Guild Wars 2

I did this on a really low overflow just now and got to actually see the shockwaves.

It doesn’t even give you the chance to jump over the visual part of the wave. The knockback hits you before the visual part does. So you can jump ahead of time and land halfway inside of the wave for 0 damage.

You could say it’s something people should learn but really graphics should indicate where the danger is, and I think the solution is to match them up and be intuitive for players.

Yeah. You actually want to jump a bit before the front end of the wave reaches you.

There’s kind of the same issue with the poison clouds too. They start ticking before you see any poison effects when it really be the other way around.

Once you figure it out, its the same skill involved… you just time your jump/dodge earlier.

But yeah its lame I got pretty mad the first few times I was getting ready to jump it then get knocked on my kitten before the graphic even reaches me.

This type of really basic graphics mistake bothers me a lot, and the degree it harms this event cannot be overstated. It’s not like a mismatch on some random rock or wall that once in a blue moon impedes someone’s movement, or obstructs a projectile. This graphic is fundamental to the event, one of the most important graphics and effects to get as accurate as possible. How this passed QA is beyond me. Even if you know to jump early, it’s still much harder to execute when there’s a mismatch of what you see and what you know, especially in an environment as busy as this event.

There have been a couple new builds since the new Tequatl event was released, and I’m amazed each time something this important and simple to fix hasn’t been addressed.

However, that’s not even the biggest problem with this event. The complete lack of any animation for Tequatl’s Reach is.

I’m pretty sure this stuff is not detected client-side. The animation probably isn’t offset so much as behind the real effect due to latency.

LameFox.6349:

I’m pretty sure this stuff is not detected client-side. The animation probably isn’t offset so much as behind the real effect due to latency.

I doubt client-side latency plays that big a role in it, given that instant-activation skills can block attacks at the very last split second, and also given how many other enemy attack and environmental effect hitboxes in the game don’t line up with their graphics at all.

Desbreko.7906:

LameFox.6349:

I’m pretty sure this stuff is not detected client-side. The animation probably isn’t offset so much as behind the real effect due to latency.

I doubt client-side latency plays that big a role in it, given that instant-activation skills can block attacks at the very last split second, and also given how many other enemy attack and environmental effect hitboxes in the game don’t line up with their graphics at all.

Does it need more than a fraction of a second to be out of place? The wave isn’t all that wide, and if the effect is intended to be in the centre it only has to travel half that before our animation starts.

I have about 300ms ping to the US west coast, and worse to the rest. Harder to say with blocks as I rarely use them, but my dodges always need to happen in advance, for anything. Attacks that happen really suddenly like the risen priest of Melandru spiking people with stalagmites for me require basically taking a ‘finger on the trigger’ approach to dodging, where I’d probably die to his whirling attack I’m having to pay so much attention to the ground right beneath me.

However when I see other people dodge, both in game (after all, the server is what’s telling me they’re dodging) and videos they’ve recorded, they can cut things way closer without being hit. To me, that sort of thing would look as though I began to dodge, then got interrupted mid-way through.

While I do also notice a lot of attacks that simply don’t fit inside their animations, that isn’t happening with these waves, nor the MF shockwaves where I experienced the same thing (for me, the ideal there was to land directly in the centre of the animation).

That’s because the dodge animation happens about a half second before you actually start evading (and you keep evading for the same amount of time after the animation is finished), so your latency gets added on top of the built-in delay. Instant-activation skills don’t have that added delay.

And that’s basically the same issue with the shockwaves here; the timing of the animation doesn’t line up with the timing of the hitbox. I generally get somewhere in the range of 50-75ms ping, yet I have to jump far more in advance than that to avoid getting hit.

When I say ‘in advance’ I mean relative to other people dodging, not relative to the attack I’m dodging (hence bringing up the difference I see in videos and their dodges in-game).

I know, and I’m saying that because of the built-in delay being added together with your latency, it will make it seem like an even bigger difference. Going from a 500ms delay (assuming an even half second—I’ve not tried to measure it exactly) to an 800ms delay is huge when you’re trying to dodge attacks that only have about a second of telegraphing.

But that’s not really the point, anyway. The point is that if the shockwaves’ hitbox desync were only due to latency, then everything should exhibit roughly the same amount of desync, and yet that’s not the case.

Desbreko.7906:

I know, and I’m saying that because of the built-in delay being added together with your latency, it will make it seem like an even bigger difference. Going from a 500ms delay (assuming an even half second—I’ve not tried to measure it exactly) to an 800ms delay is huge when you’re trying to dodge attacks that only have about a second of telegraphing.

It makes the difficulty greater, but that’s because I have a shorter window in which I have to start a dodge if I’m to evade effectively. The time it actually takes for evade to kick in doesn’t appear worse than my ping makes it, because everyone I could possibly compare to also has (at least) that inbuilt delay to contend with.

Desbreko.7906:

But that’s not really the point, anyway. The point is that if the shockwaves’ hitbox desync were only due to latency, then everything should exhibit roughly the same amount of desync, and yet that’s not the case.

Should it? I was under the impression games do attempt to compensate for latency, but I don’t code games. I have played a lot of them, and I wouldn’t say I’ve ever known lag to be equally as perceptible in all aspects of one. (Player) Movement tends to be something that stands out to me as weird first, for example. That definitely holds true in GW2 – movement skills feel like I’m simulating the life of a hyperactive rubber ball, and that’s the best result I can expect. What are we comparing the wave to? Projectiles, melee hits, pulsing AOE? Do we know how all of those work?

The closest thing I can think of from a player’s perspective are the ones in the MF, and I found those to be much the same as this, but less forgiving.

ANet, and their hunt for that elusive “skill”…

Try living in Australia, haha, at least you can dodge roll it as well. :P