Guild Wars 2

Don’t get me wrong — I LOVE the new bloodlust mechanic — it let’s players who are more skilled in 1v1 and small-group skirmishes shine, and it gives guilds something to do besides PvDooring.

But every minute or so, everyone on the server seems to get afflicted by massive lag spikes. This seems to happen whenever the bloodlust buff swaps. Has A.net said anything about this problem?

And, if the problem is caused by the server having to recalculate everyone’s stats, would it be wise to get rid of the stat buff? The +1 point per stomp thing is already pretty huge. My server (Blackgate) is currently down 200 PPT from the leading server, yet we’ve been CLIMBING AHEAD in overall points because we consistently hold about ~2 of the orbs and apparently keep stomping the other servers’ players. I don’t know if we need a stat buff on top of that to make the orbs worth holding — especially if the stat buff is what’s causing the lag.

edit: The rubberbanding lag appears to have been fixed, so this thread is kinda pointless now.

Noticed this today too. My lag was not only skill lag, but also players rubber banding back and forth.

Smooth as butter in LA and other zones, definitely WvW (maybe even just borderlands) isolated problem.

Yes. It is responsible. 100% confirmed.

You’ll notice you lag horribly when the bloodlust buff at the bottom of your screen flickers rapidly.

The server that has incapable of calculation in WvW now got more load.

1- CHeck 15 node and reapply buff for 2000 people.
2- Check blodolust and give stomp buff for every stomp in 4map.

I’d looove to see the responsible code and its tax in big-O notation, this could be hilarious..

At best O(lg n). More likely O(n), but possibly O(2^n) if the reporting has to be broadcasted.

I don’t want to know what the Big-O is. It will only make me sad/mad I believe. To OP: Yes, this is what is creating your lag. Skill lag comes from the inability of the Anet servers to handle all of the computations that happens when large groups clash. The fact that conditions get dynamically calculated based on changing stats contributes a large part to this. What the buff have now done is add more computations, since every single person’s stats is now changing even more than before. This is not limited to conditions btw. Everything affected by your stats are now being recalculated over and over.

The thing that I don’t understand though: The have already stated that upgrading the servers is not an option, so the only solutions that I can see is:

1. Reduce computations. For example: When a condition is applied it ticks for the same amount every tick instead of changing every second with your stats. This is how it works in WoW, unless that have changed.

2. Encourage large groups to split up. This will decrease the computations per second since less people are fighting at the exact same time. The new maps might help with this, but unfortunately they have added way more computations with the bloodlust buff than the new maps could ever help with.

3. Reduce the amount of players on the map. This can be achieved by either lowering the player cap per map or encouraging the server populations to equalize. I would not be a fan of the former, but the latter would be great.

I also just would like to point out that prior to the patch I have been pretty impressed with how little skill lag I have been experiencing lately. I used to get it when large zergs met, but for the last couple of months I have not had any, apart from when a 3-way was happening in SM with higher tier opponents. Since this patch, I have been completely unable to play. I hope they fix it soon, as I only play WvW and it has been the best large scale PvP I have experienced!

Edit: I didn’t list the removing of the stat buff as a solution, but I obviously feel that that needs to go ASAP! I don’t think they will keep it for too long, but hopefully they will replace it with something that doesn’t strain the system, but still encourages the fighting on the new zones.

Brafius.7432:

I don’t want to know what the Big-O is. It will only make me sad/mad I believe. To OP: Yes, this is what is creating your lag. Skill lag comes from the inability of the Anet servers to handle all of the computations that happens when large groups clash. The fact that conditions get dynamically calculated based on changing stats contributes a large part to this. What the buff have now done is add more computations, since every single person’s stats is now changing even more than before. This is not limited to conditions btw. Everything affected by your stats are now being recalculated over and over.

The thing that I don’t understand though: The have already stated that upgrading the servers is not an option, so the only solutions that I can see is:

1. Reduce computations. For example: When a condition is applied it ticks for the same amount every tick instead of changing every second with your stats. This is how it works in WoW, unless that have changed.

2. Encourage large groups to split up. This will decrease the computations per second since less people are fighting at the exact same time. The new maps might help with this, but unfortunately they have added way more computations with the bloodlust buff than the new maps could ever help with.

3. Reduce the amount of players on the map. This can be achieved by either lowering the player cap per map or encouraging the server populations to equalize. I would not be a fan of the former, but the latter would be great.

I also just would like to point out that prior to the patch I have been pretty impressed with how little skill lag I have been experiencing lately. I used to get it when large zergs met, but for the last couple of months I have not had any, apart from when a 3-way was happening in SM with higher tier opponents. Since this patch, I have been completely unable to play. I hope they fix it soon, as I only play WvW and it has been the best large scale PvP I have experienced!

Edit: I didn’t list the removing of the stat buff as a solution, but I obviously feel that that needs to go ASAP! I don’t think they will keep it for too long, but hopefully they will replace it with something that doesn’t strain the system, but still encourages the fighting on the new zones.

rhodoc.2381:

The server that has incapable of calculation in WvW now got more load.

1- CHeck 15 node and reapply buff for 2000 people.
2- Check blodolust and give stomp buff for every stomp in 4map.

this.

/15 charrs

WvW needs less lag, not more. (IIRC, fixing lag was voted one of the top priorities for WvW players.)

(Please let me know of any errors in the following.)

The main sources of lag seem to be (in descending order):

1. The number of server calculations performed per tick
2. The number of server-client messages sent per tick
3. The complexity of each server calculations

Changes that reduce these are good for WvW; those that increase them are a bad for WvW. Changes that increase just one of these will degrade WvW performance. Any change that significantly increases two or more of these across a large proportion of the WvW population is likely to be very bad in terms of lag in WvW.

Put all this together and it makes a lot of sense for ANet to be working to eliminate or curtail features affecting the combat values of large numbers of players in WvW. (There’s a very good reason why AoE, conditions and boons are capped to 5 players.) The converse of this also applies.

Applying this to our current situation, it looks like Anet are going to have to find an awful lot of performance from somewhere if they want the bloodlust buff (or any version thereof) to survive. The obvious way to get this performance is by significantly reducing the volume of condition and boon calculations. However there are problems there:

• The majority of condition and boon stacks are small, which means the maximum number of stacks will need to be cut to fraction of their current level to make a material difference to performance
• Cutting condition and boon stacking to that great an extent is likely to have marked and potentially unanticipated impacts on the dynamics of GW2 combat

The Bloodlust boon may turn out to have a far greater impact on GW2 than Anet anticipated.