Guild Wars 2

Newest Culling Movie!

Cull Hard 3: Cull Harder

Culling 2: The Revenge of Culling
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVMx3wxjNLo

I have experience culling throughout the game, but in the past it was only when there actually was a HUGE number of players in the vicinity.

With the December trial and the current culling system which has reverted to that trial, sometimes I experience culling when there are not that many players nearby. This confuses me.

I am running a one-year old system which was high-end when I bought it. I record fraps on full at 1920X1200 resolution at 60 FPS. I run the game off of a SSD. My computer is not the problem. The culling system is the problem.

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Some people are saying that the system is better for them. But, some are saying it’s worse. If you are wondering why a lot of people are saying the system is worse for them it is because they are seeing culling in situations where culling did not exist before in the old system as demonstrated in the movie above.

Has anyone actually seen any of the “placeholder models” yet? For me everyone still appears with all their normal gear showing…

Chamone.6890:

Has anyone actually seen any of the “placeholder models” yet? For me everyone still appears with all their normal gear showing…

You won’t see it unless you are running an incredible slow machine. Placeholder models are for slow loading times client side. “Culling” (in quotes because what we are calling culling isn’t actually culling) is a server side issue.

well its neither a serverside nor a fully clientside problem

its more or less the architecture of the game
imageine the server sends you 60 agents when they get in range to your client

1. client will receive one by one
2. model will be rendered after the agents information are fully received (heigt,skin,face,gear all that bullkitten)
3. client might be slow in rendering → fallback models will be loaded first

i personally dont get why you would wait with rendering the fallback model until all information about the client is gathered and processed?

you could just say:
Draw fallback model of char, warrior on position xyz, keep receiving the pending agent data and change fallback model to correct model

I really hope Anet looks at this and decides to revert the change. I just stopped playing GW2 for a week last December until they reverted the change. This time I’ve just been playing a lot of fractals to soothe my frustration. I don’t think I can take another week of it.

It’s much better now than before so why revert?

Junkpile.7439:

It’s much better now than before so why revert?

Because it’s easy to record how bad it is currently?

Junkpile.7439:

It’s much better now than before so why revert?

Obviously a fair number of people disagree with this. My biggest issue with the new system is how random and unpredictable it seems to be. Sometimes it works amazing, but just as often it’s way worse than the old system. The old system was at least predictable and you could plan around the eventuality of there being more people on the screen than you could see. With the new system it might just suddenly decide to stop rendering all your friends mid fight making it harder to keep cohesion within a group.

I play WvW in NA tier 1 where there are massive battles all the time. The new culling system is a huge improvement over the old one. I no longer run blindly into enemy zergs because I can actually see them. I see placeholders for about 20 of my teammates, which is fine. Everything seems to be working as it should be. I run a low spec MacBook Pro 2010.

Minoru.1237:

I play WvW in NA tier 1 where there are massive battles all the time. The new culling system is a huge improvement over the old one. I no longer run blindly into enemy zergs because I can actually see them. I see placeholders for about 20 of my teammates, which is fine. Everything seems to be working as it should be. I run a low spec MacBook Pro 2010.

Good to hear that your low spec pc can now more or less handle WvW.
But the people that did actually spent some cash got shafted.

No comments, working has intended.

The culling system is beyond trash.

I think the update stated that it was not a fix to culling, which is server side. I think the new system sets priorities for what loads first on the user end, and that users of high end computers really shouldn’t notice too much of a difference.

The culling in the above video isn’t bad at all compared to what I’m used to.

Minoru.1237:

I think the update stated that it was not a fix to culling, which is server side. I think the new system sets priorities for what loads first on the user end, and that users of high end computers really shouldn’t notice too much of a difference.

The culling in the above video really isn’t bad at all compared to what I’m used to.

Yeah defenetly I was used to having 50-60 people on screen at all times, now in fights were there are only 10-15 players in screen some of them cull, seems miles away better then what Im used to, oh wait no it doesnt.

Minoru.1237:

I think the update stated that it was not a fix to culling, which is server side. I think the new system sets priorities for what loads first on the user end, and that users of high end computers really shouldn’t notice too much of a difference.

The culling in the above video really isn’t bad at all compared to what I’m used to.

Wrong

There is 1 client side change (the placeholder models) and 1 server side change (affinity culling).

Again, complaining about your client not being able to keep up while playing on a 2010mbp is just facepalm worthy.

That video is a great example to show culling doesn’t seem to be any better than it was before and in some cases worse.

Heru.5427:

My biggest issue with the new system is how random and unpredictable it seems to be. Sometimes it works amazing, but just as often it’s way worse than the old system. The old system was at least predictable and you could plan around the eventuality of there being more people on the screen than you could see. With the new system it might just suddenly decide to stop rendering all your friends mid fight making it harder to keep cohesion within a group.

This^

I was one initially reporting it was better but more experience with it shows it either works great or is worse than the previous system.

I think I would rather have predictable bad over unpredictable bad as you can adjust your play to predictable bad.

Roll it back for now imho

waeren.9743:

Minoru.1237:

I think the update stated that it was not a fix to culling, which is server side. I think the new system sets priorities for what loads first on the user end, and that users of high end computers really shouldn’t notice too much of a difference.

The culling in the above video really isn’t bad at all compared to what I’m used to.

Wrong

There is 1 client side change (the placeholder models) and 1 server side change (affinity culling).

Again, complaining about your client not being able to keep up while playing on a 2010mbp is just facepalm worthy.

I’m not complaining. I like the change.

Xavi.6591:

That video is a great example to show culling doesn’t seem to be any better than it was before and in some cases worse.

You forgot to include that in some cases it actually is an improvement. Look around these boards, in all related topics there’s also folks posting it’s an improvement for them.
As much as those shouldn’t ignore that for some others it became a worse experience, you also shouldn’t ignore that for some users it became a better experience.
Since posters on the forums are a minority of the player community this doesn’t create any representative stats though, only A.net can have the overall picture by datamining / monitoring and act accordingly.

Those people appeared out of nowhere!

This will not stand, they must revert this change immediately!

People appearing out of nowhere cannot be tolerated in WvW!

I’m trying to see how many enemies were culled in that video. It’s kinda hard to tell with the mezmer clones popping up as well.

Culling is a lie,
its just mass teleport hacking of whole raids!

As someone else pointed out. There doesn’t seem to be consistency with the way the system is working. I’ve had nights where I have no culling since the change with MORE people around me than what is shown in the movie above.

That does not make sense to me. I’m wondering if other things are effecting the culling significantly. For example, there are a lot of NPCs and MOBs near that supply camp. Perhaps some areas of the map are more susceptable to culling than others?

I actually ran into (or through, rather) a summoning necro and his minions and none culled before i was standing in them. He was the only player there, too, and no npc’s around. Weird…

It is beyond stupid now. It affects PVE too. This is just ridiculous.
It takes all the fun out of playing at all.
It keeps getting worse and worse.

How about you give us options or something because it is getting gamebreaking. To the point where I am going to stop playing.

Sorry but what does this vid prove? They all popped up before you made it that close, you were in a large group….. Soooo?? I guarantee the majority of people who are against it already set their minds that the trial was awful and this doesn’t work. it’s even better fr me and alot of others I know

CrassBippy.4619:

Sorry but what does this vid prove? They all popped up before you made it that close, you were in a large group….. Soooo?? I guarantee the majority of people who are against it already set their minds that the trial was awful and this doesn’t work. it’s even better fr me and alot of others I know

Are you being serious?

We had around 10, they had under 10. Why should there be any culling with those types of numbers? At the beginning of the clip you can see the circle is blue but you can’t see a single enemy player in the circle until we get very close. I guess we were lucky there were less than 10 in that circle instead of 30 because WE HAD NO WAY OF KNOWING.

I’ve spotted zergs of 30+ at full clip range in this system. Why was there culling here? Something is not working as intended.

I can almost guarantee you that they never even saw us until we were right on top of them as well. That must have been tremendous fun for them.

Ive had the same thing happen under the old system. Overall this system is an improvement. I do believe that some serious bugs exist in both culling systems not properly prioritizing by distance. For example the other day when fighting by lowlands keep there was an invisible line we had to cross before the enemy would load in, when we went back past this ‘line’ the enemy would phase out. The line was somewhere between the southern most keep and the western most tower running east to west.

It is a strange anomaly and ive seen it in action under the old system as well. I think something is wrong in the distance calculation that arenanet is using. Maybe the new system is making this anomaly more apparent.

New culling movie released!

This time a 3v10ish situation. Can a dev help me understand this, please? Why am I experiencing culling like this in small fight situations while I did not under the old system? Can you please explain what would cause culling like this with around 13 players in the vicinity? Is this working as intended?

Adaneshade.2409:

Chamone.6890:

Has anyone actually seen any of the “placeholder models” yet? For me everyone still appears with all their normal gear showing…

You won’t see it unless you are running an incredible slow machine. Placeholder models are for slow loading times client side. “Culling” (in quotes because what we are calling culling isn’t actually culling) is a server side issue.

See, this is what I don’t get. I am running an old computer which lags like crazy around even “small” zergs, but I have not seen a single placeholder. All I’m getting is culling, except even worse than before because it’s happening with smaller groups. The trial in December was awful for me and this is pretty kitten bad too.

wooow that pretty ridiculous.

not even a placeholder enemy skin.

Edit: I actually saw a placeholder skin on an enemy yesterday.

The only reason i actually noticed it is because this guy turned from an all red colored char with black fur (and what looked like a warrior) into a white char with colors (enemy team colors turned off btw) and into a thief lol.

But the strangest thing is, he faded onto my screen (as the place holder skin) from culling but only really took less then half a second to load from the placeholder to actual enemy skin.

So far this new system doesnt help out anyone… They still are invisible and have to fade in the screen, by the time they have, they’re already out of the place holder skin

Yep, this is the same thing that was happening to me in the December trial and as mentioned before I’m running a pretty good machine.

I mean, they say it’s supposed to be an improved system but I think I have definitively proven that it’s not (for me, at least). Anyone who doubts that can just go back in my Youtube history from before this improvement and look at the movies I’ve put out with us fighting 30+ that has absolutely no culling in it whatsoever.

The game is worse for me under the new system, and by reading the posts you can be pretty sure I’m not alone on this one. Feedback from the devs would be appreciated. At least acknowledge that the system is worse for some people for whatever reason – known or unknown.

2 first minutes of this video for a massive culling trap.

It was before patch.

I can attest to the weirdness of culling. Just died at a camp because I only saw 1 enemy when there were in fact 6. It made no sense to me that I should encounter culling when there are so few people.

EDIT: And just a second ago, got killed by 15+ players and only saw 5.

Placeholder skins show intermittently for me, sometimes players pop right out of culled without getting a placeholder, sometimes they have a placeholder for 10-20 seconds while the server decides to tell me what armour they are wearing…

Sometimes I can see our full zerg of 40 people and see most of the enemy, sometimes I can only see 10 of us and 10 of the enemy, sometimes we cull when there’s no enemy around at all. All seems very random and arbitrary.

Generally, someone within 1200 distance is always visible, so at least that’s something

Core i7 2600K, 8GB RAM, SATA-3 SSD just FYI.

I was running solo supply runs to build oilsites just 1hr ago. Our border was deserted, only 15 guildies around doing maintenance and upgrades accross the entire BL where the rest of the population was in EB and other borders. Twice did I run into a party of 6 enemies, and they only started rendering until I was actually right in their midst… This did not happen pre-patch, I would have seen them coming from far away. I didn’t like the new system they tested in december, and after this happened, it made me remember again how aweful it actually was.

This trial of the “culling” was bad last time, it`s just as bad now.
I`ve had friendlies & enemies alike popping up right next to me out of the blue.
Other times I can see a few in camp, charge in & all of a sudden a zerg is stood there.
Please revert it, this is terribad.
In warcraft I could run in AV & there`d be eighty of us, not once did I ever not see a player I was being hit by, yet this game struggles with five!?

Kony 2012,
Culling 2013…

Actually, why not make the placeholders an option? take a generic human male/female and while you play all you see is that model in teamcolour (heavy armour/med armour/etc). Or choose the figure you want to see (all enemies armies look like eir for instance). I’d happily play vs an army of lookalikes if it kitten well meant i could reliably see the buggers.

Even siege weapons cull, try to fight while looking for the invisible ballista that is hammering you.

I`ve posted about this on game bugs because this is sooooo bad!
It seems in the PvErs are having the same problems.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Remove-broken-culling-model-pre-loads/first#post1357010

/sigh

Tonight Mr. Culling preferred to hide golems.
Very funny if you’re defending an EB keep a short distance in front of the main gate and can’t notice the golem hammering on the gate.

Presenting… Cull Hard 3: Cull Harder

So, I’ve been wondering why some people say the system is better and some say it’s worse. I’m thinking the people who say it’s better are the types who engage in long drawn out mexican-standoff type of zerg battles where they don’t engage quickly. This gives time for the game to feed them accurate information about the force they are facing.

It seems to be really hurting small mobile groups who engage quickly to not let the enemy galvanize. I’m not seeing the enemy numbers until AFTER I port in to them. This is making my job as a melee line-crasher really frustrating. I did not have these problems anywhere near to this extent in the old culling system.

Last night is the first time that I logged out angry at the game. First time. You might want to take note of that Anet.

The biggest problem with the system is that it is now numbers agnostic. For people on lower end machines who culled on every fight easily, this is not noticable. However, the new system nearly ALWAYS culls people outside of a much more limited range than previously. Before, rendered characters would remain rendered. This allows for various strategies that were not possible before the change, and are not fun to enact or fight against, yet will become necessary for WvW.

This thread was feedback so the WvW devs could see what was going on. It isn’t an entertainment link.

Sweeping the problem under the rug is extremely insulting.

I have a feeling it was done by one of their sweeper bots. You know, the automatic process.

“About this forum:
This forum is a place for everybody to show off the cool Guild Wars 2 related websites, tools, videos and other resources around the internet.”

lol? They want this to be used as a “show case”?

Well think about it, what was in the very first post? A video. Odds are they set up an auto-filter bot that looks through the first post and then redirects it, depending on if certain key things are in it.

Many movie posts are left untouched on WvW forum. This is intentionally sweeping an important issue under the rug.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/17rdlk/anet_sweeping_the_culling_issue_under_the_rug/

If things are moved by an automated system, then why aren’t ALL movie threads in the WvW forum moved? Heh. Automated systems don’t pick and choose what gets moved and what doesn’t.

I’ve never ran into this situation in any other MMOs, and have no idea why its in this one.