Guild Wars 2

Faux.1937:

Fast question.

Why is it that open pve content I dont skill lag in zergs (even at low frame rates) but then in PvP solo tournaments I Always have 1sec skill lag no matter what?

Usually, the main cause for lag is due the number of simultaneous connections happening (number of players at the same place). The game must send/receive updates for all players involved in a scene and if one of them have some delay it can cause some lag to all others involved. That’s why you tend to experience more lag in crowded areas than empty areas, even if the place’s geometry is the simplest one. More players in an area, more connections server must deal with and more processing is involved.

In your case, maybe this only one in solo PvP is causing more delay to the server than a lot of zergs in a PvE area would do.

BillFreist.1527:

Issues like this are something I definitely plan to continue improving upon (Necromancer Minions also come to mind).

Hello Bill

Since you said Necro Minions .. have you also read the reports in the Bugs forum that the minions since maybe 2 months are doing nothing most of the time ? And is there finally a fix in sight ?

All I can say is, WvW 10v10. They stack to heal, I go to drop a hammer stun on the group and 3 seconds later it goes off, after they spread out…
Every. Kitten. Time.

Every skill has at least a 1 second delay in small scale fights. We’re on an empty borderland, maybe only 15 people from each server. This is not T1 blobfest.

This skill lag is killing PvP and WvW.

Just dropping in as a representative of the miniscule Linux-user populace to throw all my support around Mac client optimizations (because those aid us as well due to Wine). When the Mac client takes a hit during a patch, we do, too.

Solidarity my Mac brethren and sistren!

OP “5 months ago” – yet nothing has actually changed

skill lag is back with a vengeance. pretty much unplayable last night on TC BL.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Why-has-skill-lag-seemingly-gotten-worse/

Hey Bill, I’m not sure what’s been changed in this most recent patch (March 18th) But I’m already seeing some big improvements. I’m a Charr player and RPer and spend a lot of time in the Black Citadel, and normally the Factorium area only nets me around 30-40 frames on high settings. Post -patch I’m getting 50-60 consistently, tending toward 60.

Specs: i7 4770k @ 3.5GHz, GTX 780 Ti, 8GB RAM

I don’t see any improvements, Especially in WvW it is twice as bad as it was before the last optimization.

mcarswell.3768:

skill lag is back with a vengeance. pretty much unplayable last night on TC BL.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Why-has-skill-lag-seemingly-gotten-worse/

I want to second this, whatever was in the last patch has set lag to what it was months ago. And this on the eve of S2, I shudder to think how bad it will be for the season.

Skill lag makes WvW unplayable in big fights. As soon as there are more than 80 people fighting, everyone in the area gets skill lag. The skill lag gets worse, the more players fight. It also affects conditions. If you have skill lag, conditions are not removed after they expire but their effect remains, usually until you go down bc of kitten of bleeding.
It has gotten worse in the last two weeks. I’m glad I finally found the corresponding thread for this. Please check the WvW forum, where you can find lots of posts about skill lag.

For a game that uses DX 9.3C, I am amazed how laggy this game is. I am using a Radeon 7950 and an i5 2500K and in big fights in WvW the game is totally unplayable.

I note today’s patch notes… “Improved server performance”. How is it then that since I’ve logged on, in either PvE or WvW, I’ve been rubberbanding most of the time?

I’ve been on sites like outageanalyzer.com that give near-realtime reports of which areas are affected by which ISP’s outages. I’ve been suffering packet loss for a good two months with no real permanent/effective fix from anyone.

I’m not sure if anyone else has these problems (rubberbanding and packet loss), but this is getting to be very annoying.

Nothing has changed.. WvW is still a skill lagfest and now even#1 fails to land… forget heals, forget elite skills, forget anything remotely fun when there are decent sized fights.. and now you can be stood in spawn and rubber band/skill lag, miles from the action.
EotM was also bad at times these past 2 days and I have had some issues on the few busy maps there are left in the game..
So where are these improvements you speak of ANET?

this game lags even more than before for me! -.-

I’m not sure if this will help anybody else as I’m sure you’re all far cleverer than me and would have spotted this already, but if it helps others, I don’t mind looking a fool.

I too was suffering serious lag. Many expletives were vocalised. In big WvW battles, frame rates were dropping to an optimistic 1 FPS, but not always. I tried setting the graphics options to “best performance”; a little better, but no real help.

On examination, the graphics card was running at 1-2% (I wondered if this was a fault), the CPU 75-84%, memory 24-26%, no serious disk access and no viruses found. Ok the CPU was high, but nothing seemed to be wrong with my system until I checked the temperatures. The problem was caused by the CPU overheating, hitting a cosy 81 degrees centigrade and causing it to throttle back.

My system consists of an AMD FX8100 (with standard fan), 32Gb of RAM and Sapphire Radeon 6850/1Gb. This is all exists in an older case with 1 front and 2 rear fans. I thought this should have been enough cooling, but it turns out it wasn’t.

I temporarily rigged up a sophisticated mechanism with a desk fan blowing into the front of the case. Temperatures dropped to 65 degrees and lag disappeared, even on high settings. Well not quite true. It did lag once more when my son knocked the fan. 30 seconds after putting it back in place the temperature dropped sufficiently and the lag disappeared.

I have now rigged up another fan blowing into the side of the case while I wait for new components to arrive, temperatures have dropped to a comfortable 54 degrees.

My system runs an FX-8150, Crossfired HD7870’s and only 8gb RAM. I have no real issues with frame rates asides when two zerg collide, which would test most modern-day systems. This being said, I also have an H-80 water-cooling setup on the CPU and enough fans running in my Zalman GS1200 case to overrun any ambient noise outside my room.

I get an alert when my CPU hits 65°C, and that’s usually only when my case hasn’t been cleaned out in a while and when abovementioned zergs collide. Systems like ours can support mountains of RAM, but in saying that, this amount of RAM won’t help the game. What WILL help this very CPU-oriented GW2 client is a better CPU, and not one like ours that is somewhat limited by it’s inherent lack of hyper-threading; although it has a lot of cores, the game client isn’t designed to use them. An i5 or an i7 will get you out of trouble, along with better cooling, but how much you want to throw at a system to just enjoy one game is totally in your hands.

Your systems have nothing to do with skill lag and server optimizations, so no point in posting them into this thread.

Thanks for your… ahem.. rather constructive input. /sarcasm

The above posts were about ways to minimise lag, either client-side (FPS) or server-side.

I simply stopped joining large scale fights. There’s just more frustration than fun.
WvW is GW2’s end game and the best part of it creates awful skill lag.

It’s a game breaker for me.
Hopefully the problem will be fixed this year.

Never had trouble in the first year.
And now every time I think I have it fixed, it is ok for a bit and then comes back .

Nyspar.6103:

BillFreist.1527:

• Player/Client -> GameServer bandwidth
  • Most cases usually come from players having other heavy traffic going on while playing the game, weak WiFi signals, or their ISP is having difficulties.
• GameServer -> Player/Client bandwidth
  • This can happen sometimes in our datacenters during peak hours or when hardware is having difficulties, but normally resolves very quickly.

Let’s be honest, there is a LOT more GamerServer -> Player/Client bandwidth issues than there are the other way around.

I felt the same way but months of tracerouting and my regular packet loss is almost always Comcast’s fault.. It sucks because AT&T dsl would be my only alternative……and who has time for that stone age crap.

Now when i play World Bosses and temple events, randomly my skills stop working, i can still use some Fs, and Heal myself, but only way to do skills again it’s to Restart the game.

Also the normal skill delays are something we notice daily, sadly. As this is not one issue of “me and that guy”, also my guildies on our voice-chat sometimes point that they can’t do skills at all same time i cant…

I must get to the conclusion there is more problems on the game side than my side, that or game optimizations are yet to be developed about this.

Almost everyone I’ve asked has been getting skill delay since the patch hit. Ive NEVER had delay and NEVER lagged in this game and I’ve got 1,700 hours played, but since the patch, I’ve been playing with skill delay and it makes it extremely difficult to pvp or wvw.
I have a brand new PC custom built (not the problem)
Checked with my ISP and have been watching my connection speed throughout the day – 3ms ping, 30 download 25 upload. (not the problem)
So its not on my end.

^ same thing, just sent my ticket into support. Hope this gets fixed soon. If support helps resolve the issue I will report back and let you know how.

completed a traceroute and it shows a LOT of packet loss

I also started having .5 to 1 sec skill lag about 4 to 5 days ago. I notice this lag with weapon swapping and inventory management also. I contacted my ISP and they had a repair guy stop by this morning, after testing he found everything is running optimally on my end. I already knew this to be the case since I have no issues what so ever running any other game.

Really hard to play correctly when you cant make any precise actions without a delay. Also should note that I have never had any issues running this game before.

Same issue here, skill delay and sometimes I can’t use any skills until I change map or restart the game.

Yesterday evening I had a horrible skill lag while in Dredgehaunt cliffs (I was doing map completion). It looked like someone was doing an event there or something — a few commander hats up north. And skill lag was getting worse and worse up to about 2 seconds from pressing to actual activation Including guild chat.

Restarting couple times worked — on 3rd try I got a map without any commanders and everything was working just fine. So I figured it was that particular instance that got overloaded somehow.

ISP didn’t have any packet loss

I’ll try to give more details later but it can take me up to 10 minutes to load into DR with my graphics set to ‘best performance’. I have never had that happen prior to the April 15th patch. Outside of DR it takes me 2-5 full minutes depending on the zone. I used to be able to pop right into zones without having to knock my graphics down unless something big like Jorlag or Teq were up.

I’m having 1-4 second skill delay as well as delay in combat and animations. Just noticed this last night as well – I’ve never had any skill delay issues before so this is a first. My ISP seems the same and my other games and programs are unaffected. Also takes longer for the Guild list to get populated and for me to hear map-chat.

Everything looks good on speed test and ping test so I don’t know what the issue is.

Tickwomp.8735:

I’m having 1-4 second skill delay as well as delay in combat and animations. Just noticed this last night as well – I’ve never had any skill delay issues before so this is a first. My ISP seems the same and my other games and programs are unaffected. Also takes longer for the Guild list to get populated and for me to hear map-chat.

Everything looks good on speed test and ping test so I don’t know what the issue is.

Here to report the same. I’ve never had any lag since I started playing, and now WvW and PvP is almost unplayable. Full 1+ second delay on anything – have to run into a portal for a full second+ to get out of a gate, a full second+ to an auto attack to start, etc. For example on my ranger, shortbow#3 skill makes me rubberband pretty hard, as well as sword#2 skill of rolling back and leaping forward. Instead of using this technique to catch up to a group, I usually end up falling behind. Just an extremely frustrating experience.

Been having skill lag since the realease of feature patch, starts at 11 am server time and ends at about 9 pm server

Hi all I have been having the same issues lately! I noticed it happening maybe in the last week+ I usually play tpvp and a thief so even having a slight skill delay makes playing the game reactively impossible..
Im affected in solo and team queues and also hot joins, the lag that I experience includes major skill activation lags, watching teammates and enemies running against walls for several seconds before rubberbanding me back to a random spot in a teamfight where Im usually downed already or have no way to calibrate myself in a teamfight. The lag is so bad that Im unable to even play preemptively with my skills as its impossible to know if my skills activated or if I will be rubber banded back to where I was earlier it all seems random and it seems Im affected by it while others in the same game seem to be doing fine.
I’ve never had this sort of lag in this game before and it is completly random when it starts to affect me(usually when Im in a tournament)
In the past lag that I experienced affected other people in the same games and noticeable in HoTM. Also previously when I experienced a rubber band watching myself and others run into walls caused a client login error which would take me back to character select; where as now it seems to be continuous lag that would rubberband me back to random spots.
Hope it gets recognised and fixed soon!!!

Genoss Hazard.7528:

Genoss Hazard.7528:

Yes, a week into the Wintersday event this skill lag/long delay came out of the blue, weeks prior to that day I played with no skill lag and I could do world bosses and zerg in wvw and experience no issues, but this lag came out of nowhere and the game was unplayable regardless of me being in (PvE, PvP or WvW. Overflow/empty zone)

I could not play the game, the only time the game was actually playable was past 1AM. 5 weeks have passed and the problem persists, however last Thursday the skill lag was reduced significantly but I would get lag spikes of 2-3s, however I still get delays of 20s+ when large groups of players are nearby.

It’s really upsetting because I just want to play the game and have fun. In addition I would also like to mention that there is no conceivable reason that it could be a problem originating from my side, my pc and internet were able to meet the requirements for GW2, I was able to run the game perfectly before this issue arose.

I’m positive that this problem persists for many people, and I urge arenanet to delve into the problem to find a solution instead of creating more problems every two weeks.
Sincerely
~ An upset player.

Thank you Arenanet, I notice the improvements. The horrible unplayable lag just disappeared sometime last week and I have returned to playing normally prior to the whole issue that arose early Wintersday ; however it took you far too long to repair this issue (approximately +-9 weeks. Some people have probably been experiencing this for longer) which is unacceptable.
But I’m pleased with the results.

I have also been experiencing skill lag and rubber banding, this basically makes any wvw and pvp impossible. When the April feature pack went live my gaming experience was perfect.

I did not experience any issues whatsoever, be it in a huge mega server blob doing a world boss, spvp, dungeons and wvw. I was really having a great time. But I noticed a delay last week Wednesday.

Having 0.5-1s of skill lag and rubber banding irrespective if you are in an empty map or a populated map, It is everywhere. This kills the game for me. I thought things were finally sorted out, but I was wrong.

I have been having issues with lag since the day Wintersday was released (10th Dec). Sometimes the lag is unbearable and sometimes the lag is gone which really confuses me, but this is unacceptable, I want my gaming experience to be as fluid as it once was I’m tired of having all these issues. Please fix this.

The skill lag is pretty awful in WvW. It’s a death sentence in large fights. I’ve spent a lot of time setting up key and mouse bind combinations so I can fire off a skill immediately on cooldown, but I might as well phone in a skill more often than not. Very frustrating.

I’ve been having problems ever since megaservers came into play. I used to play on highest graphics settings, now I must use lowest. My connection (Chinese internet) was poor to begin with, but now I disconnect from 95% of boss events and miss the bonus loot. Today, I did Ulgoth pre up to the champ war beasts. I lagged so much that I knew disconnect was coming. The gate broke, we all went in to fight the war beasts. On my screen, I was skill lagging/rubber banding and eventually got disconnected as expected. Less than 20 seconds later I was back in the game, but the boss had already died! What? On my screen we still had 2 champ war beasts up! This problem is killing the game for me and making it no fun at all. At this point, I’m lucky if I get a medal for any event boss. Is there a fix coming for this?

Lord Dimitri.3286:

I’ve been having problems ever since megaservers came into play… is there a fix coming for this?

I’m not sure if a fix is possible for that. My internet is bad too (though thankfully not that bad) so I can understand what you mean, but it just seems to be a case of your connection not being capable of processing quickly enough the huge amount of data present due to all those extra players… if that’s the case then there’s nothing the devs can do for you.

I’ve been having weird issues since the Festival started. If I go into the Crown Pavilion, my FPS drops down to 6 FPS. However, I can participate in a 3-way battle in SM, with no issues at all.

Obviously, trying to fight in the Gauntlet is quite impossible for me. LOL =)

sice the feature patch im having huge lag spikes on PvP.

since ~2-3 days my skills or picking up [F] react around 0.25sec too late, it’s very uncomfortable and I don’t know why does it happen. it’s not typical lagging, texting does work or talking with npcs without problem.
also, picking objects is kinda bugged again, i have to spam ffffffffffffff to pick up something, it doesn’t feel good

BillFreist.1527:

Quick update:

Happy new year everyone! Now that we’re back from holiday vacations, we’ve got more improvements that’ll be rolling out soon. A handful of client improvements will also be making their way (soon hopefully), that should see a drastic memory usage drop and client frame-rate improvements, especially for lower-end hardware.

I’ll make sure to update once I have a better idea of what release you can start seeing these changes trickle in.

-Bill

tic tac …any news on this? or was it part of some other update without noticable improvement ? :-o

Ever since the Mega-server release I have experienced skill lag that makes PvP and WvW unplayable, and PvE considerably less fun. I am still able to run full graphics during a zerg fight with all players rendered and no lag, except for the delay in casting my spells, so I’m having a hard time finding the problem on my end.

Skill lag is back with a vengeance – see the plethora of lag-related posts all over the main, bug, and LS threads.

I’m also experiencing this for a couple of weeks now…….. Sometimes the skill lagg goes up to 16 seconds.

Zachariah.1397:

Ever since the Mega-server release I have experienced skill lag that makes PvP and WvW unplayable, and PvE considerably less fun. I am still able to run full graphics during a zerg fight with all players rendered and no lag, except for the delay in casting my spells, so I’m having a hard time finding the problem on my end.

I am in the same situation, honestly I don’t want to play gw2 until this is fixed.

This is making a problem for most people. Every time I start the game, it’s normal but when I play the game, it lags like hell. My animations are fine and my latency is not bad. Everything is frozen for me. I can move but my River Drake doesn’t follow me. Even if I wait a bit, it says " lost connection to server. Try again later" or something like that. Please could you fix this. If you can, that’s great! If you can’t, it’s probably my computer.

I’m getting similar issues. It started happening ~2 hours ago. I moved to a different internet connection and I’m still getting the issue. I am currently unable to even get into the game after character select. I tested my internet connection and it seems very strong.

This might be a dumb suggestion/question, but are any of you guys who get a lot of lag running any overlays? I used to use a world boss/wvw overlay, but about a month ago I realized my fps dropped by about 50-60 whenever it was on. When I stopped using it, my fps shot up to around 70-90 fps. I run on the performance mode preset with some character number drawn/detail settings higher (so I see people and not just names) for wvw or large zerg events and no longer experience significant lag then either. Running Windows 7 on an NA server (Mag) with an i5 and a gtx 770 if that detail matters.

Since the latest post here was 3 months ago, I figured I’d post to see if there has been any update on the status of the servers?

For the past month or so I’ve been experiencing pretty nasty skill lag, and generally when I run a ping trace, I’m losing about 10% of my packets once they hit NCSoft servers during non-peak time and around 70-90% of packets during CST peak time.

Was just curious if there was any sort of update on this front?

Loperdos.7924:

For the past month or so I’ve been experiencing pretty nasty skill lag, and generally when I run a ping trace, I’m losing about 10% of my packets once they hit NCSoft servers during non-peak time and around 70-90% of packets during CST peak time.

from a networking standpoint, loss of packets for a ping inside a network does not directly correlate with “skill lag” you may experience. typically networks that are at risk of attack (ie. game servers, VoIP servers, etc..) rate limit or drop ICMP entirely since it is very common to be used for abuse. this is also true for UDP as well.

if you do a TCP (3-way-handshake) style ping, i would almost put gold on you not seeing any loss.

Were there any major improvements to the game engine regarding amd fx-processors? @4.8ghz My experience soured in the long run despite much enjoyment and enthusiasm in the beginning. Was anything ever done to fix this?