Guild Wars 2

Over 1000 votes.

1018 votes

Better 23%
Worse 64%

Esoteric,

Obviously the poll is not scientific, but what it does indicate is that a hell of a lot of people are having a worse gameplay experience with the current system when compared to the old system.

Now personally, I’m seeing culling that I don’t think I should be seeing under the rules of the CURRENT culling system. This could indicate that something is not working as intended (i.e there is a bug). In which case, the feedback from this poll and the comments within are important.

Oozo,

The patch was never an actual fix. It is really a reallocation of resources, a trade, if you will. It is highly likely that individuals are judging this patch based on the false pretense of “fixed culling” when in actuality it simply shows more enemies and less friendlies, which I don’t see how that makes WvW less playable. There certainly could be a bug, you know, in addition to the absurd queues and pop caps.

For the record, someone has to play the devil’s advocate here.

Here is the deal, Esoteric. A lot of us are experiencing culling when there are far less than 20 total players (friendly or enemy) in the vicinity. Check out the movies I’ve posted. I could make a ton of movies like these. And, it’s not just me… everyone in my group is experiencing this same culling at the same time.

The culling in these movies certainly can’t be what Anet is intending to happen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6Nnr1e7hsM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVMx3wxjNLo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2Si4e8LIXw

Ive exprienced what oozo’s videos show. I am currently of the belief that the culling system is not properly accounting for distance.

Sometimes it works great though, like i can see enemies treb range out, other times not so great and a zerg just appears 10 feet away from my face.

Right.

I don’t always have this type of culling. But, I have it far more now and with a lesser number of players in the vicinity than I did in the old system. It seems to be worse in some areas of the map than others. It is really common for me to get culling in the SE BL supply camp (for example).

These are strong indicators that there is a possible bug or unintended consequence in the current system.

If I put it this way, if they fix the bug that is causing culling to be all screwy I honestly see no downside to the new system. On paper at least.

Small group fights seem to be much worse, large group fights are better.

This is from an Australian ping time of around 180 to the server. I’m sure lag has an impact on this.

Thieves are still ridiculously OP with stealth in its current form.

The culling is much worse.

Like, it’s gonna spawn a gazillion white moas on the garrison plains, but only 2-3 enemies on the plains. So you make a threat assessment, and realise that you and your friends are about equal numbers, and it’s doable. So you jump in ( use movement skills) and get closer. SUDDENLY 20 guys appear on top of the other 3 guys. You can see white moa @ 1500 feet but you can’t even do reliable threat assessment @ 600feet. and because i dont have a stealthing class, basically it’s not like i can disengage at this point….

I also love the ~1 sec activation skill lag in eternal. Real winning latency in there.

golfclap and keep drinking the coolaid saying that “It’s getting better”
( and while this assessment may be harsh, it is sadly how i feel about the current state of culling. And, of course, the culltrains.)

Culling is worse for me and some friends i know, yea it’s bad for the other side too, but imagine trying to go small man group and roam/scout/yak hunting/etc and you just walk into a group of 20+enemy, sure they didn’t see you but when you both see each other small man group gets slaughtered in less than 20seconds.

I think its better, at least for enemies. I can’t see my allies though.

For me it is worse, because I do not see my allies.

For small groups (5-10), it is way better as they can see the ennemies better than before. For groups bigger than 20, it is aweful: there is no way to know how many you are, where is your commander at all time. Yesterday, we were a group of 40 in an area as big as the inside of a tower. I could see only 20 of my friends at once, but I could also see that many ennemies.

Esoteric.5490:

Oozo,

The patch was never an actual fix. It is really a reallocation of resources, a trade, if you will. It is highly likely that individuals are judging this patch based on the false pretense of “fixed culling” when in actuality it simply shows more enemies and less friendlies, which I don’t see how that makes WvW less playable. There certainly could be a bug, you know, in addition to the absurd queues and pop caps.

For the record, someone has to play the devil’s advocate here.

Riven,

Yes it’s not a fix but the change they made is horrible.
When running with HB and a couple of other people following us we into groups that turn out to be up to 5 or more times larger then we see initially all the time.

The new system is so easy to abuse. Just stack up with 25+ people and the other team will only see a couple until they’re in hit range.

The old system was horrible when you had a big group but at least it was consistently horrible and it was better for smaller groups. The new configuration is so random you can never figure out what’s going on until it’s too late.

I think the sample size is now large enough that you can extrapolate the data.

This is a resounding “DO SOMETHING”.

It is far worse. The least they could do is to once again remove the terrible culling experiment, but leave in the model loading thing (even though it seems to do very little).

It is honestly quite astonishing how much ArenaNet can alienate their WvW playerbase. This is something a large amount of their players play, yet it has mostly gone from bad to worse during the entirety of GW 2’s life span so far.

And now the February update won’t even bring the WvW stuff with it. It is pretty disheartening, as a purely WvW player.

Wow, I can’t believe how many people think the new system is worse. Far from my experience. When running into an enemy zerg of 30-60 players, I can actually see them! Sure, my commander or some of my allies might cull, so what? I can actually see where the enemy is. We can actually use field tactics. Yeah, I have a bit of a frame rate drop, but when I hit a skill, it gets used. How is that not better?

Spurnshadow.3678:

Wow, I can’t believe how many people think the new system is worse. Far from my experience. When running into an enemy zerg of 30-60 players, I can actually see them! Sure, my commander or some of my allies might cull, so what? I can actually see where the enemy is. We can actually use field tactics. Yeah, I have a bit of a frame rate drop, but when I hit a skill, it gets used. How is that not better?

That’s not the case for everybody obviously here, which is why the topic is at discussion. If everyone was running like you, there seriously wouldn’t be any arguments, but seems like a good portion of players are having culling issues, me included, before patch it was fine with me, now it’s really bad

1132 votes

Better 24%
Worse 63%

Absolutely worse. I don’t think nagging anet about it will help much though, the problem seems to be very deep and expensive.

Alex.9268:

Absolutely worse. I don’t think nagging anet about it will help much though, the problem seems to be very deep and expensive.

Actually, all they would have to do to improve it for the people who are complaining is to revert back to the old system. It is that much worse now.

I’m guessing this is entirely a pride issue now.

Spurnshadow.3678:

Wow, I can’t believe how many people think the new system is worse. Far from my experience. When running into an enemy zerg of 30-60 players, I can actually see them! Sure, my commander or some of my allies might cull, so what? I can actually see where the enemy is. We can actually use field tactics. Yeah, I have a bit of a frame rate drop, but when I hit a skill, it gets used. How is that not better?

Pve is affected,mobs turn invisible.In wvwvw,my teammates turn invisible,i have no clue how big my zerg is,my teammates weapons turn invisble at times as is mine.People now cull in and out of vision while their One feet away from me.Keep fooling yourself and the other 24% aswell.The system is Far worse then it was before.Btw this has Nothing to do with hitting a skill and getting a delay,that is related to lag,Wich btw,stills happens alot lately,getting random spikes.

Did anyone see the footage a guy frapsed where his own character model culled out for over 20 seconds?

Oozo.7856:

Need a bigger sample!

You do not only need a big sample, you do also need an unbiased sample.

Unfortunately, this is something that is virtually impossible to achieve by advertising a poll in a forum that is not a representative sample of the whole player base.

So, please, take your result with a grain salt.

~MRA

This thread should be a sticky until things are fixed. I played last night during reset and it was worse than ever. As I was following my commander, he would disappear and reappear at random along with at least 3-5 other players at any given time. Members of my own team were disappearing! This drastically affects my ability to do what I need/am supposed to do when the person I am following disappears.

My understanding of culling is that local video settings do not have all that much impact. However, I took all of my client’s settings down to their lowest values last night just to see if it would make a difference. I also turned on team colors hoping that would help. None of this made any difference.

I also thought they were simply going to turn culling off?

In any case, they should give players the option of turning off character rendering completely and just show names. I know this flies directly in the face of their artistic vision, but sometimes function must supercede form.

MRA.4758:

Oozo.7856:

Need a bigger sample!

You do not only need a big sample, you do also need an unbiased sample.

Unfortunately, this is something that is virtually impossible to achieve by advertising a poll in a forum that is not a representative sample of the whole player base.

So, please, take your result with a grain salt.

~MRA

If you read back through all of my comments in this post you will see that I have already acknowlegded that. However, the main point of this was to bring it to the devs attention that a lot and I mean a lot of people are having a worse gameplay experience in the new system than the old system.

If you were a developer, would you take a look at this poll and decide

1. to ignore it
2. to investigate that there might be something not working as intended

THAT is the point of this poll. Now, before you say they aren’t ignoring it, keep in mind that the negative feedback you are seeing now was both given when they did the trial of this system in December and when it was announced that they were going to move to this system “because most of their feedback was positive” – which was not true, BTW. Most of the feedback was negative just as it is in this poll.

Oozo.7856:

If you read back through all of my comments in this post you will see that I have already acknowlegded that.

Sorry, I didn’t read the whole thread. (I have given up reading whole threads in this forum.) I just noticed you updating your post with so much enthusiasm, so I merely wanted to drop a friendly reminder. No offense intended.

Oozo.7856:

If you were a developer, would you take a look at this poll and decide

If I were a software developer (fun fact: I am, but not with ANet) I would do my own research on how my product is doing.

Forum post or email complaints may be useful for a number of things (such as giving players a legit place to vent, and learning whether your communication strategy is working as intended) but they are most certainly not representative. That’s all I wanted to say.

~MRA

MRA.4758:

Oozo.7856:

If you read back through all of my comments in this post you will see that I have already acknowlegded that.

Sorry, I didn’t read the whole thread. (I have given up reading whole threads in this forum.) I just noticed you updating your post with so much enthusiasm, so I merely wanted to drop a friendly reminder. No offense intended.

Oozo.7856:

If you were a developer, would you take a look at this poll and decide

If I were a software developer (fun fact: I am, but not with ANet) I would do my own research on how my product is doing.

Forum post or email complaints may be useful for a number of things (such as giving players a legit place to vent, and learning whether your communication strategy is working as intended) but they are most certainly not representative. That’s all I wanted to say.

~MRA

So, this poll isn’t a measure of which culling system is technically superior or why one is technically better than the other. It is an end-user satisfaction poll.

Now, the developers will make a system that they think most people will enjoy. But, if they get feedback that a lot of people aren’t enjoying their new system then maybe they should step back and ask the question “why?” rather than taking the position that the people who are saying they aren’t enjoying the new system are wrong and they are actually enjoying the new system more (they just don’t realize it).

MRA.4758:

If I were a software developer (fun fact: I am, but not with ANet) I would do my own research on how my product is doing.

This should be done, of course. But ignoring other sources of input and feedback is nothing short of arrogance and pride. There are a lot of intelligent people out here playing the game that know when something is not working as intended.

Puz.8529:

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

Noticing that too in Orr. No significant change in WvW, albeit a little less predictable, and culling in PvE now too.

ANet already offers an option in settings menu to color all players gear the same as their WvW color. I wish they’d just add an option to normalize the gear and character models as well.

8 professions * 5 races * 2 sexes = 80 gear/char permutations. Have a default character model for each race/sex, and use the WvW Invader’s gear for all the gear skins. Cache those in RAM and load them first instantly, then replace with custom gear/models as able on a lower priority.

waeren.9743:

Esoteric.5490:

Oozo,

The patch was never an actual fix. It is really a reallocation of resources, a trade, if you will. It is highly likely that individuals are judging this patch based on the false pretense of “fixed culling” when in actuality it simply shows more enemies and less friendlies, which I don’t see how that makes WvW less playable. There certainly could be a bug, you know, in addition to the absurd queues and pop caps.

For the record, someone has to play the devil’s advocate here.

Riven,

Yes it’s not a fix but the change they made is horrible.
When running with HB and a couple of other people following us we into groups that turn out to be up to 5 or more times larger then we see initially all the time.

The new system is so easy to abuse. Just stack up with 25+ people and the other team will only see a couple until they’re in hit range.

The old system was horrible when you had a big group but at least it was consistently horrible and it was better for smaller groups. The new configuration is so random you can never figure out what’s going on until it’s too late.

You do understand that this is because HB puts 50 people in 3 square meters of space, abusing the very thing you’re complaining about, right?

Wait they already fixed it? is this a joke?

All I know is that perma-stealth thieves are still perma-stealthing.

It’s a lot better now, though there’s still culling it’s actually quite playable.
Yay for stealth-fixing without acknowledging there’s a problem?! :p

Devs posting in threads about blueprints but cant take a minute of their time to post in this thread. Ridiculous.

i cant even see my golems …

Kalkz.5297:

i cant even see my golems …

Neither can the enemy. It’s all good.

Go to 9:40 in the video, and you’ll that’s the problem with culling.

Churchill.8714:

waeren.9743:

Esoteric.5490:

Oozo,

The patch was never an actual fix. It is really a reallocation of resources, a trade, if you will. It is highly likely that individuals are judging this patch based on the false pretense of “fixed culling” when in actuality it simply shows more enemies and less friendlies, which I don’t see how that makes WvW less playable. There certainly could be a bug, you know, in addition to the absurd queues and pop caps.

For the record, someone has to play the devil’s advocate here.

Riven,

Yes it’s not a fix but the change they made is horrible.
When running with HB and a couple of other people following us we into groups that turn out to be up to 5 or more times larger then we see initially all the time.

The new system is so easy to abuse. Just stack up with 25+ people and the other team will only see a couple until they’re in hit range.

The old system was horrible when you had a big group but at least it was consistently horrible and it was better for smaller groups. The new configuration is so random you can never figure out what’s going on until it’s too late.

You do understand that this is because HB puts 50 people in 3 square meters of space, abusing the very thing you’re complaining about, right?

HB never once had 50 members online at one time. We field and average of 15-20, around 25 in the weekends, and 30 at reset. Currently we have 98 members spread out between GMT / EST timezones, so having 50 of those online at the same time would be really amazing.

We are aware how many people you had online your first reset back in T1.

Maybe it wasn’t 50, maybe it was 40. Maybe 30. The total number is not as relevant as the stack in a 3m area and wait for your characters to not load so people run right to you unsuspecting of any enemy presence. In fact, it was completely impossible to tell the exact number for the reason I stated – I can’t tell how many people are in a 3m area when there are so many that my screen turns completely red.

The good thing was that this is easily countered. It was a surprise people were still doing this and we see it with SoR now as well.

Personally, before the patch, 10/10 times the game would crash or sound issue would happen whenever a large fight inside SMC lord room took place.
Last night, on opener w/ full queues, my connection was stable the whole time EDIT: 2 Hours defending the lord room from BOTH servers.

= IMPROVED

PaulV.3245:

Personally, before the patch, 10/10 times the game would crash or sound issue would happen whenever a large fight inside SMC lord room took place.
Last night, on opener w/ full queues, my connection was stable the whole time EDIT: 2 Hours defending the lord room from BOTH servers.

= IMPROVED

I (and many others) have never had that issue. If they fixed parts of the sound bug and crashing then it’s entirely unrelated to the new culling. Also, there are many people who still get sound & crash bug post-patch.

Please think a little.

In small skirmishes it’s gotten better.

In large scale battles though, it’s gotten significantly worse.

I honestly don’t entirely grasp this whole culling thing, all I know is they sort of limit the number of players you see in your screen. I’m not liking it tbh, wonder if they could just set it so that whoever wants it can turn culling on and those who don’t can turn it off.

kurtosis.9526:

Puz.8529:

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

Noticing that too in Orr. No significant change in WvW, albeit a little less predictable, and culling in PvE now too.

ANet already offers an option in settings menu to color all players gear the same as their WvW color. I wish they’d just add an option to normalize the gear and character models as well.

8 professions * 5 races * 2 sexes = 80 gear/char permutations. Have a default character model for each race/sex, and use the WvW Invader’s gear for all the gear skins. Cache those in RAM and load them first instantly, then replace with custom gear/models as able on a lower priority.

Hell, I wouldn’t mind if the enemy rendered in as a bunch of naked asura, as long as I knew I was going to die after seeing my opponent.

The developers should honestly just implement a culling scale. The lowest being for those people still playing on toasters, and the highest being for massive computer kittens.

1227 votes

Better 23%
Worse 64%

Monoman.2068:

Hell, I wouldn’t mind if the enemy rendered in as a bunch of naked asura, as long as I knew I was going to die after seeing my opponent.

Me either.

Lionera.7908:

I honestly don’t entirely grasp this whole culling thing, all I know is they sort of limit the number of players you see in your screen. I’m not liking it tbh, wonder if they could just set it so that whoever wants it can turn culling on and those who don’t can turn it off.

It has to do with their bandwidth too. They probably don’t want people to see different amounts of culling too, people would be screaming imbalance.

24% better 76% worse, 100% not a real true sample size/unbiased gathering metrics. the only people who are goin to seek out culling info on wvw forum are people having issues with it. so this poll doesn’t mean much at all.

so you can keep the thread going, but the poll is useless

Yes, there is culling in PvE. What’s worse, is this culling is happening even in relatively small groups. You get 20 players at an Orr DE and half the time you don’t see the mobs until they’ve downed you.

Which is annoying. I’ve done those DEs for months and didn’t have any issues. Then a few weeks ago I noticed the culling.

1261 votes

Better 23%
Worse 64%

Had a couple of people log out of the game last night because it was so bad.

The culling I can put up with but the issue is that along with the new culling problem is the skill lag. It was so bad tonight I logged out as it was a waste of time playing.