So Lag is Back in Cyrodiil Now?

Duane · November 2022

Came back to ESO tonight(Friday Night) for the first time in about 2 weeks since update 36 rollercoaster release. Was in Blackreach for a few hours, but was unplayable from 9-10 P.M. 2-4 Second skill delay, getting hit by abilities clearly not on screen, ping jumping over 150. (Everyone was experiencing the same lag, as i was streaming and people were asking me if i had the same lag too) I recently swapped to PC NA to not have these performance problems, especially since we got new servers that supposedly fixed this issue. Slowly but surely the lag has been creeping back into the game. Is there any reason for this? Are you guys testing things behind the scenes? Or can the servers simply not handle the load it's under? I understand everything won't be flawless all the time, but the lag tonight has me worried for the future.

Here is stream for reference check the pinned comment for timestamp

https://youtu.be/4xu3eafvxOk

-Concerned PvP'er

Dem_kitkats1 · November 2022

Idk, from my experience Cyro lag has never been completely fixed, and I don't think it will be until devs actually complete the re-architecture of servers. I was in Blackreach PCNA from 8-11pm MST and didn't experience anything that out of the ordinary. Perhaps where I live that's just an everyday normal experience lol. Either way, a game that people pay for should have much better performance than that.

blktauna · November 2022

I was in IC and it was ridiculous. I get better ping on EU than NA and I'm on east coast US. Lord know whats going on and lord knows they will never tell us.

Flangdoodle · November 2022

Lag never left Cyrodiil. I've been playing in Gray Host PC/NA in prime time for 5 years now, and it's always been the same (especially in big fights and 100% of the time when you get anywhere near ball groups: skills stop working, you have to hit the L/A button 4-5 times for it to go off (and good luck getting a H/A off with a melee weapon) siege doesn't render player attacks on you dont render so you'll just fall over dead while seemingly out in the open and not know what killed you until the recap (and no I'm not talking about getting ganked - that happens too but this is different, this is just animations not rendering.).

The slow bugs, the perpetually being in a state of combat, the 45 thousand day debuffs that only come off (sometimes) in the Cheesemongers Hollow, the slideshows that happen when your ping shoots up over 1000 - all of that has been exactly the same and has yet to change.

"Has lag come back to Cyrodiil?" [snip] It never left.

[edited for baiting]

Duane · November 2022

Flangdoodle wrote: »

Lag never left Cyrodiil. I've been playing in Gray Host PC/NA in prime time for 5 years now, and it's always been the same (especially in big fights and 100% of the time when you get anywhere near ball groups: skills stop working, you have to hit the L/A button 4-5 times for it to go off (and good luck getting a H/A off with a melee weapon) siege doesn't render player attacks on you dont render so you'll just fall over dead while seemingly out in the open and not know what killed you until the recap (and no I'm not talking about getting ganked - that happens too but this is different, this is just animations not rendering.).

The slow bugs, the perpetually being in a state of combat, the 45 thousand day debuffs that only come off (sometimes) in the Cheesemongers Hollow, the slideshows that happen when your ping shoots up over 1000 - all of that has been exactly the same and has yet to change.

"Has lag come back to Cyrodiil?" [snip] It never left.

I'm mainly talking about the skill delay, for the most part this issue was fixed atleast from my experience in the large majority of situations. Gray host is actually playabe on PC, the lag disparity between console and pc they are just completely different games. The issue I'm raising is the servers fixed most of the lag and delay, but it is just slowly creep back into the game since my switch from Console to PC.
I'm talking about the clip in my stream, this felt no different than console lag. I know performance will never be perfect, I'm just curious if they are maybe doing something on the backend we don't know about.

[edited to remove quote]

Jamie_Aubrey · November 2022

mocap · November 2022

So Lag is Back in Cyrodiil Now?

the new campaign has just begun, players are farming the third level of rewards. Plus CP campaign, plus prime time. So why not?

merevie · November 2022

There's the wonderful new HaHaYourAbilitiesDontWorkSet which is likely to be busy doing calculations.

Lebkuchen · November 2022

“That's not a knife. That's a knife!” Come to Playstation EU and see what bad performance really looks like

I guess when everyone from PC EU, Xbox NA, Xbox EU, Playstation NA and Playstation EU tries to escape the disaster on their own server and comes to PC NA, it will break down under the heavy load at some point. But what you are trying to show us here still looks very very very good, compared to what the rest of us have to deal with. Gray Host on Playstation EU has been DEAD since August, because the maintenance in the middle of the PvP event completely broke it. Almost everyone switched to the unlocked campaigns, because the performance was better for a while. But it is getting worse, there are not many players left and we do not know where to go next. Nobody knows when we will get new servers. Nobody knows if the re-architecture is going to improve anything. So maybe we all will have to come to PC NA before everything goes up in flames. Do not misunderstand, i feel with you. The fear of going back to the old performance must be devastating. I wish someone could reassure us that things are going to get better instead of worse. But... yeah...

Duane · November 2022

Lebkuchen wrote: »

“That's not a knife. That's a knife!” Come to Playstation EU and see what bad performance really looks like I guess when everyone from PC EU, Xbox NA, Xbox EU, Playstation NA and Playstation EU tries to escape the disaster on their own server and comes to PC NA, it will break down under the heavy load at some point. But what you are trying to show us here still looks very very very good, compared to what the rest of us have to deal with. Gray Host on Playstation EU has been DEAD since August, because the maintenance in the middle of the PvP event completely broke it. Almost everyone switched to the unlocked campaigns, because the performance was better for a while. But it is getting worse, there are not many players left and we do not know where to go next. Nobody knows when we will get new servers. Nobody knows if the re-architecture is going to improve anything. So maybe we all will have to come to PC NA before everything goes up in flames. Do not misunderstand, i feel with you. The fear of going back to the old performance must be devastating. I wish someone could reassure us that things are going to get better instead of worse. But... yeah...

I know how bad it can be, grayhost on console is unplayable beyond belief and has been for years. I'm just trying to maybe see if they are doing something on the backend we don't know about. Bc its been a pretty pleasant experience with few minor hiccups, but this was a huge pothole🤣

Flangdoodle · November 2022

Duane wrote: »

I'm mainly talking about the skill delay, for the most part this issue was fixed at least from my experience in the large majority of situations. Gray host is actually playable on PC, the lag disparity between console and pc they are just completely different games. The issue I'm raising is the servers fixed most of the lag and delay, but it is just slowly creep back into the game since my switch from Console to PC.
I'm talking about the clip in my stream, this felt no different than console lag. I know performance will never be perfect, I'm just curious if they are maybe doing something on the backend we don't know about.

Fair enough, and I suppose I'm in a unique situation in that I've only played during primetime (that's just when IRL gives me the time to play), and I'm masochistic enough to have not taken any breaks since the time I started playing

, but I'm serious when I say that I've never noticed any difference in the lag - TBH, I actually thought you and others were joking when they said the lag had been fixed in Cyrodiil because I've honestly never noticed any difference. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

subarctic · November 2022

Lag in Cyro, live in Norway.

Jaraal · November 2022

Got lagged out at the hammer battle today. Everybody went into freeze frame mode, then everything sped up, then my screen went gray. Got kicked to login screen, clicked "LOG IN" several times, each time got "That account is already logged in." Finally got back in, and people were still fighting on my corpse.

I guess I got lucky and beat the timer that makes you respawn at your base and force you into a long ride back.

React · November 2022

Just wanted to share that my experience was the exact same in both campaigns last night on PC NA. There was 3-5 second skill delay for 4-5 hours straight during prime time, in both campaigns. This is quite literally the performance that we saw on PC NA before the server was replaced, which means that either the servers are degrading again or they had their capacity reduced.

I am very nervous about the future of the game. After seeing this awful performance on the only server with new server hardware, coupled with the lack of communication about the "year long code rewrite" that we are now 10 months into, and the lack of any pvp content at all in the past few years, it seems like ESO is destined to die out as the MMO with probably the most wasted potential of all time.

I truly, sincerely hope the developers prove us wrong and turn things around, or at least start communicating with us directly about these issues. This is sad to see.

FeedbackOnly · November 2022

It's laggy in pve too now

Thecompton73 · November 2022

Lebkuchen wrote: »

“That's not a knife. That's a knife!” Come to Playstation EU and see what bad performance really looks like I guess when everyone from PC EU, Xbox NA, Xbox EU, Playstation NA and Playstation EU tries to escape the disaster on their own server and comes to PC NA, it will break down under the heavy load at some point. But what you are trying to show us here still looks very very very good, compared to what the rest of us have to deal with. Gray Host on Playstation EU has been DEAD since August, because the maintenance in the middle of the PvP event completely broke it. Almost everyone switched to the unlocked campaigns, because the performance was better for a while. But it is getting worse, there are not many players left and we do not know where to go next. Nobody knows when we will get new servers. Nobody knows if the re-architecture is going to improve anything. So maybe we all will have to come to PC NA before everything goes up in flames. Do not misunderstand, i feel with you. The fear of going back to the old performance must be devastating. I wish someone could reassure us that things are going to get better instead of worse. But... yeah...

Gray Host on PC NA has actually been pretty slow lately compared to what it was like when I made the jump to PC back at the beginning of the year. The meta of everyone playing 35K+ health quasi tanks combined with 12 players groups that can infinitely survive being bombarded with every type of siege while also being attacked by 30 people has sucked the fun out of Cyro. That combined with the fact that DC and EP basically refuse to fight each other has made it a total bore.

TechMaybeHic · November 2022

I generally try to a avoid weekends as it gets pretty bad still. Even when it was at it's best right after new servers PCNA, it still was noticeably worse on weekends. But it has gradually been getting worse and even more so the further we get from a maintenance

VixxVexx · November 2022

At this point I'm pretty sure they use some sort of DRS (dynamic resource scheduler) so they can allocate more or less resources towards their servers. This becomes very noticeable during events. Can't blame them for using it though, can save quite a bit on server costs.

Dr_Con · November 2022

Lag never left cyrodiil and if never will until heal stacking and crit healing buffs/healing buffs/overheal buffs are limited/removed. Limiting the number of people in cyrodiil makes those limited people figure out ways to squeeze more potential out of each player and the conclusion they came to, due to the game's design, was heal stacking and the burst meta.

Lebkuchen · November 2022

Dr_Con wrote: »

Lag never left cyrodiil and if never will until heal stacking and crit healing buffs/healing buffs/overheal buffs are limited/removed. Limiting the number of people in cyrodiil makes those limited people figure out ways to squeeze more potential out of each player and the conclusion they came to, due to the game's design, was heal stacking and the burst meta.

No. They tested heal stacking, proc sets and who knows what else. And they did not see noteworthy impacts on performance. We do not know what the problem is, but new servers seemed to help for PC NA. And there is some kind of resource they can redistribute/reallocate (?) for pvp events, that helped in the past. But it looks like they can not do that anymore. There are countless theories about the performance issues and bugs, but nobody tells us what's really going on. Please stop blaming other players for their playstyle, because i am sure that's the one thing that will help noone.

YandereGirlfriend · November 2022

The "2/3 of Cyrodiil crashes simultaneously" bug has also returned with a vengeance.

Oakenaxe · November 2022

Cyrodiil was the only thing keeping me on this game after all the disappointments (U35 and now the buggy and, imo, poorly written Firesong DLC), but now not even that is pleasant anymore. I'm taking a break from the game and not regreting it. I sincerely hope things get better next year.

Dr_Con · November 2022

Lebkuchen wrote: »

Dr_Con wrote: »

Lag never left cyrodiil and if never will until heal stacking and crit healing buffs/healing buffs/overheal buffs are limited/removed. Limiting the number of people in cyrodiil makes those limited people figure out ways to squeeze more potential out of each player and the conclusion they came to, due to the game's design, was heal stacking and the burst meta.

No. They tested heal stacking, proc sets and who knows what else. And they did not see noteworthy impacts on performance. We do not know what the problem is, but new servers seemed to help for PC NA. And there is some kind of resource they can redistribute/reallocate (?) for pvp events, that helped in the past. But it looks like they can not do that anymore. There are countless theories about the performance issues and bugs, but nobody tells us what's really going on. Please stop blaming other players for their playstyle, because i am sure that's the one thing that will help noone.

I don't care that these are invincible forces of nature, I care that it crashes people and generates lag that everyone has to deal with on this shared resource called a server. I also fail to see where I am blaming anyone in particular, I'm simply pointing out that if you want to generate lag, you get a bunch of people together to heal stack and tank damage at the same time. Generating lag in this fashion is an intentional tactic to make stuns last longer when coupled with a pull and intentionally causes core combat abilities to not work, such as break free. This gives people in a group the moment they need to mash their buttons and do burst damage. Thousands of calculations go into outhealing damage being done, if they should crit or not, buffs being applied, when they were applied as they tick down, and when you do this intentionally with a faction stack it will even crash people to the log in screen who enter render distance.

mzprx · November 2022

(PC EU) i have abandoned CP campaigns long time ago. Ravenwatch is the only campaign on PC EU that (kind of) works. yes, the lag (and other issues) hits when there are ball groups around or a lot of people are playing (weekend prime time), but if you want to have any meaningful gaming experience on PC EU you are in RW. also, if you don't want to be dealing with all the "new and improved proc sets that make everyone miserable" (i.e. all the new proc sets that we warned them about on PTS but they didn't listen, see Mara's Balm)..

that's why i don't understand PC NA. i have started playing there recently and Ravenwatch is... not very popular over there. no idea why. i have around 160-180 ping and RW NA works better than RW EU with 60 ping. RW EU with 160 ping is unplayable, that's when all the ball groups crawl out of their holes and it's weekend prime time. but why there aren't as many players in RW NA as in RW EU i will never understand. but at least the game works, so i am mostly in RW NA ATM..

but yeah, i also feel like PvP in this game has been abandoned long time ago. they release some new broken proc sets every-now-and-then to shut us up but that's about it. and that's sad, because ESO can have (probably) the best PvP combat experience. if the game works, that is..

Dr_Con · November 2022

mzprx wrote: »

(i.e. all the new proc sets that we warned them about on PTS but they didn't listen, see Mara's Balm)..

I think Mara's Balm was their attempt at resolving issues with stacking effects by limiting the amount of negative effects that can be applied per person and converting it to burst healing. I actually noticed a performance increase, but the number of invincible troll tanks in pvp was too numerous and game altering to ignore.

YandereGirlfriend · November 2022

mzprx wrote: »

(PC EU) i have abandoned CP campaigns long time ago. Ravenwatch is the only campaign on PC EU that (kind of) works. yes, the lag (and other issues) hits when there are ball groups around or a lot of people are playing (weekend prime time), but if you want to have any meaningful gaming experience on PC EU you are in RW. also, if you don't want to be dealing with all the "new and improved proc sets that make everyone miserable" (i.e. all the new proc sets that we warned them about on PTS but they didn't listen, see Mara's Balm)..

that's why i don't understand PC NA. i have started playing there recently and Ravenwatch is... not very popular over there. no idea why. i have around 160-180 ping and RW NA works better than RW EU with 60 ping. RW EU with 160 ping is unplayable, that's when all the ball groups crawl out of their holes and it's weekend prime time. but why there aren't as many players in RW NA as in RW EU i will never understand. but at least the game works, so i am mostly in RW NA ATM..

but yeah, i also feel like PvP in this game has been abandoned long time ago. they release some new broken proc sets every-now-and-then to shut us up but that's about it. and that's sad, because ESO can have (probably) the best PvP combat experience. if the game works, that is..

There are a lot of reasons why PC-NA Raven is dead. It was never as popular as Grey Host but it was healthy and more popular than Blackreach before the failed No-Proc experiment from a year ago but when that ruleset became permanent most guilds left for the CP campaigns.

The population that was left in Raven was heavily skewed toward AD and they took that opportunity to faction-stack and zerg-down the EP or DC that were still around and willing to fight them outnumbered. Eventually, EP and DC got tired of that and that is what led to the current, mostly dead, campaign.

I have heard that some of the AD recently went over to EP to try to re-balance the campaign population but I think that it is likely too little, too late. If that had happened 6 months ago then it might have succeeded, but who really knows? My guild, along with TM, was basically the last DC guild left on the server and we pulled out back in July or August.

mzprx · November 2022

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

...My guild, along with TM, was basically the last DC guild left on the server and we pulled out back in July or August.

there is at least one other guild that plays RW (on NA) regularly for DC (i play DC as well). shout out to my friends from CtG. and there are other players that play in RW (again, for DC). i also see new faces quite often. so it's not completely hopeless. but even then, i don't understand why RW EU is so popular and RW NA is not. i understand the issues, but still, a campaign where there's way less lag, no silly broken proc sets... sounds like a dream to me. but it also makes me quite sad. a game with one of the best combat systems around that has server issues like crazy, can't figure our game balance 8 years after release and still tries to present itself as one of the best MMOs on the market? i seriously doubt League of Legends would be as popular if they had servers like ESO. which brings us to the main point - if ESO had perfectly working servers the game population would be much greater, thus bringing more money in for ZOS. i can't fathom why it's not their main priority. making the servers and game work without major issues. i just don't get it..

YandereGirlfriend · November 2022

mzprx wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

...My guild, along with TM, was basically the last DC guild left on the server and we pulled out back in July or August.

there is at least one other guild that plays RW (on NA) regularly for DC (i play DC as well). shout out to my friends from CtG. and there are other players that play in RW (again, for DC). i also see new faces quite often. so it's not completely hopeless. but even then, i don't understand why RW EU is so popular and RW NA is not. i understand the issues, but still, a campaign where there's way less lag, no silly broken proc sets... sounds like a dream to me. but it also makes me quite sad. a game with one of the best combat systems around that has server issues like crazy, can't figure our game balance 8 years after release and still tries to present itself as one of the best MMOs on the market? i seriously doubt League of Legends would be as popular if they had servers like ESO. which brings us to the main point - if ESO had perfectly working servers the game population would be much greater, thus bringing more money in for ZOS. i can't fathom why it's not their main priority. making the servers and game work without major issues. i just don't get it..

1000% agree about the servers. A bunch of players came back when the servers were refreshed for NA but with all of the other balance and overall game chaos going on, most of them did not stick around.

I can't tell you why PC-EU has been more popular historically, but there was (and perhaps still is) a great appetite for a No-CP but proc-enabled format - i.e. what Ravenwatch used to be before the No-Proc madness. The players that wanted No-Proc the most were the CP campaign players, which is why it was very strange when only Ravenwatch was selected to feature the new rules. That decision was the beginning of the end for the campaign on NA. If they had instead made Blackreach the No-Proc server then Ravenwatch would likely be going strong even now.

Kappachi · November 2022

Duane wrote: »

Came back to ESO tonight(Friday Night) for the first time in about 2 weeks since update 36 rollercoaster release. Was in Blackreach for a few hours, but was unplayable from 9-10 P.M. 2-4 Second skill delay, getting hit by abilities clearly not on screen, ping jumping over 150. (Everyone was experiencing the same lag, as i was streaming and people were asking me if i had the same lag too) I recently swapped to PC NA to not have these performance problems, especially since we got new servers that supposedly fixed this issue. Slowly but surely the lag has been creeping back into the game. Is there any reason for this? Are you guys testing things behind the scenes? Or can the servers simply not handle the load it's under? I understand everything won't be flawless all the time, but the lag tonight has me worried for the future.

Here is stream for reference check the pinned comment for timestamp
https://youtu.be/4xu3eafvxOk

-Concerned PvP'er

Sounds like you live far away from the server, I've had no server issues in PC NA at all lately, aside from the occasional npc dies 2-4 seconds later but all my skills and everything go off at the right time.

mzprx · November 2022

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

...I can't tell you why PC-EU has been more popular historically...

i can. at least from what i know from other RW EU players - they are sick and tired of ZOS releasing broken OP sets and then nerfing them into the ground in the next patch. so you have to farm them like mad and/or buy them from guild stores for millions, only to see them becoming a shell of it's former self in 3 months. in RW you can make a build that will stay relevant for a looong time. so you don't bleed gold and gold upgrade mats. there is no Dark Convergence (as released), no Mara's Balm, no Hrothgar, no Plaguebreak (again, as these sets were released). you get killed by other player's skill or your mistake(s)..

it baffles me how ZOS can't figure out game balance 8 years after the game release. they don't take feedback, they don't care about PvP. and they're wondering why players leave..

YandereGirlfriend · November 2022

mzprx wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

...I can't tell you why PC-EU has been more popular historically...

i can. at least from what i know from other RW EU players - they are sick and tired of ZOS releasing broken OP sets and then nerfing them into the ground in the next patch. so you have to farm them like mad and/or buy them from guild stores for millions, only to see them becoming a shell of it's former self in 3 months. in RW you can make a build that will stay relevant for a looong time. so you don't bleed gold and gold upgrade mats. there is no Dark Convergence (as released), no Mara's Balm, no Hrothgar, no Plaguebreak (again, as these sets were released). you get killed by other player's skill or your mistake(s)..

it baffles me how ZOS can't figure out game balance 8 years after the game release. they don't take feedback, they don't care about PvP. and they're wondering why players leave..

I meant history in a longer-term sense. Like Grey Host (e.g. faction-lock CP campaign) has always been the most popular NA campaign whereas I have heard that the Ravenwatch (e.g. faction-lock No-CP campaign) has typically been the main campaign on EU. Unless I am mistaken in that understanding?

The EP and DC in No-Proc Ravenwatch just got tired of constantly getting zerged-down by 40 AD when they tried to take a their own home keep resource and then having to having to fight at a permanent 2, 3 or 4:1 numbers disadvantage. People dunk on proc sets not requiring skill to use but it doesn't take much skill to zerg around in a giant faction-stack, either. Sometimes factions do that for one or two campaigns before population re-balances itself, but EP and DC were having to 12v50 basically every night for over a year in Raven and eventually it just got old. Each night, you would log in to single bar EP and DC with no home keeps, no Scrolls, 3 bars or locked AD and an AD emperor that had been ruling for like 10 days. It was not fun. Hopefully things are better now.

To get more on-topic, I think that part of the reason that Raven has better performance is precisely due to the lack of players. The small handful of times that we had 3 bars across-the-board after the server upgrade the game would still start to chug. Performance in Blackreach is fine most nights, it's more when it's triple-locked that problems start. Since Grey Host is always triple-locked in prime time, it could present the illusion of worse performance vs. Ravenwatch when in reality it's just a function of population and population density (since Grey Host has more ball groups and ball groups draw enemy faction-stacks).