Guild Wars 2

So far it’s been pretty clear that culling hasn’t even become close to being fixed. We have been having groups appear right in front of us, not being able to see half of a zerg, friendlies disappearing and reappearing, all the usual stuff. There does not appear to be any real difference in the culling.

If there were supposed to be preloaded crappy models used to help culling, it isn’t even noticeable. It’s been six months, WvW has barely gotten any attention and has been a footnote in every update so far. You can’t possibly tell me it’s taken six months to get a fix that isn’t even noticeable? The remaining WvW community isn’t going to last long with this type of crap still in WvW after half a year.

It culls more friendlies and renders more enemies. I like this way better but it’s not perfect. Only way to tell how many friendlies there are is by glancing at the minimap. But at least I can see the enemy now.

Veltoss.9135:

If there were supposed to be preloaded crappy models used to help culling,

Fallback models do nothing for culling. Their original ‘announcement’ made this quite clear:

“Please note that this change does not eliminate delays due to culling, it only addresses delays due to asset load times.”

I don’t think this was the “culling fix” patch.

I think this was just the “implement the temp models and reinstate the December test culling” patch.

This culling is god awful. Before we saw 10 of the 40 zergers before the rest loaded….now it’s down to 3 before the 40 zergers show up. Terrible.

“WvW & PvE: Our culling system has been updated to use affinity culling, which favors allowing players to see important enemies regardless of the local player population density.”

So it wasn’t the culling fix they have promised, but it supposed to be a culling fix.

It is far, far worse for solo players, and smaller groups. I think I’m done until this is fixed.

it seems better for me except one of the most important issues, thieves still aren’t appearing instantly after doing damage.

The following is taken directly from Habib’s post on this update:

It is important to note, however, that while we believe this change is an improvement to the WvW experience it does not fully address the issues with culling and we are still working towards our goal of removing culling from WvW completely. This change is intended to give players an improved WvW experience while we continue work on our more comprehensive solution. While this update only contains a couple of visible changes to WvW it lays a lot of important groundwork for future updates. We have some exciting changes coming and this update is just the beginning!

I don’t know why people were expecting things to be magically better tonight. We had already seen the culling change during the test back in December, and I’d imagine a good majority of players have machines that don’t need fallback models anyways. But the fact is they’re working towards eliminating culling completely and this was the first step towards that goal.

I dont care if it didnt fix it…i care that its worse…stop trying to justify how BAD this is.

Jscull.2514:

I dont care if it didnt fix it…i care that its worse…stop trying to justify how BAD this is.

The other way wasn’t really better, it was just friendlier to solo, and small group players because stealth bombs were extremely effective due to the culling/rendering issue.

They just kind of flipped culling on its head with this patch, and put the advantage in the hands of the much larger groups.

That said, I’ve never seen a game with this bad of an issue, not even Aion was this bad.

Jscull.2514:

I dont care if it didnt fix it…i care that its worse…stop trying to justify how BAD this is.

its worse for YOU..

Its better for me…maybe the problem is what your playing on?

This is probably the worst thing they have done to wvw since the game started. If you can’t fix it…put it back the way it was. At least that way, I can see the majority of the players on the map instead of getting instant killed by enemies I can’t see.

I know that it’s not >the< fix, but it was supposed to be >a< fix, and it has not improved the problem at all. It has not improved the fact that zergs appear out of no where and you may not see the majority of the enemy until halfway through a fight.

Anyone that agrees with this “as a move in the right direction” runs in 40 and has no idea what the rest of the players are talking about.

I was just in a 30+ v 30+ and the rendering looked much better… My only experience with it so far seems that it is improved.

Pixels.6532:

I was just in a 30+ v 30+ and the rendering looked much better… My only experience with it so far seems that it is improved.

My point exactly

I believe they said in a previous thread this isn’t the cure. This is just a treatment so that the cure will actually work. And it has some noticeable effect, it’s just one of a few steps on the road.

Laying the foundations, if you will.

I’m a bit confused why people are saying it’s worse because I can see enemy zergs easily now without an issue from quite a far distance. I might not be able to see all of the enemies at the same time because the culling is still there but at least I know they are there. Before you wouldn’t see them at all till it was too late.

They did say this is the groundwork and not ‘THE’ actual culling fix. So I think until they bring out the actual fix this is a great solution to the problem. You can already see the improvement in zerg tactics as suddenly you can’t hide behind culling anymore.

That said I haven’t really done any skirmishing yet so I don’t know if there are problems there but I didn’t notice any when running around.

This made it worse for me, before i rarely had an issue and that was only for groups of about 50+. now groups of 10 are just appearing on me. But my guildmates said it made it better. Seems to be if you have a high end system its worse, a low end system is better.

jkctmc.8754:

Jscull.2514:

I dont care if it didnt fix it…i care that its worse…stop trying to justify how BAD this is.

The other way wasn’t really better, it was just friendlier to solo, and small group players because stealth bombs were extremely effective due to the culling/rendering issue.

They just kind of flipped culling on its head with this patch, and put the advantage in the hands of the much larger groups.

That said, I’ve never seen a game with this bad of an issue, not even Aion was this bad.

If this is the case, it will only encourage further the current zerg play in the game.

And zerging is just killing the fun.

I also found a huge improvement in the culling tonight. It isn’t perfect but I found I seen alot more of the enemy and they where far quicker drawing in than ive previously experienced.

I never experienced the only seeing 3-4 and there were actually 30. I did find that if you portal bomb the culling was worse but im only talking a small delay and no where near what it was before the patch and out in the field fighting it was far far better for me at least which was a bonus.

Thrumdi.9216:

jkctmc.8754:

Jscull.2514:

I dont care if it didnt fix it…i care that its worse…stop trying to justify how BAD this is.

The other way wasn’t really better, it was just friendlier to solo, and small group players because stealth bombs were extremely effective due to the culling/rendering issue.

They just kind of flipped culling on its head with this patch, and put the advantage in the hands of the much larger groups.

That said, I’ve never seen a game with this bad of an issue, not even Aion was this bad.

If this is the case, it will only encourage further the current zerg play in the game.

And zerging is just killing the fun.

This isn’t group vs group, but World vs World!!!

You knew the type of game you paid for, so quit complaining that they’re creating the massive war type atmosphere World vs World was meant to be. They created a group based player vs player atmosphere when they created sPvP.

I run solo, and you won’t hear me complaining about zergs.

That said, they need to fix culling not for groups, not for solo players like me, but for every player who enters into WvW. I don’t know why people have to hate on anothers playstyle, but this childish nonsense about zerg this, zerg that needs to end.

Not sure it was really tested for me tonight as most of the fighting was 10 v 40 at most. I didn’t have any issues with culling personally.

They should give the player an option to choose which culling system they want to use.

Culling = server calculating what you will see and then send you the data.
pro: you can play with a worse internet connection / GPU.
con: calculating needs time and you have to wait longer for the data.

last patch: decreased the time to load an enemy AFTER you get the data from the Server.

What needs to be speed up is that the client gets the data from the server.

Anyone who read what anet wrote should have known that this wont fix the problem

This isn’t group vs group, but World vs World!!!

You knew the type of game you paid for, so quit complaining that they’re creating the massive war type atmosphere World vs World was meant to be. They created a group based player vs player atmosphere when they created sPvP.

Whilst I see your point its not entirely correct, Colin Johanson touched on this during his last interview:

WvW & Zerging – what are you guys working to get people away from zerging.
- Zerg is sort of the natural gameplay that is kind of evolved – find a commander and follow it. Comfort in numbers.
- Strategically, the best strat is to split into mini zergs and constantly harassing the map.

They are trying to move away from the almighty Zerg and will be introducing events in the future to break into mini-zergs (smaller groups).

Others comments about smaller group play are legitimate WvW playstyles and Anet agree. Dont just dismiss what you have today as what will be in the future.

How are any of you justifying not being able to see 20 other people behind the 3 you do see? This program is just bullkitten

vanzan.1250:

This isn’t group vs group, but World vs World!!!

You knew the type of game you paid for, so quit complaining that they’re creating the massive war type atmosphere World vs World was meant to be. They created a group based player vs player atmosphere when they created sPvP.

Whilst I see your point its not entirely correct, Colin Johanson touched on this during his last interview:

WvW & Zerging – what are you guys working to get people away from zerging.
- Zerg is sort of the natural gameplay that is kind of evolved – find a commander and follow it. Comfort in numbers.
- Strategically, the best strat is to split into mini zergs and constantly harassing the map.

They are trying to move away from the almighty Zerg and will be introducing events in the future to break into mini-zergs (smaller groups).

Others comments about smaller group play are legitimate WvW playstyles and Anet agree. Dont just dismiss what you have today as what will be in the future.

We already have small group/solo play in WvW, and if they add more, I’ll welcome it. I run solo, taking camps, killing solos/duos going to reinforce a defense, and so on. There is plenty for us smaller groups, or solo players to do. But to harp on those who run in larger groups is childish, and will get us no where.

The best thing for any game, is choice. If you limit those choices, you’re setting the game up for failure. So instead of trying to break the zerg, and ruin those who choose that form of play, why not champion both?

Jscull.2514:

How are any of you justifying not being able to see 20 other people behind the 3 you do see? This program is just bullkitten

No one is, so quit with this nonsense.

I have a really amazing computer to the extent I scoffed a little bit at charges of culling because maybe my view distance is so far out I’m not affected? I dunno, but anyways, I can see much much more than I could before to the extent its a little funny watching the zerg trains moving around and around trying to cull and recull. I can even see them dropping fields and what not in the distance. Maybe the fixes only help the top end?

jkctmc.8754:

vanzan.1250:

This isn’t group vs group, but World vs World!!!

You knew the type of game you paid for, so quit complaining that they’re creating the massive war type atmosphere World vs World was meant to be. They created a group based player vs player atmosphere when they created sPvP.

Whilst I see your point its not entirely correct, Colin Johanson touched on this during his last interview:

WvW & Zerging – what are you guys working to get people away from zerging.
- Zerg is sort of the natural gameplay that is kind of evolved – find a commander and follow it. Comfort in numbers.
- Strategically, the best strat is to split into mini zergs and constantly harassing the map.

They are trying to move away from the almighty Zerg and will be introducing events in the future to break into mini-zergs (smaller groups).

Others comments about smaller group play are legitimate WvW playstyles and Anet agree. Dont just dismiss what you have today as what will be in the future.

We already have small group/solo play in WvW, and if they add more, I’ll welcome it. I run solo, taking camps, killing solos/duos going to reinforce a defense, and so on. There is plenty for us smaller groups, or solo players to do. But to harp on those who run in larger groups is childish, and will get us no where.

The best thing for any game, is choice. If you limit those choices, you’re setting the game up for failure. So instead of trying to break the zerg, and ruin those who choose that form of play, why not champion both?

Good response, I see your side and agree.

IMO the old culling was better. :s

can i see my players again please?

sincerely, a commander….

{Some} (emphasis) of you folks don’t seem to understand how a HD that is not a SSD works. I would wager some dont know how paging works in a particular OS (windows)

Now i dont understand why they wont let us do things like for PRELOAD our Memory with a command switch such as -2000000 kb or whatever the number would be like -fpsmax 60 similarly …

but if you dont have a SSD and there are a KITTNE slew of armors that could be on any individual zerg member coming at you… so preloading generic guardians; warriers; theifs etc make them drawable before your HD has time to seek 7×40 280 different pieces of armor including facials and hair etc on the whole zerg coming at you

this is a deframenters nightmare especially as the game doesnt have “internal” defragmentation of the internal game structure file.

but the solution of preloading zergs with generic models is going to help everyone with a good or bad computer .. if your HD is of the spinning disk kind… i dont care if you have a nice one.

the issue is the game doesnt page more than like 500mb – 2gigs that i have been able to record…. and the game itself is like 25gbs.

if your HD has to seek for individual pieces of data that may not be defragmented inside the “gw.file” that is 30gb then this is an issue.

i think allowing us the command line for pre-determined amounts of data to be loaded to the memory instead of having to seek for it… or worse page it with windows is a better solution

but preloaded models should help anyone without a SSD period..

until internal game data defrag is an option
or having the whole game (if you have 32 gb memory which isnt most of us)
or buying an ssd

but defragging all the armors and player data internally would be a big help

but right now i dont think regardless of your defrag because its a single file even high dollar defrags wont internally defrage this … and ANET would be better suited for this task anyhow.

if you have a fast computer… random seeks on a HDD of the spinning variety are always much lower (internal defrag not done on new GW data updates not HD defrag) than the sequential reads… on a 30 gig file unfortunately 8 cores or 4 cores if the data isnt preloaded it will take longer.

random reads… vs sequential reads…

i would like to see -switches that allow for larger forced preload of textures; dyes; and armors; player face models etc

also possibly an internal defrag of GW2.DAT file for us cavemen with spinning disks.

and the rest of you need to learn how to have a 2nd harddrive..
or even a 3rd.

partitioned to around 50gigs or so at the FRONT or leading edge of your spinning disk and making sure gw2 is there..

and if a 3rd HD having your paging for windows there with its own partition.

this will help

also for random reads a FAST usb stick that can do “windows” boost for random reads.

or buy an ssd

but anet
internal defrag may be a good idea of your game info… i dont think it would take even a long time to add this.

and allowing for more memory to be preloaded in general as a command switch…

if ANET is correct about most of the issues being related to HD seek times.. these are more comprehensive solutions.

but.. they do the game differently and i could be way off base maybe…
?

Liquid.9672:

The following is taken directly from Habib’s post on this update:

It is important to note, however, that while we believe this change is an improvement to the WvW experience it does not fully address the issues with culling and we are still working towards our goal of removing culling from WvW completely. This change is intended to give players an improved WvW experience while we continue work on our more comprehensive solution. While this update only contains a couple of visible changes to WvW it lays a lot of important groundwork for future updates. We have some exciting changes coming and this update is just the beginning!

I don’t know why people were expecting things to be magically better tonight. We had already seen the culling change during the test back in December, and I’d imagine a good majority of players have machines that don’t need fallback models anyways. But the fact is they’re working towards eliminating culling completely and this was the first step towards that goal.

I wasn’t expecting a magical fix but I sure in the kitten didn’t expect it to get worse. And don’t blame my computer because I wasn’t having these issues yesterday before the patch.

2 examples.

I was at quentin just capped it and pushed out and noticed that there was around 10 enemies to my left, started rushing them and people just slowly kept appearing and vanishing all the time and suddenly i noticed im in middle of 30-man zerg.

I was running from quentin to golanta, was in middle of kraits camp and saw zerg clear as day heading towards ours from before the tree line towarsd golanta.

Why is this so situational?

For me new system is like..10 million times better.
And no..i am not running in zergs.
Also…thiefs are insta rendered now as soon as they start attacking out of stealth.

ALSO..this is just my personal experience.
Love those changes.

Interesting how the system behaves different

MrLT.6028:

This made it worse for me, before i rarely had an issue and that was only for groups of about 50+. now groups of 10 are just appearing on me. But my guildmates said it made it better. Seems to be if you have a high end system its worse, a low end system is better.

I have a high end system and it works great so I don’t think it has anything to do with that.

The way I think culling currently works is that it tries to distribute culling between both allies and your enemies rather than cull your enemies entirely but load all your allies.

I think it’s better this way temporarily because you might not be able to see correct numbers and some of your allies might disappear but at least you can see both sides.

The only noticable time it freaks out a bit is when you both have huge zergs then the system seems a bit confused as to what to load or not. Otherwise I’ve seen a vast improvement.

According to my experience last night, it’s hard to say whether the culling is fixed or not. But I am sure it’s changed, but maybe not in right direction.
I have a relatively high-end system (windows performence index 7.9 for everything) with 30M (speed test) fiber optic internet. I can noticed the change before VS after patch, but it’s wired:
Before Patch: for example I meet a 30 men zerg, I will see 2-3 of them at the very beginning, then 1 sec later after I run into zerg, I saw 10 more coming out, then I downed, 2 sec later I saw another 10, then I died and saw all of them. It’s a gradual change.
After patch: I met 30 men zerg, I see no one but magic effects or arrows, I know some fights happening there, I run into them, 2 sec later all 30 suddenly appears in front of my face at the same time. But I still survive, coz they didn’t see me either untill I see them.
An example last night: I saw opponents send a portal bomb (~20 ppl), then I cast my symbol of swiftness(guardian staff skill) right on the output portal, then I only saw 3x pulses of ton of white number before I saw the real chars(all of them) appear from the portal.

A easy way to describe: before patch = 1—>5—>10—>30, after patch= 0—————>30.

It’s hard to judge whether this change is better or worse, but the problem does still exist.

Yep, culling still needs a lot of work.

It is a bit better for me. Haven’t had a portal bomb against me so not sure how well it is working yet, but I can see more of the enemy zerg before I get too close. Used to run right into a zerg before I knew anyone was there.

No it’s not fixed.
It’s the same situation as the “Temporary” measure that they employed and said it was such a great success that they’d roll it out.
In fact, if you followed that thread the majority of people said it was worse. So yea, so much for your great statistical tools that can monitor how many carrots are collected in a particular area or how many Silvary sneeze in a north westerly direction on a Sunday, yet you can’t read a forum thread correctly and get a true representation of peoples feelings on a subject.

oh, I sound a little miffed that’s because I am.

Changes are great. I was heading down to one of our keeps, and from a distance, everyone loaded immediately, something that the previous build did not do. And you can actually see the enemy zerg moving and scheming for a flanking attack.

Could be better, but ANet is moving in the right direction.

Whatever you guys did to " fix " culling made it a issue for me where I never had a issue before , please flip that switch back the original position because this is broken.

They never said this patch fixed culling but was the first groundwork step towards the big culling fix in February. They said culling is still there. They just made adjustments to what the culling loads being Enemies and Allies get loaded half/half rather than whoever is nearest to you (which is usually all allies). While also testing the system of placeholder models for lower spec machines.

Here’s is the quote:

Habib Loew.6239:

In the January update we’ll be making a couple of preliminary changes to WvW.
1. The first of our engine changes will be coming on line to help improve character load times by using fallback models.
2. We’ll be switching over to the culling methodology that we trialed in December.

The engine change we’re making uses fallback models to represent characters until their detailed models are fully loaded. The fallback models are cached so that they can display without any asset load delay and there is a distinct fallback model for each race/gender/armor-class combination. As a result of this change players will be able to see characters represented as fallback models as soon as those characters are reported to the client. Once the specific, detailed model for a given character is completely loaded from disk the fallback model will be replaced with the detailed model. This visual compromise will help to ensure that players see other characters as quickly as possible in WvW. Please note that this change does not eliminate delays due to culling, it only addresses delays due to asset load times. Players on higher spec machines would therefore expect to see fallback models less often than players on lower spec machines. This change also lays the groundwork for more extensive uses of fallback models in future updates.

In December we ran a one matchup trial of an updated culling system. Based on all the feedback we received, both during and after the trial, we will be transitioning to the updated culling system that we used in the trial. This update allows the culling system to handle allies and enemies separately so that being surrounded by a group of allies will not impact the culling of enemies (and vice-versa). The general consensus after the trial is that this system lead to a better player experience in WvW. We further saw that some of the issues people had with the new system were related to asset load times rather than culling issues so making this change in combination with our character loading improvements should lead to an improved overall experience. It is important to note, however, that while we believe this change is an improvement to the WvW experience it does not fully address the issues with culling and we are still working towards our goal of removing culling from WvW completely. This change is intended to give players an improved WvW experience while we continue work on our more comprehensive solution.

While this update only contains a couple of visible changes to WvW it lays a lot of important groundwork for future updates. We have some exciting changes coming and this update is just the beginning!

Source: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/January-WvW-culling-loading-changes/first

sandvich.8259:

No it’s not fixed.
It’s the same situation as the “Temporary” measure that they employed and said it was such a great success that they’d roll it out.
In fact, if you followed that thread the majority of people said it was worse. So yea, so much for your great statistical tools that can monitor how many carrots are collected in a particular area or how many Silvary sneeze in a north westerly direction on a Sunday, yet you can’t read a forum thread correctly and get a true representation of peoples feelings on a subject.

oh, I sound a little miffed that’s because I am.

The “majority of players” did not say it was worse.
People don’t seem to grasp that the people who make the effort to come post on the forums (especially in threads related to new features/technical stuff) are usually the ones who are dissatisfied. Most people who have had their culling experience improved with this patch are in WvW playing the game, not posting here.

What you read in the other thread were a vocal minority.

FYI, this patch helped culling a lot for me.
Everytime you see one of the fallback models, what you’re seeing is an instance where you would have seen nothing before this patch.

I dont know what you are talking about its wayyyyyyy better for me. i Ran in a large group last night with around 30 people and i had no trouble seeing “most” of the other zerg we were fighting. I also saw all the small groups we ran over and it seemed like they could see me atleast because i saw 3 people dodge my clones when i sent them to shatter.

I also ran in a small group of 5 running around taking camps and had not problems at all with other groups of 5-10 that we ran into, i even saw the mass of red letters and player models as a zerg of atleast 25 completly run us over. although it didnt really matter if i could see them or not they would still have slaughtered us either way. anyone who is still having trouble i feel for you but please quit proclaiming that “everyone” hates the changes. submit a ticket and try to get it resolved i would hate for it to go back to the way it was.

I love the culling fix. I won’t drop any names, but it has been pretty clear since the patch which groups were relying on it as a tactic. Pretty clear and pretty hilarious.

Spitjaw.2987:

For me new system is like..10 million times better.
And no..i am not running in zergs.
Also…thiefs are insta rendered now as soon as they start attacking out of stealth.

ALSO..this is just my personal experience.
Love those changes.

Same for me.