Guild Wars 2

First chance I had to really play tonight and it is worse. In come cases names appear long after characters have not letting me know if they’re friend or foe although the colours should give them away.

^this. I’m constantly looking down at the mini trying to figure out friend or foe now.

……Culling is the equivalent of being deaf, dumb, and blind……

Two day’s ago I ended my night when I jumped to attack a target and was rolled over by a dozen or so enemies I had no knowledge of. Then, last night was another poor showing for this culling trial.

Our keep was under attack, I go up to the top of the wall to man some siege equipment. I see no one up there! I’m like, “Where is everyone????” on chat. I run to grab an arrow cart, yet “Huh, it’s manned? By who?” As I walk around the wall THEN a few of my fellow players appear. A couple more feet forward I walk, then a couple more appear. Otherwise, I saw no one anywhere else!!!!!

How can I play intelligently when my eye’s are deceiving me so??? We need MORE information please, not less…..

Attention Anet!

I think a lot of players will agree with me on this, and I have seen it posted before but lost in the masses!

If the culling will remain for awhile, at least force the client to render name tags before models. At least we can tell we are surrounded by red names or allied name plates and have a better understanding of the situation around us. We can no longer cross server whisper people without finding their name on the forums, so why should we care what armor skin or weapon skin they possess? It’s not like rivalries between individuals can be formed from skin appearances really.

Thanks for trying the new build though!

Worse !

that is just unplayable.

If you want to see what it done in a fight 20 Vs 20 (that is not what i call a massive epic fight …)

Look at the the begining of that video, enemy group just appear from nowhere, and when i look back, they just all passed by … i’m tank, how am i supposed to handle ppl that i can’t see before they are on my ranged fellows ? oO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ckZZz4ACFv8

Please, at least, render the names and a pre-calculated shape (a kind of “shadow”) to mark players positions !! it’s just unplayable and kill all the fun of the game.

Angelyne.2936:

Worse !

that is just unplayable.

If you want to see what it done in a fight 20 Vs 20 (that is not what i call a massive epic fight …)

Look at the the begining of that video, enemy group just appear from nowhere, and when i look back, they just all passed by … i’m tank, how am i supposed to handle ppl that i can’t see before they are on my ranged fellows ? oO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ckZZz4ACFv8

Please, at least, render the names and a pre-calculated shape (a kind of “shadow”) to mark players positions !! it’s just unplayable and kill all the fun of the game.

Blocked by EMI in Denmark – should probably upload such things without music so people can actually watch it.

Intigo.1653:

Blocked by EMI in Denmark – should probably upload such things without music so people can actually watch it.

Well…i guess his video is showing something like that:

The new Culling Trial at it`s best!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hq8Qx4CAKrM

Quit making culling just number based. Should be distance based, and if there aren’t any foes within that distance THEN numbers. If there are 200 people within 100 ft of me, I should be able to see 200 regardless, friend, foe or otherwise. Being able to render some people outside that range allows for some preloading at least and for scouting to be reasonably effective.

As a commander on SBI i find this change has made maters Worse. I now have invisible allies that only serves to cause panic when they look around seeing only 5 people on there team and start running even if its 30 us v 20

This is absolutely terrible on my end now. I gave it some time, did some re installs, just to make sure it wasn’t totally on my end. This has to have been the most confused I have seen myself and other players on the battle field.

After about 45 minutes I had to say kitten this. This is not something you want your players saying on a daily basis one would assume. Sure as hell don’t leave me warm and fuzzy wanting to buy gems.

I prefer how it is now, it is much better for organized guilds. I feel bad for the errant players with no large guild presence as they may have an issue, which is why i agree with rendering nametags before character models. Being able to see the enemy is the most important part. Please keep this in mind, it’s worse to not see the enemy position than not seeing ally position.

As a member of a large guild which focuses on WvW, we believe that this culling trial is good and works.

Seeing enemies is more important than seeing your allies. The reason for this is because enemies are the ones that are going to kill you if you don’t see them, not allies. We are now able to see large groups of enemies trying to portalbomb instead of being completely oblivious to the group 5 meters in front of us. It’s possible to attack a group without firing blindly now.

Not being able to see your allies is better than not being able to see the person punching you in the face. The minimap shows the group of dots of who is in your team, and most guilds are using TeamSpeak to communicate where they are.

Please keep the Culling Trial permanent. It has made WvW much more enjoyable for large guilds.

Thankyou.

I can’t believe people are arguing to keep invisible enemies. In the old system organized groups could only keep tabs on enemy zergs with scouts. This new method allows you to see an enemy group you wander across. Minor problems and all, this new system is better than the old.

This system is much better but not quite what is really needed. That said, I’d rather have this system than the previous.

The new culling system is great. It’s a step in the right direction.

This version is a MASSIVE improvement. I don’t know why anyone is prioritizing seeing allies over enemies. I have not once since the patch felt like dying was out of my control from not seeing the enemy. Obviously, any change that’s made could be done better in any situation but this is a step forward. Retain it, improve on it, don’t step backwards because some people don’t understand how iteration works.

I didn’t realize there was a new system in place, but I had noticed a huge difference in the culling and appreciate the changes! The new system is great!!!!

We need to keep the new system. I don’t know about all the people voting to get the old system back, but I LIKE SEEING MY ENEMIES for a change.

KEEP THIS NEW SYSTEM.

I love the new culling! I can actually see my opponents and i love it Only thing i would like to see fixed if its related it that i crash now sometimes while i never did before.

Keep the new one. Commander icons make it so you dont need to see your allies anyways.

yea if people paid attention to the little blips on the minimap, theyd know they have a lot of allies nearby.

This new system is a flipping joke when fighting any actual numbers. Tbh I think they got it backwards.

I never ever loose sight of allies but enemies take ages to render.
Frankly Its a horrid mess and anyone saying otherwise is either on a dead server that never fights 25+ vs 25+ or they’re trolling.

Its almost funny when scouting. You’ll see 4-5 render and run by. Then once they’re almost out of name tag clip range the other 35+ render after almost completely passing you by.

neuro.6594:

This new system is a flipping joke when fighting any actual numbers. Tbh I think they got it backwards.

I never ever loose sight of allies but enemies take ages to render.
Frankly Its a horrid mess and anyone saying otherwise is either on a dead server that never fights 25+ vs 25+ or they’re trolling.

Its almost funny when scouting. You’ll see 4-5 render and run by. Then once they’re almost out of name tag clip range the other 35+ render after almost completely passing you by.

Have you even played WvW? We can see groups of enemies easily now.

CorruptDropbear.4721:

Have you even played WvW? We can see groups of enemies easily now.

I play 4+ hours daily with 20-40 people so mm yea. And there’s not a single person in the server teamspeak that isn’t having issues with rendering.

So you’re:
A: Trolling
B: On a low wvw pop server
Or
C: Found some magical fix that literally hundreds on our server would give anything for.

I think the new system is far better than the old one. The only person I need to see in my allies’ hundred man zerg is the commander. I never have a problem seeing the boss. Other allies drop in and out based on proximity, but the sticking point is that I can see the enemies. Rendering time for enemies is drastically reduced regardless of how many hundreds there are. Not all of the enemies will be readily apparent, but it is far better to kill fifty only to watch another fifty appear, than be unable to tab target a single individual and get rolled by a horde of invisible enemies. New system = Way better.

neuro.6594:

CorruptDropbear.4721:

Have you even played WvW? We can see groups of enemies easily now.

I play 4+ hours daily with 20-40 people so mm yea. And there’s not a single person in the server teamspeak that isn’t having issues with rendering.

So you’re:
A: Trolling
B: On a low wvw pop server
Or
C: Found some magical fix that literally hundreds on our server would give anything for.

I don’t know what game you’ve been playing for the last week. Immediately when I enter big confrontations the number of allies I see goes way down, but situations where I’d ordinarily see nobody and then immediately killed by forty people I couldn’t see, I immediately see enough of them to know what’s going on.

For example, portals were becoming a very badly balanced tactic strategically, because the only indication the enemy team would see would be the portal landing among them before they all fell to the ground. Now I see, A) the mesmer running up, B ) the mesmer after his veil has dropped, and C) enough of the enemies coming through the portal to know where it is and where not to stand. This is so much more than before and I can’t imagine why anyone is advocating a return to the previous build where this wasn’t the case. If there were situations where players were being culled, I didn’t notice because I saw the majority of the opposing team, enough to know where most of them were standing. I can always seem to see enough of my own team that it’s not an issue as well. I’ll admit I can’t see everyone on my team, but they’re not the ones trying to kill me are they most of them anyway.

As for your problems, I can’t imagine why you or your guild are still having players pop in. It’s not as though this latest build has removed clipping altogether, but it’s been an improvement. You might not be seeing all 35 members of a zerg running by, but you see players. You look, there’s players, you react, and if you’re not playing with blinders on you stay out of range until you are sure of their numbers. It’s not a perfect system but it’s better than running along and having literally negative seconds to react to the invisible zerg that has already killed you.

Removing this fix would be a major step in the wrong direction. Although it is temporary, it is still a major improvement over the previous culling iteration.

I prefer the new method of culling. I actually enjoy seeing enemies as opposed to getting destroyed by hordes of invisible foes. This new culling should not affect organized allied groups. If said group is in a voice chat and can communicate with each other it does not matter if allies can be seen or not. The number of allies, their disposition, and their status is known from voice chat. Thank you ANET for making WvW fun again. Please keep this fix and improve upon it. This “temporary” fix has been one of the best aids for what ails WvW.

with a name rendering of “all” enemies and and a pre-calculated shape as placeholder, your culling problem is no more … Look at others games and how they handled that issues (well i help you, look at a Rift, by exemple). When rendering is laguy, you have a kind of halo of light insteed of player. that’s all what we need.

I have solved the copyright problem so you can see this video, on the begining, you see how ppl appear front of me, and when i look back, they just passed by me and are on my ranged fellows … weeeeee

Tank ? …

I like the culling trial as well. Seeing enemies, and through that being able to better fight in coordinated attacks against them with my guildies was one of the best things in WvW these last couple of days.
I think this culling method was finally a good step forward, so please keep it like this.

Guess some guild ordered their members to post here :p

I’d love to see some video from their PoV where we can see this great improvement. From my experience it’s a lot worse due to how random it is now. Video’s/screenshots documenting that have been posted already.

Also imho we shouldn’t start accepting band-aid fixes as a community, it might come back to haunt us.

@waeren: what actually happened is that we are a large guild who has done well in WvW, and we were all horrified to learn that the new culling was being attacked because we had all found it to be a major improvement. So yes, you see a coordinated attack on the topic. That’s how we became a leader in WvW <s>.

I´ve never been running so many kamikaze attacks before. I´m quite active (nightshift) in WvW but this new system is as worse as it gets. Defending a keep against 1 group, 4 ppl jump down and scream WTF pretty much at the same time on teamspeak because we just kamikaze´d into a 50+ zerg.
I honestly can´t see how thats an improvement.
Those WTF moments happen on a regular basis now and aint fun at all.

I personally like the new culling. It’s much better than what we had in the past.

@jmrathbun,

Again, if it is for you then I’d like to see it. What guild would that be exactly? Most of your posts are PvE related.

I’m in a reasonable sized guild that does pretty well and I haven’t heard many good thing said about the patch. For me it has been pretty awful when we are in a bigger group. I do agree that in longer drawn out sieges enemies are somewhat more visible.

Most of the people in this thread seem to be pretty negative as well (which tends to be the case in forums I guess).

It shouldn’t be too difficult to get one of your members to record and upload some raw footage so all of us can see what you’re talking about.

A step in the right direction from what I have seen, keep it up.

Please tell me this garbage change is going away tonight. Everyone in our borderlands are reporting the same problems and that it makes it damn near unplayable in large fights.

If you want to test something to see if it works, I love the idea. However, you really shouldn’t leave code in place for a full week when it is obvious that is has failed horrible after the first 24 hours. This is poor decision making when you refuse to regard the negative impact on your customers.

The new system is terrible. Anyone posting in favour of it is nothing short of delusional.

Please do not go back to the old Culling system. I can actually see who is trying to attack me now. WvW has been much better, since we don’t have to try fighting ghosts.

Fine tune what is needed, but as others said before me, this is a step in the right direction. – Thank you

WvW is one of the main reasons I still log on regularly to GW2.
The new culling system is not only a step in the right direction, but also also keeps me hopeful that the problems we are facing in WvW are being resolved.

Thank you.

If you want the true benefits of this update. Try playing out of a big Zerg. You will appreciate it more as well as have more fun and be a beneficial member of the team, rather than a zombie spamming 1.

I love this movement more and more every time I play. I hope it does not get reverted, but if it does I hope that it is to make room for a bigger better version of the same thing. If I could only see one thing, that would be the enemies.

Hats off ANet. I love that you are working on WvW and this change has revamped my faith in you.

Why on earth someone would not want to see enemier over allies is beyond me. Don’t listen to them.

waeren.9743:

@jmrathbun,

Again, if it is for you then I’d like to see it. What guild would that be exactly? Most of your posts are PvE related.

I’m in a reasonable sized guild that does pretty well and I haven’t heard many good thing said about the patch. For me it has been pretty awful when we are in a bigger group. I do agree that in longer drawn out sieges enemies are somewhat more visible.

Most of the people in this thread seem to be pretty negative as well (which tends to be the case in forums I guess).

It shouldn’t be too difficult to get one of your members to record and upload some raw footage so all of us can see what you’re talking about.

Can I ask you to do the same? We stream nightly and viewers have been noticing a marked improvement. I don’t want to drop the stream name without permission of the guy that owns it but that guy has been lurking in this topic cough and if he would like to share it it would probably be to the benefit of our cause.

So I should add more video’s than those that are already there?

Except for your guild most people seem to be against this “update”. If you want to ignore what was posted in this thread and troll on then feel free to do so.

Ah well at least it’s finally getting rolled back. Hopefully the next one will be an improvement.

You can’t tell me that it’s better now…Kodash just attacked our north camp and it took them the entire time walking from the west gate to the actual camp until they finally appeared.

I’m all for fixes but it’s not helping on my (sadly sub-par) system. Now I can see neither friends NOR enemies until it’s too late, sometimes. Sometimes it does seem to work. I was able to see a big zerg push up to a tower where I was manning an arrow cart. But when I pushed back into the same tower to try to back-slam their capture attempt, I couldn’t see either allies nor enemies, which put me at the top of the ramp right amongst all their players wondering why I was taking so much damage.

Please please for the love of the Gods make it so I can at least see enemy nameplates. Then I would be a little less likely to one-man charge things. Well…a LITTLE less likely.

waeren.9743:

So I should add more video’s than those that are already there?

Except for your guild most people seem to be against this “update”. If you want to ignore what was posted in this thread and troll on then feel free to do so.

Ah well at least it’s finally getting rolled back. Hopefully the next one will be an improvement.

I don’t understand why people like to use the word “trolling” for statements which go against what you think you’ve observed. This is not a subjective change. Things are better. I see more people. I don’t just moan about this because of some subjective experience of getting curb stomped for not having situational awareness.

The video by Angelyne looks like a situation which played out better than it would have in the previous iteration. The enemy loads in late, to be sure, but they load in. Normally there would have been nothing loaded in, at all, and everyone would have been dead before there were enemies to look at. It’s possible to form strategies around this with proper scouting if people are willing to accept that vision changes= balance and strategy changes.

Emo Parvanov’s video shows a small group of enemy players blowing out into a big group when his allies backpedal out of his viewing range. As I said before, in the previous iteration you would have seen nobody there. Until there is a permanent fix I think it’s acceptable for teams to have to see enemy groups and assume that their numbers may be distorted, as a tradeoff to see no enemy groups and assume that their numbers are zero until you are dead.

Anyway, hopefully the rollback will show Anet that people will complain about anything. There’s no point in polling the community if the only feedback they get is negative personal interpretation.

I have seen nothing but an improvement in my ability to see enemies after this culling trial. I much prefer this new system to the old.

I have to wonder if they are trying different things on different pairings or servers this week. There can really be no other explanation for half the people saying it is remarkably worse and the other half saying its a great improvement.

I can tell you that on my server literally everyone is having major culling issues, so much to the point that it is nearly unplayable in large fights. Sure the models do completely render at times, but it is often 5-6s too late. That is unacceptable.

Not only arent we seeing friendlies, but less enemies than we were prior to this week as well by a large margin.

I’m going to echo some of the sentiments others have posted. I really like the idea, but it’s possible that something in the execution wasn’t perfect. It seems like people generally agree that prioritizing the rendering of enemies makes sense, but I have definitely noticed a SIGNIFICANT increase in the number of times that enemies just appear around me, too late for my to do anything about it. That may just be a less-than-optimal implementation of the new algorithm or maybe I just have more crud in my computer’s memory this week, but I like where Arenanet is taking this. And I like that they’re willing to try this kind of thing and see how it works. WvW is a lot of fun, and it’s great to see people taking our fun so seriously.

So to reiterate, we are trading one flawed system for another as you are confirming.

Yes I do see more enemies and I see them faster but I don’t necessarily see all of them and I don’t necessarily see all my allies. I did have people randomly cull out and reappear, I have noticed skill delay I didn’t have before and it’s impossible to run as guild without a commander tag.

They’re getting closer but not close enough. I do appreciate that they’re working on it, I don’t appreciate the way this change was pushed without any earlier test or clear notification.