Guild Wars 2

Krakah: “Yes, of course I know that the culling is done server side but a lot of the problem is on the user side.”

The new culling system is horrendous. I recall seeing quite a few threads during the testing phase that also pointed this out, and here they are again.

Not seeing the other players in this game is completely unacceptable.

In my opinion it has honestly gotten worse, ANET can you look into possible issues with drivers/hardware?

its better sometimes, and sometimes its worse.

I’m convinced at this point that the moments were noticing when its worse is a bug that anet can hopefully resolve soon. On paper by their description certain culling events were seeing plainly should not happen.

Draygo.9473:

its better sometimes, and sometimes its worse.

I’m convinced at this point that the moments were noticing when its worse is a bug that anet can hopefully resolve soon. On paper by their description certain culling events were seeing plainly should not happen.

I tend to agree. Something is not working as intended.

Sorry if this has been mentioned but don’t feel like reading three pages worth of posts.

You do realize your poll’s results will mean jack nothing wrong? You will iin fact see more votes for worst culling, why?

Lets ask this question, do people go to customer service or even call them to state how amazing their product/service was? Very few actually do.

How often do you tell that checker at the grocery store how good he is doing when you go there? Never right? But if he short changes you than I gurantee he will hear about that!

Point is, the people that benefit from this system ae not coming to the foruums to praise about it, thus giving this mispreception that the system is worse for everyone.

covenn.7165:

Then there are the times that they don’t appear at all. Our 5 man was taking a supply camp and not a single one of us saw a single enemy player at range until they were literally standing on top of us. The camp models and the spiders mobs on the other side taking prioritization? Who knows

Now this is the issue the updated friend/foe binning should be checked for. NPC objects, and especially non-hostile ones should hopefully not have priority over players.

This forum is a pretty good representation of people who take WvW seriously enough to post about it. You will note that this forum is not designated as a forum for player complaints.

If someone is having better performance with the new system then they would be motivated to post in order to help preserve it.

Not really. Most of the WvW players I’ve talked to about it won’t come here because they can’t stand the people.

Generally, if they’re not having problems, they won’t vote.

Puz.8529:

Oozo.7856:

15 votes so far.

Better 13%
Worse 67%
Same 20%

Need a bigger sample!

Voted and bumped. Let’s get a bigger number and see if Anet takes notice!

Btw, anyone else noticed that there is now culling in pve as well? I never had that happening before (I think)!

Culling has existed in PvE for a very long time. In my recollection, whenever I was in a huge zerg to take the Temple of Balthazar, people and mobs would sporadically vanish and then reappear.

Zergs play really smart defense… Hide 85% of the Zerg until they have flanked and encompassed their opponents before appearing.

Whatever. Have fun with the game if you can. (not being sarcastic)

I’m done with GW though.

I will be honest I have never seen culling as much in PVE like I have done when this patch went live.

In WvW although I am seeing the enemy and they are coming in faster, the constant disappearing of friendlies is making it unplayable for coordinating attacks properly. If it was a choice of seeing half the enemy or half the friendlies, I would prefer the old system. It is hard running around and being able to time when to rush and where your team are without having to now constantly check your mini map and also check the action.

The biggest problem is when you add Golems, its hard to protect something you just cant see. Even when they are at the door, today we were trying to get into Hills and had Golems and the only way I knew they were at the door was because it was going down quickly, other than that I never seen any Golem on my screen and for them to appear I literally had to run to the keep door in order to see them. It is crazy and for me is ruining WvW it is all about team play, with both tactics and coordination and you can do neither if you cant see your fellow team members because most are invisible to you.

You even get the Commander going invisible, the person that people are meant to be following, told to stick to like glue etc. How can you follow and stick to someone you cant see, if the commander and group rushes into an enemy zerg you want to be right next to the commander when it happens. If the commander and fellow friendlies are invisible I need to watch for the blue dorito and dots rushing in and its crazy, it causes people to hesitate as they aren’t sure what is going on and that slight hesitation is enough to get you wiped out.

Here’s an uneditted 45 second clip from a fight we had at blue bay last night in Tier 1. I believe the culling is working much better and have had no problems since the last patch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svGeCUHxLIk

Its worse then before, if this is the way anet fixes things Id rather they didnt fix anything, just revert it back, both culling and map caps.

fishergrip.4082:

I think people are focusing too much on the amount of culling going on and not on the actual impact of the culling on WvW. It seems worse sometimes because your allies are culled around you more often, so you end up noticing more culling overall. It is much better in that enemies appear on your screen sooner, so you don’t get trampled by a giant zerg without seeing at least part of it first.

This is false, I’ve given the example in 1 of the other threads about how I was with a group running into a supply camp, an enemy group running the other way rendered AFTER we had run past each other, in fact both groups ran directly through each other and didn’t render until each had passed it was obvious we didn;t render for them either. I never had an instance like that occur under the old system.

Scarran.9845:

The biggest problem is when you add Golems, its hard to protect something you just cant see. Even when they are at the door, today we were trying to get into Hills and had Golems and the only way I knew they were at the door was because it was going down quickly, other than that I never seen any Golem on my screen and for them to appear I literally had to run to the keep door in order to see them.

Yep the same thing has happened to me. I was 3-5 metres away from them and they did not render, not until I moved right on top of them.

Peetee.9406:

Here’s an uneditted 45 second clip from a fight we had at blue bay last night in Tier 1. I believe the culling is working much better and have had no problems since the last patch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svGeCUHxLIk

The maximum number of people on a given map is constant across tiers. It is irrelevant that you are in Tier 1. The fact that you feel the need to mention it makes me question everything else you have to say.

You are playing a staff elementalist, casting at ~1,200 range from your targets, using ground targetted AOEs and a few single target abilities on tab-targetted opponents, from the safety and comfort of your friendly zerg. The experience of a melee or mid-range player would likely have differed significantly. Culling isn’t even a concern for you, and this video doesn’t show a darn thing.

Kraigan.6057:

Peetee.9406:

Here’s an uneditted 45 second clip from a fight we had at blue bay last night in Tier 1. I believe the culling is working much better and have had no problems since the last patch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svGeCUHxLIk

The maximum number of people on a given map is constant across tiers. It is irrelevant that you are in Tier 1. The fact that you feel the need to mention it makes me question everything else you have to say.

You are playing a staff elementalist, casting at ~1,200 range from your targets, using ground targetted AOEs and a few single target abilities on tab-targetted opponents, from the safety and comfort of your friendly zerg. The experience of a melee or mid-range player would likely have differed significantly. Culling isn’t even a concern for you, and this video doesn’t show a darn thing.

I like the fact he shows this has a good example of why it is better and doesnt even notice the invisible elementalist 5 meters to his right, or the unknown number of players bellow him on the right spaming skills (you see where the projectiles start and land, but dont see the players)

Also those 5 guys that charged your group on the wall were very brave, or were they more then 5?

It would help if people posted if they had a crappy PC or not – I imagine the new system is better for them.

For the rest of us not running N64’s it’s unanimously worse.

Edit: Not to mention, PVE culling on empty maps? lol

The WvW maps had less culling with 60 vs 60 vs 60 man zergs than I see with a 5v10 at a supply camp now.

Ben K.6238:

Not really. Most of the WvW players I’ve talked to about it won’t come here because they can’t stand the people.

Using your own argument, those same people, if they have a complaint won’t come here either.

It’s definitely improved for me at least .. but I’m concerned it’s implementation brought in our map population bugs.

Kraigan.6057:

The maximum number of people on a given map is constant across tiers. It is irrelevant that you are in Tier 1. The fact that you feel the need to mention it makes me question everything else you have to say.

You are playing a staff elementalist, casting at ~1,200 range from your targets, using ground targetted AOEs and a few single target abilities on tab-targetted opponents, from the safety and comfort of your friendly zerg. The experience of a melee or mid-range player would likely have differed significantly. Culling isn’t even a concern for you, and this video doesn’t show a darn thing.

I used to have an issue where players would not cull until they were on top of me and I was half dead. Now players cull at a distance that is outside of my 1200 range. That is a significant improvement to me albeit not perfect as the poster below you mentions my servermates not culling at close proximity but seeing them is not a priority.

Peetee.9406:

I used to have an issue where players would not cull until they were on top of me and I was half dead. Now players cull at a distance that is outside of my 1200 range. That is a significant improvement to me albeit not perfect as the poster below you mentions my servermates not culling at close proximity but seeing them is not a priority.

This is what I’ve been trying to communicate. Everyone is so caught up in actively SEEING the culling happen, but fails to realize you can actually see an enemy portal onto you or charge from a distance or come through a tower door. No one realizes that combat is more balanced now than it has ever been because you can see a force coming and respond before you are half dead. I’d guess the vast majority of those that voted “worse” somehow expect culling to be 100% fixed and anything but is automatically considered worse.

DivineBeing.2086:

Lets ask this question, do people go to customer service or even call them to state how amazing their product/service was? Very few actually do.

How often do you tell that checker at the grocery store how good he is doing when you go there? Never right? But if he short changes you than I gurantee he will hear about that!

Customers will note ‘Exceptional Service’ and recommend it to their friends, other people and be very pro-product, but it takes a fair amount of effort to reach exceptional in any kind of industry. Parts of me still wonder if vast swathes of the computer-game industry has any kind of employees in them that have had any fundamental customer service skills at all, because it seems to be pretty barren.

Kind of reminds me of the early-era of ISP’s which where run out of garages and spare rooms by computer-science grads, early 20’s dudes that knew a lot about transmission, modems and switch gear, but not the faintest idea of how to actually engage a customer… they’ve all gone now except the guys who started up and maybe didn’t have the most technical of knowledge, but knew how to keep their customers happy and as a result ’don’t work anymore’ because they’re rolling in cash.

Customer service here by Anet, about a 3/10, the response will be overwhelmingly negative as to be detrimental to the business beyond even the comparatively minor impact to the overall game (lets face it, wvw is a marginal area it would seem) and its not the developers fault. They deal with numbers, code and get stuck in a back room away from the normal people, supplied with lots of caffinated drinks and the odd fluffy animal thrown in for their appeasement.
They aren’t customer service delivery specialists

This isn’t endemic to Anet, but the whole computer game service industry treating its customers like kittens, cheats, liars, idiots and barely tolerated. Considering the cash that gets thrown into games often exceeding blockbuster movies now, you’d think they would have taken a leaf out of hollywood’s book, that even if the end result isn’t great, people will still come away liking it to some extent if you treat them well.

I’ve basically come to the conclusion that if its not fixed by the end of the month, I’m gone..

I will not play a game that you can’t see the enemy till you’re 2 feet away.

Multiple times I’ve engaged people only to have it turn out to be a group or more… and i’m solo….

I should not be having my bloody fights culled.

But here we are, despite telling them it didn’t work during the last test, they chose to go through with it.

So that’s it, if its not gone next patch, I am.

Esoteric.5490:

Peetee.9406:

I used to have an issue where players would not cull until they were on top of me and I was half dead. Now players cull at a distance that is outside of my 1200 range. That is a significant improvement to me albeit not perfect as the poster below you mentions my servermates not culling at close proximity but seeing them is not a priority.

This is what I’ve been trying to communicate. Everyone is so caught up in actively SEEING the culling happen, but fails to realize you can actually see an enemy portal onto you or charge from a distance or come through a tower door. No one realizes that combat is more balanced now than it has ever been because you can see a force coming and respond before you are half dead. I’d guess the vast majority of those that voted “worse” somehow expect culling to be 100% fixed and anything but is automatically considered worse.

I guess only people with terrible computers have seen a improvememnt in culling, to all the others that could already see everyone in front of the screen now are forced to see the fail that anet has done.

These are latest results

Worse. Way worse. Does that count as two votes?

Worse. The “getting attacked by invisible armies” happens every bit as often as before. Today, I swam halfway through a spread out enemy zerg, and typed up a message about their location and how many golems they had before they even noticed I was there (they were slowly loading for me—the base models would load when they were just barely in front of my face—but apparently, I wasn’t loading for them.) I wasn’t using any stealth abilities.

I also now get short lag spikes each time it loads the base model and again when it loads the normal one, making dodging a pain since my timing keeps getting randomly thrown off. And the sound sometimes cuts out for a while during big fights. Previously, I only got the lag spikes when there was a large zerg nearby, and the sound only cut out briefly after loading the map (if at all), and would be fine afterwards, regardless of how many people were there, making it much, much easier to tell if I was getting hit by invisible people.

Oddly, WvW worked best for me back during the first two BWEs (didn’t play in the third one), when I don’t think they even had culling (at the very least, I recall no one loading just a couple steps in front of me. Everyone loaded much further away.) No lag, was able to set everything to the highest settings and ran it perfectly fine, regardless of how many people were on screen. Now, nearly all my settings except draw distance are turned down in hopes that it’ll help (and it doesn’t . . . ) :/

Nyta.4769:

I also now get short lag spikes each time it loads the base model :/

The benefit of the lag is that i now i know in advance when an enemy zerg is nearby. Its awesome, its like legal radar. Similar to DAoC spikes when enemies or friendlies were within a 5000 range.

I think it is better as far as loading enemies, but overall it seems worse as I am now randomly losing sight of my group mates. To me culling should be over once a model is loaded, so why are my group mates randomly disappearing when a bunch of enemies start to load? I play a support role, being able to see my group is pretty important, instead of trying to follow dots on the map.

Niim.9260:

I think it is better as far as loading enemies, but overall it seems worse as I am now randomly losing sight of my group mates. To me culling should be over once a model is loaded, so why are my group mates randomly disappearing when a bunch of enemies start to load? I play a support role, being able to see my group is pretty important, instead of trying to follow dots on the map.

Because culling has nothing to do with model loading. The server keeps track of where everyone is and has to keep telling your client where they are.

Let’s say for example the culling limit is 50 and you have 60 around you. The server sends position info on 50 models and your client draws them. The next tick the server sends a different set of 50 to your client. Since your client can only draw what the server sends, it erases the previous 50 and draws the new 50.

The server sends a different batch because their culling algorithm may have selected a better 50 to show you, I.e. more enemies, less enemy pets or something.

The client has to dump the prior info because only the server info is valid. The client can’t know where the models are because many things might happened, stealth, logout, wp, etc.

906 votes

Better 24%
Worse 64%

BTW, just want to thank everyone for their feedback regardless of the vote. Getting close to 1000 votes. That’s pretty good.

hey, Oozo!
love your Culling trilogy videos.

and voted.
definitely worse – thing most surprising was super low pop areas, i’d experience culling now (e.g. 3 allies with me, 1 enemy player). took a good while for that one invader to render.

Thanks for creating this thread. I hope it gets Anets attention and we can get an official response. All I hear is crickets on this. Its not just a WvW matter, I have noticed it in PvE during events, pretty much everywhere. This culling (so called) improvement is epic fail. Can we finally get some official reply so we can all breathe a deep sigh knowing you guys are trying to resolve it along with the queue issues?

Worse. I’ve had opponents disappear in 1v1 fights with the new system.

I had a culling issue in an empty PvE map … wtf? seriously, two svanir attacked me twice each before they rendered. No other player was around.

Xsorus.2507:

I’ve basically come to the conclusion that if its not fixed by the end of the month, I’m gone..

I will not play a game that you can’t see the enemy till you’re 2 feet away.

Multiple times I’ve engaged people only to have it turn out to be a group or more… and i’m solo….

I should not be having my bloody fights culled.

But here we are, despite telling them it didn’t work during the last test, they chose to go through with it.

So that’s it, if its not gone next patch, I am.

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

Seriously, war is war, and WvW is war. Expect to be surprised by superior numbers. Expect the enemy to be hiding inside that ‘undefended’ keep.

Expect that solo Mesmer to not be alone.

Expect to die running solo in WvW.

If that’s a problem for you, that’s your problem, not mine.

I relished the fighting tonight. At one point, I spotted a thief that had been waiting to gank our next yak. Out of view of him is small ball of ten or so allies, who also could not see him. I saw the rough outcome on the wall right them. I charge him, he goes into stealth, and moments later he and his buddy (who was already in stealth) are finishing me off. The 10 friendlies out of view of the thieves (and vice versa) see my down/dead symbols on the map and march around the slope, much to the dismay of the dual thieves. I got to put the finish on both thieves, thanks to my allies quick response + res.

Yes, I was surprised by someone I didn’t see. Didn’t alter the outcome any – a glass cannon thief can still kill me one-v-one, and a mini Zerg can kill 2 meager glass cannons caught off guard and with their key skills already on recharge.

Yeah, I got killed. Big deal. I stopped a yak gank by dual thieves, and all I had to do was die. All the same, I was solo. I expected to be killed going in.
//Portable Corpse

Attitude, son. All it takes is attitude, and you have plenty of the wrong kind.

Yamagawa.5941:

Seriously, war is war, and WvW is war. Expect to be surprised by superior numbers. Expect the enemy to be hiding inside that ‘undefended’ keep.

Expect that solo Mesmer to not be alone.

Expect to die running solo in WvW.

Some people use something called “awareness of their surroundings” to gain an advantage over people who are less aware or careless. You are obviously not one of those people.

People defending the invisible fighting are hilarious. I mean, by all measures wvw is essentially broken and anet (who supposedly put pvp on a pedestal) has made us wait 5 to 6 months for hopefully a fix. we dont even know if it will work. If wvw was / is important this would have been priority number 1 and nothing would have been added til it was fixed.

phabby.8945:

Ok so here is something of interest to you all that our leader found, If you goto the setting pannel and select show all in the team colours it reduces the lag and cullling slightly.

This setting oddly got me almost back to pre-patch quality. Which is to say it’s broken, but playable.

Yamagawa.5941:

Xsorus.2507:

I’ve basically come to the conclusion that if its not fixed by the end of the month, I’m gone..

I will not play a game that you can’t see the enemy till you’re 2 feet away.

Multiple times I’ve engaged people only to have it turn out to be a group or more… and i’m solo….

I should not be having my bloody fights culled.

But here we are, despite telling them it didn’t work during the last test, they chose to go through with it.

So that’s it, if its not gone next patch, I am.

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

Seriously, war is war, and WvW is war. Expect to be surprised by superior numbers. Expect the enemy to be hiding inside that ‘undefended’ keep.

Expect that solo Mesmer to not be alone.

Expect to die running solo in WvW.

If that’s a problem for you, that’s your problem, not mine.

I relished the fighting tonight. At one point, I spotted a thief that had been waiting to gank our next yak. Out of view of him is small ball of ten or so allies, who also could not see him. I saw the rough outcome on the wall right them. I charge him, he goes into stealth, and moments later he and his buddy (who was already in stealth) are finishing me off. The 10 friendlies out of view of the thieves (and vice versa) see my down/dead symbols on the map and march around the slope, much to the dismay of the dual thieves. I got to put the finish on both thieves, thanks to my allies quick response + res.

Yes, I was surprised by someone I didn’t see. Didn’t alter the outcome any – a glass cannon thief can still kill me one-v-one, and a mini Zerg can kill 2 meager glass cannons caught off guard and with their key skills already on recharge.

Yeah, I got killed. Big deal. I stopped a yak gank by dual thieves, and all I had to do was die. All the same, I was solo. I expected to be killed going in.
//Portable Corpse

Attitude, son. All it takes is attitude, and you have plenty of the wrong kind.

K, this is exactly the problem with this forum right now…

This guy pick a thread talking about culling, and proceeds to respond in a way that is just silly..

A. It’s not about being surprised about superior numbers…If you sneak up on me, That’s perfectly fine….If I attack you, and magically 10 people appear around you cause of culling, That is not fine….If i’m running along the bloody road, and all of a sudden you appear 2 feet in front of me, stop a second and start attacking me (basically surprised as I was that i appeared) again…That’s a bloody problem.

B. Don’t you dare come and respond again to me in a post if you don’t take the time to bloody read the thread you’re posting under…..You waste everyone’s time by rambling on about something you clearly don’t have a bloody clue about.

Fact is that we told Anet it was worse back in December, and yet somehow they took that as being positive feedback.

Anet need to find out who was in charge of bringing it back and give them a talking to, the forums were filled with negative feedback so perhaps they would like to show us the piece of positive feedback which seems to have nulified the 67% of negative feedback?!

You trailed the culling in December, you got plenty of negative feedback, and yet you brought it back again; I think we deserve an explanation on why you made the game worse for everyone again!

The wierd thing is, im running a Lenovo z570 laptop, and i get around 24 frames in a quiet area with medium graphics.

and when i WvW i do 3 things, kill all texture quality, set the LOD distance to the max, and texture rendering to subsample. yeah my game now looks quite bad, but im having 35 frames a second constantly, and i see ppl a mile away and have not had any bad culling issues. Im based in europe playing on a NA server and i do not have any culling issue. I have yet to see any ‘’low rez’’ figures, because i always see a name and 1/6th of a second later i see the character like, a mile away.

if you really are having problems with culling try looking at your LOD distance setting, because it has an effect.

the only time i ever have a problem with culling is when i first log in at Lions Arch and run from bank to black lion npc. for 10 seconds i see no players. NEVER happened in WvW before.

… Problem with this voteing … your voteing in the middle of it being changed IT HASNT Changed completely Yet So WHY Should I Vote or why should these Votes Matter What So Ever?

It be like … ok your about to try new food out WE VOTE ITS HORRIBLE BEFORE WE GET A PLATE OF IT

I Mean hasnt this topic been debated to death allready? Most people complaining currently are just complaining over Theroys of how its going to be so on so forth.

No Offince i just see this thread as one big QQ

IQ must be this —-→ high
to enter the ride.

THACO.7021:

… Problem with this voteing … your voteing in the middle of it being changed IT HASNT Changed completely Yet So WHY Should I Vote or why should these Votes Matter What So Ever?

It be like … ok your about to try new food out WE VOTE ITS HORRIBLE BEFORE WE GET A PLATE OF IT

I Mean hasnt this topic been debated to death allready? Most people complaining currently are just complaining over Theroys of how its going to be so on so forth.

No Offince i just see this thread as one big QQ

I guess Thac0 doesn’t keep the riff-raff out after all.

To be honest, it is a little of both.

For PvE, it is actually a little worse. In the Pentitent Camp, the culling takes out the Mobs and I cannot see them until they are on top of us. This is because there are lots of people doing the events.

In WvW, I actually see the enemy models from further away and it is better. I am not sure where the serious problem is in WvWvW.

It’s gotten better for me. But in all honesty, I’ve got a killer machine and an even better internet connection. It’s pretty hard to make things get worse.

THACO.7021:

… Problem with this voteing … your voteing in the middle of it being changed IT HASNT Changed completely Yet So WHY Should I Vote or why should these Votes Matter What So Ever?

It be like … ok your about to try new food out WE VOTE ITS HORRIBLE BEFORE WE GET A PLATE OF IT

I Mean hasnt this topic been debated to death allready? Most people complaining currently are just complaining over Theroys of how its going to be so on so forth.

No Offince i just see this thread as one big QQ

THAC0, at least we do not have to calculate the number of enemy models through subtraction and addition. Hitting an Armor Class of Zero is hard to calculate. (Love the name).

I still hold that most people who are disappointed with a system will vote/speak out on it, especially on the internet. If people are enjoying the product, they are out their playing it. Most forum threads, if not discussion based, are outright complaints. I love my warrior, but do you see threads filling these boards about how much anyone loves their class or how much people love generic awesome WvW feature? Forums are visited primarily for complaints so you will see a disproportionately high number of “worse” votes no matter which forum this gets put in. I’d bet that it is far closer to 50-50 than anything else.