Guild Wars 2

To be honest, I’ve mostly stopped playing due to this. I really enjoy GW2, and WvWvW is why I bought the game. But after weeks and weeks of dying repeatedly to enemy I can’t even see, running into areas only to wind up dead and then see the enemy materialize around me, and being unable to effectively fight at range or with siege weapons because I can’t see who I’m supposed to be targeting, I’ve given up.

I go back every now and then because I miss it, but I quickly get frustrated again and log back out. It’s just not fun running in to cap a tower or something thinking the lord room is empty, only to have the entire group killed because there were 30 or so enemy stacked in there and we couldn’t even see them until it was far too late.

i just read Habibloew reply. thanks for such an extensive reply.

i think it rather accurate explains the origins of culling but doesn’t seem to mention network bandwith requirements from the server side. i find it hard to believe that client side network bandwith is and issue for the vast majority of users but i can imagine that server side network bandwith is a bigger issue when huge amounts of players are in close proximity.

A great reply Habibloew, thanks.

From a purely nerdy developer (and hypothetical) point of view, have you guys (or any MMO with these culling-style issues) ever considered game clients talking directly to each other as a way of advising about nearby enemies? For example, in WvW, you have a known number of players… would a mini p2p system whereby clients poll other known clients for more information about player movement, or one client contacts another client when there is an interaction (such as targeting) improve things? I appreciate the complexity a distributed, peer2peer system like this represents, but it strikes me that culling exists mostly as a server level optimisation as opposed to anything that would kill client performance… after all, the client still renders and tracks all of those players once informed about their existence.

Just interested. Thanks again for confirming that fixes are on the way.

Its nice to see a dev comment on this. If someone targets you, your computer should be made aware of them and kept aware of them. This could solve some of the thief issues.

Perhaps there should be a client side option “slider” to determine how much bandwidth we can use for the game. Some of us are sitting on very high end systems. Its rather lame that we facing the same limitations as someone on a 56k modem.

They can’t just Engineer their way out of this huge problem.
And if they do find a way to, it will only make WvW even less balanced. Mark my words.

The Server-side culling was the right direction to go, they just didn’t take it to its natural conclusion that exists in PvE. IOW: If an A.I. controlled foe can’t “Path” to you, then you can’t damage that target. This is exactly how server side culling should have worked, everyone on both sides waiting for a server side parity/double check before they could start damaging eachother or using skills that affect Visibility. That right there would immediately put a stop to both Mass-Portal Bombings and “hiding in plain sight” Invsibibility Spamming classes. It also would have incentivized players to spread out more and not Zerg so much.

This is the most serious issue in the game and the dev post is pretty clear it will never be fixed. Look at the last paragraph. The goal is to get “more” characters on screen. They won’t even claim they are TRYING to eliminate culling entirely.

It is apparently part of the game that isn’t going to change. Those of us serious about large-scale PVP just need to give up and go elsewhere.

To be honest it’s not even the big battles that bother me. I expect there to be lag and rendering issues when 100+ people are fighting in one area. But when I’m dueling a thief and they don’t show up for a good 3-4 seconds after coming out of stealth, then they just stealth again before I can even find them it just makes me want to break my keyboard.

I know how to spam tab target, I know how to aoe them when they’re in stealth yada yada yada. It still doesn’t help. First you have to find out which way they went, then you have to spam tab and somehow hope it targets them. Then you have to position yourself in a way that you think your spells will hit because you can’t see their character. It’s just aggrivating.

I see the thief for maybe 20% of the fight. The rest of the time they’re invisible.

Pro tip:
Ask Mythic how they get all this done perfectly well 10 years ago with DAOC RVR. sigh

If it helps, I don’t mind if instead of showing actual players models, you show us instead some generic/clone player model. Some differentiation to show if its a warr , necro etc would be nice.

FYI, the culling bug also ruins any large scale world event.

teg.1340:

Pro tip:
Ask Mythic how they get all this done perfectly well 10 years ago with DAOC RVR. sigh

Mythic had their own problems back in the day. But you’re right that culling makes the issues DAOC had seem like small potatoes.

Them talking about BANDWIDTH being the problem is very puzzling. MMOs dont’ take much bandwidth. It really shouldn’t be the limiting factor on displaying more characters. There is something very, very wrong with their game code if it’s sending so much information back and forth that they can’t let someone see 100 characters on the screen for fear of maxing out the clients’ internet connection.

Culling hurts PVE all the time.

- It makes Orr very difficult. Battles for the temples are many times harder now than before this was added.

- It is killing the fun of the new Lost Shores events, since players can not see each other or any of the DARN MOBS WE ARE SUPPOSED TO BE KILLING !!

- I have quit playing WvW because of culling and that was the primary reason why I purchased this game.

- The -only- part of this game that is unaffected is sPVP.

I had no problems in beta or the week this game was released. I do not understand why I am being punished for having a high-end computer.

Why not disable it until your fix is ready ?
Why not put a slider in, 0% – 100% culling ?
Why not disable it for high-end computers ?

That’s the bit that concerns me: When the game launched, culling wasn’t present. It was introduced in the first week or so after launch. I.e., it was put in intentionally. And it could be taken out. But it’s not being taken out. It’s being left in and modified instead.

They can’t put a slider in or disable it for certain computers because it’s not a client-side feature. It’s a change they made to the server-side code.

i think the reason this problem exist is $ (server resources cost money) and i’m afraid from a commercial (cash shop) pov, w3 is just not interesting to anet.

HabibLoew.2590:

In order to address the culling issue we need to ensure that clients, including min-spec clients, are able to handle rendering and processing many more characters.

Please don’t waste any time worrying about min-spec users. Nobody can reasonably expect a large scale massive multiplayer experience on a toaster.

I wish they would just roll this game back to when it first released, ran and played so much better. I dont know what they did but they screwed it up for sure.

We’ll know when PlanetSide 2 comes out. We’ll just compare the two game Engines and see what is and isn’t possible.

Anet better hope the competition is just as bad on culling or their procrastinations really will be taken for lies.

muylaetrix.2096:

i think the reason this problem exist is $ (server resources cost money) and i’m afraid from a commercial (cash shop) pov, w3 is just not interesting to anet.

I can’t imagine how it isn’t. Wv3 is the biggest cash sink in the game. I wager more gems (and purchased gems) have been converted into gold to spend on upgrades, Commander tags, repairs, siege, etc… than any other facet of the game.

How can they not ‘love it’?

The point i am wondering about is:

When you run with your Zerg you have big problems of displaying the enemy. As soon as youre dead the enemys are displayed immediately. And there is no difference in the grafiks displayed.
I just dont understand this fact.

Maybe u can bypass the problem of older PC’s by letting the Client itself choose how fast and how much enemys he wants to display. Every user can then select the best for his PC’s. Like that u can make a compromise between grafik details and number of enemys shown.

Dhar.6392:

We’ll know when PlanetSide 2 comes out. We’ll just compare the two game Engines and see what is and isn’t possible.

Anet better hope the competition is just as bad on culling or their procrastinations really will be taken for lies.

Well – seeing as much of the culling and rendering issues for me arose in a patch and not when the game went live, then unfortunately – nobody cann guarantee the same will not happen in PlanetSide 2- but the PS2 beta so far gave me hope. I did not notice the same issues there yet.
And better yet – no PvE dungeon to grind over and over.

waeren.9743:

Has me wondering why the current system was never considered a potential problem. Didn’t this occur during beta/alpha testing?

In my experience, this is only a problem when there are lots of people out in WvW already, and I’ve been moving from place to place, so this probably didn’t happen enough pre-launch to be flagged as a significant issue.

Obviously, whenever something like this happens, (you run into a camp to kill the one guy attacking it and suddenly realize he has 25 friends) it’s a big deal and super frustrating. On the other hand, keep in mind the number of times that this DOESN’T happen.

Overall, the current system works very well 99% of the time. I encounter issues when there are lots and lots of people from all sides out in WvW, and I’m moving from one zergy battle to another. My feeling is that the game (server and/or client) is still busy tracking the 100+ people that I just ran away from, and chokes abit as I enter the proximity of another group.

I’m glad they are working on it, and agree it should be improved, but I don’t think the current system is as much of an epic fail as some people make it out to be.

mcl.9240:

That’s the bit that concerns me: When the game launched, culling wasn’t present. It was introduced in the first week or so after launch. I.e., it was put in intentionally. And it could be taken out. But it’s not being taken out. It’s being left in and modified instead.

Yep I have wondered why they don’t just simply roll back those changes.

Regrets of Sini.6083:

What is not up to the task is underlying distributed server infrastructure. Have you noticed that when people load, they load mostly all at once, and fully, so you see entire model, with race, type of armor they have and so on…

since it is a server side issue, and they are throttling the info sent to your machine due to the large amount of data that is needed to be sent in large battles, I would even be happy if they toned back the info sent about each model. Perhaps a generic look for each class so you at least you see them before they bombard your line with huge packets of data.

I know why they have designed it this way because it makes playing the game seem lag free. Works wonders in PvE but obviously it doesn’t work in WvW (still lag free but you can’t see anyone)

If they decided not to throttle the amount of data needed to view all the players, their gear, the way they have been designed, weapons you would need to be sitting on top of their servers to recieve all that info without lag.

They have to streamline the data sent for each model.

Honestly guys did you ever took a look for the usage of your internet connection???
I got an overall usage, even in big WvW zerg battles, of max. 10kb. Ok for all players its on server side a little bit higher upload.
But honestly. Cant u guys pay more for your connection and server blades and keep the gameplay more fluently and better?
And its more often then 1% happening that big zergs hit each other. Its the normal way of fighting.

There would be also the way of using a standard skin for the enemy. Like this the server just needs to send amount position race gender actions of the enemy. I dont need to see which armor the enemy is wearing. And the colors are red at all. For me i just need to SEE a player. Reduces at least the amount of data send by the server.

I don’t care what pretty weapons/armor anyone has when I am fighting with or against them, but I don’t expect to be listened to anymore either. Think how the people who’ve spent hundreds of dollars to have a sparkly sword would feel if you never had to see it? See why they aren’t going to put a placeholder/basic-skin model option in?

HabibLoew.2590:

In order to address the culling issue we need to ensure that clients, including min-spec clients, are able to handle rendering and processing many more characters. We also need to ensure that the bandwidth needed by any given client remains reasonable and falls within our min-spec for connectivity. The WvW team is working to address both the bandwidth and the client performance issues even now. The changes that we’re making are complex and have a large impact on the way the game engine works.

I am especially worried about us minimum spec low fps people that are already suffering hard in WvW zergs even with invisible enemies, please please tell me that you will have a patch that drastically improves performance on the minimum spec side of things before implementing this as to not make WvW completely unplayable for us poor folks

I posted it before in a separate thread that unfortunately went almost unnoticed but since it has been brought up here: Just do inbuild low polygon models for the enemies which are rendered whenever someone is in view but the information to render is not yet fully on the client (armor model, colour, etc.) or when the client is a low power machine that cannot handle that many high detail models.

Have the client dynamically adjust which model it uses and even low spec gear people should be able to play wvw in a 60 vs 60 fight with decent fps. I think what is actually stopping ANet from implementing such a mechanism ist the fear of low detail screenshots giving the game a bad name … but – from a player’s point of view – I could live easily with 30 ugly models on screen – much better than with 30 invisible ones that clobber the hell out of me.

Thrashbarg.9820:

I don’t care what pretty weapons/armor anyone has when I am fighting with or against them, but I don’t expect to be listened to anymore either. Think how the people who’ve spent hundreds of dollars to have a sparkly sword would feel if you never had to see it? See why they aren’t going to put a placeholder/basic-skin model option in?

Dude i am not watching enemys skins cause I CANT SEE ENEMYS. So i dont see his nice sparkling sword. And i am not interested in. I just see him dying. So its no problem to play with basic skin. The skin u made ur char is for your own kitten growth. Its also you cant see the colors the enemy choosed. so its uninteresting if you see the skin. Cause you cant see his 2gold expensive black colour or something else.

I also agree to HtFde. I think its much easier to let the player decide if he wants to have a great grafics but no enemy visible or be able to see the enemy in a acceptable time to choose a tactic oder run away.

Again, their stated explanation makes no sense. If it was really about making the game playable on bad computers they would give you a slider option to control how much culling you get.

The only reasonable conclusion is their stated explanation is not the real one. Either culling exists to lower bandwidth costs on their end or it exists because of some other flaw in the game engine. Both of these explanations fit with the way it was introduced after beta.

Even if it just showed the floating name tags that would at least give us an idea before running into an otherwise vacant looking area and should take virtually zero time to render.

HabibLoew.2590:

As I hope I’ve made clear in my posts fixing the culling issues is a major focus of the WvW team right now and I firmly believe that we will be able to achieve significant improvements when our current development efforts are complete.

The point is that “significant improvements” arn’t good enough. Being killed by 20 people and seeing 10 of them is not much better than being killed by 20 people and seeing 5 of them.

If you can’t tell us that at some point we’re not going to have culled enemies killing us how can you expect people to be satisfied? DAOC managed to do wvwvw 10 years ago with no culling.

Also your comment about culling always being in the game just does not ring true from those of us with experience in the beta. If you really think nothing is changed it is probably worth looking a bit closer because it sure feels like something changed on the user end. I remember playing in the BWEs and seeing many, many more people onscreen than I see in post-launch wvwvw. I can’t tell you with 100% certainty I never got attacked by culled enemies but it certainly didn’t feel like it does now.

@Yukishiro, completely agree with you .. Culling is a game breaker rather it’s 50% cull or just 5%. invisible enemies kill people.

On a side note..
I have recently had my main gaming rig’s mother board fail.. I was completely shocked at how badly WvW plays on a average gaming computer (my back up computer). On this back up rig, which is WAY above min spec (3.4G quad core, 8 GB ram, 860 nvidia card, BLAH BLAH BLAH )WvW big battles and keep takes / defenses are unplayable… lag, slow rendering, and then on top of that the sweet sweet culling.

Further more, In game settings to have zero effect to mitigate these slow rendering / client lag issues. yes I have even tried puting everything to lowest/min/off settings. I feel very sorry for those stuck on these lower than cutting edge computers.. Oh and I can’t even imagine what it’s like on a min spec rig or anything close to that .. It has made my main love in this game, WvW, a nightmare of invisible enemys and blind guessing.

Before I hated the culling issues, thinking what could posibly be worse than this?!? ..

now I know..

I can’t imagine how Mythic could run MASSIVE RvR battles10 plus years ago with out this issue and Anet, a decade plus later, has “intimate relations with a canine” on such a HUGE GAME BREAKING issue.

Don’t get me wrong .. I want to see culling fixed ASAP.. I just hope they fix WvW so more players can play and enjoy it … Not just those that can afford rigs that cost as much as a older used car.

HabibLoew.2590:

I would also like to add a personal observation: I understand that the current state of culling is frustrating. It frustrates us too and we’re working hard to fix it. Often in these threads people propose a variety of options for addressing the issue along with the suggestion that their proposed changes are simple. This is a tempting line of thought but in my experience very little of what goes on in game development is actually simple. In particular, the changes required to deal with culling involve fundamental changes to core systems. Both the changes and the systems involved are complex, which is why it’s taking us so long to implement them. As I hope I’ve made clear in my posts fixing the culling issues is a major focus of the WvW team right now and I firmly believe that we will be able to achieve significant improvements when our current development efforts are complete.

HabibLoew,
Could you explain if it would be difficult to increase the amount of data seen on the screen? What I mean is, obviously the Anet team is looking out for the little guy (min spec users) so the amount of data being sent to the client is very, very minimum. Could you explain if it would actually be “technically” hard to increase that amount of data to say 400kb/s? Or even do a speed test on our system to optimize the amount of data that can be consistently sent across the line? Or are you dealing with the problem of a bunch of micro-packets being sent to the client rather than bigger size packets? If that isn’t the problem, is it a legality issue regarding this min spec user thing? Image of the company on the min spec user?

I can see how any one of the above problems could cause the problems. Increase the packet size = people with slower connections or LIMITED connections will be ticked and put at a disadvantage, etc etc.

Sorry, just curious.

I too hope that it is addressed……….

…….But, realistically, from a pure marketing perspective I wouldn’t expect Anet to say anything other then “we’re working on it” regardless of actual prospects/priorities. It may be here to stay. /shrug.

HabibLoew.2590:

I’d like to correct a common misconception that I see popping up regularly in these threads. The culling that exists in Gw2 today is the same as what we shipped with. It was not introduced after the game launched, but was in fact present on day one. I suspect that people didn’t notice it as much in the beginning due to the game being all shiny and new, but it has been there all along.

I would also like to add a personal observation: I understand that the current state of culling is frustrating. It frustrates us too and we’re working hard to fix it. Often in these threads people propose a variety of options for addressing the issue along with the suggestion that their proposed changes are simple. This is a tempting line of thought but in my experience very little of what goes on in game development is actually simple. In particular, the changes required to deal with culling involve fundamental changes to core systems. Both the changes and the systems involved are complex, which is why it’s taking us so long to implement them. As I hope I’ve made clear in my posts fixing the culling issues is a major focus of the WvW team right now and I firmly believe that we will be able to achieve significant improvements when our current development efforts are complete.

I’m a programmer and I certainly understand changing features or adding new functionality can be difficult and takes time. Even though I work on relatively small applications for academic analysis, I’ve gotten my share of requests for features that would take far too much time to implement.

However, Anet has to realize, players are playing the game now. I’m sure you do realize this, but I just want to reinforce the point. While a good long term solution is great, you guys are just leaving the wvw game in a bad state right now, turning off players…ie customers.

Heck, if you need to break out the old GW1 april fool’s stick figure models for culled players, do so. Even if there’s not the badwidth to tell me what those players are specifically doing, I’d at least like to know they are there.

It would be pretty boss if this got fixed with some haste. This portal bombing thing is just absolute trash. Nothing like being unable to see the 40 people that just ported on you.

I am glad that ANet are working on this issue. I would like to emphasize that it is not only in WvW that culling becomes a major issue, but also in large scale PvE events. In the recent Lost Shores one-time events, most, if not all of the mobs that I faced in the phase 3 event only appeared on my screen at half health – due to the large number of players participating in the event they had been culled. This, coupled to the setup where experience and rewards are only earned if a player/party is responsible for a certain percentage of the total damage meant that I only received experience for perhaps 1/5 kills, even though I was in a full party. This needs to be fixed pronto.

As a programmer i know how hard it is sometimes to pass from thoughts and words into “1’s” and “0’s”. Saying things like “It’s easy, just do this or that… don’t help at all!”

Bandwidth sucks! With the improving of the MMO games a lot more of data is required to be sent from the client to the server and the other way around. This would create issues when a lot of players are doing this at the same time, like it happens in WvW or on PvE big events (Like the events from Lost Shores).

There are three kind of situations that can make this happen.Client side issues, Server side issues, and Client-Server communication issues. While the Client side issues are important, they should not be accounted for as the WvW should be working in at least the Minimum system requirements. Server side issues are easy to enhance (boosting the server machine with better components), but i believe that they are fine as they are. Communication is what is making the culling happening. The amount of data required @ every given time is very high. Specially in stressful situations like zergs, it is too big for the server to handle. Some safety procedures exists and that’s whats making the culling by imposing a limitation to the max amount of data @ any given time. If this procedures didn’t exist, we would face a lot of disconnects as the network couldn’t handle the huge influx of information given from the clients (Narrowing to the extent of crashing).

Some quick fixes can lighten the communication. One of them is rendering pre-existing models (with same outfit, same colours, same visual effects) on stressful situations (big PvE events and at WvW). That would surely reduce the amount of data received from the clients and sent from the server to the clients. Although this is not pretty and the people may not like it, it is a good suggestion!

The bottom line, culling will always going to exist. The key here is to determine how much to have and how much it can interfere with the WvW experience.

I’m no programmer and thus I don’t understand most of what is said in here with all the techtalk.

Correct me if I’m wrong on the following:
Culling is simple server resource management. If a 50 man zerg runs into another 50 man zerg a server has to push information of 50 people to 50 PC’s on 1 server and information of 50 people to 50 PC’s on the other server. Combine that with spell effects and whatnot and you have one hell of a stressed out server environment I suppose.

A simple yes/no or “No you kitten its” followed by a proper explanation in everyday English will suffice.

Sort of…

If a 50 man zerg runs into another 50 man zerg you have a total of 100 man data. Information about those 100 players need to go to the server(at the same time) and then reaching every client. (Think on a big amount of cars entering side by side into a tunnel. how many cars can enter?). Lightening the load of received data increases the response by every client (reducing lag) and the overall stability. Rendering the characters is a pain due to their unique differences, having more data to transmit/receive. Limiting the rendering process reduces the load of data. (Now think that they reduced the load of cars by changing them to bikes in the same tunnel. They have more space to travel, don’t they?).

So basically if they change it that all the races/weapons have a basic model in WvW it already should create less server stress?

If so, do that ANet.. They can’t see my name, they don’t see my colors, may aswell make it as anonymous as possible.

Since Anet is responding here, I would like to ask, is it because you are ‘working’ on this that nothing else has really been done with WvW since launch?

You say that you have a WvW team, is it two guys? I mean really all these other things are being done with the game, events, dungeons, new gear, etc., and it took what 3 weeks to fix a broken vault door? The guards at the keeps would turn hostile and attack each other, again for a while. Notice none of these things were present at launch. So I would have to say that not only did you often bug or screw up something that didn’t even exist in the first place, but you have also basically added nothing useful.

The only thing I have seen done with WvW so far that was beneficial was removing the orbs, which I cannot imagine was that difficult and should have never been in there in the first place.

The audience of WvW will leave eventually if you continue to not really show anything of value and not really fix things either.

Saying your working on something is good, but lets be real, we are not going to wait forever, and the hope that you will do something only lasts so long.

HabibLoew.2590:

I’d like to correct a common misconception that I see popping up regularly in these threads. The culling that exists in Gw2 today is the same as what we shipped with. It was not introduced after the game launched, but was in fact present on day one. I suspect that people didn’t notice it as much in the beginning due to the game being all shiny and new, but it has been there all along.

I would also like to add a personal observation: I understand that the current state of culling is frustrating. It frustrates us too and we’re working hard to fix it. Often in these threads people propose a variety of options for addressing the issue along with the suggestion that their proposed changes are simple. This is a tempting line of thought but in my experience very little of what goes on in game development is actually simple. In particular, the changes required to deal with culling involve fundamental changes to core systems. Both the changes and the systems involved are complex, which is why it’s taking us so long to implement them. As I hope I’ve made clear in my posts fixing the culling issues is a major focus of the WvW team right now and I firmly believe that we will be able to achieve significant improvements when our current development efforts are complete.

Temporary fix of not loading the models and just loading name tags would help.

I doubt it’s a high resource hog to have a universal nametag for all players of a server (idk blue/red invader, whatever) that is shown instantly if portal/destealth happens, even if you had to spatially track dem nameplates all the time serverwise and send the location as a priority to client (eh, now I’m just making stuff up since I’m not a programmer :P, no idea how that actually works but since other games do it, I guess it’s not hard to do).

Anyway, I’d be happier to fight a nametag than (I’m a melee) tabbing around, spamming 1, and hoping I’ll hit something coz of apparent inability of my way-over-min-spec-comp and your shiney new server to render stuff.

But hey, I said to use that ages ago, so there’s no doubt I won’t get to see even the names any time soon.

kanikani.2430:

…The only thing I have seen done with WvW so far that was beneficial was removing the orbs, which I cannot imagine was that difficult…

Yeah, here’s the thing, …you cannot imagine. In other words, you have no idea.

You have no idea the complexity of the system they are working on. You have no idea what is easy or what is hard in putting fixes in place.

People need to put away their torches and pitchforks, and stop pretending like they’re the experts here. Anet said they think they can make improvements to the issue. Take a break from the game if you need to, and come back after the culling is fixed.

You guys say you want dev responses, but then chase them out of the thread, and try to tell them how to do their job. I wouldn’t want to respond to a thread like this.

Yukishiro.8792:

Also your comment about culling always being in the game just does not ring true from those of us with experience in the beta. If you really think nothing is changed it is probably worth looking a bit closer because it sure feels like something changed on the user end. I remember playing in the BWEs and seeing many, many more people onscreen than I see in post-launch wvwvw. I can’t tell you with 100% certainty I never got attacked by culled enemies but it certainly didn’t feel like it does now.

This. It was most definitely NOT in the BWEs, and not in the game the first few days of launch. It has nothing to do with “shiny” or “new”. There were TONS of people in WvWvW then, and there was no culling. It specifically and most decisively started occurring just after the patch on 8/31.

I remember it clearly, because it was just before you opened these forums, and my post on the problem starting was one of the very first made: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/BUG-Mobs-and-players-suddenly-appearing-pop-in/page/1

That was over two months ago. You can insist that it’s always been in the game, and that may be the case. However, if it was always in the game, then something in the 8/31 patch created the current problem with it.

Spartyr.6795:

kanikani.2430:

…The only thing I have seen done with WvW so far that was beneficial was removing the orbs, which I cannot imagine was that difficult…

Yeah, here’s the thing, …you cannot imagine. In other words, you have no idea.

You have no idea the complexity of the system they are working on. You have no idea what is easy or what is hard in putting fixes in place.

People need to put away their torches and pitchforks, and stop pretending like they’re the experts here. Anet said they think they can make improvements to the issue. Take a break from the game if you need to, and come back after the culling is fixed.

You guys say you want dev responses, but then chase them out of the thread, and try to tell them how to do their job. I wouldn’t want to respond to a thread like this.

I am a programmer and a business owner, so no I do have an idea exactly.

That being said, if people do ‘take a break’ and come back when things are fixed they most likely will never come back and this game that we all want to love will die on the vine like the rest of the MMO’s over the past 10 years.

And most gamers at this point are very jaded and know when a company says ‘they are working on it’ means that maybe 5 years later it will happen if ever, like many other MMO’s as well.

You need to understand this is advise from people who love and probably care more about the game then the dev’s themselves. We are paying customers and there is no reason to not treat us with the most respect and care like any other business has to. This is the foundation of why the game industry has had such a hard time as of late as far as satisfaction goes.

A little communication goes a long way, and I do thank them for posting in a thread it is rare for Anet to communicate anything, I wish they did it much, much more often. Not just about bugs, but future plans, what all these silent patches are for, etc.

Ianervan.3415:

They can’t fix it. It’s the engine. It’s not a matter of a patch or two.

This is honest reply. You will not get ANet reply on this issue because for obvious reasons they can’t post replies that would hurt sales.

This. They had same problem in GW1, in the GW2 beta an in GW2 since launch and they have been using the same engine since GW1.

Do not expect things to get better.

I have a question for HabibLoew regarding his answer. It centers around this specific set of sentences:

As you may have heard we already have a fix for the server-side culling implemented for sPvP. Because sPvP has dramatically less players we were able deploy our fix immediately without worrying about downstream side effects. WvW, however, operates at a much larger scale than sPvP and so we have a number of additional hurdles to clear before we can turn on the server-side fix.

What “additional hurdles” would need to be cleared? SPvP is just a smaller version of WvW. Why would those fixes not be applicable?