Server Performance for MYM has been really poor

Tcholl · July 29

I am playing from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I am also experiencing massive fps drops, since the last update. It gets worse when playing in group.

Performance has never felt so bad as it is now.

I am deleting the ShaderCache.cooked file everytime I go to Cyro, which helps a lot, but does not entirely solve the problem.

Hope someone finds a better solution sooner rather than later!

BXR_Lonestar · July 29

LadyGP wrote: »

The_Meathead wrote: »

Yeah, performance has been notably worse this time around while MYM has typically been the best periods we experience.

I don't know that it's purely Cyrodiil, though. My Guildies have mentioned things being ''sticky'' in overland content of late, too.

I do know that a single Ball Group or especially two+ at a time are just chewing things up like crazy in Cyrodiil this week, way more than normal. I typically have really good framerate but this week it's been an occasional unplayable slide show when they're doing their Ball-y things during primetime.

For what it is worth - I typically can have stable frames and minimal (almost no) lag when 3 or more ball groups are near me.

Just saying that because the second a ball group gets mentioned everyone gets fixated on that being the "cause" when.. ball groups just show the inefficiences of systems.. they aren't the true "cause".. if that makes sense.

Exactly this. I'm used to having pretty decent performance when my Bol Group is fighting 3-4 other Bol Groups at once in prime time (Friday Night) on Xbox NA, and now it seems like I'm getting terrible performance with barely 1 bar population. Definitely feels like they just rolled out the old servers just for the event.

BXR_Lonestar · July 29

@ZOS_Kevin

I'm playing on XBOX NA. I didn't play PVP until well after prime time last night just to get a few tickets, but my group will likely be playing tonight in prime time. If/when I get some server performance drops, I'll try to remember to take some clips and I'll post it.

RaidingTraiding · July 29

I usually get 100 fps+ playing on a 4080, its been dropping to 30 in big fights and in one particularly large fight it got down to single digits. both performance and pop have been down this midyear. it definitely feels like I'm fighting way less people during midyear than what we used to get on a regular daily basis in the past. do we really need the extra campaigns now with the smaller pop? feels like its spreading people out even more.

desyncs are really bad too. being pulled by rush from what seems like 50+ meters at time, just absolutely ridiculous ranges.

LadyGP · July 29

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

LadyGP wrote: »

UPDATE:

The tweak I posted fixed my issue. I've ran into multiple ball groups and it's night and day difference. I guess it's something to do with the recent Windows11 update and the settings file and how it allocates the cores.

Nevermind

I would imagine that those values are somewhat architecture-specific.

Like, I wouldn't want the game trying to run on Intel eCores or across chiplets on certain AMD processors.

Not that that applies to you on a 7800x3D, though.

What all was your experience like with those settings?

So it was hard to say last night. The queue was over 2 hours and once I got in there were hardly any fights (my queue popped right after the hammer went away). There was that small battle a nik and there was the DC ball there and my frames tanked. I was hoping to get a clip without being near a ball group because once someone sees a ball group they just make assumptions and ignore the underlying problem.... but.. it is what it is.

I'm wondering if there is a skill or something that "pops" and then that is causing the fps to nuke. It was good... and then out of no where it wasn't. Then it was good again... then it wasnt. I'll try finding some more fights tonight and getting into the queue earlier.

I also want to reduce my numbers a bit. I used the math on the guide I posted earlier but wondering if my values were too high.

Edit:

Now that I'm thinking about it more... that feeling I had last night was very similar to how I left when Azureblight first came out. When you'd be near a group running multiple sets of it... when the "pops" would go off server performance would nuke - I would sometimes crash when they went off. That is how it felt last night. When there are bigger fights it feels more consistent with the fps drops but maybe thats just because there are so many people running something?

That doesn't line up with people having this issue in PvE though so.... not sure. Just putting info out there in hopes something will "click" for a dev.

loosej · July 29

I don't have the game installed to test this out myself so I'm basically just spitballing, but: when it comes to fps drops I've seen people mention their audio cuts out as well, and that is something I was also experiencing the last couple of times I was in Cyrodiil. Is it possible we're correct in seeing the correlation but wrong in assuming the causation, i.e. could audio issues be causing the cpu spikes and fps drops? A lot of people mention a high-end cpu and gpu, but I'd guess most of those systems use the sound chip that came "free" with the motherboard, it's not something we even think about anymore. Maybe test with in-game audio disabled first, windows audio muted second, and finally if needed audio driver temporarily disabled?

LadyGP · July 29

loosej wrote: »

I don't have the game installed to test this out myself so I'm basically just spitballing, but: when it comes to fps drops I've seen people mention their audio cuts out as well, and that is something I was also experiencing the last couple of times I was in Cyrodiil. Is it possible we're correct in seeing the correlation but wrong in assuming the causation, i.e. could audio issues be causing the cpu spikes and fps drops? A lot of people mention a high-end cpu and gpu, but I'd guess most of those systems use the sound chip that came "free" with the motherboard, it's not something we even think about anymore. Maybe test with in-game audio disabled first, windows audio muted second, and finally if needed audio driver temporarily disabled?

So I just reviewed my clip last night where my fps literally locks up and goes to 0 for a second and the audio kept going just fine.

I know what you're talking about though... I've ran into that audio issue for many years. It's more of a feature now

YandereGirlfriend · July 29

Audio cutting-out and/or corrupting is something that I associate with unstable CPU memory controller and RAM overclocks, though the issue is far too widespread in ESO for that to be the actual cause.

loosej · July 29

LadyGP wrote: »

loosej wrote: »

I don't have the game installed to test this out myself so I'm basically just spitballing, but: when it comes to fps drops I've seen people mention their audio cuts out as well, and that is something I was also experiencing the last couple of times I was in Cyrodiil. Is it possible we're correct in seeing the correlation but wrong in assuming the causation, i.e. could audio issues be causing the cpu spikes and fps drops? A lot of people mention a high-end cpu and gpu, but I'd guess most of those systems use the sound chip that came "free" with the motherboard, it's not something we even think about anymore. Maybe test with in-game audio disabled first, windows audio muted second, and finally if needed audio driver temporarily disabled?

So I just reviewed my clip last night where my fps literally locks up and goes to 0 for a second and the audio kept going just fine.

I know what you're talking about though... I've ran into that audio issue for many years. It's more of a feature now

Was worth a shot, it's been a long time since I've had any issues like that myself, but it wouldn't be the first time that giving Realtek access to system interrupts turned out to be as clever as giving a toddler access to a bucket of paint.

LadyGP · July 29

I'm going to try this out https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/584759/frame-rate-cap-adjustment-how-to-limit-your-fps-from-being-too-high-updated

My value should have been

SET MinFrameTime.2 "0.00625000"

But was set to

SET MinFrameTime.2 "0.00000000"

Sluggy · July 29

TheAwesomeChimpanzee wrote: »

Sluggy wrote: »

TheAwesomeChimpanzee wrote: »

Most of the issues I’ve run into this Midyear—honestly even in the weeks leading up to it—have been frame rate-related. Lag feels about the same as usual, but the FPS drops have been extreme. I’ll admit I use quite a few addons, but even after disabling most of them and only keeping the bare minimum I’m comfortable playing with, there was no improvement. There’s definitely something going on, especially in those massive fights involving hammers and scrolls.

My frames will tank to 10–20 FPS, which I’ve never experienced before. I’m running a Ryzen 9 5900X and a 4080 Super. I know the CPU is technically one generation old, but it’s still a very strong processor and had no trouble handling Cyrodiil until the most recent update.

My suggestion would be to actually disable all of them. Even the libraries. ESPECIALLY the libraries in fact. Some of those are really going haywire with this patch, I think. Enable them when you want to do some simple stuff like crafting and whatnot and then turn them back off before you try to do anything involving combat. It significantly helped my issues. It wasn't perfect but it was much better than when I had them on. I was getting like single-digit framerates with them on while in Cyrodiil. Disabling everything got me back up to the thiry-to-fourty FPS range when dealing with big fights.

Thanks for the suggestion! I actually already disable all the libraries I don’t use using Addon Selector, but I appreciate you taking the time to share it. That said, this issue only started happening after the most recent update—something definitely changed, because I never had these kinds of frame drops before.

Same here. My framerates were fine until that update just after Vengeance. Removing all of the addons helped me get back to at least a playable state, though.

Desiato · July 29

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi all, if you are having issues in MYM, could you note where you are playing from and add any footage you may have? We escalated this internally, but our graphs are not showing any issue with server health. It is all within margin. So any additional data you can provide, would be helpful. We can send that over to the team to assist in investigating this issue.

@ZOS_Kevin

Many players have noted for the past month an increase in stutter in busy areas such as towns. This surely must be a factor in Cyrodiil. And we know from experience sometimes the line between server performance and client performance can be blurred.

On top of the fact that obviously what ZOS considers nominal Cyrodilic server performance isn't very good. I mean, that's tacitly acknowledged by the existence of Vengeance, right?

It should also be noted MYM server performance can vary more widely than normal because there can be such variance in the distribution of player types. Not all players load the server equally. A player who just stands on a keep wall heavy attacking taxes the server much less than a highly mobile, high APM player who executes abilities close to the GCD or a a group of players that maintain a high number of buffs up on each other.

So there are times during MYM when the server has more casual, low APM, ungrouped players than normal, resulting in a better poplocked server experience than other times when it might have a different distribution with more high APM players.

TheAwesomeChimpanzee · July 29

Sluggy wrote: »

TheAwesomeChimpanzee wrote: »

Sluggy wrote: »

TheAwesomeChimpanzee wrote: »

Most of the issues I’ve run into this Midyear—honestly even in the weeks leading up to it—have been frame rate-related. Lag feels about the same as usual, but the FPS drops have been extreme. I’ll admit I use quite a few addons, but even after disabling most of them and only keeping the bare minimum I’m comfortable playing with, there was no improvement. There’s definitely something going on, especially in those massive fights involving hammers and scrolls.

My frames will tank to 10–20 FPS, which I’ve never experienced before. I’m running a Ryzen 9 5900X and a 4080 Super. I know the CPU is technically one generation old, but it’s still a very strong processor and had no trouble handling Cyrodiil until the most recent update.

My suggestion would be to actually disable all of them. Even the libraries. ESPECIALLY the libraries in fact. Some of those are really going haywire with this patch, I think. Enable them when you want to do some simple stuff like crafting and whatnot and then turn them back off before you try to do anything involving combat. It significantly helped my issues. It wasn't perfect but it was much better than when I had them on. I was getting like single-digit framerates with them on while in Cyrodiil. Disabling everything got me back up to the thiry-to-fourty FPS range when dealing with big fights.

Thanks for the suggestion! I actually already disable all the libraries I don’t use using Addon Selector, but I appreciate you taking the time to share it. That said, this issue only started happening after the most recent update—something definitely changed, because I never had these kinds of frame drops before.

Same here. My framerates were fine until that update just after Vengeance. Removing all of the addons helped me get back to at least a playable state, though.

I wish I had the willpower to disable all of my addons like you—unfortunately, there are a few I just can’t (and won’t) play without, mostly combat-related ones. I’d honestly rather tank my frames in certain fights than play without them, haha. If only the base game UI gave us all the info we actually need…

Sluggy · July 29

loosej wrote: »

I don't have the game installed to test this out myself so I'm basically just spitballing, but: when it comes to fps drops I've seen people mention their audio cuts out as well, and that is something I was also experiencing the last couple of times I was in Cyrodiil. Is it possible we're correct in seeing the correlation but wrong in assuming the causation, i.e. could audio issues be causing the cpu spikes and fps drops? A lot of people mention a high-end cpu and gpu, but I'd guess most of those systems use the sound chip that came "free" with the motherboard, it's not something we even think about anymore. Maybe test with in-game audio disabled first, windows audio muted second, and finally if needed audio driver temporarily disabled?

Dedicated sound cards haven't really been a thing in decades. Since the early 2000s CPU have been so powerful that it all just gets processed on there. The only time you'd see an audio addon of some kind is in professional work where you need to reduce latency for input/output audio equipment, provide shielding to avoid picking up hum from things like mains power, or to provide additional jacks for more hi-end equipment.

In my experience audio cuts are the result of one of two issues. 1) The buffer being used isn't being filled with new audio data fast enough - usually caused when the CPU is bogged down but the audio system is still playing in parallel. This is usually easy to tell because they typically use ring buffers so you'll just hear the audio repeat over and over until new data is streamed in. Or 2) The audio itself is trying to handle too many 'voices' at once. Most projects I've worked on have a finite set of channels or voices that can be used to play an individual sound effect. Depending on how you handle the mixing it could be anywhere from a dozen to a couple hundred. When too much stuff is going on they all get filled up and you either have to drop some currently playing sounds so that you can start a new one or just not play the new sound at all.

Sometimes I hear the audio cut out when the game fps tank badly but there have been lots of times where my framerate is fine but the audio is still cutting a lot which leans me toward option number 2.

LadyGP · July 29

Sluggy wrote: »

loosej wrote: »

I don't have the game installed to test this out myself so I'm basically just spitballing, but: when it comes to fps drops I've seen people mention their audio cuts out as well, and that is something I was also experiencing the last couple of times I was in Cyrodiil. Is it possible we're correct in seeing the correlation but wrong in assuming the causation, i.e. could audio issues be causing the cpu spikes and fps drops? A lot of people mention a high-end cpu and gpu, but I'd guess most of those systems use the sound chip that came "free" with the motherboard, it's not something we even think about anymore. Maybe test with in-game audio disabled first, windows audio muted second, and finally if needed audio driver temporarily disabled?

Dedicated sound cards haven't really been a thing in decades. Since the early 2000s CPU have been so powerful that it all just gets processed on there. The only time you'd see an audio addon of some kind is in professional work where you need to reduce latency for input/output audio equipment, provide shielding to avoid picking up hum from things like mains power, or to provide additional jacks for more hi-end equipment.

In my experience audio cuts are the result of one of two issues. 1) The buffer being used isn't being filled with new audio data fast enough - usually caused when the CPU is bogged down but the audio system is still playing in parallel. This is usually easy to tell because they typically use ring buffers so you'll just hear the audio repeat over and over until new data is streamed in. Or 2) The audio itself is trying to handle too many 'voices' at once. Most projects I've worked on have a finite set of channels or voices that can be used to play an individual sound effect. Depending on how you handle the mixing it could be anywhere from a dozen to a couple hundred. When too much stuff is going on they all get filled up and you either have to drop some currently playing sounds so that you can start a new one or just not play the new sound at all.

Sometimes I hear the audio cut out when the game fps tank badly but there have been lots of times where my framerate is fine but the audio is still cutting a lot which leans me toward option number 2.

I'm in no way an audio person..

So with option 2, are you saying that.. for areas like cyro where theres just a billion different sounds/skills going off left and right, that the audio could be dropping because there are just to many and not enough tracks/channels left to play the sound effects?

Yökarhu · July 29

EuPC Finland.

I returned to the game after almost 3 years of absence. My game was fine back then but now the loading takes forever and the stuttering is almost impressing. Doing daily writs with my 18 chars takes 2 hours, bc of all the waiting when changing.
My frames drop constantly below 30 in cities and in cyro last night it was 5-7 fps when fighting in keep. That is unplayable. I put all addons off but Pvp related (only 5) and all graphic setting either low or off. All cores in action. No other programs running besides discord.

I absolutely love PvP and that brought me back with subclassing. But yeah I really don't know if I can stay and that is sad.

LadyGP · July 30

LadyGP wrote: »
I'm going to try this out https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/584759/frame-rate-cap-adjustment-how-to-limit-your-fps-from-being-too-high-updated

My value should have been
SET MinFrameTime.2 "0.00625000"
But was set to
SET MinFrameTime.2 "0.00000000"

Night and day performance for me after I made this tweak to match my monitors framerate.

LittlePinkDot · July 30

I haven't had any issues on PS5. Was running good.

Sluggy · July 30

LadyGP wrote: »

Sluggy wrote: »

loosej wrote: »

I don't have the game installed to test this out myself so I'm basically just spitballing, but: when it comes to fps drops I've seen people mention their audio cuts out as well, and that is something I was also experiencing the last couple of times I was in Cyrodiil. Is it possible we're correct in seeing the correlation but wrong in assuming the causation, i.e. could audio issues be causing the cpu spikes and fps drops? A lot of people mention a high-end cpu and gpu, but I'd guess most of those systems use the sound chip that came "free" with the motherboard, it's not something we even think about anymore. Maybe test with in-game audio disabled first, windows audio muted second, and finally if needed audio driver temporarily disabled?

Dedicated sound cards haven't really been a thing in decades. Since the early 2000s CPU have been so powerful that it all just gets processed on there. The only time you'd see an audio addon of some kind is in professional work where you need to reduce latency for input/output audio equipment, provide shielding to avoid picking up hum from things like mains power, or to provide additional jacks for more hi-end equipment.

In my experience audio cuts are the result of one of two issues. 1) The buffer being used isn't being filled with new audio data fast enough - usually caused when the CPU is bogged down but the audio system is still playing in parallel. This is usually easy to tell because they typically use ring buffers so you'll just hear the audio repeat over and over until new data is streamed in. Or 2) The audio itself is trying to handle too many 'voices' at once. Most projects I've worked on have a finite set of channels or voices that can be used to play an individual sound effect. Depending on how you handle the mixing it could be anywhere from a dozen to a couple hundred. When too much stuff is going on they all get filled up and you either have to drop some currently playing sounds so that you can start a new one or just not play the new sound at all.

Sometimes I hear the audio cut out when the game fps tank badly but there have been lots of times where my framerate is fine but the audio is still cutting a lot which leans me toward option number 2.

I'm in no way an audio person..

So with option 2, are you saying that.. for areas like cyro where theres just a billion different sounds/skills going off left and right, that the audio could be dropping because there are just to many and not enough tracks/channels left to play the sound effects?

Basically, yeah. That's based on my limited view from programming the gamelogic for sound. There could of course be driver issues or API issues but it's been so long that I've had to do anything at that level myself I really can't say. Maybe the mixing is not working right either? From what I hear it really does sound like things are just getting cut off early and that's very similar to how I've handled issues on other projects. There are ways to mitigate and disguise it though so I'm not quite sure entirely why it would be like that. If I'm not mistake this issue started at least last year (based on the last time I really played at all)? That seems like a long time to take to deal with the issue so who really knows? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Zodiarkslayer · July 31

I played PCEU No CP campaign and didn't have too many problems with fps or latency.

But that was only because I was the bloody only one in the campaign! I attacked ressources, towns and outposts. And nobody came.

2 hours of: "Is there anybody out there?"

CatoUnchained · July 31

LadyGP wrote: »
LadyGP wrote: »
I'm going to try this out https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/584759/frame-rate-cap-adjustment-how-to-limit-your-fps-from-being-too-high-updated

My value should have been
SET MinFrameTime.2 "0.00625000"
But was set to
SET MinFrameTime.2 "0.00000000"
Night and day performance for me after I made this tweak to match my monitors framerate.

I made that change and hoped for the best. It didn't change my performance one iota. But hey, it was nice to see a suggestion I hadn't tried yet. This single digit FPS during big fights is a deal breaker. Never going to pay for performance like this, that's for sure.

Desiato · July 31

Raising the fps cap isn't going to help anyone who is perpetually under the default cap of, if I recall correctly, 100 fps.

For players on faster hardware, it will make the client more responsive.

This is a good example of our subjective experiences. Two people can describe their experiences with different problems and think they're talking about the same thing. This happens a lot in threads like this.

There are a huge array of factors, sometimes things we might not consider.

For example, in 2018 a new generation of CPU vulnerabilities were revealed in the form of Meltdown and Spectre. The solution varied CPU to CPU, and for many older processors it meant severe permanent performance degradation in any IO intensive app -- like ESO -- because of the OS-level mitigations required.

It seems every year there are new speculative vulnerabilities discovered that result in varying degrees of mitigations, affecting CPU performance. If there is a CPU microcode update available to address it, it must be applied through a bios update, and how many people do that?

Plus as I've talked about it before, CPU, GPU and even chipset and VRM TIMs (thermal interface materials) lose effectiveness over time. This is a major cause of console failures, but also affects personal computers. This will result in more frequent performance throttling.

I could go on and on as I often do, but won't.

The only constant is server performance, which we know Cyrodiil struggles with. But it will vary even when poplocked as the distribution of play styles varies -- especially during MYM when more casual players play.

Friendly-assasin81 · July 31

My PC is new and can play most other games on full graphics like Battlefield 1/5/2042 with 128 vs 128 player maps.
This game shouldnt be a problem for me, but it is....

RTX 4060
I5 12400
16 gb DDR 4 ram

Only the cpu is a 100% when the game has lagspikes and fps drops to 10fps randomly...

blktauna · July 31

I have a new box of similar spec and Friendly is correct. ESO will consume 100% of CPU at times. Thats just nonsense.

YandereGirlfriend · July 31

Friendly-assasin81 wrote: »

My PC is new and can play most other games on full graphics like Battlefield 1/5/2042 with 128 vs 128 player maps.
This game shouldnt be a problem for me, but it is....

RTX 4060
I5 12400
16 gb DDR 4 ram

Only the cpu is a 100% when the game has lagspikes and fps drops to 10fps randomly...

I mean, you answered your own question there. ESO is generally more limited by CPU performance than GPU performance.

Friendly-assasin81 · August 1

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Friendly-assasin81 wrote: »

My PC is new and can play most other games on full graphics like Battlefield 1/5/2042 with 128 vs 128 player maps.
This game shouldnt be a problem for me, but it is....

RTX 4060
I5 12400
16 gb DDR 4 ram

Only the cpu is a 100% when the game has lagspikes and fps drops to 10fps randomly...

I mean, you answered your own question there. ESO is generally more limited by CPU performance than GPU performance.

Yes but not that much.... This started on the 25th of june this year....

Sluggy · August 1

Friendly-assasin81 wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Friendly-assasin81 wrote: »

My PC is new and can play most other games on full graphics like Battlefield 1/5/2042 with 128 vs 128 player maps.
This game shouldnt be a problem for me, but it is....

RTX 4060
I5 12400
16 gb DDR 4 ram

Only the cpu is a 100% when the game has lagspikes and fps drops to 10fps randomly...

I mean, you answered your own question there. ESO is generally more limited by CPU performance than GPU performance.

Yes but not that much.... This started on the 25th of june this year....

Which is when they did an update to the client.... see the correlation?

UnionJill1 · August 2

Random disconnects, with taking 5-10 min to log back in

blktauna · August 2

apparenly bar swapping and use of ultis is a no go for me...

KiltMaster · August 2

Crashed 5x in 3 hours .... amazing game play. Last time I got booted for 20 seconds, and got kicked out of Cyrodiil. Absolutely ridiculous. We've been dealing with horrible performance for YEARS. Why isn't this able to be fixed?