Guild Wars 2

zortek.9607:

First and foremost, thank you for both the effort and the communications. I can not speak for anyone other than myself, but I would much rather see effort that demonstrates progress than evasive portends of potential fairy dust. As many know, I’ve had very few kind words to share on the developmental progress in the WvW space. So, I say with confidence, “Kudos… well done, please continue to trust us and we’ll keep trusting you.”

Second this.

If Anet would just do more of this, alot of the complaining and ~major~ frustration would ease, and you would find most people would put up with your timeline.

Bad news w/ projected goals = happier clients.

Key being.. they’re still your clients.

Unfortunately, this “fix” seems to have made the problem 10x worse. Up until this patch, if I came up on 10 enemies, I could see all of them. Not if I come up on even 1, he doesn’t draw in for 5-10 seconds. I appreciate the effort, but this change looks like it did more harm than good.

Seems fine for me but I haven’t run into huge zergs as of yet. They REALLY need to add an option to turn off player Spell Effects and make the Culling something that can be toggled on the Client side.

It’s different but not that much better, first of all most friendlies aren’t rendered at all – standing inside our keep with just us nearby I was able to see ~15 people at a time and most folks were popping in and out randomly, the fun part was the golems appearing and disappearing so it was problematic to even put up a portal properly because you can’t see them all at the same time.

IMO rolling back this change and working on a real solution would be much more beneficial than choosing whether you see your friends or enemies.

Even fighting nametags and hp bars would do, or the stickfigure solution, or just 1 single model – who cares about the enemy’s race, gender, face, size or armor? Most people I know of just look at the buff bar and the abilities someone uses to figure out which class it is.

Please rollback this update Anet.

Before i hardly had any culling problems except when 3 tier1 servers was fighting with all force inside Stonemist Lord room.Only than i had problems to see players.

Now i don’t see anything at all.

We was just attacked by army of invisible Golems -.- and almost lost.

On top of that the enemy players that i saw around me started to disappear which wasn’t happening before as well.This is happening even when we was 3v3 or 2v2.
The enemy and allied players randomly appear and disappear now

p.s. now people will cry about thiefs again =.=

The current trial is an absolute disaster.

This needs to immediately be rolled back as it renders the WvW experience completely farcical.

The effect seems to be worse in small groups as well having just had 15 people but only 5 visible to us, we were 5 but based on the damage completely visible to them.

The effect seems ridiculously random and for a small group trying to coordinate it ruins the game and turns it into a very “zergy” experience

Much worse now. Sometimes I can’t see the zerg I’m running with so I’m not even thinking about the enemy zergs I can’t see.

My Experience in EB late night: I’m on the wall I see 2 SOS run by the wall, all of the sudden group of 20+ rendered within a few seconds.
Then fight at a supply camp, I could see enemies closer to me, when I push into them a little more, all of the sudden I don’t see all of them at once.
on BL: When JQ and SOS were trying to take garrison. They didn’t all render at once because when I ran in to push towards them I realized there were more than I could see.
Now strange thing, sometimes I think they can’t see me either because when they render on me screen, they start attacking me too (thats when I die)

You know ..im glad i stumbled onto this thread.

The day in question i was with my server waiting for the transfer/reset for WvW.

I could see every1 inside the Stonemist castle main room (eternal battleground). Im talking 50-100 people ..i didnt count but most(~75%) my guild who was online at the time was there and that was atleast 20 + rest of server who bothered to turn up. And was getting a solid 60fps limit by vsync.

Then all of a suden during the interval of the points reseting the servers reseting ..the culling kicks in…why? ..i mean ..just why? .. i had 60 fps.. i dont need culling -.- .

Give players the option for crying out loud. Some of us have cpu’s powerfull enough to handle large numbers of people on the screen without dipping to umbearable fps (<30) ..so why force culling onto us. I was playing WvW fine beforhand, now though culling is as some have stated ..worse.

i dont mind cullign but the radius is simply to small (near). Give us the option to change it ..a simple slide bar would be great. One that controls what our client requests from ur server. i.e

Client: Gve me all player info within Xyards from current location. Where X is dictated via Options menu.
Server: Ok here you go.

Not as it is now
Client: please sir can i have some more?
Server: No !

-.-

I used to have almost no problems with culling, but now almost all enemies are invisible until I’m on top of them.

In addition, the same is happening with allies now.

I see this is already a hot topic. Let me start by saying I had no idea about this change, these problems were so bad I actually had to come to the forum for the first time to figure out what was going on. “New culling system? Well kitten me…”

I have rarely had culling issues, and only mild lag during LARGE WvW encounters. Last night it was really bad, and it is a very EXPLOITABLE issue.

One incident:
Me and 20+ allies were assaulting a gate, two-three enemies were on the wall. ONE red player jumped down into the midst of us and came running towards me. Tab, targeted a cannon, tab, targeted the gate again. I had to manually click multiple times before I could target him, by the time I did he was about to pass me and still had full health!! No one had even hit him. I turned to follow him as he kept running…. lag…. lag…. lag…. there were actually SEVEN red enemies who had jumped off the wall.

They were now about a range of 1200 from the gate, targeting the allies furthest back (most likely to be low level, not very experienced with WvW) lag… lag… dead…. I had to warn everyone at the gate to turn around, because only a couple of people even noticed this group run right through the middle of them. Everyone thought they had been flanked, not that these guys had gamed the system.

This type of incident happened REPEATEDLY. Is is a major exploit. and EASY to do. One small group hangs back from their main force, just enough for the culling to kick in, then runs full force through the enemies main group = insta-flank. The resulting lag when the culling catches up to them is enough to score several kills each, if not turn the entire affair in their teams favor.

And the THIEVES, I have never been part of the silly anti-thief bandwagon, mesmers and rangers with swords are far more annoying in my book. But as some have said, ANY invis triggers the culling when they are supposed to be visible again.

There’s ONE guy… gone, what? Ow! Lag… where… there he.. was… what? lag… dead. One single person should not be causing lag every time they use a cloak skill. Alone, in a group, they are now invisible gods dispatching mere mortals from the shadows of the culling system.

My two cents: culling and WvW will never work. If a player’s machine can’t handle it, they are already at a major disadvantage. Leave player names and targeting intact, or even better ad some kind of simple-to-render ORB or something to culled player models (IF you can get rid of the lag culling brings to the table now) or institute enemy dots on the radar, at least temporarily. This is a very exploitable issue, and it isn’t hard to figure out how to do it.

it is a horrible change. Cant see people 5 feet infront of you.

Worse than before. You can’t have someone lead without a commander tag because you won’t see him 80% of the time.

Enemies still don’t show and now I can’t see allies either. Really impressed by the internal testing that must have gone into this.

I prefer the way it was before, now I can’t even see my own team.

waeren.9743:

Worse than before. You can’t have someone lead without a commander tag because you won’t see him 80% of the time.

Enemies still don’t show and now I can’t see allies either. Really impressed by the internal testing that must have gone into this.

They must test it on a bigger scale. Give them a break, that’s why we are leaving feedback. It’s a test on a permanent patch

I still had issues, but last night I actually saw enemies in EB. This was day 1 on the refresh where all sides were occupying EB in force. I don’t have a low spec computer, but usually have huge problems in EB. So this change has had some positive impact.

There were times when I had to wait for the enemies to render, which coincided with huge amounts of my team in the same area (they hadn’t rendered either). But the fact there were entire battles where I could see my enemy, man was I happy

On my home BL I didn’t run into a single culling issue.

It is worse than before.

Any way to add hp bar for culled allies and enemies? Even just that would be awesome.

zazu.2836:

waeren.9743:

Worse than before. You can’t have someone lead without a commander tag because you won’t see him 80% of the time.

Enemies still don’t show and now I can’t see allies either. Really impressed by the internal testing that must have gone into this.

They must test it on a bigger scale. Give them a break, that’s why we are leaving feedback. It’s a test on a permanent patch

I’m sorry but I wouldn’t call this a successful patch.

You still don’t see opposing players fast enough and you still don’t see all of them and on top of that I now have no clue where half my guild is.

This is not be the type of change you just randomly push to a live server and take off for the weekend. If you want to beta test then create a test server.

You really need to revert this as it is way worse than it was before. It now is taking approximately half the models on screen than it did before for the culling to begin, plus there is lag that was never there for me before.

Seriously I could see twice the models before at least without the lag.

You need to take the same approach another very successful MMO did back in the day with this. If a rig 8 years ago on a crappy connection could handle 100+ players on screen at once, it should be doable today with some sensible programming.

Regardless, this needs to go immediately until you get something better.

waeren.9743:

This is not be the type of change you just randomly push to a live server and take off for the weekend. If you want to beta test then create a test server.

This. Exactly this.

You cant push a change right after rollover and not be available to reverse it when it fails as bad as this. This is basic stuff man really.

It’s impossible to play with this new culling system. We can’t even see ennemies.

It’s worse than before for me too, sadly- several times this evening I’ve had a group of 10-20 enemies in front of me, all of whom have vanished instantly as I got within maybe 900 yards of them.

Thanks for working on it but I preferred the old way!

PlanetSide 2 actually has this exact same problem. You only render a certain number of players in your vicinity and anyone over that limit you just can’t see. The devs over there have acknowledged it and are working on it, granted it’s not 3 months after release for them, but ArenaNet is working on it and I’m confident they will have a solution, hopefully soon.

Why dont you give enemies default skins ie one for every class

This is so much worse than pre-patch. This change is a complete and utter nightmare when it comes to WvW performance for organized groups.

Fighting large (50+) numbers with ~20 people becomes even harder than it already was in the first place (with the 5 target limit, severely nerfed heals and everything else you’ve thrown at us). It becomes extremely tough to coordinate on guild leaders when they disappear much more frequently than beforehand. The only ones who can coordinate properly at this point are the few people in the group with said leader.

Not to mention the fact that it severely benefits a zerg mentality when fighting smaller groups as they will have a much easier time loading the majority of the hostiles they are fighting while they have little care for friendly positioning as long as they can optimize their damage.

You have shown very little understanding of how to best balance WvW in the few months after launch – this trial is yet another example of that. I hope this changes severely before your planned February update to WvW as you are scaring off many organized WvW’ers from GW 2 with your current mentality.

huge thumbs down from me for this. It feels like you load wrong people all the time, you see useless allies and useless enemys.
Much harder to play than before because you loose your key friendly targets all the time. And the enemys suprise with massive numbers so muh more often.

Previous was better.

This is way, way worse. It makes it impossible to make reliable decisions in the game – you can think you’re making a safe charge into half your numbers, then get totally caught out when you discover that there’s actually 60 enemies, which load once you’re dead. It makes fighting greater numbers than yourself next to impossible.

It’s almost unplayable. I appreciate the attempt to fix things, but this is really, really bad.

I just ran at one guy to attack them, then all of a sudden my entire combat log is getting hit by 10+ unknowns.

Before the rematch, this would have never happened. I would have culled these enemies and I wouldn’t have charged in.

I am extremely accommodating to trying new things as i beta-tested the new FoV for widescreen monitors before it was implemented, but this is the first beta change that I just can’t stand behind as an improvement.

Please do not be discouraged, though, Habib Loew and all those responsible for working on this ! We appreciate your correspondence and your earnest efforts to give us players the best culling experience possible for WvW – keep trying !

This is by far worse than ever. I have had 0 issues with lag/rendering until now (excluding that previous patch that made everyone invisible). There are weird things going on with people/groups who intentionally go stealth (they just dont ever reappear) as well as not realizing you are in the middle of a pack of enemies because they never rendered.

This culling system should be configurable. I’m on a decent computer with a decent connection and I really haven’t had any issues until you start applying these broken patches (I’m hoping this one isn’t going to last for 3 weeks like that other one before its fixed/reverted).

This is a brilliant idea:

Why dont you give enemies default skins ie one for every class

Give an option to toggle this on/off. Same for teammates.

With this change, I effectively can no longer play in World vs World. Even groups of 3 people do not appear until half way through the fight.

I’ve never experienced anything remotely resembling this until this new culling system.

I sincerely hope it will not be like this all weekend.

Don’t know if this change is the reason, but things definitely haven’t been working properly tonight. Having a lot of minor rubberbanding/desync problems in WvW.

This change enforces being in a massive zerg and basically shafts small/guild organized groups. The zerg should be the ones getting shafted not the people that roam in smaller groups/guild groups. Wow Arenanet good job once again. I would like to see what good smallscale guilds (5 mans) think of this change. This is a potential game ender. It was fine as it was there was no need to change it. What you should of changed is to make the combo fields effect everyone and not 5 targets. That would of been good instead of this crap. Or better yet get an engine where you can see everyone without culling.

Its definitely worse now. it benefits the larger group(zerg) of players since they can see the smaller group all the time while their own positioning really doesnt matter for them.

Im also hearing alot of ppl with the sound bug and crashing again.

To go against the norm, I have been seeing better culling in WvW now but, as far as even more anecdotal evidence goes, my fellow WvWers have been seeing worse performance or no performance changes. Though I did notice that over a long period of time the number of enemies loading up seems to be ever fewer and it takes more time for a new enemy to pop up even if there’s no one else around, though I’ve been fixing this with closing the client.

Is the fix, perhaps, not properly dumping out old enemies of what it prefers to cull until you hit a new bunch of enemies and it starts to check? This would explain why initially I saw a good change but overtime began to see less and less enemies immediately. Or is it perhaps checking over too long a distance and as such picking enemies that are close as you’re running away from them or their direction and then not loading the enemies you happen to run into along your way?

Do the NPC enemies count as part of the culling formula? There’s quite a few of them out there and I can see them quickly hogging up culling placeholders as you run all over the map.

heh, I was no where near a group of friendlies today, Saw a single Warrior running along and figured hey, i’ll go after him, so I start running at him, and all of a sudden 4 of his friends instantly load on my screen.

Culling sucks.. really no way you can make it work without it sucking.

I might just be blind buuuut I noticed no change. Except when I was told by a guildie screaming down TS to turn around, I could actually see why he was running. :P With that said im on a mid tier so pop levels are quite low compared to higher end.

for me this works better than before as i can see the enemy. my allies show on the mini map anyways

It has gotten worse

Its as bad as ever. Seriously, this is pretty pathetic.

I appreciate the effort, and especially appreciate the communication, but I seem to have trouble with the new culling issues. Sometimes, people randomly disappear(as compared to before, where it took longer to appear at first) mid fight, and I cannot see my team many times.

thanks for listening

Still can’t see thieves for more than half a second, so no change for me. As a ranger who isn’t using traps all the time (I like to change stuff around), it’s almost impossible for me to solo them or even hit them till they are gone again. Hopefully the arrow fix will help in the next update, but I would prefer to see them 100% of the time they don’t have invis.

this isnt working at all, yes i can see enemies a little better but that change doesnt warrant me not being about to see half my teammates, please just revert this change, its a step in the right direction but gone horribly wrong

This isn’t working, I just died to a Guardian, and a Warrior, and I didn’t see them. I died not knowing how, and had to read the combat logs to find out what killed me.

100% worse and borderline unplayable! Gonna focus on the PvE thing from now on till this is fixed.

I feel pretty alone here, but the patch was an improvement for me. My annoyance was that friendlies, and occasionally commanders would disappear, however I never once encountered groups of invisible enemies.

I played in Eternal Borderlands for about 3 hours, and was in a group of about 20 – 30. We encountered large groups of enemies during Stonemist siege, and I was able to see them from farther away than pre-patch. I also feel like when assaulting towers, I was able to see the lone enemies coming to defend, from further away.

My machine specs are:

Win7 64
i3750k CPU
GTX 680 GPU
8GB ram

It’s a higher end machine, but I was experiencing a ton of enemy culling before the patch, even with no lag. Overall, this has been an improvement.

I only had problems before in fast moving zergs, but the 30 v 30 for a few hours tonight seemed to work quite well. Occassionally enemies would come in a touch slow when I was flanking, but never so poorly that I left any enemies behind me unseen.
Thieves were still problematic.

Add me to the ’it’s worse’ pile. Allies not rendering is a nuisance, and enemies are not rendering any faster. If anything they’re rendering more slowly.

I like this improvement and i hope that programers team will find even more ways to cut down lagg in WvsW.

we made the experience that this really depends on the constellation on the field. while midscale (30vs30) works better than before (faster loading in), large scale(everything above 30vs30) is a single catastrophe.
the loading in times remind me of the first days when we ran through a zerg and didnt even notice it until someone randomly hit the 1 and said “i hit something”. friendly players dont render properly and if they do, they just disappear again the second after, especially with commanders on the field. the new system let their symbol disappear, its still visible on the minimap, but buried under green and blue dots.
when we faced groups with more than 30 players, we only saw 30 players. hey kept constantly despawning and spawning again. the spell effects didnt render properly either. i stood completely outside of the field of battle but got randomly damage by melee and projectiles/fields which didnt render at all (they did in the old system).
tl;dr old system was better, the new system makes a lot of problems which i thought disappeared decades ago and it advantages the bigger groups (should be the other way around, shouldnt it?)

Thank you for the effort. Unfortunately my experience is significantly worse than before. Ive had small engagements (5v5 or less) were hostiles were culled during the fight. Ive had warriors and guardians literally culled out of combat in front of me in certain fights after I fail to attack that specific target for a second or two. In these cases there were no “stealth” classes involved.