Guild Wars 2

Hi all,

I am well aware that there have been topics about this before. However, I was wondering if anyone had come up with a solution/solutions to help ‘control’ the skill lag when it occurs?

I have read about the server side issue, so it would be great if a Arenanet representative could give the community an insight on how/when/if they plan to fix this?

Right now, I think this is the biggest problem in World vs World. The recent patch was brilliant, but it is impossible to play at times and therefore negates the content in-front of us. If anyone has found anything that works, it would be great to know, since until we get an answer on what is happening about it, we have to work with what we have.

(P.S If something has been posted by a moderator before about plans to change skill lag, I apologize)

Sadly, the only solution available right now is to physically avoid zergs. Players are bunch up more than ever these days and when one ball clashes with another the servers can’t process all the incoming client information real time.

I’m about as far from a software or hardware engineer as it gets, so I’ll refrain from commenting on how to fix it, other than the obvious that something needs to change so all the information from these clustered groups can be processed real time.

Liquid.9672:

Sadly, the only solution available right now is to physically avoid zergs. Players are bunch up more than ever these days and when one ball clashes with another the servers can’t process all the incoming client information real time.

I’m about as far from a software or hardware engineer as it gets, so I’ll refrain from commenting on how to fix it, other than the obvious that something needs to change so all the information from these clustered groups can be processed real time.

I don’t think ‘Zerging’ should be completely blamed or honed in on as the problem. Some World vs World guilds are in excess of 40/50+ people alone, are we therefore saying that a max sized World vs World group or guild should be 25 people?

The whole idea of World vs World was to have large scale battles. I love both squad and zerg play. Both have there ups and downs. But to solely blame this, is unfair.

Also just ‘avoiding’ it doesn’t work, since it will lag the map out anyway.

dont worry m8ty,

7 months of culling will now turn into 7 months of skilllag (If not longer), since i doubt if there are even willing to fix it ($$)

Other then that they fixed they culling the WvW update was totoally crap ( okay its nice to buy a second set from all the badges we gathered) but for the rest…totally disapointing.

Infact gief me back my culling i loved it small raoming. I rather have 100% culling then 1 % skill lag and we have 75% skill lag so figure it out:P

regards

What Tier Server? I’m in T5, In WvW every night for multiple hours and haven’t seen any lag at all. I’ve been around a handful of major fights that are 50ish on each side fighting at Stonemist.

I’m assuming this is in EBG, but are the Borderworlds experiencing the same problems at the same time?

The only time I’ve ever seen skill lag in T4/T5 is when all three teams have their biggest zergs fighting in the same space — generally this only happens at Stonemist.

Culling didn’t impact this one way or another as far as I can tell. It’s one reason I don’t like Eternal as much but you can also just avoid Stonemist. While the 3-way-zergfest is there, go cap some towers.

Its in all boarder-lands and Eternal. I am currently talking about tier 1. If we could please avoid this thread becoming a ‘complaining’ thread and focus on if anyone has found some solutions.

I think the patch addressed alot of issues and brought life back into World vs World, so I dont share your view Akunadin I’m afraid.

I sure future badge spending options will come in the future, but that isn’t the focus of the thread.

Solution against skill lag: Get out of stacked top tier servers…

Slamz.5376:

The only time I’ve ever seen skill lag in T4/T5 is when all three teams have their biggest zergs fighting in the same space — generally this only happens at Stonemist.

Culling didn’t impact this one way or another as far as I can tell. It’s one reason I don’t like Eternal as much but you can also just avoid Stonemist. While the 3-way-zergfest is there, go cap some towers.

This is where it used to happen most often, because of the number of players you could often find in one small area (SM Lord’s room). Mike Ferguson even specifically mentioned “lag issues players experience during some of the larger fights around Stonemist” in a February interview.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/196tgh/jeuxonlineinfo_made_an_interview_with_mike/

“We generally try to avoid changing the limits as it greatly impacts the game, but it is one of the things we can manually adjust to help us evaluate our changes when they go live. After the last patch we tried reducing the limit quite a bit more than what has been typical for the last few months to see if we could ease some of the lag issues players experience during some of the larger fights around Stonemist, but changed it back after a few days because we didn’t see a major improvement and it was just too detrimental to the game.”

They tried reducing the map population limit (something I think many of us remember) and it didn’t provide meaningful improvements vs. the downsides (queues). I think the problem now is larger clashes are often taking place outside of SM, in Borderlands for example, where it didn’t happen as often before, if ever. The result is more players are experiencing skill lag where for a long time it was mainly limited to large 3-way fights for SM. I really do think this is because the number of players following a single commander has grown in recent months, and ballooned recently when WEXP was introduced because zerging is the most time efficient way to gain that WEXP.

Jeknar.6184:

Solution against skill lag: Get out of stacked top tier servers…

I don’t believe this to be solution. Thank you for your input though.

Jeknar.6184:

Solution against skill lag: Get out of stacked top tier servers…

You need to educate yourself. Here’s some viewing material for a start.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/180776/Video_Guild_Wars_2s_programming_tricks_revealed.php#.UTPsClded4M

Check out the part where the presenter explains how WvW uses the merged capacity of all the servers for every tier.

Try to imagine what happens when a massive battle breaks out in Tier 1 and the system needs to scavenge capacity from elsewhere. Can you picture the result? Probably not, but the Cliff Notes version is that players everywhere else, including in PvE, can be affected as the system dynamically tries to respond to the extra heavy load in Tier 1. The lag will for sure be worse and occur more often sequentially (multiple lags one after another) in a high population tier, but that’s small comfort to anyone in a lower tier whose abilities suddenly fail him in a critical situation.

Skill lag is a game wide problem. I’m on a Tier 6 server and it would take a pretty dull witted person not to notice the prime time lags even here.

Thanks for the video link. I had never seen the presentation before, but it’s really opened my eyes as to the issue going on here. From what I can understand, there is a certain gameplay environment that at certain times goes over Anet’s allocated CPU budget. Like any business, Anet will allocate the smallest amount of resources to provide a fluid and enjoyable gameplay environment. The big question is, will they decide to address these spikes by increasing their CPU budget, or will they decide that it is not worth it from a cost/benefit standpoint.

Liquid.9672:

Thanks for the video link. I had never seen the presentation before, but it’s really opened my eyes as to the issue going on here. From what I can understand, there is a certain gameplay environment that at certain times goes over Anet’s allocated CPU budget. Like any business, Anet will allocate the smallest amount of resources to provide a fluid and enjoyable gameplay environment. The big question is, will they decide to address these spikes by increasing their CPU budget, or will they decide that it is not worth it from a cost/benefit standpoint.

A lot depends upon how they actually perform the dynamic allocation of capacity. Trust me, I’m not trying to defend ANet or some of the highly questionable decisions they’ve made, but it may be that their total system is so tightly integrated that they can’t really add server capacity (or improve the game engine or expand whatever link they have from the servers to the internet) without shutting everything down. If you watched the entire video you saw the part where they talked about how even their dev trials and QA data collection is done via scripts that run on the live system. It’s a cool sounding approach on paper but they clearly underestimated their ability to meet player demand for WvW (whether that may be due to more demand than they expected or simply less capability of their product than they thought they had) and they may have painted themselves into a corner as far as doing anything about it.

I’m just speculating, of course, but since ANet won’t actually tell us what’s going on that’s really all we can do.

Jeknar.6184:

Solution against skill lag: Get out of stacked top tier servers…

T7 EB was full of skill lag this past weekend. Not too bad when people were just converging on SM, but the moment SM out is open, skill lag extends about as far as halfway between spawns and keeps.

Couldn’t even try to use skills to get back to SM faster.

silverfire.2547:

Jeknar.6184:

Solution against skill lag: Get out of stacked top tier servers…

T7 EB was full of skill lag this past weekend. Not too bad when people were just converging on SM, but the moment SM out is open, skill lag extends about as far as halfway between spawns and keeps.

Couldn’t even try to use skills to get back to SM faster.

It’s because SF is a cluster of people =P.

Jokes aside… Most people I see complaining are from T1/T2… So I say it’s clear that lag is more frequently on the high populated servers due the high amount of people in the zones… Hell, the dragon fights on PvE also lag a lot…

Blame WXP. WXP has caused more people to zerg in even bigger balls then ever before. Maybe (though doubtful) this will finally inspire anet to do something to de-incentivise zerging for a change. 30-40 and even 50 man balls were okay but now we get 80-100 man balls.
When you stack that many people into a tight ball then suddenly explode outwards into skills and movement and effects its also going to cause an explosive usage of server resources.

Enough has been said, again they will not fix skill lag.

The couse is eassy the servers anet usses are crap for blobbing. So they need to invest in better 1’s wich is very expensief. Again they will not do so!!!!!!!

Anny decent server can hold 100vs100.
Look at Aion when asmo invaded we had over 150 vs 150 and no1 had lag ( course U needed a good pc for this) that was playing on Perento. (just tell me iam wrong here:P)

Its all about the money.

Can we add a Q to some PVE areas, and use the resources that would have otherwise been spent on overflow servers to reduce skill lag in WvW?