Guild Wars 2

hello. this is 2013. come back in decade or more, when computers and software has advanced a bit.

Thats what they said a decade ago.

They are working on it. From what they’ve stated, they are engineering how to fix it so, that could take some time. It’s really no easy task, but they’ve said they are figuring it out.

That’s the only thing you can hang on at the moment :P

They have said there basicly rewrithing how character rendering works. That will take some time

A staff post has stated that they need to completely re-do a portion of coding to fix the culling issue and that normal estimations for such a task would take 5~10 years.

They’re trying to do it within a few months.

So… Quit whining. They’re being real troopers.

Thats why you ‘’pick/create’’ a good engine/software, just because is easy to use/modify/pretty that doesnt mean is good, they are going to have (having?) a good time trying to fix this, lines to lines.
One of the mistakes was to put so much effort in the fancyness, the art, the particles even in the pve map, sometimes you cant even see what are you hitting a cause of the inmense particles around, and with the new fix(?) even culling with mobs, it should be pretty ofc it satisfy the customer’s eye…but if doesnt run good…meh, perhaps if you are alone…but is an MMO.

And may be more stress test for the behavior in different rigs, because this isnt an issue regarding to mainly your computer, even when your own computer and how you have it tweaked counts…the software (this case gw2) plays another big role too.

It remember me sieges/mass pvp in Lineage II…i had to disable, clan crest, names in the head, fancyness (low details), and so many stuff to be able to play with a decent fps…and in those days i had end game computer too, so isnt something new to me…althought in lineage ii it was more regarding to lag and frozen screens, dont really remember invisble people and is a lot older…

And last but not least…isnt about whining tbh…it has been a good run already, just because they dont have the delicacy to post in a mannered way, doesnt imply their complaints arent valid. Because patience….its been around for so long.

DreamOfACure.4382:

A staff post has stated that they need to completely re-do a portion of coding to fix the culling issue and that normal estimations for such a task would take 5~10 years.

They’re trying to do it within a few months.

So… Quit whining. They’re being real troopers.

Huh? We paid for the game mate, we can ask for it to work the way it is supposed to, the fact that you’d team up with the ones who didn’t deliver an engine that could hold one differentiating point about their game is just ludicrous. It is them that have to man up and fix it, not us who got to be complacent and stop demanding what we, as cuistomers, deserve.

P.S: I am sure your boss would be as understanding if your work wasn’t up to what you promised or said you would… Yeah, right.

i just wish they would hotfix just for thieves. Culling is what makes stealth OP in wvw.
The worst is when there are groups of 4/5 thieves of the same guild, running around together and stacking stealth, even in 15v5 they can pop out, kill a bunch of people while still under the culling blessing, disengage at will, rinse and repeat.

Tzun.6073:

Huh? We paid for the game mate, we can ask for it to work the way it is supposed to, the fact that you’d team up with the ones who didn’t deliver an engine that could hold one differentiating point about their game is just ludicrous. It is them that have to man up and fix it, not us who got to be complacent and stop demanding what we, as cuistomers, deserve.

P.S: I am sure your boss would be as understanding if your work wasn’t up to what you promised or said you would… Yeah, right.

Yeah but you are asking for something that is being fixed right now. You can complain all you want, it wont fix faster lol

And i don’t know how much they could have anticipated of this thing. Me, for example, don’t have single problem with this theme. Maybe they tested it and worked out fine. Or in any case, they saw it/could only see it once the rendering system was already in, in which case there’s no point but to start over and make the whole thing again.

Yep. Culling is worse, and meanwhile perma stealthed thieves continue to dominate in WvWvW.

Buy a i7 OC 5Ghz, SSD PCIe 3.0 WITH 800MB/s R/W, 32GB RAM and NVIDIA GTX 690
And say bye to WvsW problems.

They have released an update this month that supposedly improved culling issues, but many are reporting the opposite. That being said, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. They are still working on many more things in order to fix the deeper issues.

There is a large WvW update coming later this month, so it may not be all that far-fetched to assume that culling will be further improved this month, though it’s far from being certain.

Here’s a little write up I did a little while ago, based on what the devs have already said, that explains the culling issue and what they’re doing to fix it:

What is culling?: ArenaNet’s servers only have so much bandwidth. When a player’s data is sent to your client, it uses some of their bandwidth. When you receive data about a player, it uses some of your bandwidth AND some of your computer’s resources, mainly in regards to the CPU/GPU and RAM.

To conserve bandwidth on both their and our end as well as to conserve computer resources on our end (primarily when there are many dozens of players around us), they only send our game clients data for some of the players. Thus we only see some of the players on our screen, even though there are technically more players around us… we just can’t visually see them. This is called culling.

How are they fixing culling?: There are numerous factors they have to deal with. Bandwidth sent by them to us and resources used by our clients. They have programmers that are currently working on all of these factors. I imagine that they are currently both bug testing and tuning it. They have to re-factor and further optimize much of the core of both the server and client to do this as effectively and efficiently as possible.

Their goal is to eliminate culling, though some people (with poor computers and/or poor internet connections) may or may not still experience culling, though hopefully not anywhere near as bad as we are currently experiencing it. This will first be applied to WvW, and hopefully either at the same time or some time after that, to PvE as well.

TimeBomb.3427:

What is culling?: ArenaNet’s servers only have so much bandwidth. When a player’s data is sent to your client, it uses some of their bandwidth. When you receive data about a player, it uses some of your bandwidth AND some of your computer’s resources, mainly in regards to the CPU/GPU and RAM.

To conserve bandwidth on both their and our end as well as to conserve computer resources on our end (primarily when there are many dozens of players around us), they only send our game clients data for some of the players. Thus we only see some of the players on our screen, even though there are technically more players around us… we just can’t visually see them. This is called culling.

How are they fixing culling?: There are numerous factors they have to deal with. Bandwidth sent by them to us and resources used by our clients. They have programmers that are currently working on all of these factors. I imagine that they are currently both bug testing and tuning it. They have to re-factor and further optimize much of the core of both the server and client to do this as effectively and efficiently as possible.

Their goal is to eliminate culling, though some people (with poor computers and/or poor internet connections) may or may not still experience culling, though hopefully not anywhere near as bad as we are currently experiencing it. This will first be applied to WvW, and hopefully either at the same time or some time after that, to PvE as well.

I think the issue is how they prioritize player and effect data. Often in wvw i see the effects of spells, the animations and skill use of some players who are fully loaded, and see NOTHING about other players.

I suppose the client is receiving and loading all the data from one char, before moving to the next one, which is BAD.

priority should be as follow:
1-enemy POSITION within line of sight (just position, no fluff. Render the enemy as a still wireframe if need to be) and Enemy aoe circles (no effects, just the circles)
2-same thing, but for allies
3-enemy animation and skill usage
4-same thing for allies.

Also, the game SHOULD pre-cache all the possible data about players during idle time (with no one around) to be ready for possible congestions during fights, and use a smart system when choosing who to render first (chances are, if someone is attacking me, i’m VERY interested in seeing him)

I’m a programmer myself, and the current culling problems just baffle me, its something you expect to be fixed in an alpha stage OR reduce the number of concurrent players in wvw until you get it fixed post-launch.

Stealth thieves are ridicoulous because the client KNOWS he is there, and sometimes you can tab target to him, but it just refuses to load the model giving priority to other useless fluff around..

TimeBomb.3427:

They have released an update this month that supposedly improved culling issues, but many are reporting the opposite. That being said, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. They are still working on many more things in order to fix the deeper issues.

There is a large WvW update coming later this month, so it may not be all that far-fetched to assume that culling will be further improved this month, though it’s far from being certain.

Here’s a little write up I did a little while ago, based on what the devs have already said, that explains the culling issue and what they’re doing to fix it:

What is culling?: ArenaNet’s servers only have so much bandwidth. When a player’s data is sent to your client, it uses some of their bandwidth. When you receive data about a player, it uses some of your bandwidth AND some of your computer’s resources, mainly in regards to the CPU/GPU and RAM.

To conserve bandwidth on both their and our end as well as to conserve computer resources on our end (primarily when there are many dozens of players around us), they only send our game clients data for some of the players. Thus we only see some of the players on our screen, even though there are technically more players around us… we just can’t visually see them. This is called culling.

How are they fixing culling?: There are numerous factors they have to deal with. Bandwidth sent by them to us and resources used by our clients. They have programmers that are currently working on all of these factors. I imagine that they are currently both bug testing and tuning it. They have to re-factor and further optimize much of the core of both the server and client to do this as effectively and efficiently as possible.

Their goal is to eliminate culling, though some people (with poor computers and/or poor internet connections) may or may not still experience culling, though hopefully not anywhere near as bad as we are currently experiencing it. This will first be applied to WvW, and hopefully either at the same time or some time after that, to PvE as well.

I have to agree here… I noticed after the Jan patch that culling was worse and not just in high pop WvW / PvP WZ’s or LA.. I was running round Diessas Plateau even before the Living Story went live that one minute im chilling lopping a tree or summing , next Im being stomped by a bunch of ogres or something… its insanely poor imo…
Sure our own hardware also needs to play some part in that equation as does our internet connection – yes we all say that we have the best stuff, faultless internet etc but is it always 100% all of the time cos even a slight drop off in performance can have an effect on our gaming experience… but this culling is just to prevalent to be only our end and a quick fix might not be that quick in coming.

WvW is the least important aspect of GW2. It has received less attention/updates relative to any other aspect of the game.

Fixing the culling/rendering issues are just not a priority for ArenaNet.

While this issue is WvW related, this issue is also popping up in PVE where mobs are not showing in some areas until they are on top of you.

Back to WvW there were several comments to day that went something along the lines of “Went to attack this lone so and so, only to find myself suddenly surrounded.”

Culling issue made it hard to judge numbers also, I could see lots of AoE going off but no one in sight until I got close to it.

In a PvP situation I can’t begin to understand how they thought that showing less PCs is preferable to showing everything but dumbing down the graphics. Other games have PvP and don’t have this issue. I mean Holy Cow! “Lets make the players they’re supposed to be fighting invisible – that’ll solve the graphics problem.” Really? Really?!

Kalbris.3902:

Thats what they said a decade ago.

I don’t think anyone outside of FFXI had this problem a decade ago. Now GW2 has it, Tera Online has it, Vindictus has it.. I’m sure there are others. Odd has this has taken a step backwards. I think it has, unfortunately, just become more accepted over time (and thus more prevalent).

DreamOfACure.4382:

A staff post has stated that they need to completely re-do a portion of coding to fix the culling issue and that normal estimations for such a task would take 5~10 years.

They’re trying to do it within a few months.

So… Quit whining. They’re being real troopers.

They don’t get props for fixing something that should have been working before release. There were people as far back as beta telling the devs that this game was not ready and they released it anyways because they were convinced that it’d do great, whether they paid attention to their players or not. They started believing their own hype. Now they’re paying for that mistake.

So….they don’t have 5 to 10 years to fix their game to the quality level that people demand from their PvP. They have maybe two more months at best before they can expect to see yet another exodus. And once again, that’s a time scale they put on themselves, not one that the players “forced” on them.

I haven’t tried WvW where they were focusing their efforts since the patch, but culling is much, much worse in open world PvE since the patch. It affects friendlies and enemies. Often the only cue that enemies are present in to see friendlies beating the air. Move in that direction and the enemies eventually appear. I was expecting, if anything, culling would improve after a patch that addressed it. Not so with 1/28 patch. And, it’s a non-issue with other games I play. I really don’t understand the problem they are having with it and why.

SoPP.7034:

WvW is the least important aspect of GW2. It has received less attention/updates relative to any other aspect of the game.

Fixing the culling/rendering issues are just not a priority for ArenaNet.

What are you on about…. culling doesnt just exist in WvW, it’s all over the game.. or maybe you never go to the bank in LA or the Trading Post perhaps.
PvE, PvP and WvW all suffer with it, its just some areas dont see it as much due to the pop density in particular maps / zones…..

To say WvW is the least important area of the game is just pure sillyness considering GW2 was marketed heavily on it, boasting how it could handle huge dogfights so well without seeing the performance issues other MMO’s would suffer with such large scale activities… except it cant handle it in any part of the game thats sees similar activites… the only place I have yet to have an issue is in Fractals tbh… but then we are talking 5 man instances which pretty much any MMO ou there has been handling for years (with the exception of SWTOR cos that game is just riddled with engine issues imo)

The culling is on your end, not theirs. Your cpu isn’t “fast” enough to display the models even though the server allows them to attack you. While I agree that culling was a big issue before the latest patch because even people with high end computers (i would call myself mid range) were having to deal with it, I haven’t had an issue with it since the update to a large extent. The worst I have come across since the patch was a zerg rushing towards me (unrendered) but I saw 1 guy pop up about 1500 units away and knew something was fishy by how confident he was. At about 1200 units I saw 4 more pop up and knew it was time to gtfo. I warned my guild while fleeing to them and survived with relative ease. There was about 25 of them total and they all were rendered by the time I regrouped with my guild (they were about 2000 units away) so I was able to pick targets and fight without much issue.

Raine.1394:

I haven’t tried WvW where they were focusing their efforts since the patch, but culling is much, much worse in open world PvE since the patch. It affects friendlies and enemies. Often the only cue that enemies are present in to see friendlies beating the air. Move in that direction and the enemies eventually appear. I was expecting, if anything, culling would improve after a patch that addressed it. Not so with 1/28 patch. And, it’s a non-issue with other games I play. I really don’t understand the problem they are having with it and why.

I’ve noticed it in PvE as well. In WvWvW it can be pretty brutal since fights with players are far less forgiving. The few waypoints and almost guaranteed repair bills don’t ease any of the frustration either. There are many times I try to go to someone’s aid, they have maybe two people on them, my ally goes down (fast too), I find it a little weird but jump in anyway then BAM, ten more people pop up around me aaaand I’m down! Talk about demoralizing lol. It’s surprising this issue made it passed beta or alpha for that matter.

Indoles.1467:

The culling is on your end, not theirs. Your cpu isn’t “fast” enough to display the models even though the server allows them to attack you. While I agree that culling was a big issue before the latest patch because even people with high end computers (i would call myself mid range) were having to deal with it, I haven’t had an issue with it since the update to a large extent. The worst I have come across since the patch was a zerg rushing towards me (unrendered) but I saw 1 guy pop up about 1500 units away and knew something was fishy by how confident he was. At about 1200 units I saw 4 more pop up and knew it was time to gtfo. I warned my guild while fleeing to them and survived with relative ease. There was about 25 of them total and they all were rendered by the time I regrouped with my guild (they were about 2000 units away) so I was able to pick targets and fight without much issue.

Well in some part you are correct, every players hardware is likely setup that much differently and has varying levels of capability (my earlier post in this thread made mention of this).

But its far to prevalent and to such a large scale of an issue in areas such as WvW to be solely down to us… and ANET have already admitted to this hence why they are busy working on a fix..
My rig, granted is not one of the Supercomputers used by the Pentagon or NASA but I am pretty confident that my i73700 running off an Asus P8Z77-V MB with 16GB DDR3 GSKILL RipjawsZ, dual Mushkin SSD’s and twin Nvidia GTX550Ti’s should be able to handle this game and does for the most part, except where large player/mob density zones exist… culling is enforced imo not something that my PC is 100% struggling with… perhaps it has been coded to purposely do this so that players with lower end rigs are not left completely with the feeling of “i cant play this game on my rig”

Fox Soul.4809:

Buy a i7 OC 5Ghz, SSD PCIe 3.0 WITH 800MB/s R/W, 32GB RAM and NVIDIA GTX 690
And say bye to WvsW problems.

It has nothing to do with the comp you are using. Thankfully I have reached a point in my life where I can afford a rig very similar to this to play one video game and, post-patch I am experiencing these same issues. I did not experience them before; which, leads me to believe that originally it was left to do with the users computer but not everyone is as fortunate as us (or at least me and the few friends I have that can afford super-top-end gaming rigs).

Bloodstealer.5978:

What are you on about….

Dungeons: FotM, Ascended gear
PvE: Mad King, Lost Shores, Wintersday etc
sPvP: New maps, regular updates
WvW: Orbs (removed), Break Out events

For the longest time WvW was the only aspect of the game where content was removed.

Bloodstealer.5978:

….boasting how it could handle huge dogfights so well without seeing the performance issues other MMO’s would suffer with such large scale activities… except it cant handle it in any part of the game thats sees similar activites…

It takes time for people to render in LA, ok cool, now enter WvW and go see what happens when that enemy zerg renders right in front of you.

You said it yourself, it affects densely populated areas. Now got back to the top of this post, to that list I made, which area is impacted on most?

So is the the ‘a’ and ‘e’ in your title =P

But yeah, it is unfortunate that the culling issue is there. But they are working on it, that is good news.

core i7 975 running at 4 ghz,
6 gig of memory
ocz revo x2
gforce 590 vid

this should be more then enough to run gw2.
no need for 32 gig of memory. when i check task manager, my system only uses around 1 gig for gw2 and has 3 gig free memory.

I dont do wvw and dont notice invisible enemies in pve, but
in la bank and tp i do. Not realy worrying.

i can imagine that this would be a big problem in pvp play.

Saulius.8430:

hello. this is 2013. come back in decade or more, when computers and software has advanced a bit.

It’s the software they are using, others using it are having the same issues. I have noticed the change in PvE as well, a little worse.

Indoles.1467:

The culling is on your end, not theirs.

This is just incorrect. The developers have made it clear this is a problem on their end and that they’re working to resolve it. Nobody is immune to the culling issue. If you are not seeing it, keep in mind that’s kind of the point. It’s difficult to tell when the scene isn’t rendering something vital unless it’s in the process of killing you.

Tzun.6073:

Huh? We paid for the game mate, we can ask for it to work the way it is supposed to, the fact that you’d team up with the ones who didn’t deliver an engine that could hold one differentiating point about their game is just ludicrous. It is them that have to man up and fix it, not us who got to be complacent and stop demanding what we, as cuistomers, deserve.

LOL, self-entitlement much?

That’s not how it works. Didn’t you read the ToS?

You paid for Guild Wars 2, and you got Guild Wars 2. It does not have to work the way you think it should. It works however ANet designed it to.

They care about their customers, so it’s great that they’re working to fix the issues, but under no circumstances do you possess any actual right to demand things.

You merely make suggestions and they decide if it’s a good suggestion.
If you don’t trust ANet to do their job, then it’s your own fault for not fully vetting the game before purchasing it.

There is not, and never will be, any clause that says a game is guaranteed to work the way you want it to.

You get what you pay for. And THIS is what you paid for.

Culling has just became second priority to me.

I just finished defending Longview. There was a enemy Mesmer using a movement hack to teleport into the tower and dropping portals.

I’d rather have a third the enemies be visible than our wall be useless.

DreamOfACure.4382:

LOL, self-entitlement much?

That’s not how it works. Didn’t you read the ToS?

You paid for Guild Wars 2, and you got Guild Wars 2. It does not have to work the way you think it should. It works however ANet designed it to.

They care about their customers, so it’s great that they’re working to fix the issues, but under no circumstances do you possess any actual right to demand things.

You merely make suggestions and they decide if it’s a good suggestion.
If you don’t trust ANet to do their job, then it’s your own fault for not fully vetting the game before purchasing it.

There is not, and never will be, any clause that says a game is guaranteed to work the way you want it to.

You get what you pay for. And THIS is what you paid for.

I love it when people make statements like this, it shows a lack of understanding about how the MMO industry works.

Yes, a company is welcome to do whatever it pleases with its own property. Just as the customer is welcome to reject any future products from that , and to withhold their money rather than spend it on the company’s game. But an MMO doesn’t work like a normal video game that you buy in a store. It has constant server costs to maintain and a game world to keep up. It has to keep adding content via patches and expansions to keep itself from being eventually tossed aside like other games. And if you make your players mad and they leave you, you’re not going to sell expansions or micro-transactions, you’re going to die.

The fact that ANet is backpedaling and making such a big deal out of these new patches that will “strengthen the core game”, and is actively working to changing its communication with its players, indicates that they’ve taken a larger financial hit than they expected. They went from 2 million sales of the game within weeks of its release….to breaking 3 million sales at the start of January. That’s a big dropoff in sales, and it’s likely their gem sales took a similar hit.

And there’s more evidence of their financial woes in the form of stock trends: NCSoft stocks were climbing in August (release of GW2), slowly trended downwards through Sep and Oct (right after the cancellation of CoH), then took a nosedive in November (two days after the announcement of Lost Shores and the resulting community backlash). It hasn’t recovered to anywhere near its August levels since August 31st.

Yes, a company can run its game however it wants. However, this isn’t a “finished product” game, it’s an ongoing title. And if they want to keep it running, they are at the mercy of their parent company (and by extension its stockholders), and so may want to consider giving their players a bit more say-so in how the game is run moving forward….which, incidentally enough, is what we’re already seeing starting to take place. Suddenly things that weren’t a big deal are becoming priority projects, bug fixes are much more common instead of just rushing out more PvE content, and they’re trying to shuffle their interactivity levels by posting in the forums more often and having more AMAs and video chats with us. This isn’t all coincidence, it’s because they can see things aren’t going the way they had planned and they’re smart enough to scramble and fix things, rather than following the trend of other games that make radical changes and then stick to them (resulting in many of them dying off).

ANet knows this. That’s why they’re working to change people’s negative opinions of the game right now, because they’re not in the dominant spot they expected to be, and they know they need to reverse course to some degree and fix things or they’re not going to live long enough to see their own “panda” expansion.

My personal sugestion would be to give priority to load character/npcs names. This way even if they’re invisible you know they’re there and their exact position without needing to wait for their models to fully load.

After that they could take their time in fixing culling with a “solution” already there so players can locate their opponents while they’re at it.

I agree, after the recent patch where they suppose to fix culling, it seems like culling got worse. Used to be only in WvW, now even PVE has culling issues. I’m running a i7-3930k, 16gb 1666Ghz ddr3, GTX 590 and SSD.