Guild Wars 2

Allie Murdock.8152:

Hey all just wanted to update real quick! We’ve been investigating an issue that was introduced recently which we suspect could be causing increased lag in WvW. Today, we’ll be doing a hotfix to improve server performance with the hope that it mitigates the lag we’ve all been experiencing.

Keep an eye out once the hotfix is live and let us know if you notice a difference!

Dear Allie, I am sorry to inform you that the WvW lag is not something new. So fixing something that was recently introduced won’t fix the issue.

The skill lag and fps drop has been there since months before WvW season 1 back in 2013 and maybe even before than….Yours truly, a humble WvW warrior.

The lag issues had subsided ( not vanished) dramatically for many of us shortly after the fixes to culling but re appeared for many around the same time as the Lions arch events.

I have a few thousand hrs into wvw but am not a NA timezone player except on reset day so mileage may vary.

I’ve had terrible lag since Season 2 started until the patch today, and now its much better. I was in a 3 way battle at Bay TC/BG/JQ and it was 95% better than earlier. so THANKS!

Playing from 4pm-9pm CT on SoS in EB and heavy population BLs.
Not feeling but a slight amount of lag.
Yesterday, there was skill lag about every 5th encounter.

Seems to be working. There is still some real choppiness (teleporting herk and jerk) which is a real pain when it is your commander and they say “follow me”.

The “tells” on skills are still a bit rough, like listening at a bar to a TV station on Slingbox while watching the big screen. Manageable but annoying.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Hey all just wanted to update real quick! We’ve been investigating an issue that was introduced recently which we suspect could be causing increased lag in WvW. Today, we’ll be doing a hotfix to improve server performance with the hope that it mitigates the lag we’ve all been experiencing.

Keep an eye out once the hotfix is live and let us know if you notice a difference!

Madame, you are my new favourite ArenaNet representative. Luv ya!

Yesterday evening, after your ‘fix’ on SFR Eb was business as usual, mega lagfest for half of the time and huge skills speedups after.
If i may i would suggest an QoL improvement to WvW: scrap the music you have now and add some from the Benny Hill show when people were chasing eachother. Thanks!

Yeah with moa skills.

We lost hope to see wvw without lag after almost 2 years (from 18:00 to 22:00 GMT, no chance to play).
Play in zerg/blob warr, guard, necro or stay in pve – that’s it.
We love your game BUT we can’t play how we want. Sad, very sad.

I guess that you will get more valid repots during the prime time!

Come to think of it, we had some pretty huge fights after the patch last night in the JQ vs BGTC and the lag was pretty much gone.

Allie Murdock.8152:

That’s good to hear! Our graphs are showing improvement too, but it’s good to hear from you guys that it’s gotten better.

This issue is far from fixed Allie, Don’t get me wrong it has improved but only VERY slightly.

Thanks for keeping us informed though.

Allie Murdock.8152:

That’s good to hear! Our graphs are showing improvement too, but it’s good to hear from you guys that it’s gotten better.

It was improved for me except for going into EB so its not back to where it was prior to the problem but it is better. Keep working on it please! I’d like to be able to go to EB.

What kind of issue are you specifically having that could be related to lag?
Skill lag, rubber-banding, etc. ~pretty much this. Before the league started, when bad lag occured only skills and portals (into keeps ie.) stopped working. Now even the movement is lagging.
What server are you on?
Seafarers Rest.
Has there ever been a time when you or a friend are experiencing lag, while others in your party are not?
No, entire zone suffered from lag. Before, it seemed like the lag was somehow focussed on a zone where there was zerg activity, and right now it seems way more zone wide.
Has there ever been a time where one party in a map is experiencing lag, while other parties in that same map are not?
Yes, there have been, though it seems that when this big lag starts it is definately throughout the entire map. It might be worse right next to zerg activity.
Do you experience the lag at very specific times?
Definately when 1 entire zerg (ie. 80 players from 1 server) are actively doing something thats not just moving. Definately way way worse when 2 zergs this size clash. Seems to only happen if there is compact zerg activity 80+ members.
If so, can you estimate how many players are in each zerg?
atleast 80 in 1 single zerg, and then all the players from other servers and the rest of the people on the map.

Lag is the same as before the patch for me.

1. What kind of issue are you specifically having that could be related to lag?
Skill lag, rubber-banding

2. What server are you on?
SFR

3. Has there ever been a time when you or a friend are experiencing lag, while others in your party are not?
The whole Map got skill-lags not only a “few” persons

4. Do you experience the lag at very specific times?
Zerg fights somtimes 20vs20vs20 and sometimes 80vs80vs80, In prime time the skill-lags are horrible

Even after your “Hotfix” there still horrible skill lags. For me as a Roamer who MUST use his skills right in time wvw got unplayble. In my opinion its kind of ridiculous telling us after months “there might be a problem with the server performance”. The WvW Community is complaining about this since Month. In the last periode of 2013 the skill lags began.
Please give us back the culling instead of skill lags. It’s not very funny to die 2-3 times in 1vs3 fights just because of thesekitten** skill lags.

If You offer us a map like eternal battlegrounds where 100 players of each server can play at the same time then you HAVE TO make sure that your servers can handle this !!!!

1. Complete player lag out, 3-4 and up to 10 seconds of complete devoid interraction followed by a speed catch-up that occurs in less than 1s.

2. JQ

3. Most of the players note lag when it occurs, but people have said varying degrees of it.

4. I answer below the times it occurs:
I experience lag on fully queued maps most nights, so I can’t note a specific night, but I’ll talk about last yesterday.

I spent some time in JQBL during the day. From the experiences it seemed as if TC had an almost full queue, same with JQ players and a small BG force. There was no lag, or very little of it.

Later in the night, all 3 servers were showing fully large forces (queued map) and lag was unplayable when two zergs were close together. If you are at a far side of the map it’s not noticable, but when in proximity to two servers near each other, it starts showing up.

In fact, I’ve gotten to a point where I would play normally then experience a lag-out and I would know… oh enemy zerg is nearby.
It seems it’s an overload on the server processing the actions

Where is this improvement you speak of.. cant get any skills to fire now.. not even #1 skill.. .. not fun or maybe that’s the improvement!

something you have improved?
here is my answer. Yes, I can now impose acceleration dolyaks when no one is around. When there is a battle of 3-4 players and more, then there are all the same lags.

3 Day’s on from when i last said about the skill lag i was experiencing and still no change even after this improvement patch. In eb 15 second skill delay’s minimum, rubber banding as usual when taking camps. Everyone who is with me or fighting on another part of the map is the same……

JaredKincade.9761:

I am on Blackgate

I experience two separate problems related to skill lag.

The first is when very large groups are fighting, usually over a keep. The skills are delayed and most times never even fire. After the fight ends, the server seems to “catch up” and all our skills fire super fast.

The only way this would happen is if the server had already acted on those button pushes, but the packets sent by the server are being held. The server enforces the global cooldown.

I can think of only two ways packets could be held like that:

1. TCP drop/retry storm between the server egress and internet backbone
(Possibly the result of a policer configured to drop packets the server sends when its allowed send rate has been exceeded)

2. Traffic shaping at the server (before the TCP timer kicks in), in which case the packets are being held in the server’s queue before sending (or possibly in a server acting as a gateway, but once packets hit the network the TCP timeout is rather absolute…unless GW2 uses some ad-hoc replacement for TCP)

:)

JaredKincade.9761:

I hope I’m not off topic here:

There is something my guild and I have linked. We used to experience the most skill lag when fighting guilds with heavy necro’s. Old school War Machine was some of the first laggers because they were some of the first heavy necro well users.

These days, there is something my guild does (other guilds do it too) that I don’t really want to say that causes skill lag even in smaller fights. Suffice it to say, that using this thing causes tons and tons of conditions. (If someone cares I’ll respond to a PM).

I think somehow that the larger amount of conditions and perhaps the ticking nature of wells should also be suspect.

Hmmm…interesting…not going to ask for your gameplay trade secrets but this is interesting.

Let’s say, hypothetically, that when a condition is aoe’ed onto 5 players that the server must send information to each of those players every tick about every condition. I’m assuming you all have min/maxed this technique so condition duration is very, very long. If somehow when n players are in a zerg on zerg battle, each player ends up with tens of conditions, then the amount of updating between server and one client could become tens of updates per second instead of the normal out-of-combat one update every few seconds. Multiply this by 50 players from each of 3 factions in close proximity, each of whom is being told about each of the effects on the other players, and this is O(n^2) updates.

For you non computer science types, I’m speculating that the algorithm used will cause 10 times as many people to have 100 times as much network traffic at the server, which means there’s probably a number of people at which the server’s internet connection just can’t send that fast. Given that many zones share one server, there may be a fail safe preventing one zone from monopolizing the network connection causing performance in other zones hosted by the same server to collapse.

The fix for this is of course to design out the O(n^2) growth in traffic, or if that is not possible to mark the traffic in some way (in networks we use green, yellow, red, but generally don’t trust servers not to lie) so that if there’s an overload the yellow packets are dropped first. The level of skill, and time, it would take to cleanly identify multiple classes of traffic in the server, and re engineer the server to network connection, so the network would know what to drop in an overload is likely beyond ArenaNet’s skill and resources.

Maybe a display option “show spell effects only up to this many friendly players” and “show spell effects only up up to this many mobs and enemy players” where I could say 1, or 10, or 100 in the box, might be the fix…or better yet cap it at 10. Just a thought, and remember I’m speculating here.

Yesterday’s lag in BL maps was easier to deal with than before… EB on the other hand, even worse… couldn’t even get my 1,1,1,1,1,1,1 to work…

Skill lag, rubber-banding, portals won’t let me through for about 5 seconds and occasional teleporting of other players and myself
Gate Of Madness
Usually 3 out of 5 people in party experience lag
map chat complains about lag too
Besides big fights… Very randomized when lag happens, currently even experiencing it in PvE and so are the rest of the people in the dungeons
30v30 zergs it becomes kitten delay on skills and that’s IF we have skills other than auto attack.

Allie Murdock.8152:

That’s good to hear! Our graphs are showing improvement too, but it’s good to hear from you guys that it’s gotten better.

Yeah, it’s pretty much back to the normal skill lag during large battles. The ‘powerpoint fight lagging, freeze then disconnect issue’ that an area of people would experience appears to be gone. Thanks!

Allie Murdock.8152:

That’s good to hear! Our graphs are showing improvement too, but it’s good to hear from you guys that it’s gotten better.

It’s better than before, skill lag is still there, but at least it’s not unplayable. Whatever was changed, it’s in the right direction – but go on, and do even more if possible, using the comparison data on the code – before this patch (bad lag) and after (improved).

Also, maybe not directly related – but could be: options to skip sending customization data, and display one set armor and weapons (something choosen by us client side, same light, medium and heavy armor for everyone, including us), and thus reduce load on both server, network and client, could help a bit both server lag and client performance, including immersion (too many silly wings and “titles” and effects vs. a WvW world specific army uniform). Optional for those who want/need it, those who would do anything to improve reaction times even further.

When doesn’t matter your part, since lag kills you – then the game is over. Lag still isn’t solved, just improved a bit – and the next patch can destroy this improvement again. This WvW league should have been delayed until lag is reduced enough.

Skill lag is back, yesterday I had little to no problem but today I’m experiencing the same latency i had before

The fact was before this tiny patch: non of my guildies stept into eb because they where unable to do enything. It got fixed and we have great times there now.

The last 2 evenings I had no lagg untill 21:00 gmt+2 but after that the same lagg as before the tiny update. But this time even on the Borderlands where i had no lagg before the update.

-skill and rubber banding more so around the bloodlust point
-Blackgate
-yes,most of the time its jst me but my friend sometimes gets too while other not in my party dont get it
-no
-no
- yes 2-3 groups of 50+

Still the usual in EB chronic rubber banding when soloing camps small fights dueling, skill delays when in a zerg. Pretty much everything is worse since season 2 started surprise surprise.

Skill lag has been an issue since culling got dropped, so has damage slowdown/catchup, and conditions not wearing when their timers hit zero. The main issues are not going to be solved by hot fixing recent changes.

These issues probably require a server overhaul. Which is kind of sad seeing as this is the single most game breaking issue in GW2 – it is the only part of the game that becomes unplayable – and WvW is the only game mode which is not receiving new servers

.

I must inform you that skill lagg in presetn again, happened today in EB server is Ring of Fire, faced zerg with 50+, so nothing was fixed, not to mention exploits… you need to improve your so called fixing.

What kind of issue are you specifically having that could be related to lag?
Skill lag, rubber-banding, etc.
A) Healing is the worse, I have to hit it 5-6 times in a row before it registers.
B) Executing anything that isn’t an auto attack.
C) Definitively rubber banding..all of sudden everyone around me is frozen in time and yet I can still move..30 secs later, I am all by myself in a completely different location.

What server are you on?
A) Jade Quarry

Has there ever been a time when you or a friend are experiencing lag, while others in your party are not?
A) Yes, 5 man parties and two of our teammates swear up and down that the rest of the party is not with them when we are standing right next to them.

Has there ever been a time where one party in a map is experiencing lag, while other parties in that same map are not?
A) Yes
Do you experience the lag at very specific times?
A)During peak zerg hours (for me it is between 5-9pm central time). My friends and I can tell when there is a nearby zerg (even when we can’t see them) because all of sudden everything starts becoming laggy.
For example, when 1 zerg is facing another zerg.
If so, can you estimate how many players are in each zerg?
A) On average between 12-30 and it is just one zerg…so if I am with a party of 4 others..we know when a zerg is coming because of the lag.

What kind of issue are you specifically having that could be related to lag?
Severe skill lag. Rarely when it happens, it’s minor, and skills are just delayed, but when several big zergs are in one place at the same time, the lag is unplayable. Moving around, dodging, talking, all completely fine, but no skills go off. It’s like you’re not pressing those buttons at all.

Last night, it got so bad in Stonemist Castle when all three worlds were in the lord’s room that I could hardly do anything. The only skills that worked were going into Death Shroud, DS #4, and I think staff #2. That’s it. Every other skill would not work, period, and the three skills that would work had a pretty large delay of 3-4 seconds to trigger. Strangely enough, once I got out of combat, my heal would work (which made it redundant anyway since my HP would already be going up), but the second I re-entered combat there, lolnopenohealforyou. Happened 3-4 times where my heal would trigger just fine when I exited combat, while still in the lord’s room with the massive zergfest. I was pretty much relegated to running around like a headless chicken while my life force was depleted and staff 2 was on CD.

What server are you on?
Tarnished Coast.

Has there ever been a time when you or a friend are experiencing lag, while others in your party are not?
Sometimes, yes. When the skill lag is fairly minor, it seems to not affect everyone, or at least some people get hit harder by it while others aren’t too hindered. When it gets very severe to the point where no skills work ever, it seems to hit everyone, or almost everyone.

Has there ever been a time where one party in a map is experiencing lag, while other parties in that same map are not?
It does not seem to affect people party-by-party, from what I can tell. When it’s severe, everyone feels it. When it’s only affecting some, it’s kind of random and doesn’t only exist in certain parties.

Do you experience the lag at very specific times?
When a massive number of people from multiple worlds are together in the same location. This is the only scenario I’ve seen that triggers it. The bigger the mishmash of zergs, the worse it seems to get. Last night’s skill lag was the worst I have ever seen. It may or may not be made worse by all three world’s zergs being in the same location – I think the times it’s been unplayable for me were the times we had every world in the same small area.

If so, can you estimate how many players are in each zerg?
In the battle last night, I would guess ~40-50ish in each world’s zerg, possibly a little less from SoS. It was a little hard to tell with so many there in such a small space.

This thread is already a mile long, and I’ve already posted in here, but I had more to add that didn’t belong in the other thread that I was about to post it into. Really, I don’t know if anyone will read it at this point, being it that I just skipped past 3 pages to post this. hah:

I think most of us in NA have too crappy of a computer to even witness what’s happening on the field. lol

If you can only see the name tag of your opponent, and it’s a gvg, then you can just throw skill out the window at that point, because you’re playing a guessing game. Culling & lag is an ever-increasing scourge.

I’d recently watched a Blu coverage video of a gvg, and you could barely see what was happening. He pointed out things I didn’t even realize were going on based on his extensive experience with pvp, and full knowledge of the classes.

Guilds are going 30> these days to be able to handle the over-population of blobs littering the field, and can you even say that’s pvp at that point? A lot of people are losing interest. A lot.

My whole guild just said ‘kitten this’ and went PvE yesterday cause of the giant lagg in 3-way battles. Anet need to get better servers or put a lower cap on the numbers that can access a map…

Lagg hasn’t changed a dime.

Nothing has changed. The hotfix didn’t work. Lag is horrific.

Cosmetics change will not help. If Anet really want to change situation in right way they must work on ENGINE. There are too many “draw calls” …

Ok i have purposely stayed away from EB because of the crippling skill lag and stayed in my home bl (Gandara) in behold smaller queues but still the same problems skill lag but on a smaller level, i’d love to see your graphs and compare then to whats really going on.

Fergie’s Cross, EB generally. There is always lag when one of the bigger server’s zerg comes near, and generally when the fighting starts there’s multiple types of lag. Right now we’re fighting a MUCH larger server, and when their zerg entered our keep I couldn’t use skills and just watched as my toon fell to generally simplistic attacks I could have shrugged off.
And it’s been a continuous problem, usually worse when one of the larger servers zergs.

This is still happening, though not as bad as last week.

1. What kind of issue are you specifically having that could be related to lag?
Skill lag, rubber-banding
2. What server are you on?
Sorrow’s Furnace
3. Has there ever been a time when you or a friend are experiencing lag, while others in your party are not?
Anyone on our side or quarter of the map get the skill lag.
4. Do you experience the lag at very specific times?
The rubberbanding I have only experienced once, the skill lag is an indicator that an enemy group (10+) is nearby. Any time we get the skill lag we start looking for the enemy and then find them. It does NOT happen when two of our good sized groups meet up, only when an enemy group is in the vicinity (the quarter of the map we are on).

• What kind of issue are you specifically having that could be related to lag?
  Huge amounts of epic skill lag, rubberbanding, sent back to character screen due to excess amounts of lag

• What server are you on?
  Jade Quarry

• Has there ever been a time when you or a friend are experiencing lag, while others in your party are not?
  Only when it’s my end. Server lag is experienced by everyone.

• Has there ever been a time where one party in a map is experiencing lag, while other parties in that same map are not?
  Lag is experienced by all at the same time during huge zerg battles.
  e.g.
  - SM fight.
  - Major keep fights
  - Any point that all three servers are in combat together at the same location
  - Fights against two queued servers

•What kind of issue are you specifically having that could be related to lag?
Huge amounts of epic skill lag, rubberbanding, crash to character screen due to excess amounts of lag, (usually on first meeting with enemy map zerg)

•What server are you on?
Sea of Sorrows.

•Has there ever been a time when you or a friend are experiencing lag, while others in your party are not?
Some Oceanic lag BUT. Server lag is usually experienced by everyone, most lag for me is on first contact with enemy zerg ie Zergs arriving through portals.

2 things create this lag .

• the server sends all the voice data from other clients to our client and this is server and client resource waste .

how i found it ? one day i captured a camp and when the battle ended i heard the voice of the second ally ( it was an asura ) . also the voice is the reason that in www old pc are not perform well as you can read in my thread > https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/7-years-old-PC-without-LAG-in-WWW-1080p/first

if server side department can limit (or give us the option to total stop the other voices from ally and enemies ) what voice data send the server to client this will have as result way much better performance for all the players and servers too ,because the server will compute and send less data to clients in each battle

• the second reason is the packet loss between the level3.net and your edge

I can’t believe this thread hasn’t been closed and regenerated to permit clean data/reporting. The topic is anachronistic and the information it contains is tainted.

At this point, it seems we should be glad to hear that monkeys are flying out of our enemy’s backsides…

This thread has lost credibility.

I can say for myself that I felt no skill lag in the past couple days after the hotfix. And I’ve been in huge battles with zergs from every server.
But some people in my guild are still feeling skill lag in those battles, but not as bad as it was before, where we had 10, 20 seconds of skill lag.

well, if some have skill lags in big fights, it is his problem because of bad connection+pc, ive never had skill lag in fights or wherever in wvw.. maybe in like 100+ players fights i have drop sometimes under 20fps (everything on max) but no skill lag.. //iam from SFR

anyway all i want to ask what can i do if i get bugged, i cant use any of my skill, i just press any skill and nothing happen, it mostly happens when i leave siege or after big fights, equiping siege/teleport to WP/change skills doesnt work, only what works is die and go WP… //i dont know maybe this is not good thread for this

+sometimes and yesterday in sPvP i had perma 1sec delay in skills (restart game worked, relog char. didint, but that is not solution)
+last week(1st matchup of this league) (only) in Riverside BL in wvw rly lot of ppl had this 1sec delay on every skill

Nearly every time I encounter big fights, I start to get serious lag and rubberbanding. Whilst annoying, that’s not the worst part. Often I get disconnected as well.. today twice in EotM whilst encountering only semi large groups. Everyone stops moving, skills stop firing and I’m disconnected. I’ve had this happen during Stonemist fights and on larger zerg fights on borderlands. It’s getting quite frustrating, especially given the queues to get back into maps. I’m on Gandara.

There 15 days ago last comment from a redcoat on this god awful issue.. and its gotten worse again….
Just like every other CDI or red post asking for info etc.. swept under the carpet and forgotten.. but hey I guess your graphs are looking colourful.

Just got my first unplayable lagg issue In EB and a zerg of about 20 came running by and i could do nothing at all, Its not my system as have been in lots of zerg v zerg fights with over 50 a side and had no issue now getting it with a lot less numbers happened 3 times now.