An Overdue Discussion in Regards to Performance

LostToTheSea · October 2020

I want to start out by saying that I love this game and the community within it. I followed this game avidly during development and started playing back in 2015. There are multiple reasons I could ramble on about why I did and why I'm still playing today, but I will spare us all the extended story and do my best to stick to the point of this post.

There is one key aspect of this game that brought me here and has paved many memories along the way. Cyrodiil. I entered at level 10 and was hooked from the start. This game managed to achieve something I had long thought impossible: A Dark Souls-esque reflex combat system within an open world setting, while allowing for combat of any scale. Those of us who saw the earlier days of ESO remember what a massive scale that was delivered to us, as well as how much smoother the game ran back then. It was far from perfect (even today) with balancing and performance, but it was absolutely unmatched and to this day has not been by any other game. When this game runs well... There's simply nothing like it! There has been the lighting patch and several others that have been extensively detailed in these forums/elsewhere that degraded performance over the years. Along with population caps in PVP reeled in to where we are not even 1/4th of what we once saw in Cyrodiil, even with the game running unquestionably better back then. I've watched countless veterans walk away from this game through the years, but not one of them I ever spoke to said they wanted to. They all reached a breaking point with where performance had deteriorated to and reluctantly stepped away. Some come back, as I have multiple times, but many have not.

This year we saw U25 fundamentally break the core functionality of ESO. We redownloaded the game. Block was moved from client to server side (for Stadia?), along with several other known changes. This time, not just the PVP community, but all of the ESO community watched performance change for the worse (especially the trial/pvp crowd. Perhaps a casual overland quester/RPer wouldn't notice in what they do). Atrocious levels of desync, break free delays like never before, skills greyed out/not firing, our characters twitching when trying to use skills, and so on. The dev team even went to the extent of publicly acknowledging that desync was a standing issue and that there was work being done to fix it. Yet, not a single mention has ever been made specifically stating that U25 itself was a game-breaking update. Not a single mention has ever been made of reverting any of those changes for the sake of ESO itself. When it has been abundantly clear that ever since U25 this game has not been the same for PVE or PVP. There have been many theories thrown back and forth among the community, but nobody knows any better. Why? Because we aren't being told otherwise.

We've now seen nearly 2 months of overly broad, indirect testing that has done little more than frustrate the PC PVP community... to the point of many wondering if there's any reason at all to stick around. Performance has not improved. No matter the claims of a ~25% server fps increase. Despite most people's playstyles, skills, and classes not being usable/viable during these tests. PVPers en-masse will tell you right now, unwavering, that the game is running as poorly as ever for all timezones. It's incredible that such broad tests are being conducted (and considered for implementation) when this dev team has had direct oversight over an update that severely hindered performance across ESO.

This community deserves an answer to why U25 (or some of U25) was never reverted. Surely there are some developers who have at some point experienced the change for themselves, but we have been left in the dark as to why none of it was rolled back. Why? The community can only withstand so much PR talk from the dev team. Just tell us how it is.

trackdemon5512 · October 2020

Why Update 25 was never reverted:

PS4 and XBOX versions would never be able to run. Plain and simple. Any console player, esp PS4 player could tell you how many blue screen crashes they were getting before Harrowstorm. The stability changes were for the better, just not a magic wand to fix everything for everyone.

Firstmep · October 2020

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

Why Update 25 was never reverted:

PS4 and XBOX versions would never be able to run. Plain and simple. Any console player, esp PS4 player could tell you how many blue screen crashes they were getting before Harrowstorm. The stability changes were for the better, just not a magic wand to fix everything for everyone.

I guess the massive positional desyncs are preferred to constant crashing.
Sadly PC performance didn't change for the better, only for the worse for U25.
Regardless, I don't want to belive that so many years after the games release they can't deliver a working product.
Games older or newer alike run better than eso.

caperb · October 2020

Fortunately with the upcoming sticker book it is finally possible to play the game without ESO+ when the AoE tests will be implemented as yet another feature

zvavi · October 2020

Unfortunately you need both sides to speak for a discussion, but zos is radio silent.

Mythreindeer · October 2020

Firstmep wrote: »

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

Why Update 25 was never reverted:

PS4 and XBOX versions would never be able to run. Plain and simple. Any console player, esp PS4 player could tell you how many blue screen crashes they were getting before Harrowstorm. The stability changes were for the better, just not a magic wand to fix everything for everyone.

I guess the massive positional desyncs are preferred to constant crashing.
Sadly PC performance didn't change for the better, only for the worse for U25.
Regardless, I don't want to belive that so many years after the games release they can't deliver a working product.
Games older or newer alike run better than eso.

With regard to your last statement I'm genuinely interested in what games you know that run better than ESO. I'm not baiting you or trying to be critical of ZOS, but I've watched for a couple of decades as a player, one who doesn't mind spending some cash to play a good game, and watched the gaming industry deteriorate into a steaming pile of customer service dung. An industry that either can't or wont optimize it's games for stable play. I haven't played a single one that doesn't become buggy as all hell as the years go by and cannot or will not be fixed. Why should I pay for that?

I've been playing this game for a couple of months and having a lot of fun learning it and exploring but as I've read about the Cyrodil and PVP issues I haven't ventured into Cyrodil or BG not even once yet. Frankly I don't want to get so disappointed by it that I decide to drop ESO. FWIW, I am ESO+

Rayden715 · October 2020

I am on PS4 (EU) and what you would call a casual player. I play all aspects of the game including PVP, PVE, solo, questing, crafting, housing, dailies, even fishing! etc. but casually.

Update 25 significantly impaired the game's playability for me. This occurred the minute I started after the update, so I doubt its my connection

This was compounded by subsequent updates where more calculations were moved server side. Previously I had lag, occasional crashes in Cyrodiil, and bugs, the first two manageable, the last I'd just laugh off. Now however, I am facing communication failures with the server doing the simplest things.

Like sprint not activating at times (e.g. in Vivec city, in between writ tables), like light attacks not firing (fighting a mudcrab alone on some beach), block failing at times (stopped doing dungeon runs), at times character just stands still doing nothing (doing overland dailies), abilities greyed out(in Cyrodill only), bars not swapping, if fighting a WB and another player shows up I just give up and move away as my character stops responding for 3-5 seconds, and finally an extreme FPS drop when engaging combat of any sort to the extent it is difficult to control your movement or target enemies in front of you.

I love this game, mainly for the world and combat system, and hope they manage to resolve these issues. I have however started leveling mains in two other games this year on the side as a 'contingency plan'

caperb · October 2020

So in update 25 ZOS did move even more calculations to the server side, so consoles have better performance?

Won't it be time then to make ESO a PC exclusive again like it was in the past. Not that I'm against people having a gaming console, but if the limited hardware of these things is also limiting performance on other platforms because calculations are done server side, then consoles shouldn't be an option.

Of course this isn't going to happen, so let's hope that ZOS will move calculations to the client side when the new PS and Xbox launch.

barney2525 · October 2020

I don't understand the setup.

Since the games don't overlap, and you can't interact with characters PC to Console, and vice versa, wouldn't you have servers dedicated specifically to each type of system? And therefore, issues on one would not affect the others.

IMHO

SickleCider · October 2020

Not to detail, but you lost me at "Dark Souls-esque." It made me do a double take. 🤣

But, yes. Bar swapping unresponsive, targeting becoming oppressively difficult, skills misfiring, blocking and dodge rolling desyncs, microfreezes and stamina bugs abound, even in solo instances. I agree that U25 was a bug culprit.

SgtNuttzmeg · October 2020

I didn't see a massive dip in performance after Update 25 but I did see the rate at which it was getting worse increase.

trackdemon5512 · October 2020

Rayden715 wrote: »

I am on PS4 (EU) and what you would call a casual player. I play all aspects of the game including PVP, PVE, solo, questing, crafting, housing, dailies, even fishing! etc. but casually.

Update 25 significantly impaired the game's playability for me. This occurred the minute I started after the update, so I doubt its my connection This was compounded by subsequent updates where more calculations were moved server side. Previously I had lag, occasional crashes in Cyrodiil, and bugs, the first two manageable, the last I'd just laugh off. Now however, I am facing communication failures with the server doing the simplest things.

Like sprint not activating at times (e.g. in Vivec city, in between writ tables), like light attacks not firing (fighting a mudcrab alone on some beach), block failing at times (stopped doing dungeon runs), at times character just stands still doing nothing (doing overland dailies), abilities greyed out(in Cyrodill only), bars not swapping, if fighting a WB and another player shows up I just give up and move away as my character stops responding for 3-5 seconds, and finally an extreme FPS drop when engaging combat of any sort to the extent it is difficult to control your movement or target enemies in front of you.

I love this game, mainly for the world and combat system, and hope they manage to resolve these issues. I have however started leveling mains in two other games this year on the side as a 'contingency plan'

I play PS4 NA and have had none of these issues. I must ask though are you playing on an original PS4 or PS4 Pro? Also if you have ever replaced the HD drive within your system. The latter is rather important as Sony notoriously uses extremely low quality/high capacity drives to knock down the price of the system. The drives are prone to failure over time and the game issues prior to Harrowstorm coupled with crashes accelerated this.

I had a new system and Dragonguard essentially destroyed my system hard drive. To the point when I would do 4 player content but enemies nor their attacks would load in but they would still make contact. Replacing with a good Solid State Drive may actually be your solution if your internet is good.

UppGRAYxDD · October 2020

Hmmm, no new server purchases or extras leased during non-events and or content release combined with the added strain of housing, crown store, and re-skinned mounts has led us here... add more servers to the “mega server”... maybe now that ZoS got acquired Microsoft the mantra of maximizing profits might end.

etchedpixels · October 2020

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

Rayden715 wrote: »

I had a new system and Dragonguard essentially destroyed my system hard drive. To the point when I would do 4 player content but enemies nor their attacks would load in but they would still make contact. Replacing with a good Solid State Drive may actually be your solution if your internet is good.

I have and old Xeon server box with 16 CPU cores, 96GB of RAM, and being in Europe good internet. Update 25 definitely made things a lot worse for responsiveness so the problem isn't about crap client hardware although if you only have 8GB RAM it may well be that is a problem (and an SSD would help hide the issue).

As a mostly questing/crafting character the responsiveness is still ok, but I can see why hardcore trial and pvp folk get peeved.

agentpixi · October 2020

Money. It all comes down to money. The team isn't given the time or resources to actually fix anything just enough to keep pushing out new content. The people working on performance can only tweak things and try to bandaid the game.

I love eso. Been playing since launch but it is a absolute mess atm regarding performance. Unless Microsoft comes in some time next year and starts throwing money at zos to do actually real updates and fixes i don't ever see performance getting better.

Idk but I'd really love to see this game succeed because so many of my friends have left due to the poor performance.

Recapitated · October 2020

agentpixi wrote: »

Money. It all comes down to money. The team isn't given the time or resources to actually fix anything just enough to keep pushing out new content. The people working on performance can only tweak things and try to bandaid the game.

It's demoralizing enough playing this game, imagine working on it.

TineaCruris · October 2020

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

Why Update 25 was never reverted:

PS4 and XBOX versions would never be able to run. Plain and simple. Any console player, esp PS4 player could tell you how many blue screen crashes they were getting before Harrowstorm. The stability changes were for the better, just not a magic wand to fix everything for everyone.

You mean we can get our performance back if we go back to PC only? Works for me.

TineaCruris · October 2020

caperb wrote: »

So in update 25 ZOS did move even more calculations to the server side, so consoles have better performance?

Won't it be time then to make ESO a PC exclusive again like it was in the past. Not that I'm against people having a gaming console, but if the limited hardware of these things is also limiting performance on other platforms because calculations are done server side, then consoles shouldn't be an option.

Of course this isn't going to happen, so let's hope that ZOS will move calculations to the client side when the new PS and Xbox launch.

I couldn't agree more. Well said.

TineaCruris · October 2020

LostToTheSea wrote: »

I want to start out by saying that I love this game and the community within it. I followed this game avidly during development and started playing back in 2015. There are multiple reasons I could ramble on about why I did and why I'm still playing today, but I will spare us all the extended story and do my best to stick to the point of this post.

There is one key aspect of this game that brought me here and has paved many memories along the way. Cyrodiil. I entered at level 10 and was hooked from the start. This game managed to achieve something I had long thought impossible: A Dark Souls-esque reflex combat system within an open world setting, while allowing for combat of any scale. Those of us who saw the earlier days of ESO remember what a massive scale that was delivered to us, as well as how much smoother the game ran back then. It was far from perfect (even today) with balancing and performance, but it was absolutely unmatched and to this day has not been by any other game. When this game runs well... There's simply nothing like it! There has been the lighting patch and several others that have been extensively detailed in these forums/elsewhere that degraded performance over the years. Along with population caps in PVP reeled in to where we are not even 1/4th of what we once saw in Cyrodiil, even with the game running unquestionably better back then. I've watched countless veterans walk away from this game through the years, but not one of them I ever spoke to said they wanted to. They all reached a breaking point with where performance had deteriorated to and reluctantly stepped away. Some come back, as I have multiple times, but many have not.

This year we saw U25 fundamentally break the core functionality of ESO. We redownloaded the game. Block was moved from client to server side (for Stadia?), along with several other known changes. This time, not just the PVP community, but all of the ESO community watched performance change for the worse (especially the trial/pvp crowd. Perhaps a casual overland quester/RPer wouldn't notice in what they do). Atrocious levels of desync, break free delays like never before, skills greyed out/not firing, our characters twitching when trying to use skills, and so on. The dev team even went to the extent of publicly acknowledging that desync was a standing issue and that there was work being done to fix it. Yet, not a single mention has ever been made specifically stating that U25 itself was a game-breaking update. Not a single mention has ever been made of reverting any of those changes for the sake of ESO itself. When it has been abundantly clear that ever since U25 this game has not been the same for PVE or PVP. There have been many theories thrown back and forth among the community, but nobody knows any better. Why? Because we aren't being told otherwise.

We've now seen nearly 2 months of overly broad, indirect testing that has done little more than frustrate the PC PVP community... to the point of many wondering if there's any reason at all to stick around. Performance has not improved. No matter the claims of a ~25% server fps increase. Despite most people's playstyles, skills, and classes not being usable/viable during these tests. PVPers en-masse will tell you right now, unwavering, that the game is running as poorly as ever for all timezones. It's incredible that such broad tests are being conducted (and considered for implementation) when this dev team has had direct oversight over an update that severely hindered performance across ESO.

This community deserves an answer to why U25 (or some of U25) was never reverted. Surely there are some developers who have at some point experienced the change for themselves, but we have been left in the dark as to why none of it was rolled back. Why? The community can only withstand so much PR talk from the dev team. Just tell us how it is.

More and more it seems like the fix is a really simple one: Expand server capabilities in proportion with player base number increases. You know, like how most other companies do when they offer an online product that becomes popular.

relentless_turnip · October 2020

Totally agree with you OP, I have been making threads similar to this since update 25 was released and am no closer to a response.

I'm fairly certain calculations were moved server side for the release of stadia. I also think GBs removed from the client were simply put server side. I don't think any of it was done to improve console performance. I would argue what is happening now is worse...

I would love it if a developer would comment on these theories or explain why none of it could have been reverted. I imagine doing so would expose them to too much criticism, so to a degree I understand it. Regardless I would love to see them take this step with the community👍

Thannazzar · October 2020

LostToTheSea wrote: »

I want to start out by saying that I love this game and the community within it. I followed this game avidly during development and started playing back in 2015. There are multiple reasons I could ramble on about why I did and why I'm still playing today, but I will spare us all the extended story and do my best to stick to the point of this post.

There is one key aspect of this game that brought me here and has paved many memories along the way. Cyrodiil. I entered at level 10 and was hooked from the start. This game managed to achieve something I had long thought impossible: A Dark Souls-esque reflex combat system within an open world setting, while allowing for combat of any scale. Those of us who saw the earlier days of ESO remember what a massive scale that was delivered to us, as well as how much smoother the game ran back then. It was far from perfect (even today) with balancing and performance, but it was absolutely unmatched and to this day has not been by any other game. When this game runs well... There's simply nothing like it! There has been the lighting patch and several others that have been extensively detailed in these forums/elsewhere that degraded performance over the years. Along with population caps in PVP reeled in to where we are not even 1/4th of what we once saw in Cyrodiil, even with the game running unquestionably better back then. I've watched countless veterans walk away from this game through the years, but not one of them I ever spoke to said they wanted to. They all reached a breaking point with where performance had deteriorated to and reluctantly stepped away. Some come back, as I have multiple times, but many have not.

This year we saw U25 fundamentally break the core functionality of ESO. We redownloaded the game. Block was moved from client to server side (for Stadia?), along with several other known changes. This time, not just the PVP community, but all of the ESO community watched performance change for the worse (especially the trial/pvp crowd. Perhaps a casual overland quester/RPer wouldn't notice in what they do). Atrocious levels of desync, break free delays like never before, skills greyed out/not firing, our characters twitching when trying to use skills, and so on. The dev team even went to the extent of publicly acknowledging that desync was a standing issue and that there was work being done to fix it. Yet, not a single mention has ever been made specifically stating that U25 itself was a game-breaking update. Not a single mention has ever been made of reverting any of those changes for the sake of ESO itself. When it has been abundantly clear that ever since U25 this game has not been the same for PVE or PVP. There have been many theories thrown back and forth among the community, but nobody knows any better. Why? Because we aren't being told otherwise.

We've now seen nearly 2 months of overly broad, indirect testing that has done little more than frustrate the PC PVP community... to the point of many wondering if there's any reason at all to stick around. Performance has not improved. No matter the claims of a ~25% server fps increase. Despite most people's playstyles, skills, and classes not being usable/viable during these tests. PVPers en-masse will tell you right now, unwavering, that the game is running as poorly as ever for all timezones. It's incredible that such broad tests are being conducted (and considered for implementation) when this dev team has had direct oversight over an update that severely hindered performance across ESO.

This community deserves an answer to why U25 (or some of U25) was never reverted. Surely there are some developers who have at some point experienced the change for themselves, but we have been left in the dark as to why none of it was rolled back. Why? The community can only withstand so much PR talk from the dev team. Just tell us how it is.

As Mark Hamill was quoted as saying about the new star wars movies, but it equally applies here: "Remember Kids, as far as the studio is concerned It doesn't have to be good, as long as it makes money!"

The only feedback that ZOS will pay attention to, is that which hits them in the wallet.

Elo106 · October 2020

zvavi wrote: »

Unfortunately you need both sides to speak for a discussion, but zos is radio silent.

This ^
Extremely frustration 90+% of Zos posts are just them deleting/editing posts

Celephantsylvius_Bornasfinmo · October 2020

Well all these issues regarding bugs, server disconnects, lag etc...have become the main focus point nowadays and it's a damn shame.

In a recent live show with an audience our game developer went over all the different content they had brought out over the years. Whilst watching this it seemed more like a goodbye than a look into the future and the two had forgotten a lot of old content because there's just too much of it!

Quantity has taken over quality and sales were promoted instead of stable gameplay. It's a shame for a franchise such as TES as it is such an immersive and engaging world, but at the moment ESO feels like it's going down the FO76 path of 'oh well'...back to the drawing board...

AMeanOne · October 2020

The game has been a dumpster fire since the February 5th patch on ps4. Almost 9 months ago

dem0n1k · October 2020

Cyrodiil is a miserable experience atm with these skill delay tests.

gatekeeper13 · October 2020

LostToTheSea wrote: »

This community deserves an answer to why U25 (or some of U25) was never reverted. Surely there are some developers who have at some point experienced the change for themselves, but we have been left in the dark as to why none of it was rolled back. Why? The community can only withstand so much PR talk from the dev team. Just tell us how it is.

We are never going to receive any answers and servers will never see any performance improvement. This is the truth.

When the game director says that "he saw server performance improvement" when most players say game and especially pvp performs like trash, there is no reason to expect anything from them anymore.

ZOS only cares to make money and imho they dont behave like a company who treats it's game as an artistic creation like many developers do but more like a cow to milk and make dollars.

The only way to see performance improvement is if the company moves the game to better servers. This will cost money and it's never going to happen. Till the game shuts down for good, what we are going to see is failed "performance improvement plans" and useless patches that break game even more.

NeillMcAttack · October 2020

Sadly OP, we are stuck with the communities own theories on that, was it Stadia optimization, console viability, cheaters, etc. etc.

The disingenuous nature of the announcement, calling the entire movement of processes server side “block changes”, kind of tells you all you need to know. That they didn’t think we would notice that our synergies aren’t responding in a timely manner anymore, that we wouldn’t notice, the huge delay’s in positional updates, potions being even less responsive, again, etc.... calls the motives into greater question.

[snip]

The sad part is OP, I am just like you, there is a certain kind of magic that is Cyro combat that had me hooked from my first level 10 also, it’s casual and hardcore, it’s exciting, it creates passion in players fighting for their faction. It really is something special. And up until update 25, I could actually enjoy it, and I wouldn’t be here, this many years later if Cyro didn’t exist, or played the way it does today. It’s sad to think of the amount of players that will never get to experience that.

ZOS should do the right thing and communicate with us like adults. I mean, a lot of us are here for many years, they owe us that much at the very least. But I think we all know the answers already. They have taken this direction, and it appears there is no turning back.

[edited for discussing disciplinary action]

volkeswagon · October 2020

I'm glad I don't do pvp. I never liked the whole concept of killing other players. It just goes against my nature. It's a shame they have so many issues with pvp. It seems to be the root of most of the complaints on this forum. If only it ran as smooth as pve.

Zyva · October 2020

at this point, we are getting so used to the double ap with the tests that when it goes away its going to feel like a loss.

Delphinia · October 2020

You know, honestly at this point... it would just be nice to know that when you summon your mount, it consistently shows up and you can stay mounted... I see mounts for sale all the time in the crown store, yet why buy them if you can rarely use it in cyro?
other than that, I can handle a little lag and toxic player behavior here and there.. but, the exploits/hacks/cheats, call them what you will, are what really ruins any semblance of fun in this game.. and yes, I know not everyone does it, but you'd be a fool to think it doesn't still exist.

UsoSaito · October 2020

I literally came back to the forums to agree with this. I haven't played ESO in quite awhile strictly becuase of this reason. Friend in an ESO discord posted this and this is exactly why I quit. I love the PvP and the early days of actual large siege without massive lag was amazing and memorable and small group PvP felt phenomenal. Now I'll log in when an expansion comes out once a year since there is always claims of server performance and only see it get worse each year.

My ping was 90 the first few years the game came out in 2014. Since then I have noticed ping at risen up to at least 120 only when it is good. If you get a network/system performance check (when it lags) everything becomes a slideshow even though you aren't even near any large groups or even empty keeps for that matter.