Guild Wars 2

Instead of making Tyria one big seamless world why did they choose to keep using portal load screens from GW1? can anyone explain why?

i’d imagine with gw2’s graphics, a big seamless world would cause a HORRENDOUS amount of lag since your not loading each area seperately

Gwaiyn.4395:

i’d imagine with gw2’s graphics, a big seamless world would cause a HORRENDOUS amount of lag since your not loading each area seperately

This. Because ArenaNet likes to appeal to a variety of gamers, (I.E. Gamers of all sorts with all sorts of computer hardware) they try to keep graphic dependency to a minimum. And with that, we have smaller “open zones”.

sonicwhip.9052:

Instead of making Tyria one big seamless world why did they choose to keep using portal load screens from GW1? can anyone explain why?

Also some sanity on the server side. Lets assume 2mil players world wide (similar number stated by a red post somewhere in the past week). Thats a little short of 38.5k people per server (average). Now lets assume that that each zone has its own process within the server, that means for the map you are on, the server only has to worry about 1.5k people per process (reality it is much less since not all 2m are on at once).

Conclusion, zoned map areas means less work for the server to do per map, meaning less server lag for us all.

It’s just easier to make the game that way.

I just don’t like how every zone is a rectangles and squares.

Also, could you imagine how overflow would work without zones?

Currently, each zone goes into overflow on an individual basis (whether or not it is packed).

If it was a “seamless” map, I think my world (Tarnished Coast) would be in constant overflow.

Anet has enough trouble with www and 3 servers in a single map. Now multiply the www culling and massive lag all over tyria? pve would be impossible.

Given such a thing is easy, you can see it with wow and their continents. But given how badly www is, I don’t want to imagine that everywhere else.

wildcode.5403:

sonicwhip.9052:

Instead of making Tyria one big seamless world why did they choose to keep using portal load screens from GW1? can anyone explain why?

Also some sanity on the server side. Lets assume 2mil players world wide (similar number stated by a red post somewhere in the past week). Thats a little short of 38.5k people per server (average). Now lets assume that that each zone has its own process within the server, that means for the map you are on, the server only has to worry about 1.5k people per process (reality it is much less since not all 2m are on at once).

Conclusion, zoned map areas means less work for the server to do per map, meaning less server lag for us all.

Those numbers are really fictional. Just because 2 million people own the game doesn’t mean they’re still playing it. In fact we know a good number of players have left.

The reality as you just put as a sidenote is what is you should’ve focused on. And reality is about much smaller numbers. Already having hundreds of people in the same map is already a strain on performance. That’s why WvW areas are capped much more strictly than a server as a whole.

It’s really a good choice in the end if it improves performance. The big downside is the loading times for each area, especially towns but I think I can live with that as such if it means better performance overall.

If you were at the Lost Shore/Karka Event at Lion’s Arch back then, you would know how bad that idea is.

If players have to deal with that kind of lag, and disconnection, and crash, and unresponsiveness, no one will play this game after just 1 day.

Of course, on the technical side, it’s easier to attack a “big problem” one “small piece” at a time….

Gehenna.3625:

wildcode.5403:

sonicwhip.9052:

Instead of making Tyria one big seamless world why did they choose to keep using portal load screens from GW1? can anyone explain why?

Also some sanity on the server side. Lets assume 2mil players world wide (similar number stated by a red post somewhere in the past week). Thats a little short of 38.5k people per server (average). Now lets assume that that each zone has its own process within the server, that means for the map you are on, the server only has to worry about 1.5k people per process (reality it is much less since not all 2m are on at once).

Conclusion, zoned map areas means less work for the server to do per map, meaning less server lag for us all.

Those numbers are really fictional. Just because 2 million people own the game doesn’t mean they’re still playing it. In fact we know a good number of players have left.

The reality as you just put as a sidenote is what is you should’ve focused on. And reality is about much smaller numbers. Already having hundreds of people in the same map is already a strain on performance. That’s why WvW areas are capped much more strictly than a server as a whole.

It’s really a good choice in the end if it improves performance. The big downside is the loading times for each area, especially towns but I think I can live with that as such if it means better performance overall.

They sold 2 million copies the first MONTH.

I think it’s safe to say they have far surpassed that number by now.

Too bad the way GW2 events worked out that only tyria could be accessible at the start. If Cantha and Elona could be accessed as well, might just give enough room to allow gw2 to be a seamless world. That would make it much more appealing imo

Wow nice necro, dude… you had to dig really deep, huh?

And yea, it makes perfect sense. Each map, one server. That makes load balancing way easier.

sonicwhip.9052:

Instead of making Tyria one big seamless world why did they choose to keep using portal load screens from GW1? can anyone explain why?

This is a big reason why I stopped playing the game… it’s such an amazing looking world, but the zone lines and loading screens at every turn broke the immersion… could never really have flying mounts, which would have made the world that much more amazing.

Zeldain.5710:

sonicwhip.9052:

Instead of making Tyria one big seamless world why did they choose to keep using portal load screens from GW1? can anyone explain why?

This is a big reason why I stopped playing the game… it’s such an amazing looking world, but the zone lines and loading screens at every turn broke the immersion… could never really have flying mounts, which would have made the world that much more amazing.

Well, they can do a flying sky world (one big zone), then you able to go “down” if you want to a zone.

11 months ago and then suddenly about an hour ago….

I just wish every zone didn’t have such linear boundaries, seems a bit odd but I’m sure that was just the best way to do it because I can’t really think of any alternatives that would make sense.

Actually I think the reason they seperated the world into “zones” was so their systems could keep track of and run all the different dynamic events within each one.

There are literally hundreds of events, could you imagine their system trying to keep track of every single one – when it happens, who counts for it, who helps to scale it, who gets reward from it, when it runs, what other events are linked to it. Now multiple that for every single event not to mention every single person, npc in the world and where they are all located and what they are doing….

How long does it take you to load Lions Arch?
Well think about it again.

Ping.5739:

How long does it take you to load Lions Arch?
Well think about it again.

For me it depends on time of day (if its US peak times or not since I am on NA servers). If LA is prime time it can take up to 2-3 mins I guess. Non prime time, 30 secs to a min.

It seems to depend on how many people are actually in the map that determines load time. Well that’s my observation anyway.

I am glad it’s zoned. Zoned games tend to run better and have less glaring issues on the whole over open world games. If you put as many players as show up to some of the major events on the screen at one time in a game like LOTRO, it would crash horribly.

Heck, my guildies and I played ToR and that game is zoned and it would crash that game too. The fleet in SW:ToR used to get laggy with 100 people there. I did Grenth with a ton of people last night and my framerate barely dipped. Zoned is good.

Iason Evan.3806:

I am glad it’s zoned. Zoned games tend to run better and have less glaring issues on the whole over open world games. If you put as many players as show up to some of the major events on the screen at one time in a game like LOTRO, it would crash horribly.

Heck, my guildies and I played ToR and that game is zoned and it would crash that game too. The fleet in SW:ToR used to get laggy with 100 people there. I did Grenth with a ton of people last night and my framerate barely dipped. Zoned is good.

I don’t think Lotro has those horrible lag issues because of its “seamless world” – I remember them saying that your character information got copied from one zone to the next- which was one of the reasons they had trouble adding more inventory space. From an old post:

“Each server handles a small portion of the entire game world and since we can travel from server zone to server zone across the “seams” without going through loading screens LotRO is a “seamless” world.

….

Servers handle specific areas such as Breeland or the Shire. Servers may actually handle even smaller segments of the game world. Seam I believe refers to where these servers hand off responsibilities.
For example when you ride into trestlebridge you leave the breeland server and enter the north downs server. If there is a lot of traffic on a server there can be trouble handing off the responsibility of generating the world your character sees. This would result in rubber banding where you ride forward into a new server and it can’t handle the load just yet so you get bounced back to the server where you came from. Usually after a few minutes, at most, the new server can give your client the data to generate the zone on your screen and you ride in."