Guild Wars 2

I think the time has come to do something about the problem with invisible enemy players in WvW in Guild Wars 2.

The problems:

1) Enemy players and npc’s do not display on your screen.
2) Friendly players and npc’s do not display on your screen
3) The time it takes for enemies or friendlies to display can be up to several minutes!

The Anet Explanations:

1) It takes a long time to load player models and stuff.
2) There may be a bug in our game engine.
3) It is due to bandwidth issues
4) It is due to the distance of the enemies (which is simply not true, they can stand right next to you and not render)

Player suggestions:

1) Make it possible to modify the number of displayed players/models (fx automatically or via options)
2) Make it possible to increase the view distance (fx automatically or via options).

I have created this thread, because I have been unable to find any thread that handles this in a serious and constructive fashion. I haven’t read all the posts in all the threads, but the explanations from Anet and the suggestions from players seem inadequate to me. I appologice in advance, if I have missed a thread/post where the suggestions I mention here are already mentioned.

Here are some of the threads about the issue:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/The-real-problem-here-is-invisible-enemies-Give-their-algorithms-time-to-match-servers-properly/first
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Small-update/page/1
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/WvsW-is-unplayable-because-of-mesmer-portal-abuse/first
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Invisible-non-rendered-people/first

Here are some suggestions, that may remedy the issues with invisible players/npcs.

0) Make the client determine what it wants to display
Let the players that want to see fancy graphics use the current models/sprites/animations/skins/haircuts/facial features/area of effect stuff/etc use it; and let the players that want to see enemies and friendlies be able to lower the graphic detail a LOT.

1) Let the client decide which models to display
Make it possible, via options, to let the client choose what he wants to see. People like me want to see the enemy models immediately. We do not need to see snow, clouds, sun, nor a fancy sky or the grass swaying in the wind. We do not need to see animations for 100+ different area of effect attacks/heals/misc effects. All we need is to see our friendly models and the enemy models, and very very simple animations for shots/beams/aoes/atl. All the suggestions below, should be adjustable via the options or via a configuration file.

2) Let the client decide if it wants to use fixed/forced models and skins.
Anet has mentioned that it may take a long time to load models, textures and the like from your hard drive. In games where frames per second really matter, and where you don’t want too much disc-I/O while you play, you have the option to ‘force enemey models’ and ‘force team models’. Implement it, and make it available via a pvp/wvw option-tab. Make it possible to turn ALL enemy players into a the SAME model with the SAME clothes and the SAME facial features and the SAME haircut and the SAME … etc. This will make it possible to store ALL enemy models in memory, before you enter wvw.

3) Let the client decide how detailed the game should be. Use fewer polygons/animations.
Implement models that uses fewer polygons than the currently used models. Make it possible to limit the number of polygons used A LOT. And fx make it possible to limit the amount of animation used when a character walks/runs.

4) Let the client display fewer environmental graphics (animations, backgrounds, etc)
We do not need to see the sky, the clouds, the sun, the snow, the wind in the grass, nor fancy movement when a player moves.

5) Let the client choose which projectile, beam, area of effect animations/sprites to use
Make it possible to only see one kind of projectile, one kind of beam, one kind of aoe. You could fx make it possible to only display the red rings for enemy aoes and white rings for friendly aoes.

6) If the invisibility issue isn’t solved, then display something else instead of the friendlies/enemies.
If it is impossible to display all enemies/friendlies then display something else on the map, that represents ‘a lot of enemies’ or ‘a lot of friendlies’ or ‘a few enemies’ or ‘a few friendlies’.

Best Regards
Mu

While there are some good suggestions there you only address model loading. Which is not the issue at all. The game has no issues loading player or environment models it knows are there.

The issue is solely #3, that the server doesn’t tell you that there are players there that need to be rendered. There are ways to deal with this, either by increasing bandwidth on the wvw servers or optimizing the way they send player data to/from the server.

Vayra.3290:

While there are some good suggestions there you only address model loading. Which is not the issue at all.

I know my post was about invisible enemies, but many players (including me) have problems with ‘frames per second’ (FPS) dropping to 1-4 frames per second, when a huge zerg is near. And sometimes even less than one FPS. I think all the suggestions would help players, with FPS issues.