Guild Wars 2

I don’t like the whole culling dynamic however it’s done. Now I run into 30 invaders and I think I’m on my own so I leg it the hell out of there, as do my 30 companions which can’t see each other.

I’d personally prefer lag than culling, this might stop everyone joining 1 massive zerg and spread the fights over a larger area.

Personally I dont like the new culling system.

It’s very bad when you cant see your allies. The “common touch” feeling is very important for WvWvW.

+1 to Ravbek and others who has the same opinion.

P.S. I have more lag with this new system than with previous ( i’ve a good configuration – i5 3570k, 8 gb ddr3, Radeon 7870)

Running to SH ALONE. 3 invisible enemies jump me right outside the gate. (There are no swirling animation that indicate they come out from stealth) Only after a few seconds did they render. What are you guys thinking when you implement this? One side can see the other but the other side cannot?

I would like to say nice try ArenaNet, but this is fail please do better next time, but I can’t.

Suun.2856:

@ muylaetrix.2096
So my suggestion, just above yours was not a good one?

Anet have to reduce data sent (as suggested above) AND turn off server side culling.

Things to get rid of in data sent to clients;
Race
6 x armor items (from a huge selection)
4 x dye selection per armor item (from a huge selection)
1 to 4 weapons (from a huge selection)
Multiplied by the number of enemy in location

Replace with;
No server side culling
1 single enemy model per server (all enemy from a server looks the same)
Standard weapon models (1 per type)
Multiplied by the number of enemy in location

Think that reduces network data requirements.

Anet has to disable culling. performance optimization (adjusting graphic settings) should happen on the client. Anet should not try to ‘best guess’ what characters that are close it should tell me about. They should tell me about EVERYONE close.

the main REAL reason for culling (imho) is that without culling there happen situations where ALL the relevant data for everyone exceeds the output capacity of the servers/Anet internet connection. therefore they allocate a sort of max of bandwith on the amount of data send to each individual player. with current test they try to fiddle around in what exactly is send to each client, but they didn’t chance the totall amount of data send to each client.

untill they can increase the amount of data they send to each individual player (which might require upgrades to their server park/network connection), culling is here to stay.

in situatations where a huge number of players are involved, the servers needs to send significantly more information than when the same amount of players are not close to eachother. let me try to illustrate with numbers (the numbers are totally made up). first let me define a ‘piece of information’ as all the date your client needs to display a player, this includes amongst other things a person x,y,z location, his facing, his speed, his visible equipment, the action that he is performing, the buffs and debuffs on him, etc …

when you have 200 players spread out in 20 instances of 5 vs 5, the server has to send 10 pieces of info to 10 players, multiplied by 20 instances = a totall of 2 000 pieces of info for the 200 players. the hamsters happely run in the hamster wheel.

when you have 200 players in w3 or on a dragon or one time event the server has to give 200 players 200 pieces of info. that’s a totall of 40 000 pieces of info the server has to send to 200 players. the less said about the demise of the rodents, the better.

I notice VERY GOOD improvements on the enemy department, I can clearly insta-load whatever those cap they are running for culling enemies, imo it is a huge improvement in that department.
We still can’t load them all I know, but now atleast I don’t have to wait 30 secs to start to see anything.

BUT, the allies culling needs improvement, its a top priority to be able to SEE GUILDIES, otherwise there is no tactic advantage to raid with your guild, when the commanders can’t… well… command, because we can’t access and evaluate our position, our guild numbers, if guildies are stretching, etc.
We can’t give calls mid fight, it just makes no sense.

So, change priority to Party=Guild>Enemies>Allies, and I think you are better than before.

IF your guild raid is higher than the culling cap, then it will just be as before, but it would be a huge improvement to guild raids lesser than 25.

It’s working out great for me. I’m noticing significant improvements in performance and this is a definite step in the right direction. Keep up the good work, Anet.

Okay Anet, Habib, whoever. Your trial has received nearly unanimous negative feedback for 4 days now. What are you doing about it and why haven’t you commented? Is there some reason you can’t just revert this patch? It’s not working, not doing what you said it would do. Revert it or tell us what the issue is please.

definitely worse… gave it a few days, but ya… sorry

Why is it that every time you guys change something, something else breaks? EVERY single time. I would rather have the lag and not be able to to see 50+ enemies until too late, then have slightly better ping and not see 3-4 enemies when not even in a zerg situation.
Please hire some people that know what their doing. Iam sure there are alot of unemployed techy people who know what their doing.

muylaetrix.2096:

Suun.2856:

@ muylaetrix.2096
So my suggestion, just above yours was not a good one?

Anet have to reduce data sent (as suggested above) AND turn off server side culling.

Things to get rid of in data sent to clients;
Race
6 x armor items (from a huge selection)
4 x dye selection per armor item (from a huge selection)
1 to 4 weapons (from a huge selection)
Multiplied by the number of enemy in location

Replace with;
No server side culling
1 single enemy model per server (all enemy from a server looks the same)
Standard weapon models (1 per type)
Multiplied by the number of enemy in location

Think that reduces network data requirements.

Anet has to disable culling. performance optimization (adjusting graphic settings) should happen on the client. Anet should not try to ‘best guess’ what characters that are close it should tell me about. They should tell me about EVERYONE close.

the main REAL reason for culling (imho) is that without culling there happen situations where ALL the relevant data for everyone exceeds the output capacity of the servers/Anet internet connection. therefore they allocate a sort of max of bandwith on the amount of data send to each individual player. with current test they try to fiddle around in what exactly is send to each client, but they didn’t chance the totall amount of data send to each client.

untill they can increase the amount of data they send to each individual player (which might require upgrades to their server park/network connection), culling is here to stay.

in situatations where a huge number of players are involved, the servers needs to send significantly more information than when the same amount of players are not close to eachother. let me try to illustrate with numbers (the numbers are totally made up). first let me define a ‘piece of information’ as all the date your client needs to display a player, this includes amongst other things a person x,y,z location, his facing, his speed, his visible equipment, the action that he is performing, the buffs and debuffs on him, etc …

when you have 200 players spread out in 20 instances of 5 vs 5, the server has to send 10 pieces of info to 10 players, multiplied by 20 instances = a totall of 2 000 pieces of info for the 200 players. the hamsters happely run in the hamster wheel.

when you have 200 players in w3 or on a dragon or one time event the server has to give 200 players 200 pieces of info. that’s a totall of 40 000 pieces of info the server has to send to 200 players. the less said about the demise of the rodents, the better.

I agree with your logic, but are we entirely sure that the bottleneck is on the server or network side? Has anet come out and stated such? The reason i ask is because this type of information is very easy to serialize and/or compress before being sent to the client. In fact when you compare the task of getting game data to thousands of players to something we are familiar with and happens every day like getting a video stream out to millions, the overhead (both network and system) does seem pretty minuscule.

From my understanding the bottleneck is at the client end between receiving the data and attempting to load textures and render. Culling is just the workaround to otherwise super low fps in large encounters afaik.

Also just to add a bit of reasoning to my previous post – one of the main reasons im skeptical about network or server load being the issue is that anet does have a player limit per map. This isnt some arbitrary number that anet made up – i guarantee they tested their worst case scenario where all players on the map are visible to each other in a large battle and i believe that if they found a server or network limitation the maximum number of players per map would be reduced accordingly.

I think this may have hit a case of ‘unintended consequences’.
Apologies, the speculation gets hip deep here, just working on observations (right or wrong) in game, and making assumptions (good or bad) from there.

Problem (correct me if I am wrong): it takes 1-3 seconds to load a player model into the GPU for rendering (observed as a delay in restoring character model when leaving forms). With a large Zerg of players approaching, that may give players a minute or more before they see the full Zerg render.
Solution (as implemented): split the queue into 2, one for friendly, one for enemy.
Result (speculated): the smaller queue size may be smaller than a Zerg, with the result that as the Zerg moves, the game continually discards nearby players to load closer players. If you push the enemy so you are surrounded by them, the queue is already in disarray from friendlies, and now the enemy thrashes the load further. If you retreat to friendliest, it’s the friendliest that thrash the load – either way, the load is thrashed.

Suggestions for a real solution:

• Always render the first n name tags within x distance. Then if models do not render, the players at least can see tags.
• As the queue depth to load models gets deeper, fall back to low quality models that load faster. When the queue clears, reload low quality models with high quality models. (Heck, red & green cubes would be superior to invisible)
• when a player model changes (lich form, bear form, etc) or disappears (stealth), do not discard the original model from memory (there appears to be a load delay to get it back)
• weight the queue sort order:
  # of friendlies loaded (friendlies in queue get lower scores for more that are already visible)
  # of foes loaded (foes in queue get lower scores for more…)
  Distance to player (foes get a favorable bias for this)
  Push to top of the queue anything that stands to get a drop from the player (read: is attacking or has attacked).
  Push to bottom dead players, (but always render nearest, regardless of Zerg size – whether to promote a res or not hide a spy)

• There is also overhead in loading models, so respect already loaded models.
  Discard models priority:
  Do not discard models from memory just because invisibility is applied, or models are replaced (lich/bear form)
  Discard models only as memory is needed for new models, not as the models are made unneeded.
  When in a high population area, and a dicision needs to be made whether to discard a loaded model in favor of an unloaded model: if the two models scornsimilar for weight, keep the loaded model. (Do not discard and load unless the out of memory model is of significantly more interest)

Summary, the problem is less that there is a limited number of players that can be rendered, its that rendering new players has a time cost. Build your player model handling around respecting that cost.

//Yamagawa

Why hasn’t this been reverted yet? Pretty inexcusable to leave something obviously not working in game this long.

Habib, are there any plans to trial or roll out new culling strategies in PvE too? Though culling is certainly the most frustrating in WvW, the impact of it on PvE is significant as well: mobs not rendering until they have already been killed by other players, players getting killed by invisible Karka during the Lost Shores events, etc.

Yamagawa’s proposed solution(s) seem elegant enough, assuming his assumptions about the current system are correct – but I’d like to back up the one that seems like a fairly simple modification that would resolve the problem for now, which is displaying the enemy’s name tag even without the model (except when stealthed/other situations that would hide the name tag). That way, even if you can’t actually see the model, you know an enemy is there. The idea of rendering a low quality model first (or even just red dots on your map once the enemy is within your field of vision) sounds pretty good to me, too.

I don’t WvW often, but my $0.02 after going in yesterday and wondering why my allies kept popping in and out randomly – the old system was a lot less confusing for me.

I will be happy to see it role back.. I see the culling system as a way to artificially lower the minimum system requirements for the game. Prior to this change I very seldomly had any lag, even when involved in a large 3 way Zerg fest, but this is because I have invested in my gaming .

After this change I still have little to no lag BUT I do find that my ability to see the battle field has been greatly reduced due to the variability of people’s toons being rendered.

I think the devs time would have been better severed giving people recommend ui settings based on the quality if there pc. This would be the setting that gives them the best balance of performance and graphics. If this culling model is going to be adopted make it a system setting.

All gaming rigs are not equal, sometimes you just can’t run with everything on HIGH.

I wondered what the heck was happening in WvW last night. Allies sometimes invisible, enemies sometimes invisible, and such horrible lag that WvW was nearly unplayable. Restarting the game didn’t help. Then, when I switched back to PvE, everything was fine. I’m sure some of it was the incessant portal bombing with fifty players appearing out of nowhere, but I’ve never experienced lag like that in GW2 before.

I had one fun lag spike where my screen showed the same enemy Ele standing over my downed state with her Drake’s Breath animation hitting me continuously for about 45 seconds. She didn’t render on my screen until I was downed.

Please please please please please change it back. This is awful.

Habib Loew.6239:

Thank you for your feedback everyone. Currently our plan is to continue this test for the remainder of this week’s matchup and then roll back to the original method for the next matchup.

If/When you experience issues with invisible players, etc. please let us know and include a screenshot (which includes your minimap), your basic system specs (processor, RAM, video card), and which server you are on. This info well help us to narrow down exactly which issues you are experiencing.

At the end of the week we’ll move back to the old system. At that time we’ll ask you to again give your feedback once you’ve played with the old system for a bit. That way we can get a better understanding of the impact of this trial.

Thanks again for your feedback on this issue and please rest assured that we’re hard at work on a more comprehensive solution for WvW.

Here’s some random video of how bad it can be when just playing solo:

Look at :20 and on at the bridge. I never had it that bad pre-patch when just running around solo and this isn’t even that extreme an example (a lot of them were preloaded since I was running around near them).

Also, why do players load in without name tags for such a long period of time?

Habib Loew.6239:

Thank you for your feedback everyone. Currently our plan is to continue this test for the remainder of this week’s matchup and then roll back to the original method for the next matchup.

If/When you experience issues with invisible players, etc. please let us know and include a screenshot (which includes your minimap), your basic system specs (processor, RAM, video card), and which server you are on. This info well help us to narrow down exactly which issues you are experiencing.

At the end of the week we’ll move back to the old system. At that time we’ll ask you to again give your feedback once you’ve played with the old system for a bit. That way we can get a better understanding of the impact of this trial.

Thanks again for your feedback on this issue and please rest assured that we’re hard at work on a more comprehensive solution for WvW.

Not really planning on posting screenshots for every time your wonderful system is failing.

Core i7-3610QM
16GB 1600MHz DDR3
GeForce GTX 670M

Server: Blackgate

Also next time please run changes like this on a test server first, this is a week of agony when having any reasonable sized fight.

Habib Loew.6239:

Thank you for your feedback everyone. Currently our plan is to continue this test for the remainder of this week’s matchup and then roll back to the original method for the next matchup.

Shouldn’t you roll this back immediately? It has completely failed across the board and is negatively affecting game play for all but a handful of outliers.

another night of ridiculous ghostfights…
and THX for sticking with the more than obviously broken trial for the remainder of the week?! care to explain – why bother getting more feedback it has been 99% bad aka it’s worse than before. roll back immediately so this weeks matchup gets somewhat playable!

the good thing about this giant kittenup: you get to feel like a hero fighting all alone vs. the enemies EB-keep (2nd screen more than 30 seconds later shows at least 1/3 of my team…YAy “progress”

Hello! This new culling methodology has made WvW almost unplayable for me. Im now getting lag spikes all the time (the game freezes and then plays fast forward) which i never gotten before. I have a decent rig and internet connection so that is not the problem. Please go back to the old methodology. Thanks

It’s “New Coke”, people.

They roll this masterpiece out, then when they go back to the old system, people will be happy and stop complaining. Then they don’t have to bother with actually fixing culling at all…

Moving Forward.

Simple quick fix make AoE limitless to spread these almighty zergs wider and give the game engine a chance to keep up

Maybe use standards models for enemy can help, whose care if enemy wearing customize armor from dungeons if we cannot see them all.
Less information need to be proceed.

Khrums that type of information is not taxing.

Whats taxing is sending locational data + ability data + health data to x clients. Armor, dyes etc is only sent once, and would actually be eliminated as a stresser if culling didnt exist.

Pile 500 people into the same area and arenanet has determined that the server can only handle sending information to each person about 80-100ish objects without laghappyfuntimes.

Its all about magnitude.

Ok lets say for funs sake that there is no culling and a fight happens in SM.

There are 20 NPC’s in ‘visible range’ of the fight. Lets say there are 30 people participating in that fight, and the server is sending location+ability etc every ‘tick’ and each tick is every .1 seconds

For 30 people the server will send 5,000 updates a second (30x(30+20))x10
Now lets double that and there are 60 people (60x(60+20))x10 48,000 updates a second, so doubling the number of people increases the bandwidth load by 10x
Now 500 people in the SM room all fighting: 2,600,000 updates a second.

With Culliing at 80 that puts the updates a second at 500×80×10 or 400,000 updates a second.

Any way you cut it getting a massive battle between 500 people going smoothly is a hard task.

And that is just the expedential bandwidth utilization, not including the CPU load on the server of actually calculating that fight. (which is why AoE is capped)

I hate the new system.

Please revert to the original until you completely remove culling.

thx

This trial was a fail in my guilds books and mine. If it wasn’t for the mini map to keep track of people in a fight there is no way to visually see where your group has moved to in a big fight. Ridiculous when placement is so important in WvW – I’m not sure I understand the reason behind continuing the trial until the end of the week when its universally hated. I think you have your results already.

Sucks beyond belief o_O Its gotten even worse. Now defenders in camps don’t even need stealth because they are permanently invisible to the attackers right until they can kiss defenders very kitten

Whatever you did you made things ten times worse and WvWvW is now practically unplayable for attackers.

Its probably because the undo for the change is in the patch rollup for the 14th. Instead of trying to revert early with an untested build that can bring more problems.

Khrums.3765:

Maybe use standards models for enemy can help, whose care if enemy wearing customize armor from dungeons if we cannot see them all.
Less information need to be proceed.

I like this idea, I guess it helps a bit to see if your opponent is geared out and not in blues. But with transmute stones anything is possible.

The previous version was much better. I had no problems before. With this new culling trial, I can’t see where enemies are coming from. They look like 10+ but 10 seconds later, we find out they have 30+.

Disastrous, it is substantially worse than the old system. Invisible enemies worse, loading range worse, lag worse. I had minimal problems with the previous system, I could see enemies at long range, models loaded in a reasonably timely manner (albiet not quick enough to address perma-stealth problem).

Now I can’t see 30 people until they are 10m away and when they do load the lag is so bad I can’t do anything about it.

Windows 7 64 bit
i7 870 quad
8 gb RAM
nVidia GTX 680

Isle of Janthir

We used to have 200vs200 battles in Aion and the culling was nothing like this, possibly because they used a model which loaded players as generic paperdolls that filled in as the data populated them. At least you could fight.

I believe that lags can be not related to invisible players issues. 0 lag on my side all the time but ALL the time invisible players from both sides (enemy and our server players). Not seeing your own commander is the strangest thing for me.

Habib Loew.6239:

Thank you for your feedback everyone. Currently our plan is to continue this test for the remainder of this week’s matchup and then roll back to the original method for the next matchup.

If/When you experience issues with invisible players, etc. please let us know and include a screenshot (which includes your minimap), your basic system specs (processor, RAM, video card), and which server you are on. This info well help us to narrow down exactly which issues you are experiencing.

At the end of the week we’ll move back to the old system. At that time we’ll ask you to again give your feedback once you’ve played with the old system for a bit. That way we can get a better understanding of the impact of this trial.

Thanks again for your feedback on this issue and please rest assured that we’re hard at work on a more comprehensive solution for WvW.

Hey.

I have beed expereincing Distorted Reality alote with this new system. I managed to catch 2 examples on video.

1) Player Downed state.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxyzUakvFOg
Brief explanation of the problem: As you can see on my screen the player is behind me, but his real body is infront of me and invisible to me. But thanks to heartseeker i managed to locate it and damage it. You can also see the pets are also near me damaging the downed player. Note: I do not have " Finish him" button available to me. While the player on my team behind me, also expereincing same Distorted Reality, he is trying to " Finish Him " – but nothing is happening.

2) Dolyak Escort
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE2-_G_WlKc
Brief explanation of the problem: Same thing is happening here, i see Dolyak beeing way behind his eksual whereabouts. I try to damage it but no hits are landing on the Dolyak. At 0:09 i use my heartseeker to navigate to Dolyak real location, and while on my screen i am hitting the thin air, i deal damage to dolyak.

After 20+ hours of WvW since this update I have to say they actually kinda work on larger battles. Can see all on a keep defense etc.

Running into small groups of people randomly in the world is kittened up though. I see ranger arrows and necrohands way before the players. And that have happened alot. Just talking 4 – 5 man groups.

I really wish this was NOT being rolled back. The culling is better against enemies. As for allies, I rely on the minimap, and it is indeed worse when finding allies, but I find it a non-issue compared to not seeing what is trying to kill me.

There were tactics solely relying on the older culling system and most do not work any longer simply because the enemy can be seen. At least now I can see the bulk of the enemy instead of whiffing at empty space and getting random white numbers.

So no, sorry but I disagree with all the people here saying it’s worse. This new culling system is a step in the right direction, but nonetheless, the culling needs to be completely eliminated, or at least reduced to the point that it is unnoticeable.

A lot of people are saying “it’s not working for me”, but how? Are you NOT seeing much more enemies rather than invisible enemies? The difference is night and day. So I really cannot understand why it’s worse other than the fact that maybe you want to see your allies more and prefer to get trampled by invisible enemies, or perhaps you simply state so because you want NO compromises (I want no compromises too, but I’m sure I’m not going to get that).

Lakevren.1945:

I really wish this was NOT being rolled back. The culling is better against enemies. As for allies, I rely on the minimap, and it is indeed worse when finding allies, but I find it a non-issue compared to not seeing what is trying to kill me.

There were tactics solely relying on the older culling system and most do not work any longer simply because the enemy can be seen. At least now I can see the bulk of the enemy instead of whiffing at empty space and getting random white numbers.

So no, sorry but I disagree with all the people here saying it’s worse. This new culling system is a step in the right direction, but nonetheless, the culling needs to be completely eliminated, or at least reduced to the point that it is unnoticeable.

A lot of people are saying “it’s not working for me”, but how? Are you NOT seeing much more enemies rather than invisible enemies? The difference is night and day. So I really cannot understand why it’s worse other than the fact that maybe you want to see your allies more and prefer to get trampled by invisible enemies, or perhaps you simply state so because you want NO compromises (I want no compromises too, but I’m sure I’m not going to get that).

It’s pros vs cons and right now there’s simply too much cons.

Yes I do see more enemies but at what cost?

• I still can’t see all enemies and they seem to be loading in and out randomly
• You can still run into enemy zergs without them having load
• Small scale it seems to have random culling now
• It still takes a while for enemies to show up when they portal or you portal them
• Even when there’s not a single enemy around your team can get culled. Having your commander or teamleader disappear when he’s a couple meter ahead is dumb. Having to rely on a minmap to tell who’s where is dumb. Being unable to see who’s downed is dumb. Having random people cause culling for guild members is dumb.

I’m guessing you’re ok if you are not in any kind of organized group and just want to stay alive. Otherwise it’s just an all around terrible band-aid fix.

Yamagawa.5941:

• Always render the first n name tags within x distance. If models do not render, the players can at least see name tags.
• Fall back to low quality models that load faster as the queue depth to load models gets deeper.
• When the queue clears, replace low quality models with high quality models. (Heck, red & green cubes would be superior to invisible)
• When a player model changes (Lich Form, Bear Form, etc) or disappears (Stealth), do not discard the original model from memory

//Yamagawa

These are the two things which would make the biggest difference in play. Quoted for posterity, and hopefully to get it another look if anyone (particularly Habib or anyone else at ANet) had missed it.

I never understood why name tags aren’t present when a thief comes out of stealth, even with no other players around. I don’t see that with mesmers coming out of their version of stealth (which is apparently a separate category of boon and doesn’t stack with a thief’s stealth).

On low-quality models, this is the mists. It would be reconcilable, lore-wise, if what appears first is a simple, white, misty fog — with a human form/shape — before the player model loads and it presents a solution to the low-quality model first issue. Do it! :p

Draygo.9473:

Khrums that type of information is not taxing.

Whats taxing is sending locational data + ability data + health data to x clients. Armor, dyes etc is only sent once, and would actually be eliminated as a stresser if culling didnt exist.

Pile 500 people into the same area and arenanet has determined that the server can only handle sending information to each person about 80-100ish objects without laghappyfuntimes.

Its all about magnitude.

Ok lets say for funs sake that there is no culling and a fight happens in SM.

There are 20 NPC’s in ‘visible range’ of the fight. Lets say there are 30 people participating in that fight, and the server is sending location+ability etc every ‘tick’ and each tick is every .1 seconds

For 30 people the server will send 5,000 updates a second (30x(30+20))x10
Now lets double that and there are 60 people (60x(60+20))x10 48,000 updates a second, so doubling the number of people increases the bandwidth load by 10x
Now 500 people in the SM room all fighting: 2,600,000 updates a second.

With Culliing at 80 that puts the updates a second at 500×80×10 or 400,000 updates a second.

Any way you cut it getting a massive battle between 500 people going smoothly is a hard task.

And that is just the expedential bandwidth utilization, not including the CPU load on the server of actually calculating that fight. (which is why AoE is capped)

I guess your calculation are correct but … problem witch culling is not really during fight or is not leave so big impact. Problem appear when u run in to large group or two large groups run into each other, there is not fight start jet just movements and you cant see them, models start slowly loading at fight and in one moment client have to show models and all updates about skills hit-points dmg etc.

If u run in to 30 strong group client need to receive information about 30 × 6 pieces of armor weapons etc and load correct models, do we really need that? Dont think so. Using standard models for each race and armor class can leave more bandwidth for important information like hp, position dmg. etc. Maybe that could help. Colors dosnt matter as each fraction have own color

Is not my idea that system is use in Warhammer Online when we can see customized skins on self and ally only, models for enemies using standard models from each armor set how ever skin that player use. So we see standard Warlord set piece even if player customize skin and use for example Conquerior set skin on it

Maybe that could help, not sure cos I’m not game designer but if that system was used before so is a reason for it.

waeren.9743:

I’m guessing you’re ok if you are not in any kind of organized group

You assume wrong. It’s quite the opposite, really. Honestly, I was expecting this kind of answer even though it wouldn’t be true in the first place. Maybe that’s just how the forums are unfortunately ending up as, not that I’m directing this at you specifically.

I still can’t see all enemies and they seem to be loading in and out randomly.
You can still run into enemy zergs without them having load.

I can see nearly ALL the enemies, even the ones that try to flank us. I don’t know what’s going on other people’s end, but it gives me a MUCH clearer sense of the battlefield (exception for allies) than before.

Small scale it seems to have random culling now

For me, this happens only for allies, but not for enemies.

It still takes a while for enemies to show up when they portal or you portal them

Actually, we completely see the portal bombs immediately, even if it’s too late for us to counter it. But it’s only too late due to player reaction times rather than due to culling. It was MUCH WORSE before this trial, where you’d see a portal, then watch as your HP was draining due to invisible enemies.

Even when there’s not a single enemy around your team can get culled. Having your commander or teamleader disappear when he’s a couple meter ahead is dumb. Having to rely on a minmap to tell who’s where is dumb. Being unable to see who’s downed is dumb. Having random people cause culling for guild members is dumb.

As for the commander, look at the minimap. It’s not dumb. It’s dumb for not utilizing it (then again, the whole culling thing, is dumb, no matter what). I do recognize that the main problem with this culling trial is the fact that seeing your allies is hampered. And yes, it does happen even when it’s not in combat. But that doesn’t matter, and it shouldn’t matter if you either paid attention to the minimap or see allies next to you. I’d rather take this than invisible enemies. Now the invisible enemies, that’s really dumb.

So again, my previous post asks what I am missing here. Other than the ally culling, why doesn’t it work for others? Hell, why is it working for me? Is it due to certain servers and Tiers? I’m on Tier 2, so something must be different in other tiers such as 1 (probably the most difference) as well as lower tiers.

I can see nearly ALL the enemies, even the ones that try to flank us. I don’t know what’s going on other people’s end, but it gives me a MUCH clearer sense of the battlefield (exception for allies) than before.

Guess you’re one of the lucky people then since almost everyone here confirms that you still don’t always see enemies and you still don’t see all of them. Also see video posted earlier.

Small scale it seems to have random culling now

For me, this happens only for allies, but not for enemies.

See earlier comments and video posted in this thread.

Actually, we completely see the portal bombs immediately, even if it’s too late for us to counter it. But it’s only too late due to player reaction times rather than due to culling. It was MUCH WORSE before this trial, where you’d see a portal, then watch as your HP was draining due to invisible enemies.

You always saw the portals going down/light so they have never been an issue. My point is you I still see damage numbers before I see the people I’m hitting.

As for the commander, look at the minimap. It’s not dumb. It’s dumb for not utilizing it (then again, the whole culling thing, is dumb, no matter what). I do recognize that the main problem with this culling trial is the fact that seeing your allies is hampered. And yes, it does happen even when it’s not in combat. But that doesn’t matter, and it shouldn’t matter if you either paid attention to the minimap or see allies next to you. I’d rather take this than invisible enemies. Now the invisible enemies,
that’s really dumb.

So you’re trying to defend that having to look at your minimap in the middle of a battle to figure out where exactly your commander isn’t dumb? Of course it’s dumb not to look at the minimap currently, otherwise you have no clue of what the hell is going on. If that’s how we’re supposed to play I might as well go back to RTS games.

Ever tried using support skills when you have no clue where people are?

So again, my previous post asks what I am missing here. Other than the ally culling, why doesn’t it work for others? Hell, why is it working for me? Is it due to certain servers and Tiers? I’m on Tier 2, so something must be different in other tiers such as 1 (probably the most difference) as well as lower tiers.

Tier 2 – Blackgate here and most people I play daily with have complained about it.
Sounds like you’re (only) one of the voodoo people where it just happens to work.

Huge Improvement!!!!!

Kudos to you!!!!

Keep it up. I would complain that i cannot be absolutely sure of the enemy quantities, but I at least can see some of them.

Keep it up!!!!

wouldnt removing or lowering the amount of mobs and remove world bosses from wvw help reduce things needed to be loaded? why do we need does jumping around and wolfs nipping our ankles?

papacooldown.9482:

… but are we entirely sure that the bottleneck is on the server or network side? Has anet come out and stated such?

i can think of reasons why Anet would never explicitly say so.

papacooldown.9482:

The reason i ask is because this type of information is very easy to serialize and/or compress before being sent to the client. In fact when you compare the task of getting game data to thousands of players to something we are familiar with and happens every day like getting a video stream out to millions, the overhead (both network and system) does seem pretty minuscule.

getting 1 stream out to millions of people at the same time is not the big(gest) deal. getting millions of different streams to millions of people at the same time is a bigger issue. the overhead of every single one individually is neglectable.

papacooldown.9482:

From my understanding the bottleneck is at the client end between receiving the data and attempting to load textures and render. Culling is just the workaround to otherwise super low fps in large encounters afaik.

in 2001-2003 there was such a thing as ’incomming lag!" yell on teamspeak when some of the group members could notice a slight stutter for half a second when their machines loaded textures. this lag happened BEFORE the enemies came in visual range and people with decent machines never noticed it. having someone with a bad computer in the group gave a sort of 5 second warning before you ran into the enemy (or never found them). that was then. and yes, like Habib Loew says, there is a non zero time needed to load a texture. non zero is very, very small.

I’m finding it easier to see enemies and harder to damage them than previously. That is worse.

Before I could lock onto an enemy and autoattack them even though I could not see them. It’s like they are stealthed rather than unrendered. It is definitely worse IMO, but with some minor changes it has the potential to be so much better.

I strongly disagree with those find it worse that they can’t see their allies. If you need to see your allies their relative positions and numbers are still on the minimap. Seeing enemy players is significantly more important.

It’s extremely frustrating to be surrounded by player enemies you want to attack and tab has you targeting a wolf nowhere in range, or the fortified wall that you can’t possibly damage.

I also don’t like this culling system.
Getting random “surprises” is not fun at all.

I’m glad to hear that it will be reverted back to the old system.

Should you guys have a plan to make the culling system permanent, please make it optional.

I came to this forum to look at something unrelated when I saw this. I thought it was just my computer. Two points:

1. Thank you, ANet, for working on this problem and not being afraid to experiment.

2. I cannot see the enemies. They are retreating. We have 4 of them cornered and there are 9 of us. Ha, you fail Sanctum of Ra—- what the? Where did these 25 new Sanctum of Rall around us come from? [Blackgate gets curb stomped]

So, it does need more work, but thanks.

This update has been a mixed bag. For larger fights it’s hit and miss, I can see more enemies in a big lord room fight, but it feels weird not seeing allies especially when we’re trying to stack or rally up. Though this is mostly bad when a commander is trying to lead pugs and the pugs don’t see their allies, then decide to make a run for it when it’s not necessary.

Other odd moments is being in a small camp flip squad roaming back lines, and having single random enemies appear out of no where in an empty area with only a handful of mobs roaming.

On a positive note at least NPC’s and siege are not disappearing randomly in large fights.

Questions for the devs.
Do the maps need to have up to 500 players?
Would it not be smoother to have the cap at 150 players per map and just have a lot more unique maps?
If the mobs were removed would this help? I’d rather see players over mobs that pvp really doesn’t care for.