The original post was made by the German Community Manager Ramon Domke on the German GW2 forums here: Anzeigeverzögerung (Culling) und wie wir kitten umzugehen gedenken
I posted a translation on the Ehmry Bay Server Forum here: how ArenaNet plans to deal with display culling
Then I decided it that would be useful for players on the other servers to have some insight in this as well. If you want to troll me by posting something about how can you be sure that it’s translated accurately you are welcome to just do your own translation.
= The following has been posted in German by German Community Manager Ramon Domke =
We are currently working on a solution (or rather a collection of solutions) for the culling and other problems associated with loading characters [into the players view]. In order to improve this issue we have to make numerous changes to the game engine which will take time. We are currently unable to publish any details on the solutions we are working on, but we do want to let you know that we are intensively working on improving your game experience.
Long version:
We are currently employing a server-side delay in displaying characters to limit the number of characters displayed to each client. By limiting the number of characters displayed to each client we are able to limit the bandwidth used by the server and the client to avoid situations in which the client is overwhelmed with the number of characters that need to be rendered. This system has obvious advantages and works really well in PvE, but in large battles characteristic for WvW the weakness of this system occasionally surfaces.
Furthermore there are some client-side problems which impact how our culling system works. After a client is notified that a character is present some time is needed to actually load the resources required to display this character. The time it takes to load those resources depends on the power of the client computer (RAM, CPU, CPU cores. disk i/o). One of our game engine programmers recently completed an optimizing routine which will improve character load times and we will soon™ see those improvements. Still, the main issue with culling is server side an how fast your computer can load character resources is this irrelevant [if your client doesn’t even know that the character exists in your vicinity].
As you may know, we implemented a solution to the current culling problems in the sPvP part of the game. Since in sPvP significantly fewer players present at any one time we were able to implement this solution immediately without to worry too much about unintended consequences.
WvW on the other hand functions on a much larger scale than sPvP and thus we have to deal with additional issues before we can implement a server-side fix. We need to ensure that clients, especially clients which only meet the minimum system requirements, can render and process more characters. We also need to ensure that there the bandwidth required [to play the game] remains within a reasonable range and the published minimum requirements.
The WvW team is currently working an both of those issues. Any changes we will be implementing will be complex and will have massive implications on how the game engine works. Because those changes are so complex and affect core systems of the game engine it will take some time to properly implement those changes. Thus I am unable to announce any kind of ETA.
Our goal is to dramatically improve the game experience during large WvW battles and to significantly increase the number of characters that can be rendered by the client.
this is the end of the first post —-
In response to a player question whether it wouldn’t be easier to just display stick figures in WvW Ramon replied the following:
We are looking into it. Of course it’s supposed to look better than just stick figures yet offer a significant improvement in performance. For example, a standardized character model for male human characters or some such that only 10 different models have to be preloaded yet the immersion isn’t completely hosed.
this is the end of the reply to that question —-
In reply to the suggestion to color code players:
Right, thus it’s our goal to have a well defined finite solution to how characters are displayed, for example those 10 placeholder models, 5 races, 2 genders, potentially 8 color options for classes, or perhaps only 3 colors to indicate which world players are from. Those models would be permanently preloaded and would thus be instantly available when needed. The theorycrafting is quickly and easily done though implementing such a solution will take quite a bit of programming skill.
