PS4 Minifreezes during gameplay

MotokoKusanagi34 · July 2021

Is this a known issue? Since Blackwood the PS4 version is suffering from 1-2 second minifreezes, as far as I can tell usually whenever a PSN friend comes online - probably regardless of notification settings on the console. It’s an incredibly annoying issue which the PS5 version doesn’t have since I‘ve upgraded, though that bug is still present for PS4 users.

katanagirl1 · July 2021

This sometimes happens so often it drives me crazy when it does happen.

I can’t tell for me personally that it is when friends are coming online but it is possible I guess. It will happen at fairly regular intervals (like every minute or so) for a while and then I realize at some point it stopped.

I would love to see this fixed but don’t have much hope unless it is repeatable.

vivisectvib16_ESO · July 2021

It's very much known. For what it's worth, this issue went away for me when I upgraded to the PS5 version. Sadly, I think it's a PS4 hardware limitation.

Vaoh · July 2021

It’s a horrible issue..... has caused lots of deaths for me in rockgrove hard mode and vateshran arena.

Many raid members complain about the same thing.

I’m on PS4 btw (not ps5).

katanagirl1 · July 2021

vivisectvib16_ESO wrote: »

It's very much known. For what it's worth, this issue went away for me when I upgraded to the PS5 version. Sadly, I think it's a PS4 hardware limitation.

It’s hard to believe it’s a problem with the console when it worked previously. It’s like blaming the console for all the other player characters showing as dark silhouettes now when entering an area and that didn’t used to happen.

Anyone know if it occurs in the PS4 version if you play on PS5 (not playing the enhanced version)?

vivisectvib16_ESO · July 2021

katanagirl1 wrote: »

vivisectvib16_ESO wrote: »

It's very much known. For what it's worth, this issue went away for me when I upgraded to the PS5 version. Sadly, I think it's a PS4 hardware limitation.

It’s hard to believe it’s a problem with the console when it worked previously. It’s like blaming the console for all the other player characters showing as dark silhouettes now when entering an area and that didn’t used to happen.

Anyone know if it occurs in the PS4 version if you play on PS5 (not playing the enhanced version)?

Trust me - I have been complaining about this issue for years. Look up any thread about it in the PS4 tech forum and it was likely started by me. I have also posted video evidence of the issue in action.

It happened for me on both the PS4 version on a PS4, and the PS4 version on my PS5. It did not resolve until the PS5 enhanced came out.

The likely reason for it to have been working previously, but getting worse over time, is for the tech spec requirements of the game to become greater as it is expanded and added upon. Just like a PC game would. I'm not saying they CAN'T fix it, but I am say it's likely related to the hardware of the PS4 and something in-game would need to be drastically tweaked to get rid of it.

Destai · July 2021

Yup, been an issue for me since the last patch. It's bad enough I can't play the PS5 upgrade without crashing, it'd be nice if this version ran better.

Sun7dance · July 2021

I play on PS4 Pro with SSD and i really don't have these freezes, not even in PvP.
Maybe ZOS should take these information for their investigation.

I've heard from some players that after changing their DNS Server, the game runs a little bit better.

MotokoKusanagi34 · July 2021

vivisectvib16_ESO wrote: »

Trust me - I have been complaining about this issue for years. Look up any thread about it in the PS4 tech forum and it was likely started by me. I have also posted video evidence of the issue in action.

It happened for me on both the PS4 version on a PS4, and the PS4 version on my PS5. It did not resolve until the PS5 enhanced came out.

The likely reason for it to have been working previously, but getting worse over time, is for the tech spec requirements of the game to become greater as it is expanded and added upon. Just like a PC game would. I'm not saying they CAN'T fix it, but I am say it's likely related to the hardware of the PS4 and something in-game would need to be drastically tweaked to get rid of it.

This has nothing to do with hardware or memory limitation since this micro freezing issue didn’t manifest before Blackwood. I’m also not talking about taxing PvP or PvE gameplay but rather idle or non-combat activities in all zones which has nothing to do with high CPU/GPU usage or even the „spec requirements“ of the game since they haven’t changed ever since. If this was performance related we’d see a drop in framerate or frametime / if it was a memory issue then freezes should’ve been caused by ingame actions like animations or loading of assets. This is a standard situation which can be easily replicated and was verified to be an issue by all people who I‘ve asked so far. The most likely reason is the way the PSN friends/invite system has been implemented into the game where we suddenly get a PS system notification for group invites, people leaving group and disconnecting which all trigger now a system notification to be displayed now - this wasn’t the case before Blackwood so I’m guessing there’s a bug in how this was implemented and the hit on overall gameplay performance (not as in too taxing) was simply overseen. I do not know for certain since I‘m not a dev but you can make pretty good guesses when looking at the freeze causes, changes to previous game versions and possible culprits for when you take everything into consideration. This time it just seems so oddly specifically tied to PSN friends.

katanagirl1 wrote: »

Anyone know if it occurs in the PS4 version if you play on PS5 (not playing the enhanced version)?

Yes it still occurs when installed on PS5 console storage.

katanagirl1 · July 2021

One time today when I noticed the freezing, I saw those two icons show up in the upper right corner of the screen - the chat looking bubble and the mail message envelope.

I thought the game only checked your mailbox when rezoning, so I am not sure why they even show up when I’m just doing my daily crafting writs at the crafting stations or looking through my inventory, but they do. I’ll assume for now that is what they mean.

Incidentally, one time while I was fighting the last boss of Vateshran Hollow I experienced a few long seconds of crippling lag, which crashed the game and I had to login again. When I got back online, I had four expired and returned guild store items in there. Makes me think that mail caused the lag.

So, maybe there is a lot more going on behind the scenes now in the game than before, who knows.

Nova Sky · July 2021

I, too, have experienced identical issues as others in this thread. No problems prior to Blackwood, but "hiccups" ever since. Please fix this, ZOS. It's not a figment of our imaginations.

Freilauftomate · April 2024

This is still happening for me on my playstation 4 pro and at least one friend playing the ps4 version on a ps5. I had to delete most friends because of this...

Since the last update i have huge fps issues in Cyrodiil, dolmens etc. too. When there is a lot going on.

Freezes, fps drops plus everyone still crashing all the time is very annoying when trying to play harder group content or PvP.

Does this mean support for PS4 ends here?