Guild Wars 2

I have decided not to buy GW2 Heart of Thorns because my Ping are really way too high to play.
I am from from Singapore.
Right now my Ping is like at 230 – 250ms at Tarnished Coast.
Can Anet make the Ping better?

My connections from Singapore.
Last Result on SpeedTest
http://broadbandspeedtest.starhub.com/speedtestv3.1/:
Download Speed: 293818 kbps (36727.3 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 300984 kbps (37623 KB/sec transfer rate)
3/22/2015.

The internet is the limit here, not Anet. Anet can do nothing to help if the internet connection from Singapore to the server is too far/slow.

At minimum you’re looking at ~90ms from just the speed of light limit, let alone actual network limits.

So no, I don’t think you’ll be getting better ping unless you move.

You REALLY need to look up what those numbers actually mean. I’ve been PVPing (world PVP, wargame PVP) for over a decade, with a ping of over 200, and have always been completely OK. You only start to get issues at pings over 400-500 or so.

Broom.2561:

You REALLY need to look up what those numbers actually mean. I’ve been PVPing (world PVP, wargame PVP) for over a decade, with a ping of over 200, and have always been completely OK. You only start to get issues at pings over 400-500 or so.

Agree. My only real problems is when it’s 400+

Broom.2561:

You REALLY need to look up what those numbers actually mean. I’ve been PVPing (world PVP, wargame PVP) for over a decade, with a ping of over 200, and have always been completely OK. You only start to get issues at pings over 400-500 or so.

A ping of 200 is still not ideal. Assuming the game is running at 60 FPS, that’s a 12 frame delay, which can be quite significant for fast paced combat like in GW2. When you need to react to abilities with a 0.5s or lower cast time, or activate something like a stun breaker at the right time, it’s much harder to pull off. It also exacerbates things like the “desyncing” issues, such as when someone appears to fall off a ledge on your screen, although the game actually doesn’t consider them to have fallen off the ledge, and you see them magically appear again on top of the ledge.

As stated though, OP, they can’t just “fix” the ping as it’s not something they have direct control over. You could see if it’s possible to upgrade the quality of your Internet connection, but other than that the only real way to make it better is to relocate to a region that can maintain the connection with lower latency. Either that, or they would have to open a new set of servers that would serve your region specifically, though I don’t think that’s in the cards.

Uh, if you are from Singapore, shouldnt you play on Asian servers?

Leming.8436:

Uh, if you are from Singapore, shouldnt you play on Asian servers?

There are no Asian servers.

There are Chinese servers, but those are only accessible to people living in China (who also have a separate, slightly different, version of the game and a different publisher, basically because the Chinese government wants to keep outside influences to a minimum.)

People in all other Asian countries have to play on the NA or EU servers.

Thats not bad. I average about 350 most evenings and i dont have any major issues. WvW can be difficult but you just need to adapt and be more aware of whats going on around you.

I for one am going to preorder as soon as its available.

I will pass since i dont think they have the talent to improve

250 ping is way too much in a movement based game such as GW2.

It only works if the people you play against in pvp/wvw are bad/slow.

You could try a proxy, might get a better ping.

proxy won’t make it better it will in almost all cases make it worse.

I’m from Malaysia playingon EU server and im kicking kitten fine in pvp 0.o
Just some lags during zerging in WvW, try turn down your graphics settings perhaps?

I get 300 ms myself on average. So far though, this game plays well for me despite this. While it hinders me from reacting accordingly, it does help me work on predicting the next move.

jbrother.1340:

proxy won’t make it better it will in almost all cases make it worse.

Nope. There is a chance to get better. It’s all about the routing. His ISP has poor routing to ANet’s servers. A proxy provider made specifically for gaming might have better routing.

OP, try http://battleping.com/info.php – Its proxy for gamers and supports Gw2. Its a premium service but they have a free plan that disconnects you every 20 minutes or so. Its enough time to check if its going to help you out.

Also, out of all proxy providers I trust battleping the most. I’ve used it in the past and I haven’t lost my account. Its worth nothing to check it out.

They have variety of servers which you can connect to. Test your ping against theirs and on theory they should have instant routing to ANet’s datacenter.

It did reduce my ping in NA Lineage 2, while im European player and I had terrible lag spikes because kittenty routing. Battleping made the game playable.

Also If you decide to wait for ANet to fix your connection, it won’t happen. As others have already mentioned, its out of their hands, physically. The servers are not lagging you on purpose. You have bad routing to them. And its not your fault either. Its your ISP.

kakipukul.4732:

I have decided not to buy GW2 Heart of Thorns because my Ping are really way too high to play.
I am from from Singapore.
Right now my Ping is like at 230 – 250ms at Tarnished Coast.
Can Anet make the Ping better?

My connections from Singapore.
Last Result on SpeedTest
http://broadbandspeedtest.starhub.com/speedtestv3.1/:
Download Speed: 293818 kbps (36727.3 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 300984 kbps (37623 KB/sec transfer rate)
3/22/2015.

I’d kill for a ping that low. #AustralianInternetFTW

wow, sometimes I still feel beeing the center of the world as EU player (or NA). Can’t imagine how on earth big brands such as GW2 can’t propperly distribute their server locations better around the globe. A server in Australia would not only help oceanic players, but also the huge population in south east asia. (I know China has it’s own servers…but China is…just China).

Glad to have my constant <50 ms ping at > 50 FPS though.

Hylgeriak.8250:

wow, sometimes I still feel beeing the center of the world as EU player (or NA). Can’t imagine how on earth big brands such as GW2 can’t propperly distribute their server locations better around the globe. A server in Australia would not only help oceanic players, but also the huge population in south east asia. (I know China has it’s own servers…but China is…just China).

Glad to have my constant <50 ms ping at > 50 FPS though.

I remember reading something about why most MMOs do not have servers placed in New Zealand/Australia. It comes down to the insane data costs in those areas, and there isn’t enough revenue from those areas to justify the costs of running servers there.

Hylgeriak.8250:

wow, sometimes I still feel beeing the center of the world as EU player (or NA). Can’t imagine how on earth big brands such as GW2 can’t propperly distribute their server locations better around the globe. A server in Australia would not only help oceanic players, but also the huge population in south east asia. (I know China has it’s own servers…but China is…just China).

Glad to have my constant <50 ms ping at > 50 FPS though.

Cost is likely a large factor.

You’re also forgetting something else. Notice how NA server-based and EU server-based players cannot play together? It’ll be the same for players on that side of the world if they were to get their own server(s). How many people do you think would actually be on those servers? Not to mention how many of those players who would opt to do what they’re currently doing and still play on NA or EU servers.

eisberg.2379:

Hylgeriak.8250:

wow, sometimes I still feel beeing the center of the world as EU player (or NA). Can’t imagine how on earth big brands such as GW2 can’t propperly distribute their server locations better around the globe. A server in Australia would not only help oceanic players, but also the huge population in south east asia. (I know China has it’s own servers…but China is…just China).

Glad to have my constant <50 ms ping at > 50 FPS though.

I remember reading something about why most MMOs do not have servers placed in New Zealand/Australia. It comes down to the insane data costs in those areas, and there isn’t enough revenue from those areas to justify the costs of running servers there.

With Guild Wars 2 it’s also complicated by WvW. They’d have to create at least 3 servers, and then they’d be locked into the same match-ups forever, or they’d have to figure out a way to match them against NA or EU servers. Which would probably mean everyone, no matter how good their connection is, would have lag all the time. And anyone in the other regions would have the same problems when matched against that server.

It does suck for people in that part of the world (especially since we’re talking about a huge area), but unfortunately Anet, and other companies, have to look at the economics of it.

Dude, I live in Hong Kong. My ping is around 300~400ms and I have absolutely no problems playing GW2. I don’t even know what you’re complaining about.

It might not be about ping, it may be about packet loss. try running some net diagnostic tools to see if your connection is reliable. Faulty hardware, poor line quality and poor ISP can all cause packet drop and many of those things are under your control.

Yamsandjams.3267:

Broom.2561:

You REALLY need to look up what those numbers actually mean. I’ve been PVPing (world PVP, wargame PVP) for over a decade, with a ping of over 200, and have always been completely OK. You only start to get issues at pings over 400-500 or so.

A ping of 200 is still not ideal. Assuming the game is running at 60 FPS, that’s a 12 frame delay, which can be quite significant for fast paced combat like in GW2. When you need to react to abilities with a 0.5s or lower cast time, or activate something like a stun breaker at the right time, it’s much harder to pull off. It also exacerbates things like the “desyncing” issues, such as when someone appears to fall off a ledge on your screen, although the game actually doesn’t consider them to have fallen off the ledge, and you see them magically appear again on top of the ledge.

The human eye is only able to see a limited number of frames per second. A higher framerate may mean a smoother visual experience, but you are not missing information needed for a timely reaction. And 200 miliseconds is still a REALLY REALLY short time.

As to the issues you describe… those are usually due to server side lag (resource allocation issues in the servers, overloaded ports etc.) and packet loss (connection quality issue), not to connection speed issues.

Broom.2561:

Yamsandjams.3267:

Broom.2561:

You REALLY need to look up what those numbers actually mean. I’ve been PVPing (world PVP, wargame PVP) for over a decade, with a ping of over 200, and have always been completely OK. You only start to get issues at pings over 400-500 or so.

A ping of 200 is still not ideal. Assuming the game is running at 60 FPS, that’s a 12 frame delay, which can be quite significant for fast paced combat like in GW2. When you need to react to abilities with a 0.5s or lower cast time, or activate something like a stun breaker at the right time, it’s much harder to pull off. It also exacerbates things like the “desyncing” issues, such as when someone appears to fall off a ledge on your screen, although the game actually doesn’t consider them to have fallen off the ledge, and you see them magically appear again on top of the ledge.

The human eye is only able to see a limited number of frames per second. A higher framerate may mean a smoother visual experience, but you are not missing information needed for a timely reaction. And 200 miliseconds is still a REALLY REALLY short time.

You are missing information for a timely reaction. Yes, 200 milliseconds is a really short time, but so is a skill with a 250-500 millisecond cast time. Think about it. If a thief uses cloak and dagger (500 millisecond cast time) and you have a 200 millisecond delay, you now effectively have 300 milliseconds to react to it. The server isn’t going to delay events in the game to wait for compensate for the latency with your connection. It’s not that it’s impossible to react to, but it’s you need to be that much quicker than the next guy.

Compare it to someone with 100 ms latency. They would effectively have 400 ms to react to a CnD, meaning their reactions can be 25% slower than the guy with 200 ms.

It can also result in things like being hit out of the beginning of your dodges. With a latency around 200 ms, you would have to make sure to dodge preemptively. If you didn’t the game can end up considering that you were hit before you dodged, thus producing the visual dissonance on your end where you are hit out of the beginning of your dodge animation. This makes it much easier for your opponent to bait you into dodging (provided they don’t have equally bad latency), and makes it that much harder to react to the visual combat cues the game is based around.

Granted, GW2 is not as sensitive as something like a fighting game as far as latency is concerned. It can be very possible to get used to a higher latency, so long as it’s consistent. But concluding that a latency of 200 ms is not a real issue in a game that requires actions and timing on the order of 200 ms does not seem reasonable to me.

Leming.8436:

Uh, if you are from Singapore, shouldnt you play on Asian servers?

Chinese/Asian players would rather play on NA/EU because of the better service.

Broom.2561:

.And 200 miliseconds is still a REALLY REALLY short time.

In the grand scheme of things, sure, but when it comes to online gaming 200 ms of latency is huge. Honestly, that’s well into the unplayable level imo.

I wish I had ping as low as that. Here in NZ I have always gamed with 280-300 ping – we have terrible internet. You’ll get used to it.

kakipukul.4732:

Right now my Ping is like at 230 – 250ms at Tarnished Coast.

For the love of all things Kitten! Shut up and stop complaining about a 250ms ping, you sound whiny! I’ve played gw1 for years with a 2-3k ms ping and I play gw2 with a 750ms ping. Guess what? It’s perfectly playable. Now you take your 250ms and be happy!

I’m on Gandara, which was my home server while I lived in Europe. I live in Australia now. Average ping is 415ms. Still can somewhat manage in wvw although I go down a lot more than I would otherwise. It’s one of the main reasons I don’t sPVP. Half a second differences makes it a bit too tricky to fight players. At least in WvW, my high ping can be averaged out in a reasonable sized group

Shrug, I play at about 400-500 ping almost constantly, mainly due to me being forced to use a mobile hotspot where I live (I’m in the same state as the datacenter my server is hosted in). It’s not a nightmare but it makes things difficult at times, particularly duels.

Distance is the biggest issue for you, but it’s not the only one, how many hops it takes your packets to get to the nearest server is also a concern.
500ms is half a second, anything above 400 is considered lag.
The only ones that are going to complain about ping times under 300 are pvp and fps players and that’s only because they consider themselves elite and their performance is determined by their ping times because their bots can’t go any faster than their internet performance

Anyway, unless you want to be in the top tier pvp, your ping times are fine for an mmo, they’re not fantastic but it’s only a quarter second.

Lil Puppy.5216:

The only ones that are going to complain about ping times under 300 are pvp and fps players and that’s only because they consider themselves elite and their performance is determined by their ping times because their bots can’t go any faster than their internet performance

That’s a pretty kitten condescending statement.

Not to mention that it’s hugely inaccurate.

Dude nothing wrong with my 100-250 ms. Am using singtel fiber. Go upgrade yours. Starhub and m1 sucks. Trust me.

Tolerance for High and low latency defer for every gamer. I have been gaming for so long and 150 its my max limit for gaming. Its 2015 not 2004. I should think by now, any USA MMO companies would be able to supply a proxies server for those outside US to log in to.

zini.3125:

Dude nothing wrong with my 100-250 ms. Am using singtel fiber. Go upgrade yours. Starhub and m1 sucks. Trust me.

Sorry bro. I just can’t stand the MF Singtel Ceo. She want to charge her customer for using Whatsapp, WTF?

I wish I could have OPs bandwidth and ping…

Broom.2561:

You REALLY need to look up what those numbers actually mean. I’ve been PVPing (world PVP, wargame PVP) for over a decade, with a ping of over 200, and have always been completely OK. You only start to get issues at pings over 400-500 or so.

You think you are completely ok because you are used to it, it is all you know. Little do you actually pay attention to all the times where the 200 latency end up screwing you over. Most of the people who makes a switch with latency would know.

Back in league on NA I played with 250 ping and I thought it was ok too, I was like you and did not know how detrimental it was, some champions were outright unplayable, basic mechanics like last hitting would never be perfect no matter how good I was at last hitting etc. But when I made a switch to oceanic server, I started to understand the difference.

Another issue with such a pyng is that this is the BASE pyng. When the server itself has a bit of lag or in network lag spikes, the whole thing quickly becomes unplayable.
I am in Malaysia and my pyng is a bit higher at 300-350 ms. It is sort of ok for most PVE although it messes up some parts of the game really badly. For example, my ability to successfully do even easy jumps in dry top is a direct result of my pyng – now you can, now you cant. And in WvW anything more than 30 ppl can easily produce 4-5 seconds of lag followed by a dc.
The difference I see when home in Europe is huge.

I have found that a proxy server helps, not so much in lowering the pyng, but in keeping it stable and eliminating lag spikes.

230-250ms is perfectly normal for Singapore-US connections, it’s not going to cause you any real problems. The issue is probably with your connection stability.

Try kicking people off your LAN.

PS: I just used the same test in your link, and I’m getting roughly double the numbers you posted. It could be time of day, or your plan is the bottleneck here. Idk.

LOL amazing how people say 200+ is unplayable. Its not.
ANTICIPATING an attack is always better than reacting to one if done right.
Sure, you end up guessing a bit, but its not unplayable.

I am in South Africa with 230ish average and can be competitive in both WvW roaming and PvP.
Although I am sure I would improve considerably with lower ping, its still playable and enjoyable.

In most cases packet loss is the cause of unplayable lag more than ping. They are not related.

I guess we won’t be seeing you in the new zone, which is unfortunate if you’re enjoying the game now. But the reasons there’s not a oceanic server aren’t going to change because of Heart of Thorns’ release.

Fermi.2409:

Broom.2561:

.And 200 miliseconds is still a REALLY REALLY short time.

In the grand scheme of things, sure, but when it comes to online gaming 200 ms of latency is huge. Honestly, that’s well into the unplayable level imo.

Like I’ve already said a dozen times, I am a PVPer. A serious one. And I’ve been playing with a 200+ ping for YEARS without issue in dozens of game.

Broom.2561:

Fermi.2409:

Broom.2561:

.And 200 miliseconds is still a REALLY REALLY short time.

In the grand scheme of things, sure, but when it comes to online gaming 200 ms of latency is huge. Honestly, that’s well into the unplayable level imo.

Like I’ve already said a dozen times, I am a PVPer. A serious one. And I’ve been playing with a 200+ ping for YEARS without issue in dozens of game.

Not so serious then.
200+ ping isn’t too noticeable in gw2 compared to, say, games like Counter Strike (where having anything over 80ms is highly detrimental) but it’s still very much a problem on classes like engi where skill activation has to go through two passes, going from a kit to another all the time, it adds up and anyone who has played on both US and EU servers and has a good ping on one of them would think the same. When your much needed skill is only one key press away, like on most classes, it’s not much of a problem, but it’s very noticeable when you’re pressing kitswap and quickly pressing the skill you wanted from the kitswap but it doesn’t go off with the right timing (such as getting a block off). Or worse, when you want to cancel the jump from a skill like acid bomb through kit swapping action, it’s easy to get with decent ping and much harder to reliably do with 200+ ping. With 200+ ping you absolutely have to give a small delay to your 2nd keypress whenever you do something like kitswapping because it just won’t go off the way it should and would when you’re playing at low ping.
I don’t play ele in pvp, but I’d imagine it’d also be annoying. At least on classes where you’re not constantly swapping the content of your skillbar it’s not as problematic in terms of the reaction delay before the skill you want actually activates.

You also basically have no idea of what you’re speaking by the way if you’ve never experienced low ping at all (for eg if your internet is bad). You truly, sincerely don’t know what impact having a high ping has because anyone who has experienced both a solid low latency and bad internet wouldn’t even debate this.

XD hold up, you gatta buy the expantion? it doesnt come as part of the game? kitten Anets more greedy then some of the other greedy companies I know if they go through with that.

dude that means alot of the players will cease to play, alot of the players if the expantion replaces alot of the game content wont be able to do what they would be able to do normally.

in the end, they’re telling those who cant pay, to GTFO!

I play with roughly the same ping 230ms, from Europe on an NA server. I PvP a lot. I also have an EU account (50ms ping). The difference is extremely noticeable. So much so I often dominate in 1v1 on my EU account because I have learned to play with a higher ping and the ability to anticipate moves, as well as being able to react to surprises gives a huge advantage.

That said. If you are going to look at this mathematically take an ability you want to interrupt, like an enemy heal. Most healing skills have roughly a 1 sec. cast time.

First off Ping should be explained: Ping is the time it takes for one packet of data sent from point A to return to point A after reaching point B.

If you live in NA and play on an NA server then the common optimal is 80ms ping. A computer has a mean 30ms of display/input lag. The human brain is able to react to an image in 15ms, and a skilled human is able to react with a click in 70-100ms. Add all these factors together and you’ll see that the difference between 80ms ping and 230ms are actually quite massive:
- Player A casts Heal (~15ms for computer to process, 40ms for command to reach server).
- 1 second heal starts on server
- Player A receives visual on heal roughly 55ms later (40ms from server to computer, 15ms for computer to display): Heal has 945ms cast time left
- Player B receives visual on heal 130ms later (115ms from server to computer, 15ms for computer to display): Heal has 870ms cast time left
- Player B processes and reacts to heal 85ms later (15 for brain to recognise visual input, 70ms for brain to react and send command to finger): Heal has 785ms cast time left
- Player B’s command is received by server 130ms later (same as above): Heal is interrupted with 655ms cast time left
- Player A receives and reacts to visual feedback of interrupted cast roughly 140ms later
- Player B receives and reacts to visual feedback of interrupted cast roughly 215 ms later

This scenario is on the assumption that both players have lightning-fast reaction times. The average human is much slower. If, however Player B was very skilled, and Player A had mediocre skills then the playing field would be level as far as ping goes. What is also not taken into account is frame rate; anywhere below 60 fps is detrimental to Player B, while it will be less of an issue for Player A in this situation.

Unfortunately there are few ways to remedy ping. Opening an Oceanic server would lead to too much fragmentation of player base. While the other options are trying a gaming proxy for ~30ms ping decrease, or relocating.

People who have high ping just have to learn to live with it. In most cases you’ll be a bit worse off in SPvP and WvW, but it also requires you to adapt, which has the potential of improving your skill to anticipate, and decrease reaction times even more than any low-ping player would need.