to this. Why because the servers are not infallible and they just cannot handle it. The servers can only keep up with some of the playerbase play styles.

They need to change how healing works and reduce the impact it has.
1.They make it so heals don't stack, that is a big thing they need to do. They need to make it so purges don't stack on top of one another either and they need to rework that ability.
2. They need to reduce group size.
3. They need to rework the Cp system to reduce the impact it has on performance.

So there is areas that need to be addressed, removing cross healing is a good step towards the fixing the performance and yes its going to require a sacrifice. But can we handle it? yes we can. Will we be better off for it? Yes we will be better off with this. Will people like it, more mixed there will be those that don't like this at all. But there are those that might see the need in this. I see that they do need to do this and yeah its going to be painful for some playstyles but people can adjust to it.
Its going to take a lot of work on Zenimax to address this issue. This will be a big help, but like Fengrush just said above these tests alone won't fix the whole problem.
I'm not saying that this will fix the issue, but will it help.
But like I said this game is growing and they add so much to it. That they need to condense the game, condense the calculations. Reduce the impact of these calculations and remove unneeded calculations. Reduce unneeded inventory and database clutter and make things better for the player base, database, servers and client. Then address the HoTs I'm not to familiar with that but I know purge has an impact. So yeah those things do need to be addressed, but my opinion everything that can be done to fix most if not all of it should be taken. Actual solutions and not just putting duck tape on it.

Worth noting the game had a similar issue when it was first launched. One that was exploited by guilds full of 'skilled' players to let them play in easy mode.

That being the overspamming of healing skills on tightly grouped blobs in order to cause severe server issues. Issues that would then let them roll over other opponents who didn't resort to such pathetic measures.

These methods aren't even original or unique to this particular game. Other online services and games have had similar acts of scrubbery fomented upon them by desperate souls.

So it's not something new, or anything unknown to people who've been here for very long. The only differences are where the calcuations are done, what skills are being used by these 'good' players to cause the issue, and how intentional it is.

After all most of the current blobtato groups are just copy pasting something they've seen 'better' players doing. Only a relative handful of the 'best of the best' are likely to know how to purposely take advantage of these methods.

eKsDee wrote: »

Thevampirenight wrote: »

EdmondDontes wrote: »

Can the OP explain why things worked so much better from 2014 to 2018 with cross healing and population caps at least double what they are now?

I'm pretty sure they just need to put the game back onto servers that can support it.

The problem is the game is growing more players are playing it and we just have two mega servers for each platform.
They moved so many calculations to server side to remove cheating and I'm guessing as well to add Stadia in. So the servers are doing all the combat calculations and not the client. lag has been a problem its just its gotten a lot worse over time.
People think the old days of lag are better then todays. I suspect a lot of contributors to why the server can't handle as many calculations is the servers have to do way to much, it has to load in monsters, it has to load in the landscapes, it has to do all the storage when it comes to stuff like ui stuff like the costumes, outfits and stuff like that. Then all the achievements that are not account wide but more character wide.

The new collections for the account would remove so much unneeded inventory clutter allowing you to safely delete stuff. Which should help when it comes to inventory management and allow the servers to store less on the database side.
The gist of what needs to be done.
1. Reduce Calculations obviously, and the cp system to be less impactful on performance.
2. Making achievements account wide and also make all those books and letters you collect for Eidetic memory account wide. This will remove a lot of achievement data that needs to be stored per account and by making the memory Eidetic account wide as well they can reduce the number of books in the database that has to be calculated by eidetic memory. Doing this would allow for them to add in many more character slots too. As it would reduce all that stuff that needs to be stored on their databases.
3. Condensing down the materials needed to craft things. This means like each style has their own unique way of building it. What they need to do is this, the more Daedric type armors that are crafted use daedric hearts. Reachman, Bosmer and other types of armors that use more of a bone theme use bones. By removing all the unneeded regents and condensing that down so each motif uses a shared regent one needs to craft that style, they can in fact reduce the worst of the clutter.
4. Making the older dlcs just base game after so long especially the dungeon dlcs. Since they tie into the group finder and that causes issues I'm certain. That would help remove unneeded calculations and help with number 1.
5.Outfits, instead of making them just one per character then buy ten each character, which is expensive they have one for each character slot you have, plus the ability to unlock ten more for your account. Why do this is that would help with not having to store all that information. So basically if they add more character slots and you buy one you get one more outfit slot. So got 17 characters you have 17 outfit slots plus the ability to make ten more. Since its account wide you can have the same outfit for multiple characters.
6. A cap on the Eso Plus crafting bag, a high one like 5000 or 7500. This would at least help make it so its not an infinite storage bag with unlimited storage for regents you forget about. Plus there is possibly people with tens of thousands of regents just sitting in their left abandoned. That would either get people to storage it somewhere on alts or just delete the excess or sell it.
7. Account wide mount feeding removing the need to have that data for each character and just having one version of the mount feeding system then one for each character that would not only be beneficial to reducing space but also be very alt friendly.

So if they were do all that I think it would help the servers and allow them to perform better then they are now. Plus it would allow the servers to handle many more players that are playing the game now.

1. This would help, but IIRC Zenimax looked into performance with CP enabled vs disabled, and CP didn't contribute much to the performance difference. Obviously CP contributes to performance (everything related to calculations will negatively impact performance), but it may not be a large contributor.

2. Anything related to storage will not impact performance, only how much data is needing to be stored in the database. Even then, I doubt this will help much to reduce the amount of data needing to be stored. Lorebooks are probably represented as just unique ID's in the database, with a boolean (true/false) paired with it that signifies whether the player has discovered that particular lorebook.

3. As said above, anything related to storage will not impact performance. All this does is streamline crafting.

4. I doubt the accessible dungeons contribute much to the performance of the group finder. If it's done smartly, they're probably cached on the player so that the group finder literally just has to go "is this in the list". Maybe even cache the DLC ID's themselves, instead of the dungeons.

5. The 10 additional outfit slots will still be stored within the database, so this would do nothing. All this does is streamline outfit slot purchases.

6. Size doesn't matter for the crafting bag, because of how it works. In the database, the crafting bag would just store the item ID of whatever material is being stored, with an integer paired with it that signifies how many of that material is stored. Doing so would only take up 4 bytes (an integer is typically 32 bits in length, there's 8 bits in a byte, so 4 bytes in length), which is insanely small in comparison to other things being stored in the database. Not to mention that an integer taking up 4 bytes can represent any whole number from 0 to ~4.295 billion, assuming it's unsigned (ie doesn't support negative values).

7. Like the above, this probably wouldn't matter. This can be stored in just 3 bytes (a byte can represent any whole number from 0 to 255, assuming it's unsigned), potentially with some extra space to fit another value if you only care about the whole numbers from 0 to 60 (0 to 63 can be represented in just 6 bits, leaving 2 extra bits free per byte, there's 3 bytes, so that's 6 extra bits, where another 0 to 63 can be stored). 3 bytes. That's 3/4's of a whole integer!

Here is how I see it, the servers, client and database well they are all parts of eso, client is on your machine, the servers and database are either the same or connected. I'm not the best when it comes to knowing how this works. Because I'm not a programmer. Even if data is not being drawn upon, its inactive but just storage on the databases hardrives until it can be used. Can fill a hardrive likely delaying load ins, the server has to draw upon that data. The Ram likely would have to look through all the data and get the right data for your account and then project it on your screen to much data and it might take longer.

I do think they are trying to reduce the amount of data stored from inactive and likely banned accounts. That is the reason for the Cold Storage, that way they can transfer that to another database. That way its off their main, so I do consider it all interconnected and just as important they address the database stuff along with the performance. Besides if they can address the database maybe we can see more character slots, and an increased housing cap when it comes to furnishings.

Also even if it was in bytes that data still will stack up and eventually become a major issue and they would need more hard drives and whatever they need to handle that. Reducing the data size is just as important if its just so many bytes as it would be with mbs or gbs or tbs. The reason is there is many players many accounts millions of player on the various servers. Many might not be active anymore and each byte that is stored can grow with that many accounts and it can become problematic for their databases. So reducing that is important I feel because of this.

Thevampirenight wrote: »

Should Test 5 be added in as the perma solution? is this poll.
Basically Fengrush he's part of the stream team and a major pvper. He's really good at it and is skilled enough to know many moves players make and knows exactly what causes the lag.
I think he's the one that got Zenimax to do this type of test, and so far everything he has said about healing seems to be correct. It is the biggest cause of Cyrodiil lag. Reducing Group size and removing so much cross healing by limiting it to groups has done a great job in fixing it going by forum threads here. Should Test 5 be the one that is added as the perma solution? As it is the fix, and its the lag fix that is needed to fix pvp Cyrodiil.
Should the Fengrush solution be implemented?
Here is a video where he talks about and shows off examples of why cross healing causes the lag and why it causes more strain then damage abilties.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nO-NLBjSO1U
second poll option I should have said test go live permanently. The reason why I worded it that way because those that say no to this is basically asking them to game performance killing calculations caused by cross healing. Removing the cross healing looks to be what is and the only solution to fixing the majority of lag issues. Fengrush was 100% on the ball when it came to that issue and guess what he was 100% correct that it was a big factor, along with ball groups.

This poll is obviously bias just by looking at the questions. haha

The problem is their servers can't handle the load. That is the problem. It also makes absolutely no sense why it would just be healing calculations causing lag but not all the other so-called calculations. So no - I don't believe this is the "major" source of the lag. Another excuse to nerf healing? Absolutely.

They can trim around the edges to try and make it less of a problem. But until they upgrade their server infrastructure you're always going to have lag when it gets super crowded. And that Fengrush guy should know that - since a massive zerg usually floods into Cyrodil when ever that guy shows up.

This happens in PvE too when a zone gets extremely crowded. West Skyrim was unplayable the lag was so bad shortly after Greymoor was released. And I don't think that was because everyone was just cross healing each other and over burdening the system with calculations either.

Jeremy wrote: »

Thevampirenight wrote: »

Should Test 5 be added in as the perma solution? is this poll.
Basically Fengrush he's part of the stream team and a major pvper. He's really good at it and is skilled enough to know many moves players make and knows exactly what causes the lag.
I think he's the one that got Zenimax to do this type of test, and so far everything he has said about healing seems to be correct. It is the biggest cause of Cyrodiil lag. Reducing Group size and removing so much cross healing by limiting it to groups has done a great job in fixing it going by forum threads here. Should Test 5 be the one that is added as the perma solution? As it is the fix, and its the lag fix that is needed to fix pvp Cyrodiil.
Should the Fengrush solution be implemented?
Here is a video where he talks about and shows off examples of why cross healing causes the lag and why it causes more strain then damage abilties.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nO-NLBjSO1U
second poll option I should have said test go live permanently. The reason why I worded it that way because those that say no to this is basically asking them to game performance killing calculations caused by cross healing. Removing the cross healing looks to be what is and the only solution to fixing the majority of lag issues. Fengrush was 100% on the ball when it came to that issue and guess what he was 100% correct that it was a big factor, along with ball groups.

This poll is obviously bias just by looking at the questions. haha

The problem is their servers can't handle the load. That is the problem. It also makes absolutely no sense why it would just be healing calculations causing lag but not all the other so-called calculations. So no - I don't believe this is the "major" source of the lag. Another excuse to nerf healing? Absolutely.

They can trim around the edges to try and make it less of a problem. But until they upgrade their server infrastructure you're always going to have lag when it gets super crowded. And that Fengrush guy should know that - since a massive zerg usually floods into Cyrodil when ever that guy shows up.

This happens in PvE too when a zone gets extremely crowded. West Skyrim was unplayable the lag was so bad shortly after Greymoor was released. And I don't think that was because everyone was just cross healing each other and over burdening the system with calculations either.

They really should upgarde the servers and, its the feeling of some folks and I've seen this talked about aby folks and Fengrush himself. There is a possibility they have in fact switched, changed or downgraded the servers. Possibly to save money, which makes things worse for performance.
Its clear to me that they add in extra resources to handle the events since more people come back and they have to do that that can in fact handle things a lot better but they shut those down intentionally. So it looks to me like they are only willing to use those in certain case siltation's.

A better solution is to address the issues plus upgrade the servers. That way they can stay well ahead of it. Use more resources then they are for the servers all the time and not just during events. But like a business they want to get as much money as they can but spend as little for the servers as they can get away with. That is why they are doing things like these aoe tests instead of adding in additional resources I feel. Maybe Microsoft will be willing to invest into upgrading and maintaining the Eso servers.