Guild Wars 2

It is widely known that skill lag (among other issues) exists due to anet servers stressing.
If they do not believe this, let them speak now.

To FIX this and have a better gaming environment, we must upgrade the servers.
Anet, being a business, will not/can not invest that money else they would have done it.

It is up to us players to fix it.

I propose a kickstarter initiative to once and for all fix this serious game issue.
If anet would proivde a $ value on what is required to upgrade their servers, we will try to meet that goal.

Win/Win

Anet spends ZERO dollars and upgrades their best game
We get the gameplay experience that we deserve.

What say you ?

I say I feed their families enough through use of the money grubbing cash shop.

Are you sure there is problem with the servers?

Maybe its the engine or something else that cannot be fixed.

I would rather not pay for something that A-net should be paying for.

lol the servers will cost millions not just a few thousands, good luck with a kickstarter for that lol

@ Ilesyt

How would you have the slightest clue how m,uch it would cost… plz

@ smokey

Agreed, but would you also like to play the game lag free for your contribution of 10 dollars ?

@ Rissou
Not sure, need anets input

PaulV.3245:

@ Ilesyt

How would you have the slightest clue how m,uch it would cost… plz

Because I’m studying software engineering and Networks is part of that and servers at that capacity cost millions…

If only a-net had made several million dollars on this game…

They said they’re already using high-end servers iirc, and I believe that. They have to fix the code to reduce or balance CPU load, no hardware in existance could fix such an issue. Just like there’s currently no hardware that would give you a guaranteed 60FPS in huge WvW zergs, even if you had all the money in the world.

How about they just add more useless crap that everyone wants to the gem store, fix bugs, and don’t make new content (other than more gem store crap for money) so they can save up for new servers?

kittenolololol

Any problem can be solved with the right knowledge and money

PaulV.3245:

Any problem can be solved with the right knowledge and money

… only it’s not your problem to solve. It’s Anet’s. And before you throw money at a problem, you throw knowledge at it… and you can’t Kickstart knowledge, making this idea redundant.

So how about we stop with the stupid Kickstarter threads and let Anet’s engineers do their thing, in their time, to their servers to improve their game.

No skill lag in my tier. Perhaps you should transfer down?

if Anet were capable of fixing the server/lag problem, i believe they would of done it before now BUT they are capable of doing temporary content – isn’t that good enough?

“So how about we stop with the stupid Kickstarter threads and let Anet’s engineers do their thing, in their time, to their servers to improve their game.”

You may do just that… others may try to help…

PaulV.3245:

@ Ilesyt

How would you have the slightest clue how m,uch it would cost… plz

even at 1k each server, there’s 50 servers assuming they all run on there own dedicated one, that’s 50k a month

most packages are 3/6/12 months so at the very least you’re going to need to get 150k

that’s also assuming 1k is the price, which is extremely unlikley and also have you thought about what happens if you were to raise the 150k? that’s right, you have to do it all over again because anet aren’t going to pay up

i think i made a bit of a mistake as its 3 worlds on 1 server meaning it would only be 16 new servers they need, even still my point still holds

1k servers are crappiest and cheapest you can get lol

Honestly they should bet on themselves and the product they made and invest resources to address these and other major issues.

If the foundation is good then the investment would be returned to them and more through increased customer loyalty and an expanding player base.

All over the game, veteran players have expressed a deep love of the mechanics but its the same story “not enough follow through” aka spvp game mechanics vs. the lack of content available to use it.

kickstarter: lower pop cap per server

Anets got the best server architecture for any MMO ive played.

Do you ever ask yourself – why are the servers up instantly after a patch?
Why is there no downtime?

When other mmo’s update their servers go down for the patch for several hours -not so with arenanet. They are doing something right here.

The answer is that arenanets servers are all virtual. This lets them transition people into new versions seamlessly, they have the new version run alongside the old version, as people log out of the old version and log back into the new version the resources the old version takes drops as the new version increases, until the old version expires (3 mins, unless it is an instance).

The problem is a hardware one and a software one, the problem is mainly a big O problem. The more people in an area doing the maximum amount of actions per second the more server resources that client will take. Huge fights have players spamming their keys and the server is receiving all that information and has to process it all in order. Eve online has similar problems when laaaarge numbers of players would crowd into one tiny spot for a huge fight. Before time dilation (TIDI) the server would be brought to a screeching halt and often just crash. We have a similar problem in gw2, but no TIDI to help the server process everything gracefully in order. So the anet engineers need to work on a solution – and it will be a combination of reducing the amount of cpu work that has to be done and beefing up the wvw server hardware.

Currently think of this when you damage another player the following must be done

Skill base damage increased by your power times the power coefficient for the skill multiply by a random factor, roll to see if it crits, if it crits multiply by the critical damage stat, apply any on hit effects, apply any on crit effects, then calculate damage received by reducing by toughness, check boons for protection and reduce more, does the enemy block it? does it miss? does something else happen to it? (reduce to 0, transfer to pet?). Finally reduce health of target hit by damage, if target is below 0, put in downstate, if already in downstate set to defeated. display information to client hit and client hitting.

From what I estimate there is a lot of calculation going on for a single hit, siege hits are simplified as only wvw traits modify the damage side of the equasion, which is probably why they can up the aoe cap for siege.

Open this: http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1016640/Guild-Wars-2-Programming-the
then click servers.

Use your money to transfer to a lower tier server. The zerg fights still take place, just with less people. You occasionally get lag but for the most party everything is fine. In tier’s one and two you get a lot of laggy fights where nothing works for the duration of the fight, but in the lower tiers it’s not really an issue.

Draygo.9473:

Anets got the best server architecture for any MMO ive played.

Do you ever ask yourself – why are the servers up instantly after a patch?
Why is there no downtime?

When other mmo’s update their servers go down for the patch for several hours -not so with arenanet. They are doing something right here.

The answer is that arenanets servers are all virtual. This lets them transition people into new versions seamlessly, they have the new version run alongside the old version, as people log out of the old version and log back into the new version the resources the old version takes drops as the new version increases, until the old version expires (3 mins, unless it is an instance).

The problem is a hardware one and a software one, the problem is mainly a big O problem. The more people in an area doing the maximum amount of actions per second the more server resources that client will take. Huge fights have players spamming their keys and the server is receiving all that information and has to process it all in order. Eve online has similar problems when laaaarge numbers of players would crowd into one tiny spot for a huge fight. Before time dilation (TIDI) the server would be brought to a screeching halt and often just crash. We have a similar problem in gw2, but no TIDI to help the server process everything gracefully in order. So the anet engineers need to work on a solution – and it will be a combination of reducing the amount of cpu work that has to be done and beefing up the wvw server hardware.

Currently think of this when you damage another player the following must be done

Skill base damage increased by your power times the power coefficient for the skill multiply by a random factor, roll to see if it crits, if it crits multiply by the critical damage stat, apply any on hit effects, apply any on crit effects, then calculate damage received by reducing by toughness, check boons for protection and reduce more, does the enemy block it? does it miss? does something else happen to it? (reduce to 0, transfer to pet?). Finally reduce health of target hit by damage, if target is below 0, put in downstate, if already in downstate set to defeated. display information to client hit and client hitting.

From what I estimate there is a lot of calculation going on for a single hit, siege hits are simplified as only wvw traits modify the damage side of the equasion, which is probably why they can up the aoe cap for siege.

Open this: http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1016640/Guild-Wars-2-Programming-the
then click servers.

The only thing is that in EVE, you could have thousands of people in one system and THAT is when the TiDi really starts to kick in. We are talking less than 300 people here (around 80 a side in a bl) and in EVE especially, this was never a problem on the scale we are seeing. Not only that but there are way more calculations going on at any given moment server-side in even a normal battle in EVE than there could possibly be going onin GW2, transversals, turret rotation speeds, velocities, explosion velocity from missles, DRONES etc. The list goes on and on. There is a deeper issue going on here and I imagine it is a software one, and includes the virtualization element, which can’t be helping. Here is an example where time dilation does NOT occur in EVE until the battle escalates from abou 300-400 to around 2800 people, where it jumps to about 50%, then eventually goes to about 90%. This was recent, too. TiDi is indicated by a green ring on the top left next to the system name, and begins when forces from both sides begin to jump in en-masse.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_498260&feature=iv&src_vid=yTQHv0FrgrE&v=TLqb-m1ZZUA

This was even in a low-priority node….. honestly there is no excuse this far into the game’s life.

SmokeyNYY.7841:

I would rather not pay for something that A-net should be paying for.

This, especially with the way they rip money off people through the cash shop , RNG etc.

Ilesyt.7084:

lol the servers will cost millions not just a few thousands, good luck with a kickstarter for that lol

I don’t know if upgraded or new servers is the answer, but no, it would NOT cost millions.

What servers are still having skill lag? I havent had any for many weeks now.. im playing on piken square.

Gathslan.1870:

What servers are still having skill lag? I havent had any for many weeks now.. im playing on piken square.

lol…

I play on Piken Square too, and I have lag everyday because of big fights in stonemist, eternal battleground.

And that is skill delay lag, for everyone on the map.

Lead.1784:

there are way more calculations going on at any given moment server-side in even a normal battle in EVE than there could possibly be going onin GW2

I wouldn’t be quick to state that peremptorily.

Of course I didn’t play EVE so what do I know, but from the looks of battle dynamics in the video you’ve referred to… Man, if players in GW2 were mowing THAT slooooow (not absolute speed but maneuvers relative to fight sphere), I think GW2 servers would run at 10% load max. Character movement is so erratic, dynamic and unpredictable compared to these space ships, so it adds a lot of complexity and CPU load. Overall, GW2 battles look much more dynamic and loaded with movement, skill and ground AoE interactions than what I can see in EVE videos.

And from the looks of it the problem is not with throwing more hardware at the problem, but rather software architecture limitations.

Again, not stating anything firmly here, just an opinion…

I wonder if TiDi-like solution would work in a game like GW2. Would be interesting to see time slowing down just a little when battles become HUGE. Like that spacing out feeling and slomos in movies. But that of course wouldn’t work if slowdown is noticeable since it would have to be global to map at least. Or would it?..

Pinko.2076:

kickstarter: lower pop cap per server

They have done this before, and people were still experiencing lag in SMC battles.

PaulV.3245:

What say you ?

why not put your money towards camelot unreleased , would be better.

I think it would be easier if we just stopped running around in balls of 50+ people. A 30v30 battles is still pretty epic, just no lag.

Won’t do any good, they will just hire more artists and make town clothes for the gem store.

Wait… just throw money at a wealthy company? They can spend the money, they are choosing not to. That’s a big difference right there.

I doubt they’d take it even if you did do it. Not that it’s a good idea.

Dear OP you are so wrong on so many levels.

Yaro.3251:

Lead.1784:

there are way more calculations going on at any given moment server-side in even a normal battle in EVE than there could possibly be going onin GW2

I wouldn’t be quick to state that peremptorily.

Of course I didn’t play EVE so what do I know, but from the looks of battle dynamics in the video you’ve referred to… Man, if players in GW2 were mowing THAT slooooow (not absolute speed but maneuvers relative to fight sphere), I think GW2 servers would run at 10% load max. Character movement is so erratic, dynamic and unpredictable compared to these space ships, so it adds a lot of complexity and CPU load. Overall, GW2 battles look much more dynamic and loaded with movement, skill and ground AoE interactions than what I can see in EVE videos.

And from the looks of it the problem is not with throwing more hardware at the problem, but rather software architecture limitations.

Again, not stating anything firmly here, just an opinion…

I wonder if TiDi-like solution would work in a game like GW2. Would be interesting to see time slowing down just a little when battles become HUGE. Like that spacing out feeling and slomos in movies. But that of course wouldn’t work if slowdown is noticeable since it would have to be global to map at least. Or would it?..

I wonder if it would work, as well. Also, there is definitely more going on in an EVE battle, those big blobs are very uncharacteristic and most fights are skirmishes with smaller ships that move very quickly. The ships in that battle are absurdly large, most fights aren’t between cap fleets. Ill explain why there is so much going on here. Basically lets take for example one type of weapon in eve. A railgun. In eve, in the simplest terms to determine if you even are hit, it calculates the transversal (look it up) and the actual rotation speed of your turrets on your ship. The smaller the turret (usually based on ship size) the more likely you can hit a fast moving ship, this ALSO depends on your maneuvering. If you are spinning the wrong way it can actually make it harder for your turrets to hit. But basically this can allow you in a smaller ship to orbit a larger one while it is impossible to be hit by their weapons. This is just one type of weapon. Missiles even have an explosion velocity when they hit that you can literally outrun in smaller ships. In comparison in GW2 it is basically, are you in an AOE sphere (yes, it is a sphere.) or not? Did someone target you and fire a projectile? You can dodge, and yes it tracks it but that is client side for sure. There are a lot of AoE interactions in eve they are just lightly used in blob warfare like that. They even describe the “firewall” group they have. The other thing too are a main weapon of EvE the drone. This is an AI unit that your deploy and it reacts to your orders and orbits and attacks ships you designate. You can have a ridiculous amount of those in many fights, and especially in those big fights like the video. Many of the huge ships in there were Carriers, which are designed to carry drones. Honestly, GW2 just has issues with the software side of things. You do bring up a good point about the movement, the stuff that is managed by the client is unaffected by “skill lag”, namely, movement. I believe that more stuff is done client side in EvE and they figured out a way to make it work. I am not sure about that though. It would make sense though since it is such a lag-free experience most of the time. We are talking about the same number of players here too. At least as far as lag goes.

The internet’s infrastructure can only handle so much. It isn’t ANet’s servers. -_-

Aneirin Cadwall.9126:

The internet’s infrastructure can only handle so much. It isn’t ANet’s servers. -_-

Neither of these are factors. It’s the engine!

Kai.9182:

Won’t do any good, they will just hire more artists and make town clothes for the gem store.

What do artists and the gem store have to do with server lag? Oh that’s right. Nothing whatsoever. This, along with many other comments in this thread, are incredibly out of touch with how software development actually works and the limitations that exist in reality.

Artists designing items for the gem store or other content for the game has no impact on network programming or engine programming. They’re different parts of the team. Like with culling, this isn’t a simple issue that merely requires people throwing money at it. It requires a lot of time and resources to fix. The network programming for this game is incredibly complex.

Zedd.8239:

Kai.9182:

Won’t do any good, they will just hire more artists and make town clothes for the gem store.

What do artists and the gem store have to do with server lag? Oh that’s right. Nothing whatsoever. This, along with many other comments in this thread, are incredibly out of touch with how software development actually works and the limitations that exist in reality.
.

the joke went way over your head

Ilesyt.7084:

lol the servers will cost millions not just a few thousands, good luck with a kickstarter for that lol

Well Mark Jacobs just raised 2.2 million on Kickstarter for his new Camelot Unchained MMO.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/13861848/camelot-unchained

Malyck.1930:

Ilesyt.7084:

lol the servers will cost millions not just a few thousands, good luck with a kickstarter for that lol

Well Mark Jacobs just raised 2.2 million on Kickstarter for his new Camelot Unchained MMO.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/13861848/camelot-unchained

Isn’t that the guy who lost EA over $1 billion with Warhammer?

Zedd.8239:

Kai.9182:

Won’t do any good, they will just hire more artists and make town clothes for the gem store.

What do artists and the gem store have to do with server lag? Oh that’s right. Nothing whatsoever. This, along with many other comments in this thread, are incredibly out of touch with how software development actually works and the limitations that exist in reality.

Artists designing items for the gem store or other content for the game has no impact on network programming or engine programming. They’re different parts of the team. Like with culling, this isn’t a simple issue that merely requires people throwing money at it. It requires a lot of time and resources to fix. The network programming for this game is incredibly complex.

Yes, and it is sub-par.

I’d flip em a benjamin for this.
Don’t care much whos job it is. Want my game workin good.

Not in a million years.

Anet has sold millions of copies, made millions of $$ and has failed to deliver what was promised to their clients. Giving them more money to sort out an issue they have already been paid for to sort out, just encourages that sort of behaviour.

The correct move would be a community wide embargo to anything that has to do with the cash shop. When the tap runs dry, they’ll seek out the plumber.

Maybe you should contact with NASA instead of kickstarter :P

Eliandal.8735:

Neither of these are factors. It’s the engine!

This. Gw2 is built on a modified gw1 engine, and think of all the limitations on players and many other things it has.
Like another said, wait for Camelot Unchained

I’m pretty sure that Anet makes enough money they can upgrade their own kitten servers.