Guild Wars 2

Hi, my name is Zaph and I play with 250ish ping on a good day and 350ish ping on a bad day for reasons beyond my control (HPB Anonymous crowd: Hi Zaph!).

So like many other people, I’ve returned to this game due to POF hype. In the last few weeks I’ve gone through the HOT maps and metas, living story, etc, but have been looking into the new group pve stuff (fractals, raids) as well, and ‘latency’ seems to come up as a blocking issue over and over. I’ve experienced some of it myself when doing Tequatl (have to jump ONTO the wave) and Stavemaster Whatshisface with the bullet hell attack in Dragon’s Stand where I was being hit by projectiles even though I was safe on my screen. I’ve had some problems with latency in pve ~4 years ago as well (good luck winning Sanctum Sprint f’rex, and playing melee was an exercise in frustration), but at least I could do some dungeons and a few fractals and not feel like I was hindering the group. I’ve also resigned to only play staff elementalist, because all other classes/builds seem to be way too twitchy and unresponsive (I messed with scepter and dagger for a while, and was frustrated by combos not going off as they should).

Now, I understand that with my latency I won’t ever be playing SPVP ever… but I’ve played fairly high-end pve in a number of MMOs before – sometimes with even worse latency, e.g. WOW challenge modes with 600+ ping – and had no problems. What’s so different in the PVE content in GW2, especially post-HOT? Is it true that high latency makes them unfun for the player and the entire group? And more importantly, is this a continuing trend?

(NB: I understand that it’s possible to do high-end pve even with 400+ ping… but is it really fun for the people involved?)

Being in Australia on an MMO sadly sucks bigtime. I also run at that ping and therefore I wont ever hit qT’s benchmarks and raids at times can be a lag nightmare. But overall its doable, and its still fun, so we stick it out. Comes down to personal choice I reckon…are you willing to put up with it?

Zaphir.7210:

What’s so different in the PVE content in GW2, especially post-HOT?

A bunch of mechanics have become more meaningful, which isn’t difficult when vanilla mechanics were faceroll in general. Since dealing with these mechanics requires active efforts by each individual player, I’m not surprised that stuff feels much harder with a high ping. GW2 isn’t WoW, where passive stuff has a much larger influence.

Joxer.6024:

Being in Australia on an MMO sadly sucks bigtime. I also run at that ping and therefore I wont ever hit qT’s benchmarks and raids at times can be a lag nightmare. But overall its doable, and its still fun, so we stick it out. Comes down to personal choice I reckon…are you willing to put up with it?

Hah, that’s reassuring… somewhat. :p

I made this thread because when I asked about latency and its effect on gameplay in the reddit QA thread yesterday, the three responses I got were:

• necro is very ping forgiving, althou i only have 250ms (looks like I need to level a necro)
• With that ping ? nothing is enjoyable (sad face)
• While players say that pve playable with 300+ ping, I wouldnt suggest playing high fractals or raids with it. As you’re not just making it hard for you, you are potentially wasting time of rest of the group. Basically everything except engi or mesmer can work for open world with that ping, but I would take something that can afk from range, like ele, rev or something with pets, like ranger or necro. Nothing is fun with that ping, but you can try with dungeons and low fractals to see if it works. (good answer, but it makes me sadface)

And yea, that response was disheartening. I’m trying to gauge whether it’s worthwhile for high-latency players to invest time/effort into pve or if it’s just “stick to ‘afk from range’ builds in the open world and wvw” (which is pretty fun, but I don’t like missing so much of the game’s content) because high latency in fractals / raids just adds frustration for me and is a major handicap / hindrance for the group.

CptAurellian.9537:

Zaphir.7210:

What’s so different in the PVE content in GW2, especially post-HOT?

A bunch of mechanics have become more meaningful, which isn’t difficult when vanilla mechanics were faceroll in general. Since dealing with these mechanics requires active efforts by each individual player, I’m not surprised that stuff feels much harder with a high ping. GW2 isn’t WoW, where passive stuff has a much larger influence.

Hmm… I did Aetherblade Retreat and Molten Facility back in early 2013, and I don’t remember their mechanics being faceroll, though I suppose that’s not the “in general” part. I was not a big fan of vanilla dungeon play for several reasons, but those aren’t really the topic of this thread (well, there were plenty of one-shot ‘dodge this’ boss abilities that were kinda latency-critical).

However, the ‘stuff feels much harder with a high ping’ is definitely interesting. Do you mean strict dps requirements that high-ping players can’t fulfill due to lower damage potential, boss abilities that need precise timing and/or split-second reactions where you can’t rely on what you see on your screen due to latency that require significant extra effort to compensate for (turning a fun activity into a frustrating one -> dealbreaker for me), or something else?

edit: words

Not sure what the fix is really. We have a guildie that raids with us and he is in California and his ping is 66!! I liked to fell out of my chair!! kitten it, why did I leave…lol?! Word is that Australia is going to get better once the whole “NBN” thing gets more national and all, but until then if you are out in boonies like us you are stuck with whats there. Where are you, if you don’t mind me asking? I know that cable net is better and when we were in Brisbane we had that and our ping was a much tastier 150ish!! So depending on where you are there may be some hope?
That said we (wife and I) have done all wings or raids, she does heaps of fracts and wvw and we don’t see a “huge” problem. The only issue will be in say a PUG where our dps of course isn’t up to scratch by their standards, but then we run with our static team most times and guildies can be quite understanding.
All in all, hang in there if you really like the game!!

This is just one of the major pain points of the game for me, and part of the reason why I stopped playing 4 years ago. It’s just frustrating to have a game you thoroughly enjoy but be unable to play ~half of its content because of latency… But I gotta say, I like your attitude… if nothing else, it gives me hope for the future!

I actually don’t live in Aus — I play from Eastern Europe on the US server in an international cross-game guild, and most of said guild doesn’t care about dungeons/fractals/raids, so pugging is the only real way to do things. We’ve been playing together for 10+ years now in various games, and this is the first game where latency is proving to be a serious problem… it wouldn’t be an issue if it was possible to hot-switch between regions like in GW1, but alas.

So yeah, I’m wondering if ‘low latency or bust’ type encounters are what PVE is all about (and continuing to be about), and I’m legit interested to see what raiders and high-level fractal / CM players think about latency. What ping is required for those activities to be fun and enjoyable, and is there a tipping point where it actively hinders enjoyment? Is that tipping point at 100/150/200/250/300 ms? Is there any kind of lag compensation tech planned (WOW does this pretty well, to the point that playing on a west coast server with 600+ ping felt more responsive than any other MMO I’ve played and I could be pretty competitive in pve at least)? etc etc.

This is a pretty extreme video, but it illustrates the kind of obnoxious shenanigans that come with high latency, and that’s just when using abilities, never mind avoiding sub-1sec boss abilities!