How do you turn off the "New Environmental Sustainability Features"?

Tiath · June 18

The 30fps cap when in menus is horrible.

But there doesn't seem to be any way to turn it off.

ZOS_Kevin · June 18

Currently there isn't a way to turn it off. However, we are taking feedback to the team for their review.

Tiath · June 18

Thanks for the reply, Kevin.

If possible, please give us the choice.

Performance degrading when idle or AFK is fine, but the menus are used a lot.

Especially in the controller UI - where you're constantly navigating up and down lists - the loss of FPS makes the whole experience clunky and unnecessarily slow.

HatchetHaro · June 18

Open your usersettings.ini file, and make sure these entries are set to these values:

SET EnergySustainabilityMeasuresEnabled "0"
SET USE_BACKGROUND_FPS_LIMIT "0"

Tiath · June 18

HatchetHaro wrote: »

Open your usersettings.ini file, and make sure these entries are set to these values:

SET EnergySustainabilityMeasuresEnabled "0"
SET USE_BACKGROUND_FPS_LIMIT "0"

While it's good that PC/Mac users seem to have a choice, that's a bit tricky to do on PlayStation & Xbox...

alternatelder · June 18

HatchetHaro wrote: »

Open your usersettings.ini file, and make sure these entries are set to these values:

SET EnergySustainabilityMeasuresEnabled "0"
SET USE_BACKGROUND_FPS_LIMIT "0"

Likely a console user as it just launched for us today. It is pretty awful and the very first setting I looked for. It's funny they think this is environmentally friendly when I can run my console nonstop for years without making a significant dent in "global warming" or whatever they think gamers are doing to ruin the planet.

SkaiFaith · June 18

@ZOS_Kevin I play on a Xbox Series X and a LG TV both with 120Hz enabled. I also always had enabled VRR or Vsync and never had a problem, it was buttery smooth til yesterday.

After today's patch I get massive stutters entering in menus and during all time in the map.
During normal gameplay is fine but opening those two things makes the screen go "strobo lights" effect and stutter heavily.

If I disable VRR or Vsync the strobo effect goes off, but the stutter persists.
I tried enabling and disabling different options both on console and TV, like Auto Low Latency mode and such things - nothing solves the problem caused by the 30fps cap.
The only thing I didn't disable is 120Hz on Console and TV - I think you can understand me if I say I'm not ok with doing so, since I invested money in both devices because of that feature.

Please fix this issue or at least let us disable the "energy saving" thing.
Right now the game results in something kinda unplayable, which is really sad; I waited for Gold Road with great anticipation and this is bad, seriously...!

goboltz · June 18

At a Minimum, Take it OUT of the PS5 Enhanced Version, If the issues are with the older Ps4 or Xbox, put it in their versions ! Killing the Quality & performance for really dumb reasons seems suspect at best . . .

Tiath · June 18

SkaiFaith wrote: »

During normal gameplay is fine but opening those two things makes the screen go "strobo lights" effect and stutter heavily.

Oh.. that's why I am feeling sick.

I just looked more closely and yes, there's a subtle strobing effect when in the menu/map with VRR on.

This is an accessibility issue: We need to have a choice to disable it.

I was really looking forward to this expansion, and I understand this is hyperbolic, but I'm going to go and have a little cry now.

goboltz · June 18

SkaiFaith wrote: »

@ZOS_Kevin I play on a Xbox Series X and a LG TV both with 120Hz enabled. I also always had enabled VRR or Vsync and never had a problem, it was buttery smooth til yesterday.

After today's patch I get massive stutters entering in menus and during all time in the map.
During normal gameplay is fine but opening those two things makes the screen go "strobo lights" effect and stutter heavily.

If I disable VRR or Vsync the strobo effect goes off, but the stutter persists.
I tried enabling and disabling different options both on console and TV, like Auto Low Latency mode and such things - nothing solves the problem caused by the 30fps cap.
The only thing I didn't disable is 120Hz on Console and TV - I think you can understand me if I say I'm not ok with doing so, since I invested money in both devices because of that feature.

Please fix this issue or at least let us disable the "energy saving" thing.
Right now the game results in something kinda unplayable, which is really sad; I waited for Gold Road with great anticipation and this is bad, seriously...!

Same, I'm on Ps5 with a Sony Tv , I have ALL the same settings as you ! This needs a toggle for "Save the Planet" or "Watch it Burn" ! I'll wager the Older consoles had issues with the new menu/map settings and this was a "Blanket" thing done last minute as a Band-Aid !

dk_dunkirk · June 18

This is like when I bought my last PC, preinstalled with Windows 11. After a couple of minutes, my Bluetooth keyboard and mouse would stop working. Moving them and turning them on and off again didn't work. Fiddling with the Bluetooth icon on the taskbar did nothing. I updated the OS. I updated the drivers. I fussed with it for a couple weeks, and was ready to just take the computer back and get a refund. Then I had a thought: was this some sort of power saving mode? Sure enough, I dug around in the hardware config, and there's a power saving mode for the Bluetooth radio, and it's on by default. Why on God's green earth does this setting allow the computer to TURN OFF the receiver when it's ACTIVELY getting input?! Furthermore, why is this even a thing in the first place? Someone at Microsoft had to make a decision that this "feature" should be put into Windows, and someone had to code the UI for it. And for what? To save an additional penny of electricity over the course of an entire year? At the expense of me needing to restart the Bluetooth stack every couple of minutes? In what world does any of this make any sense?! So that someone could report to their manager that they were saving $X micrograms of carbon from the atmosphere, collectively, across all Windows PC's in the world? If I had a nickel for every time someone made up some stupid metric like this on a corporate yearly performance plan, I would have more money than Bill Gates.

I'm paying for the hardware. I'm paying for the software. I'm paying for the live service. I'm paying for the electricity. I'm paying for the internet access. Please let me use the FULL POWER of EVERYTHING I'm paying for, and DO NOT DEGRADE MY PERFORMANCE for ANY reason. My goodness. I wouldn't even think this to be the least bit controversial, but here we are.

BuffNukem · June 18

I'm fine with your screen savers and reduced GPU usage if I have been inactive for a decent amount of time, but I'm not fine with you throttling my performance while I am ACTIVELY playing the game. This is crazy, especially when the framerate drop is so significant that it hurts the eyes to see the stuttering while scrolling in a menu or on the map.

I don't need your help to do my part in sustaining the environment.

Atedos · June 18

About those 30fps menus...
While some devs/games do exactly the opposite for player's smooth experience, ZoS for some reason decides to fix that which ain't broken?
On PS5 maps and inventory management are literally unusable now. The effect is even stronger in contrast with 60fps gameplay in performance mode.
And it's even worse if you have larger screen (which is typical for consoles), as the distance between frames is physically larger.

And the icing on the cake is not even giving us an option to revert menus back to 60fps.

visualgloss_ESO · June 18

Unfortunately, I won't be playing again until this is reverted back or made an option. It's absolutely unplayable for me.

Tandor · June 18

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Currently there isn't a way to turn it off. However, we are taking feedback to the team for their review.

No need to make them optional, just revert the so-called energy-saving changes made in this update across all platforms.

ZOS_Kevin · June 18

Hi all, we now have an official thread looking for your feedback related to this issue. Please follow the link here to share your thoughts. We can get those to the dev team. Thank you!

Dack_Janiels · June 18

HatchetHaro wrote: »

Open your usersettings.ini file, and make sure these entries are set to these values:

SET EnergySustainabilityMeasuresEnabled "0"
SET USE_BACKGROUND_FPS_LIMIT "0"

----
Note: This method is much easier than manually editing the `UserSettings.txt` file.
However, please be aware that console users may not be able to use chat script commands.
---

To disable the "New Environmental Sustainability Features" in the game, please follow the steps below:

1. Open the in-game chat.
2. Enter the following commands:

/script SetCVar("EnergySustainabilityMeasuresEnabled", 0)
/script SetCVar("USE_BACKGROUND_FPS_LIMIT", 0)

These commands will turn off the environmental sustainability features and the background FPS limit.

Tiath · June 18

Dack_Janiels wrote: »

However, please be aware that console users may not be able to use chat script commands.

...

/script SetCVar("EnergySustainabilityMeasuresEnabled", 0)
/script SetCVar("USE_BACKGROUND_FPS_LIMIT", 0)

We can't: /script is an invalid command on the console versions.

rockyracoon13 · June 18

This makes cyrodil even more unplayable on console. It is a huge difference going in and out of menus when playing on a series s or x.

Karivaa · June 18

I definitely have lots of lag and the 30fps in the menus makes it worst, it makes me dizzy and gave me a headache so I logged off.

ArchMikem · June 18

I have some humility to feel here. When the PC players were grabbing pitchforks over this, I played Devil's Advocate for ZOS, cause I thought how bad could it possibly be? I had to wait the couple weeks to get my experience.

The knee jerk reaction was immediate. It's SUPER gross, I had gotten so used to playing at 60fps on my Series X that losing half my framerate opening menus and opening the world map feels so bad. I can't stand it and my first reaction was to look for a way to turn it off.

I'm sorry, i fully support environmentally friendly measures, but this specifically? I'm eyeing the pitchforks.

Necrotech_Master · June 18

ArchMikem wrote: »

I have some humility to feel here. When the PC players were grabbing pitchforks over this, I played Devil's Advocate for ZOS, cause I thought how bad could it possibly be? I had to wait the couple weeks to get my experience.

The knee jerk reaction was immediate. It's SUPER gross, I had gotten so used to playing at 60fps on my Series X that losing half my framerate opening menus and opening the world map feels so bad. I can't stand it and my first reaction was to look for a way to turn it off.

I'm sorry, i fully support environmentally friendly measures, but this specifically? I'm eyeing the pitchforks.

i generally try to have an open mind about things too, but when stuff like this is included with no way to change with in game settings, its not great lol

PC found a workaround to "fix" this for the time being, but this change is seriously gonna drive away all the console players if they dont turn this around quick

IIBonesII · June 18

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Currently there isn't a way to turn it off. However, we are taking feedback to the team for their review.

On PC the new settings havent made much difference to me. I had already had the background fps limited to 30fps prior to the update.

On console however its a different story. I have ADHD and dyslexia. We're all a bit different but some of the issues that impact me greatly are auditory and visual processing delays. The shift from what it looks like coming out of being idle is quite honestly terrible and almost hurts my brain at this point today after my eyeballs experiencing having to adjust every single time I come out of menus or come out of idle. The lag going into a menu as the fps drops to 30 is odd and frustrating on top of the current ping and lags.

The coming out of idle in particular is awful. I keep having to remind myself to press a controller button to get it out of idle before I look at my screen. Im on a new xbox. Brand new Ben Q monitor. It shouldn't look this bad or be an almost migraine trigger.

Tiath · June 19

IIBonesII wrote: »

...some of the issues that impact me greatly are auditory and visual processing delays.

This is what's triggering me too.

I'm not sure they understand they've created an accessibility issue where there wasn't one before.

GuuMoonRyoung · July 15

alternatelder wrote: »

HatchetHaro wrote: »

Open your usersettings.ini file, and make sure these entries are set to these values:

SET EnergySustainabilityMeasuresEnabled "0"
SET USE_BACKGROUND_FPS_LIMIT "0"

Likely a console user as it just launched for us today. It is pretty awful and the very first setting I looked for. It's funny they think this is environmentally friendly when I can run my console nonstop for years without making a significant dent in "global warming" or whatever they think gamers are doing to ruin the planet.

It is to get ESG fund from US, Canada, UK governments and EU commission. This is the reason why games have been going downhill for the last 6 or so years, they make up all losses in ESG fund. If it still doesn't make shareholders happy, fire devs.

ZOS_Volpe · July 17

Greetings,

To consolidate all feedback into one place, we are going to close this thread down, so that the discussion may continue here.

Thank you for your understanding.