Guild Wars 2

Yalora Istairiea.6287:

As to whether or not this resolves the WvW issue or not will remain to be seen. I personally only do WvW for the PvE Map completion(an issue for a later time).

As for the culling issue with PvE… The issue is a self-inflicted problem brought on by one very specific NON-Programing change by the powers that be…Guesting!

You want to fix the problem in PvE, simple:
One chest…per character…per day. Done! You will notice I did not say “Per Server”.

I am sure I have just incurred the wrath of the Server Hoppers, so be it. Just because you Can do a thing, does not mean you Should do a thing. Not only will this stop the people who flood our server just to get more drops then are entitled to a single server but I will again be able to actually tag an enemy before its instant untimely death.

I know the Server Hoppers feel they have the right to flood my server for the 30 seconds that it takes for the Jungle Wurm to drop, pick up the chest and Jump to the next server. I however, come from a different school of thought.

If you opened the Meta Chest on your server already, you’re done…move along…nothing to see here!

Now don’t get me wrong, this can NOT be a player imposed restriction, oh no, that will Never happen. This has to be Anet setting the restriction and allow those of us who do not glut up other servers, have fun again.

I’m sorry, but guesting is not the reason for culling in PvE, we had culling long before guesting was released, we had culling in the karka event (the worse I’ve ever experianced it) and we even have culling while standing around idle in cities like LA

But I’m guessing atleast another 3+ months until we see a fix for it in PvE which is stupid, a year after release and the game still isn’t “ready”. Anyway, you really need to fix it for every aspect of your game because it is getting a joke now. I know people that have left because of culling who don’t play WvW as it doesn’t only effect them or even effect them any worse. Culling should have never been introduced to the game, it’s clear that the game was not ready on release and still shouldn’t have been released to this day, not when you have massive game breaking issues like culling.

I was standing at the top of the stairs into the LA bank the other day and I couldn’t even render players that was stood at the bottom of the stairs and I’d guess that’s what, a 5 second run maybe 2 jumps distance? I also did the champion worm and it died before it even rendered, now that is game breaking.

Thanks to those posting screenshots of resource usage. I think it’s obvious that Anet has some optimization to do beyond simply shifting responsibility to the players CPU/GPU. One thing I would like to know from Colin or a dev, and it would be very illuminating for this discussion, is why did culling ‘appear’ in PvE after the 1/28 patch. I know it was present previous to that, but it was episodic. I could go days or weeks in PvE and never notice culling issues. The 1/28 patch hits and there is culling daily in all DE’s with a population of players. Why? What changed that would introduce culling uniformly and universally across open world PvE?

Yalora Istairiea.6287:

As for the culling issue with PvE… The issue is a self-inflicted problem brought on by one very specific NON-Programing change by the powers that be…Guesting!

You want to fix the problem in PvE, simple:
One chest…per character…per day. Done! You will notice I did not say “Per Server”.

I am not sure what you mean. World chests are NOT once per day/ per server.

They ARE once per char per day, so the only world event guests are people who probably don’t have time to wait for a spawn window on their server and want to get a certain event completed for that day. Life happens. Maybe they have to go to work, school, etc.

Like I said, none of the PvE culling is detrimental to success in most circumstances. In WvW it is so much more important to see who is where, hence the long months of work by Anet to solve this issue.

EliteZ.1682:

Culling should have never been introduced to the game, it’s clear that the game was not ready on release and still shouldn’t have been released to this day, not when you have massive game breaking issues like culling.

I was standing at the top of the stairs into the LA bank the other day and I couldn’t even render players that was stood at the bottom of the stairs

I can’t imagine the last 7 months without playing GW2. Anet has world-class support, hence so many player driven post-launch improvements/patches/updates. When you release something as ambitious and innovative as GW2, it takes time to get things to the top of their game. I would rather be involved in the progressive living story (PvE) improvements than wait for it to be ‘perfect’.

I have terrible culling in LA as well. We were having a costume brawl and when people started coming to watch, suddenly everyone on screen (cept one or two) started disappearing.

Aesthetically, this is certainly painful to experience but is well worth the patience for a PvE culling solution.

critickitten.1498:

I have concerns about this post.

Mainly because it doesn’t actually sound like culling has been “eliminated”. It just sounds like you’ve found a way to shift most of the burden of how culling is implemented onto the player’s own PC. The “options” presented in that post really heavily imply that the player is going to be expected to figure out how high (or low) their own graphical settings will allow them to go. For example, someone with very high end specs may be able to put their culling limit high (50 people or more), whereas people who are only slightly above the game’s min specs will have to drop their culling limit much lower or else play the game with nameplates only. And, at least to me, that doesn’t suggest culling is gone, only that you’ve found a way to make the player decide how much culling they want to put up with.

I hope I’m wrong but I can’t shake the feeling that something is very wrong with the way this has been presented. Culling really isn’t something that just switches on and off. And this post seems to imply that, rather than culling actually being removed, players will be expected to pick how much or how little culling they want to experience. And I’m pretty sure most people would rather not have any. So I think this may end up not being the wonderful “death of culling” that it’s being presented as….but hopefully I’m wrong.

so, who cares. they have fixed the issue, its the players problem now. they stated when this game was released that over time you may nee a better machine to run the game and this may be an example of that.

I just want to be able to see Mossman coming for me again – he pops up on top of me after his big stealth hit lands ever since January. Hopefully this will be a good change for WvW though!

EliteZ.1682:

I’m sorry, but guesting is not the reason for culling in PvE, we had culling long before guesting was released, we had culling in the karka event (the worse I’ve ever experianced it) and we even have culling while standing around idle in cities like LA

Yes I agree, anyone who has laid dead on the ramp up to the Final Karka event boss after 2 1/2 hours, with hundreds of other poor souls littered around me due to invisible attacks from invisible mobs; are aware that this issue has been going on for a long time. My point is that it has gotten many, many, many times worse by the advent of Guesting.

As a general rule, on the Valuable Chest events, It used to be that I could actually target the enemy spawning near me; now I am lucky to be able to tag One Grawl or Ice Elemental in the Maw event before they are dead. Sure some times are better then others(I am talking peak hours) and it is dependent on what profession you are as some can tag quicker then others.

I am just saying that it has gotten considerably worse since the Server Jumping started.

Sigh… People just can’t be happy -.-.

I’m going to say some theoretical speculation based on my years of gaming with various hardware. Note, I came from integrated graphics gaming so I DO know quite a lot about gaming with very low end systems.

critickitten.1498:

snort The folks in this thread just won’t read, they only see what they want to. And anyone who expresses even mild skepticism at the “death” of culling is burned at the stake like the heretic they are.

That’s fine. We’ll try this again after the patch goes in, hopefully people will be a bit more grounded after that and we can have a reasonable discussion on this subject without people purposely misunderstanding the concerns of others. I’m simply not going to keep repeating myself because I’ve no need to defend my concerns from you. I’ve said what I wanted to say. I’ll return to this discussion after the patch, when all of the hype has settled down and people aren’t wildly speculating.

I’m sure you’re not referring to me, but as I said, I was just refuting your concerns with logical debate/reasoning using past gaming experience and some “theory” if all works out. It’s not good to be unhappy/sad, so I thought I take something off your chest and give you some hope to look forward too instead of letting you inflict doubt and worry on your own.

critickitten.1498:

Again, no one expects an optimal experience with minimum specs, that’s unreasonable. But this notion that a person playing the game at-or-above min specs isn’t entitled to a good playing experience unless they own the best computer on the market is just absurd.

I have never, ever seen people more vehement about how this is the player’s fault (even though it’s long been established by devs that it’s not) than in these forums….but then again, I’ve never seen people have this much trouble with a game’s playability despite their computer exceeding its minimum specs, either. Culling in large battles is expected to some degree….culling when there’s only a dozen allies near you is pretty intolerable, especially when other games with smaller budgets can manage at least that much.

If you had a lot of experience with bad computer specs and stuff, then you should know well enough that people with these low specs already expect parts of the game “unplayable due to FPS lag”. I speak like this because I know too well from my own past experience. Why blame the developer for making an amazing game that my PC can’t handle? It’s not going to do ANYTHING lol because they’re not going to send you a new computer. From my own experience, I fought for every single little optimization, overclock, anything that can give me more FPS in those days. There’s no point arguing whether it’s the dev or player’s fault. It’s just your current hardware, and in this case, the bare minimum specs lets you play at least 80-90% of the game, so that’s very good if you’ve lived in that world before.

I’m only pointing this out because it feels like you’re coming at this from perspective of mid-high end. I’m pointing this out to you from the perspective of a person who came from low end to high end. It’s a hugely different world and perspective. Anyways, you say you don’t have a minimum spec PC, so I don’t see why you’re arguing.

In regards to how GW2 is… yes, I think it could use more optimizations, but it’s not easy as you guys think. With my system setup, i5 2500k @ 4.2 ghz, Nvidia 560, LA gives me around 40-50 FPS, with dips to 15-30 sometimes. LA uses especially high CPU, which is where the lag comes from. Try spinning in a circle and you’ll notice a ton of lag. Spin a second time, and it’s a lot smoother. That’s because the game loads what’s on screen dynamically. Once it’s loaded, it’s back to being smoother. It’s still heavy on CPU though compared to other areas. I’m guessing that’s due to all the NPCs/Players in the area taking up processing power. It might be due to the physics engine, Havok that GW2 uses… That could be it, but I don’t have code to look at :P. All I know is that physics take quite a lot of computational power, and if Anet hasn’t moved that off to the graphics card (which many games do nowadays), then that’s a likely source of lag. This is totally speculation though, and it’s better to leave this to devs to deal with.

By the way, even if you have low bandwidth usage, you can still lag due to latency. I know this well because many times when I game at night, my latency is around 200-300, and my internet lags more. This isn’t Anet’s fault though, but my own cable company. Apparently too many neighbors download at night, and they clog up the pipe in the neighborhood (cable is shared usually in neighborhoods. No dedicated lines like DSL).

Regardless, this change should be good for everyone. Anet is removing the client/server culling. That’s the part where the server doesn’t send data to you to tell you where people are, and that’s a big part of culling because even if you had a fast computer that can render it all, it doesn’t even know there’s something there to render. With this change, they’re letting clients control how much to render, which is a LOT better than simply limiting it on the server and forcing high end PCs to render less.
This works well for low end PCs too because you can tweak settings instead of having those moments where entire zergs come in and lag you, after the server suddenly decides to tell you that they’re there…

Colin mentioned this specifically too. The patch is for the client/server, not the client/graphic side. Technically, you can still get culling on a bad system, and it might be a small improvement on really bad systems, but for higher end systems, at least you get the data so you can render it, if you can.

I’ll end this with a quote from the article since a lot of people seemed to have missed this o.O

For the sake of clarity, I want to make a distinction between our usage of the term “culling” in this post (meaning to limit the amount of data the server reports to the client) and other uses of the word “culling” related to graphics (discarding backward facing triangles in models, triangles or whole models that are occluded, etc.). Our changes are to the client/server culling and have no bearing on basic graphics operations in the GW2 client.

kKagari.6804:

Can’t tell if serious. Yes I read the blog post. No this is not the first time they have claimed to have dealt with culling.

Then go read it again.
They.are.completely.removing.it…
As in it’s completely poof gone.
They’re not trying to improve it.

Furthermore they haven’t claimed to have dealt with culling before, if you also read the dev posts back then, you would’ve known they tried to improve it with a minor temporary fix while working on removing it completely.

I understand your scepticism though as the minor improvement they made while working on removing it, for many people wasn’t an improvement.
Also it doesn’t mean that no new problems can occur, but those problems aren’t culling related anymore because there’s no culling anymore but could be bandwidth or rendering related for which the rootcause would in many of such issues be on the client, not the server side, eg out of A.net’s control.

When I read the article about culling being gone there were only two thinks I did not like. “culling off completely IN WvW” so not in PvE.

And “(except those using invisibility skills, of course)” well it’s time for them to go as well.

So Thnx for giving some information about the PvE part however I would like it is the answer was ‘yes thats also gone’ in stead of ‘later’.

btw I am not sure why the created of this post only noticed since January, the problem has been there for a long time. Especially with vertical difference. You can maby see whats 10 meters in frond of you but you can’t see what is 3 meter above or below you. We did some jumping puzzle events with the guild and that was almost impossible to do.

Another way to see this culling is to go to Divinity’s Reach and then in the long street the go’s down towards the exit jump down on one of the balconies. There are then roads above you and below you that you can see but you can’t see anybody on them. You can understand that for doing multiple guild-events this is very bad.

The most troubling thing with this whole culling fix is an admission by the devs that they released a game that was not ready and or fully tested.

This whole culling system should have been figured out and resolved well before release. Now they are hinting that system requirements and or system performance might be different (lower).

How could this problem not have been noticed before release?

Devata.6589:

When I read the article about culling being gone there were only two thinks I did not like. “culling off completely IN WvW” so not in PvE.

And “(except those using invisibility skills, of course)” well it’s time for them to go as well.

So Thnx for giving some information about the PvE part however I would like it is the answer was ‘yes thats also gone’ in stead of ‘later’.

btw I am not sure why the created of this post only noticed since January, the problem has been there for a long time. Especially with vertical difference. You can maby see whats 10 meters in frond of you but you can’t see what is 3 meter above or below you. We did some jumping puzzle events with the guild and that was almost impossible to do.

Another way to see this culling is to go to Divinity’s Reach and then in the long street the go’s down towards the exit jump down on one of the balconies. There are then roads above you and below you that you can see but you can’t see anybody on them. You can understand that for doing multiple guild-events this is very bad.

Your referring to PVE and they are aware of it and working on it. They also known about it a lot longer than January considering that the culling your referring is what they put in. They limit the amount of data streaming through your bandwidth form the game to ensure that your system (and others) are capable of handling it. They are currently working on a fix for PVE, but you have to give it more time. PVE is by far larger and more potential for things to go wrong. Invisibility skills are also part of thieves builds and design.

diabluz.2860:

The most troubling thing with this whole culling fix is an admission by the devs that they released a game that was not ready and or fully tested.

This whole culling system should have been figured out and resolved well before release. Now they are hinting that system requirements and or system performance might be different (lower).

How could this problem not have been noticed before release?

It was noticed and put into effect by Anet to limit amount of your bandwidth being taken by the game. Basically, it was Anet trying to take the stress off of players computers. They couldn’t find a fix that would allow them to prevent player based culling so they are going to throw more on the client side. Which now means player based culling will occur but its now your hardware fault and not Anet limiting you in WvW.

so you are happy that they finally fixed something that should have been like this from the day 1? Now that’s good marketing from Anet , lol

Baeyne.9584:

EvoNeiko.8930:

So if I WvWvW my PC will blow up? my settings are on the Lowest of lows. 10-30FPS. Dragon events and stuff 1-6 FPS so this will just outright blow my box up? I don’t have 150$ to spend on a decent Card. if I did I would. if so please leave this out of PVE I don’t want to kill my box. it already runs super hot when playing now.

Errr… I don’t think you quite got what the intention of removing culling is.

The aim is that with your low end PC (as you said) you can WvWvW with 50 other people while your FPS remains at your stable 30 FPS.

And we also want that in PVE during chest events.

Hope that clears up some stuff for you.

Yea it does Thanks

Max Lexandre.6279:

The requirements can’t change that way, if you buy the game where you see that you meet the reqs., okay you play it, it can’t be a update saying “now it’s all updated and we increased reqs, soo go buy new pcs!”. It just can’t, ANet itself can’t say in the BOX when you buyed one thing, and then in the game other thing.

I’m pretty sure Blizzard did exactly just that when they upgraded WoW’s graphics with WotLK. Likewise, EVE Online has changed the requirements multiple times.

Granted, both those games did this for technology upgrades after running for many years, rather than being out for a mere 6 months like GW2. Still, there’s precedent.

zamalek.2154:

Complains about culling.

Complains when ANet tries to fix culling.

Minimum specifications for running a game are exactly that: what you need to run the game at the minimum quality settings. This change has actually decreased the minimum specifications (provided ANet have set it up so that you can decrease the model count to a value lower than it was pre-patch). The people who could previously render 80 models with no performance problems will still be able to render 80 models (and 1000 nameplates). In fact, players will who were previously excluded from WvW because of their machines will now be able to participate (again, provided the nameplate setting can be dropped to very low values). You are complaining that they haven’t done the impossible and drawn blood (high-end graphics) from a stone (-age machine). They have done what they can for you and have opened up WvW to more players.

Thanks for the hard work ANet, I hope the patch release goes off well.

One thing does concern me about nameplates though: that are a bit immaterial (and probably hard for clicky-players to target). Maybe use large class icons in the place of the model (when it is nameplated)?

You know how silly you look when you make that bold statement of “Min specs are exactly that… etc etc etc….”

My rig far exceeds the “Min spec” and I get performance that barely reflects that of an entry level PC on the lowest of low setting in GW2… no other MMO or high demand application has any issues on my PC but GW2 (especially noteable since the Jan patch) pretty much grinds to a halt in large events or WvWvW encounters.. its a mess pure and simple.
But by all means keep preaching the rule book to us all on here, just maybe look at the history of topic and you may begin to see its not just entry level PC’s that suffering.
If the entry level specs are met then having to dumb the game down further suggests the game is borked not the players hardware… its merely a shift of onus in order to make the game feel slightly playable… except its not just those PC’s that meet the min specs that are suffering poor performance.

Dont know about you but playing an MMO with not much more than a nameplate to aim at seems pretty unimmersive to me and if that’s what I end up having to cope with considering I have an i7 3700k on an ASUS P8Z77-V-Deluxe Mobo, 16GB RipJaw DDR3, dual Nvidia GTX 560Ti’s and playing off Mushkin SSD’s… then I know what my next action would be… UNINSTALL!!

Bloodstealer.5978:

zamalek.2154:

Complains about culling.

Complains when ANet tries to fix culling.

Minimum specifications for running a game are exactly that: what you need to run the game at the minimum quality settings. This change has actually decreased the minimum specifications (provided ANet have set it up so that you can decrease the model count to a value lower than it was pre-patch). The people who could previously render 80 models with no performance problems will still be able to render 80 models (and 1000 nameplates). In fact, players will who were previously excluded from WvW because of their machines will now be able to participate (again, provided the nameplate setting can be dropped to very low values). You are complaining that they haven’t done the impossible and drawn blood (high-end graphics) from a stone (-age machine). They have done what they can for you and have opened up WvW to more players.

Thanks for the hard work ANet, I hope the patch release goes off well.

One thing does concern me about nameplates though: that are a bit immaterial (and probably hard for clicky-players to target). Maybe use large class icons in the place of the model (when it is nameplated)?

You know how silly you look when you make that bold statement of “Min specs are exactly that… etc etc etc….”

My rig far exceeds the “Min spec” and I get performance that barely reflects that of an entry level PC on the lowest of low setting in GW2… no other MMO or high demand application has any issues on my PC but GW2 (especially noteable since the Jan patch) pretty much grinds to a halt in large events or WvWvW encounters.. its a mess pure and simple.
But by all means keep preaching the rule book to us all on here, just maybe look at the history of topic and you may begin to see its not just entry level PC’s that suffering.
If the entry level specs are met then having to dumb the game down further suggests the game is borked not the players hardware… its merely a shift of onus in order to make the game feel slightly playable… except its not just those PC’s that meet the min specs that are suffering poor performance.

Dont know about you but playing an MMO with not much more than a nameplate to aim at seems pretty unimmersive to me and if that’s what I end up having to cope with considering I have an i7 3700k on an ASUS P8Z77-V-Deluxe Mobo, 16GB RipJaw DDR3, dual Nvidia GTX 560Ti’s and playing off Mushkin SSD’s… then I know what my next action would be… UNINSTALL!!

My PC is weaker than yours but my performance is pretty good o.O. I’m on Win8 though. 60 FPS in most zones, 30-40 FPS in Lion’s Arch. WvW, playable FPS. Btw, I have an i5 2500k, 16GB DDR3, Nvidia GTX 560.

Bloodstealer.5978:

You know how silly you look when you

… argue for the sake of arguing:

critickitten.1498:

I’ll return to this discussion after the patch, when all of the hype has settled down and people aren’t wildly speculating.

Nonetheless, my speculation is:

- The adjustable nameplate/culling slider will allow more people to participate in WvW (effectively lowering the actual minimum specifications). This is an improvement.
- Players with overspecced machines will be able to witness more epic battles. This is an improvement.
- PvE will see better culling in the months to come. This will be an improvement.
- Zerg spell particle spamfests are still going to present a problem (my machine dips to 20 FPS in these scenarios, but in general I see 50-60 FPS in WvW). I personally hope to see some work done here soon.

diatribe: I have a single 660Ti, 2600K on a Intel OEM Intel EB Lake MoBo and get 70-75 FPS with vsync disabled in LA (90+ in general PvE). Not sure why you have problems: maybe you need to look into your MoBo or CPU (your northgate is pretty important, especially when it comes to large landscapes in combination with SLI), niether of which you specced with makes them suspect. If you did skimp on your MoBo to get that RAM try disabling SLI for GW2. It might also help to update your GPU drivers – NVidia did do a GW2 SLI compatibility update quite recently (not bothered to find the release notes, but it was in the last, say, 2-3 months).

We might see more updates if we are more supportive of ANet. Right now they are in the position where they “had better get updates right or all hell is going to break loose.” Heck, this update isn’t even released yet; and this thread full of slander. Had we been more mature about this we could have been seeing a more iterative style of release and the effort would have been more apparent. I suspect that releases are being held back in extended QA cycles because of the way we have behaved.

You asked for perfect updates, well, now you need to wait for them: QA takes time.

zamalek.2154:

You asked for perfect updates, well, now you need to wait for them: QA takes time.

Indeed, I was a bit harsh in my previous posts but, as I said, I still have faith in developement.

Yalora Istairiea.6287:

As for the culling issue with PvE… The issue is a self-inflicted problem brought on by one very specific NON-Programing change by the powers that be…Guesting!

You’re mixing up culling and overflows, among other things.

kenshinakh.3672:

My PC is weaker than yours but my performance is pretty good o.O. I’m on Win8 though. 60 FPS in most zones, 30-40 FPS in Lion’s Arch. WvW, playable FPS. Btw, I have an i5 2500k, 16GB DDR3, Nvidia GTX 560.

I also get 60FPS on most zones, except dragon or other large world events and WvW, and I also get the same FPS drop in LA. And in WvW, of course it’s “playable” most of the time. But first of all the perception of “playable” is very subjective, and secondly it gets unplayable when it would be important, in large battles. And that is solely because of CPU usage, which unfortunately cannot be reduced by any setting, even when you set everything to low, including subsampling, the FPS drop to below 30 as most of it only affects the GPU. There’s a minimal gain with shadows for example, but even that’s negligible overall.

Here’s a great quote from the Shroud of the Avatar dev team on “culling” which immediately made me think of GW2:

“Most people are shocked to hear that one of the most expensive systems on large scene MMO servers, is mob/character visibility. Not the actual ray testing to see if they can be seen but the logic of figuring out which entities should be updated of others actions.” ~ Chris Spears, Tech Director for Shroud of the Avatar.

I’m sure they’d love to fix it for PVE as well, but eliminating it completely is Expensive.

What I dont get is how is PvE different to Wubwub? Each zone has NPC’s, events, and other things to kill. They seem the same to me just without being able to attack another player.

Surely they can roll this out into the towns first? The main reason I hate culling is that it makes LA seem like a ghost town.

I understand what the dev said but I still don’t understand why low-res models are not avaiable for pve.

guess i won’t see people one feet from me in LA for another year…

Eliminating it in towns is probably the lowest priority they have, since it doesn’t affect gameplay. If it is that expensive and problematic to fix, makes sense PVP comes first, then PVE. There are so many people in Lions Arch is is probably the most expensive zone to fix out of all of them, and the pros don’t outweigh the cons.

LordSlack.4685:

Eliminating it in towns is probably the lowest priority they have, since it doesn’t affect gameplay. If it is that expensive and problematic to fix, makes sense PVP comes first, then PVE. There are so many people in Lions Arch is is probably the most expensive zone to fix out of all of them, and the pros don’t outweigh the cons.

2012 game with ps2 character rendering… This wouldn’t be a problem if they launched the game with decent rendering, you know, like games in 2012.

happyjedi.1372:

I understand what the dev said but I still don’t understand why low-res models are not avaiable for pve.

If the server doesn’t send the data then there is nothing to render. It won’t matter whether there is a low res option or not. If the server sent all the data; then the client could configure itself to an acceptable performance/visual quality provided it had the options to do so.

Right now culling kills 2 birds with 1 stone; it reduces the load on their servers and our clients. However, some of us have fancy clients and would like them to send us all the data. Unfortunately for now; due to technical reasons; they can’t.

LordSlack.4685:

Here’s a great quote from the Shroud of the Avatar dev team on “culling” which immediately made me think of GW2:

“Most people are shocked to hear that one of the most expensive systems on large scene MMO servers, is mob/character visibility. Not the actual ray testing to see if they can be seen but the logic of figuring out which entities should be updated of others actions.” ~ Chris Spears, Tech Director for Shroud of the Avatar.

I’m sure they’d love to fix it for PVE as well, but eliminating it completely is Expensive.

Who cares about mob culling in PvE? This wasn’t a problem since the Karka event took place, and that won’t happen again (hopefully). There’s exactly two places where player culling is annoying, just like in WvW and the same system should be applied: in large events where there’s mainly one big enemy, like a dragon (it should be easier to render some mobs than 100 enemy players) and in LA where you feel alone most of the time because you see only a few people. From an RPG and immersion perspective, fixing the culling in LA is actually way more important than fixing it in WvW – that’s not considering gameplay though.

Calae.1738:

Right now culling kills 2 birds with 1 stone; it reduces the load on their servers and our clients. However, some of us have fancy clients and would like them to send us all the data. Unfortunately for now; due to technical reasons; they can’t.

I’m still worried about CPU usage though. I hope they figured out what uses up so many CPU cycles in WvW and that it doesn’t get worse without culling. As I said before, my GPU is pretty much bored.

Iruwen.3164:

Yalora Istairiea.6287:

As for the culling issue with PvE… The issue is a self-inflicted problem brought on by one very specific NON-Programing change by the powers that be…Guesting!

You’re mixing up culling and overflows, among other things.

At No point did I say anything about Overflows. I am talking about what is happening on our Standard Server NOT what happens in overflows. In actuality when you are in an overflow there tends to be LESS people in the Overflow map not more and the experience is much more pleasant.

So pve remains broken until later this year

Lol bravo. Literally no point in logging on until they fix culling ,which is a horrible mechanic in the first place. I can’t even see what’s going on in events, that’s worse than the 10 FPS I get thanks to your amazing optimized client. Silly ME for actually believing they would fix culling all across the board, not just WvW.

Meanwhile, ultra in every other game I play, no problems seeing my enemies or allies. I think I know what games I’ll be playing.

I also find it mind boggling you guys still haven’t added the option for particle density. It’s largely the reason the game runs like crap in huge groups yet you can’t even lower spell effects like you can in every other MMO I’ve played… go figure.

Not to mention I’m supposed to dodge your 1hit instagibs yet can’t even see what some bosses are doing. This game still has years of work before it’s decent, and all it would take is a little common sense from the devs. #imad

I had noticed (since launch) that when I happened to get lag in PVE and in a location with many dead NPCs, the NPCs go through a fall down animation and then lay dead. Seems there may be an opportunity to remove the animation based on time per event. Player A enters proximity, IF enemy NPCs death event time stamp < player A time stamp = no NPC death animation or put NPC corpse on ground or no NPC corpse. Just a little possible refinement opportunity.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Max Lexandre.6279:

Hello.

I just saw the great news for WvW.

But since January Patch that I started to have Culling in PVE for the first times, mainly in Meta Events where even Mobs are Invisible sometimes!

Then, does the end of Culling affects also PVE? Or do we need to get used to “Invisible Events” in PVE?

I would like only to say, that I know Culling is also also about our Computer… but, the game must think in every kind of PCs, not only with high-end Ones.

The initial release of this system will be for WvW only. There are additional complications we need to solve with PvE due to the number and variety of creatures on screen that WvW doesn’t need to account for. Later this year, we’ll be expanding as much of the changes to the PvE open world as we can as well.

Problem is not in the number of mobs on the screen in PVE events. Problem with culing is when 20 or more players are participating in the event.
If you will add the same system form WvWvW to PvE it will work just fine.

That wont work Zlociutki, the problem is in the maps themself.. they give the client the information from the mobs, environment etc first. And the players later.. thats when culling steps in.

They need to re-programm all the maps in PVE to fix culling in all maps, and that takes ALOT of time.

Nemui.6753:

makes me wonder why it was introduced to PvE in the first place.

Agree i never had these issues when Guildwars 2 opened, PvE now is pretty bad with culling too, as bad as WvW..

I was on an alt in Harathi yesterday and couldn’t even see the mob of dying centaurs that the mob of players around me were killing. Culling would end as the bodies of the centaurs fell…

I just stood there doing diddly squat. Couldn’t see anything. Not sure why either as the player group wasn’t overly large compared to some groups I’ve seen running the meta-event.

I’m not sure if it was mentioned already, but the fact that culling is more apparent in PvE now compared to the launch is because they likely reduced the draw count to save on server bandwidth.

They said server bandwidth is also one of the reasons they have culling. I expect culling to get worse for PvE now that WvW gates are open to balance out bandwidth usage.

(just my opinion)

Dante.1508:

Nemui.6753:

makes me wonder why it was introduced to PvE in the first place.

Agree i never had these issues when Guildwars 2 opened, PvE now is pretty bad with culling too, as bad as WvW..

I think some decisions were made, in the numerous “server updates” we’ve had, to switch to less costly and less powerful servers or less bandwidth, and introduce intensive culling to pve. Right now I go to where a drunken npc should be out there in some camp with some 20-30 other npc’s, and have to wait 3-5 seconds for him to appear. This never happened when the game was launched and there were hundreds of players in the area. Only reason it could start to happen now, even with the lower number of players, is due to a cost reduction decision.

mysteryos.5329:

Very important change.

Many time did i rush into one enemy and see several more popping up like mushrooms within seconds. It just baffled me, the unconsciously suicidal WvW player

Its even funnier on the other end.

Often I’m in a 30+ guild zurg and we see a lone player running towards us, oblivious that we’re there. By they time he sees the first of us he is already dead. It does make me feel sympathy for the guy because I’ve died like this many, many times as well.

Alad QB.8904:

Dante.1508:

Nemui.6753:

makes me wonder why it was introduced to PvE in the first place.

Agree i never had these issues when Guildwars 2 opened, PvE now is pretty bad with culling too, as bad as WvW..

I think some decisions were made, in the numerous “server updates” we’ve had, to switch to less costly and less powerful servers or less bandwidth, and introduce intensive culling to pve. Right now I go to where a drunken npc should be out there in some camp with some 20-30 other npc’s, and have to wait 3-5 seconds for him to appear. This never happened when the game was launched and there were hundreds of players in the area. Only reason it could start to happen now, even with the lower number of players, is due to a cost reduction decision.

I guess then that shows the state of the game then, when they had to go for more cost effective (cheaper) servers..
Either way its not helping the game at all..

I’m not sure if it was mentioned already, but the fact that culling is more apparent in PvE now compared to the launch is because they likely reduced the draw count to save on server bandwidth.

They said server bandwidth is also one of the reasons they have culling. I expect culling to get worse for PvE now that WvW gates are open to balance out bandwidth usage.

(just my opinion)

I doubt i could play if it gets much worse, its pretty bad now and sometimes its almost unplayable…

To give an example
I’m in Southsun i’m on a cliff, i jump/climb down, i see nothing there, i do a few feet jump, land and 4-5 karkas materialize around me and instantly kill me, i could not see anything till i landed in them, its bad in game these days…

(I just deleted a post i added to an one month old thread, because i just saw this one is even more related to what i had to say.)

I’m quite worried about the game these last days/weeks… I got exactly the same problem as Max Lexandre. I never had culling in PvE in this game before… never ! (regardless to the place i was and how many people was here).

And now… i got some

I participated to Melandru event few days ago, and during the first part (the escort) there was many places where i just couldn’t see any of the mobs that was attacking us in waves. I was seeing other players fighting invisible mobs and i just couldn’t play.

And in the last hour i had the same problem in the grenth’s room. I couldn’t see the big spider at the end (strangely i saw the previous mobs). It just appeared during few seconds.. and disappered again, for the rest of the fight.
I could just watch other players play :/ It’s quite frustrating.

So.. i know my computer is not the most powerful, nor the oldest one (AMD 64 x2 5600+ 2,90Ghz, 4 Go Ram, ATI Raddeon HD5700 1go…) but the important part for me… is that the game was working perfectly for me in PvE before !

So.. i know my computer is not the most powerful, nor the oldest one (AMD 64 x2 5600+ 2,90Ghz, 4 Go Ram, ATI Raddeon HD5700 1go…) but the important part for me… is that the game was working perfectly for me in PvE before !I really hope you’ll don’t ruin the whole PvE for some of the players to make WvW work better (even if i like a lot the WvW too)

I’ve noticed the culling in PvE is getting terrible. In Lions Arch I walk a few steps and people pop up. The place looks empty, but as you move around you see people popping in and out…it’s awful. Even when our guild gathers in out of way spots, depending which way you turn, people are popping and disappearing. Not fun at all.