Guild Wars 2

Ok so yet another “I want guilds and individuals to stand out more in WvW” post from a former DAOC player. Ya I know but hey at lest this one is on a different subject.

Right now players from different servers armor is defaulted to the color their server currently is on the map (red, blue, or green). So any dyes they have applied to their armor is only visible to friendly players.

Back in DAOC, a guilds member’s would dye their armor with the same color scheme so when you saw them on the field you would know who they are and weather to run crying for mommy or not. This goes back to the community thing everyone has been railing about. I won’t boar you with all that, the other threads on it cover that subject well enough.

Now there is an issue with this. Namely enemy identification. There are numerous ways around that but before we get into that which is really just going to turn into people telling each other their ideas are stupid. So I’d like to start out by asking what you think of hostile servers being able to see your or your guilds color scheme?

You see guild tags, and even the full guild name when targeted. It’s fine the way it is.

If you think render lag is bad now, wait and see how bad it is when the server has deal with informing every client about every unique snowflakes dye job.

Mif.3471:

If you think render lag is bad now, wait and see how bad it is when the server has deal with informing every client about every unique snowflakes dye job.

again, why can a 12 yr old game handle this and this one cant? I have NEVER played a game with more issues in open pvp than this one. invisible players, forced color schemes, server lag causing perma stealth, etc…

Their end game isnt WvW, its paid tPvP. guess we should get used to that.

tarnin.1690:

Mif.3471:

If you think render lag is bad now, wait and see how bad it is when the server has deal with informing every client about every unique snowflakes dye job.

again, why can a 12 yr old game handle this and this one cant? I have NEVER played a game with more issues in open pvp than this one. invisible players, forced color schemes, server lag causing perma stealth, etc…

Their end game isnt WvW, its paid tPvP. guess we should get used to that.

Because 12 year old games have much simpler graphics and a lot less on screen to deal with lol. Come on. Go play a game with newer graphics like Aion or TERA or even RIFT and see how those games handle large scale content – they have the same types of issues!

Leiloni.7951:

tarnin.1690:

Mif.3471:

If you think render lag is bad now, wait and see how bad it is when the server has deal with informing every client about every unique snowflakes dye job.

again, why can a 12 yr old game handle this and this one cant? I have NEVER played a game with more issues in open pvp than this one. invisible players, forced color schemes, server lag causing perma stealth, etc…

Their end game isnt WvW, its paid tPvP. guess we should get used to that.

Because 12 year old games have much simpler graphics and a lot less on screen to deal with lol. Come on.

since when does a server handle graphics? Your client handles it, all the server has to do is pass the color information. That’s it.

Yes and when you have dozens of people on screen (or more) that’s a ton of information to handle, certainly more than you’d find in an older game. It’s hard to make it happen immediately and without error. I honestly would be surprised if there weren’t issues.

how do you figure its more information? DAoC in NF had everythign this game has minus yaks and supply. Not only that but the RvR area was MASSIVE so it had more mobs to load and more people over all to load and handled it. At this point you are just grasping at straws trying to cover up their very very poor implementation.

tarnin.1690:

how do you figure its more information? DAoC in NF had everythign this game has minus yaks and supply. Not only that but the RvR area was MASSIVE so it had more mobs to load and more people over all to load and handled it. At this point you are just grasping at straws trying to cover up their very very poor implementation.

Because the graphics in DAoC sucked. Do I really need to explain why better graphics cause problems?

Hm. I suppose you can’t really compare the two unless you had a gap analysis between GW2/DAoC based on the data being processed. GW2 may send several more pieces of data, maybe less. Idk.

Leiloni.7951:

tarnin.1690:

how do you figure its more information? DAoC in NF had everythign this game has minus yaks and supply. Not only that but the RvR area was MASSIVE so it had more mobs to load and more people over all to load and handled it. At this point you are just grasping at straws trying to cover up their very very poor implementation.

Because the graphics in DAoC sucked. Do I really need to explain why better graphics cause problems?

And do we really have to explain that the server doesn’t handle graphic? The client does.

Leiloni.7951:

Because the graphics in DAoC sucked. Do I really need to explain why better graphics cause problems?

Yes, but the limiting factor right now is most certainly a networking issue. There’e also a limit on the number of characters “loaded” at any given time though but that’s something else.

Leiloni.7951:

tarnin.1690:

how do you figure its more information? DAoC in NF had everythign this game has minus yaks and supply. Not only that but the RvR area was MASSIVE so it had more mobs to load and more people over all to load and handled it. At this point you are just grasping at straws trying to cover up their very very poor implementation.

Because the graphics in DAoC sucked. Do I really need to explain why better graphics cause problems?

Sure, explain to me how graphics, that the client (eg: your computer) handles, is going to slow down the servers or even blow out their bandwidth. IMO i think the issue is either the wrong packet type, them using crappy EC3 instead of renting a server farm so you are getting weird db lag or bandwidth restrictions, or just horrible net code. I mean really, it could be 100% realistic gfx and the server would still get the same information as it does now, just information. Color information, position, etc… no matter how detailed the skin is, the server is NOT rendering it, just sending/receiving information about what type it is and what color.

Kardiamond.6952:

Leiloni.7951:

tarnin.1690:

how do you figure its more information? DAoC in NF had everythign this game has minus yaks and supply. Not only that but the RvR area was MASSIVE so it had more mobs to load and more people over all to load and handled it. At this point you are just grasping at straws trying to cover up their very very poor implementation.

Because the graphics in DAoC sucked. Do I really need to explain why better graphics cause problems?

And do we really have to explain that the server doesn’t handle graphic? The client does.

The server needs to send the (tons of ) information to your client, and then your client has to render it. In a game with much more detail and variety there’s more information to send than say WoW or DAoC (hence why they try to limit it with uniform colors and culling, but obviously the latter is not working out so well). In the recent Reddit AMAA they explained a few of the reasons behind some of the current issues.

Better explained by Habib here: http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/11mz4k/i_am_a_programmer_for_guild_wars_2_amaa/c6nv7o2

I don’t know what games you guys have played but every recent game I’ve played with large scale battles have had similar issues. Aion, RIFT, TERA, all had problems. Some worse than others of course but none were perfect so you can’t really expect GW2 to be perfect, either.

Then they are send/receiving too much information, not compressing it, or are using tcp instead of udp. Either way, as I have stated, I have never seen an open PvP game have this many issues. Heck, even in sPvP there is lag from when a thief destealths when he hits me. Thats a MAX of 16 players and on some maps, 0 mobs.

Keep in mind that even in other games with better performance it was still possible to bring enough people to grind everything to a halt.

A significant number of DAoC players experienced significant performance decreases and “ghosts” when large numbers of players were present. At the time I had a very good computer, and I was involved in a pre-patch reset relic raid that it seemed like EVERYONE on the server was involved with. Huge clash at one of the mile gates and my performance was about on par with one of my aunt’s vacation picture slide shows. 1/3 FPS is an interesting way to fight.

Even in WoW there was a guild on my server that would bring huge crowds of DKs to Wintergrasp and all cast Army of the Dead in the courtyard to grind the server to a halt. I would guess that Earthen Ring experienced more server crashes at the end of a WG battle than any other…

At this point I wouldn’t mind waiting a few minutes at a loading screen while everyones armour/weapon/dye information is actually download in advance and put into local storage on my machine. They’ve still got to worry about movement, spells, players updating themselves, and new players of course, but at least this way one would assume the reporting/culling issues would be alleviated somewhat. A solution is needed because this is end game for a lot of us and it’s diminishing the experience.

MajorKong.8095:

At this point I wouldn’t mind waiting a few minutes at a loading screen while everyones armour/weapon/dye information is actually download in advance and put into local storage on my machine. They’ve still got to worry about movement, spells, players updating themselves, and new players of course, but at least this way one would assume the reporting/culling issues would be alleviated somewhat. A solution is needed because this is end game for a lot of us and it’s diminishing the experience.

not sure why it doesnt do this now. I know in DAoC you would get lagdar. When people came into just outside your clip range it would preload them thus taking care of this culling issue.

Yes, you could bring anything to it’s knees if enough people were in one area. maybe all they need to do is increase the zone sizes. That’s one possible solution. So much in one area is causing an overload of information. In DAoC and WAR the objects and keeps were spread out more.

Wow, so not the argument I had in mind. Well.. whatever rock on.

As for the whole “if you don’t force colors it will make render times slower” this is just flat out wrong. The server is already doing that. Allow me to show you.

Current system:
Load Player: Strenif.4935
Head: Item#3918 #color432 (green)
Shoulder: Item#458 #color432 (green)
Chest: Item#2561 #color432 (green)
Gloves: Item#1232 #color432 (green)
Boots Item#44 #color432 (green)
Legs Item#1764 #color432 (green)

New system:
Load Player: Strenif.4935
Head: Item#3918 #color32 (Rust)
Shoulder: Item#458 #color532 (Red)
Chest: Item#2561 #color74 (Rust)
Gloves: Item#1232 #color74 (Rust)
Boots Item#44 #color74 (Rust)
Legs Item#1764 #color3 (Black)

Server performance is not effected AT ALL.

Well there will actually be three colors to deal with, not one, but that’s besides the point. The point is there is a valid reason for the issues and ANet is already working on dealing with them. It’s driving me as crazy as the rest of you.

It’s funny someone mentioned lagdar – we had that in Aion as well. You knew when an enemy was nearby even before they showed up on the mini map’s radar or on screen at all. It was quite useful lol.

Leiloni.7951:

Well there will actually be three colors to deal with, not one, but that’s besides the point. The point is there is a valid reason for the issues and ANet is already working on dealing with them. It’s driving me as crazy as the rest of you.

It’s funny someone mentioned lagdar – we had that in Aion as well. You knew when an enemy was nearby even before they showed up on the mini map’s radar or on screen at all. It was quite useful lol.

I remember being accused of using radar in DAoC and I never did. It was just easy to sit some where for a second and feel the load lag from a direction and then run there. Or preset up for an inc group because of lagdar. Useful was right.

tarnin.1690:

Leiloni.7951:

Well there will actually be three colors to deal with, not one, but that’s besides the point. The point is there is a valid reason for the issues and ANet is already working on dealing with them. It’s driving me as crazy as the rest of you.

It’s funny someone mentioned lagdar – we had that in Aion as well. You knew when an enemy was nearby even before they showed up on the mini map’s radar or on screen at all. It was quite useful lol.

I remember being accused of using radar in DAoC and I never did. It was just easy to sit some where for a second and feel the load lag from a direction and then run there. Or preset up for an inc group because of lagdar. Useful was right.

Yep. Or if the lagdar goes off and you don’t see anything, then you know you have a stealthed Thief/Assassin nearby.

The reason this worked in DAoC but wouldn’t work for GW2 is because of recognition. In DAoC, you could tell each realm apart visually at clip range because every realm had different races and classes. In GW2, every world has the same races and classes, so there’s no way to visually differentiate friend from foe at a glance except for the forced colors.

Introduce capes into the game, every cape gets a “forced” background color based on server color, then you can show something like the Guild Logo on the cape. Everyone gets their own colors. This would increase information transferred to each by one information slot, using the example above, you’d have something like:
Cape Item#xxxx #color432 (green)

Then you could just download and cache all current guild logos when you first warp into WvW. Then when the client processes that someones from Guild 1 it just has to look up the logo from the cache for Guild 1. Except for maybe one or two items that would get added to the feed about the capes “forced color”, everything else would be handled client side.

Edit: Also on another note, if it were such an issue to display custom colors for players, and it really caused so much lag, they would remove the ability to see the custom colors of a player from the same server. If we could introduce something like capes that I mentioned, or a better method of enemy recognition I see no reason why we shouldn’t be allowed to see custom coloring of enemies.