Guild Wars 2

For those who have no idea what this is, O:MFG was a 3 part patch for the MMOFPS Planetside 2 that aimed to make the game perform better all-around. But it took the dev team almost a year and a half to decide to do this and it took months to do, with each patch spanning about a month or two apart. However in the end they achieved their goal and the game performs almost 80% better than before. From what I’ve experienced, GW2 is having a similar issue.

Large fights cause insane lag and FPS issues, and even people that have poured thousands of dollars into their PC’s are getting these issues. If Anet wants to fix these lag issues they have to work on it now, not later. I admire Allie for here recent post asking about lag issues, but people have been complaining about this WAY before even the 1st league started. If Anet wants this game to thrive they need to look at themselves and GW2 in the mirror and say “What can we do to fix the biggest issues in our game”?

The time for content and Pvp patches is at a temporary end. If the ground in which you are putting all this great new content on isn’t stable, then everything will continue to fall. Anet needs and probably sees a solid foundation for all this content, but to us it looks and feels flawed and instable.

If Anet wants their MMO to thrive for years to come, they need to make a second O:MFG happen, but if that doesn’t happen soon, this game will surely die and vanish from peoples radar

EDIT: THIS IS NOT A FORUM POST ABOUT AoE CAPS AND IMPROVING ZERG FIGHTING THROUGH “BALANCING UPDATES” THIS IS ABOUT ANET PATCHING THEIR GAME TO MAKE ZERG FIGHTING RUN SMOOTHLY AND ACTUALLY FUNCTION. IF ANYTHING YOU MIGHT BE SUGGESTING COULD BE CONSIDERED A “CONTENT OR FEATURE UPDATE” THEN DO NOT POST IT HERE

To start, they should completely update the engine to allow more AoE targets without slowing down their servers. Just being able to hit an additional 1 or 2 people per AoE would make a radical difference in improving WvW zerg fighting.

McFribble.2349:

To start, they should completely update the engine to allow more AoE targets without slowing down their servers. Just being able to hit an additional 1 or 2 people per AoE would make a radical difference in improving WvW zerg fighting.

Well that amount of people being hit by an AoE is limited for a reason, if they changed it by even 1 things could drastically change

McFribble.2349:

To start, they should completely update the engine to allow more AoE targets without slowing down their servers. Just being able to hit an additional 1 or 2 people per AoE would make a radical difference in improving WvW zerg fighting.

I wouldn’t mind, as long as they reduce AoE damage by 70% or something. You do know that with the current state one ele lavafront is able to deal 7k to 15k DPS, yes damage per second. And this is only for 5 targets.

Now think they would increase it with 1 or 2 people, that would go up to 10k to 21k or so. With the whole duration that is 40k to 80k damage from a skill that has 6s cooldown.

If they did increase the max targets to 10 that would mean something like 60k to 120k damage.

The AoE damage of this game is insanely high with relatively low cooldowns, thats why there is AoE caps.

But but, more on the actual topic. Would be nice to see some engine performance increase, because WvW is sometimes kinda silly to play when you can’t use your skills and a while after everyone on the map has permanent frenzy for some time.

A larger AOE cap would be nice, and it is needed to discourage blobing/stacking. Plus, to use the example from the post above, if you can’t dodge the entire lava font skill that is your own fault. It has a very telegraphed aoe circle where lava literally erupts from the ground. The damage doesn’t even start for 1-2 seconds after the initial appearance of the lava. If you stand in the middle of it and let yourself get hit by all of it’s pulses you deserve all of that damage and more.

Supposedly (I’ve seen mention of this and also witnessed it in game) the reason that AOE is capped is that they calculate the damage that a skill can do on the fly for every tick. AOE ticks, condition damage ticks, condition durations, counter duration all on the fly. This means an operation such as swinging an axe easily takes 100 calculations when it should take 5 and casting an AOE does even more.

That said OMFG wouldn’t change the AOE cap as that is a game balance issue more than a server performance issue. Below is a bullet that ANET wouldn’t eat because its how everyone else does it, but it’s one they should eat for the good of their game.
All damage capable effects have their damage calculated at the start of their effect, and afterward maintain that damage rate no matter what change happens to their owner’s buffs.
Basically if you casted a necromancer well at 25 stack might and a second later it all faded the well would continue to damage like you had 25 stacks of might on. This is to prevent the server from wasting calculations and bandwidth on changing this to match the might stacks.

If ANET does that then they can save from what I could gather 50% of the computation cost for all the skills characters use in the game. This wouldn’t change the AOE cap I’ll add though. That cap is a skill balance issue rather than a server performance issue. Since i’d estimate 70% of character skills in the game are some kind of AOE it would make large scale combat dependent on how much AOE your side carried. It still kind of does but not to an extreme extent.

The second thing I’d do if I was in ANET is start working on some AMD optimizations. As of now if you have an AMD processor in your computer you’re pretty much screwed in terms of framerate in Guildwars 2. GW2 uses the processor more than anything else. I upgraded from a 3 GHZ AMD processor (one of the top ones) to an Intel i7 and saw a near 220% increase in performance in GW2. It’s pathetic that a AAA game title can perform so badly on AMD processors. IMO this one would take a higher ranking as it also affects PVE and Living Story.

lioka qiao.8734:

Supposedly (I’ve seen mention of this and also witnessed it in game) the reason that AOE is capped is that they calculate the damage that a skill can do on the fly for every tick. AOE ticks, condition damage ticks, condition durations, counter duration all on the fly. This means an operation such as swinging an axe easily takes 100 calculations when it should take 5 and casting an AOE does even more.

That said OMFG wouldn’t change the AOE cap as that is a game balance issue more than a server performance issue. Below is a bullet that ANET wouldn’t eat because its how everyone else does it, but it’s one they should eat for the good of their game.
All damage capable effects have their damage calculated at the start of their effect, and afterward maintain that damage rate no matter what change happens to their owner’s buffs.
Basically if you casted a necromancer well at 25 stack might and a second later it all faded the well would continue to damage like you had 25 stacks of might on. This is to prevent the server from wasting calculations and bandwidth on changing this to match the might stacks.

If ANET does that then they can save from what I could gather 50% of the computation cost for all the skills characters use in the game. This wouldn’t change the AOE cap I’ll add though. That cap is a skill balance issue rather than a server performance issue. Since i’d estimate 70% of character skills in the game are some kind of AOE it would make large scale combat dependent on how much AOE your side carried. It still kind of does but not to an extreme extent.

The second thing I’d do if I was in ANET is start working on some AMD optimizations. As of now if you have an AMD processor in your computer you’re pretty much screwed in terms of framerate in Guildwars 2. GW2 uses the processor more than anything else. I upgraded from a 3 GHZ AMD processor (one of the top ones) to an Intel i7 and saw a near 220% increase in performance in GW2. It’s pathetic that a AAA game title can perform so badly on AMD processors. IMO this one would take a higher ranking as it also affects PVE and Living Story.

I appreciate the talk about AoE but those calculations aren’t even the biggest issues, many people (those that know what they are talking about mind you) have already given there opinion as to why skill lag and lag in general is caused in GW2. These people are veterans in their fields and have a lot of incite and interesting theories as to the underlying issues. But I made this post not just to talk about AoE calculations, but the game as a whole. For Planetside 2, they had to almost completely do over entire continent sized maps because there were too many single items (boxes and useless things) taking up calculating space, also the UI itself was causing massive issues. And the game was poorly optimized for even the most powerful of CPU’s. But GW2 is suffering from poor optimization

I’ve got a hex-core and from what I can see, this game is barely optimized to use more than 4. My brother has a quad core AMD and I have a Hex core, both OC’d to 3.5 Ghz. Same graphics cards too! But his game runs better than mine, these are the issues that need to be fixed, we don’t need “The April Patch Extravaganza” we need a faster, smoother, and more optimized MMO experience

I agree with the optimizations. Only ANET would truly know what they need to optimize. I was suggesting places to start looking though.

I want them to work more on the AMD optimizations. I think they may have mentioned it at some point. I built a new gaming rig with an Intel processor after noticing my Intel based gaming laptop performed better at GW2 than my AMD desktop (with a better gfx card) when they were both set to the same graphics settings. That 220% performance boost is a fairly accurate estimate of going from 20hz framerate in the middle of the vigil keep to 44 hz in the middle of the vigil keep on max settings.

lioka qiao.8734:

I agree with the optimizations. Only ANET would truly know what they need to optimize. I was suggesting places to start looking though.

I want them to work more on the AMD optimizations. I think they may have mentioned it at some point. I built a new gaming rig with an Intel processor after noticing my Intel based gaming laptop performed better at GW2 than my AMD desktop (with a better gfx card) when they were both set to the same graphics settings. That 220% performance boost is a fairly accurate estimate of going from 20hz framerate in the middle of the vigil keep to 44 hz in the middle of the vigil keep on max settings.

It’s seriously THAT good on intel?

This is an email i recieved from Anet’s Techincal support on the issue

Dear Fuzzion.2504,

Thank you for your email. The recommended specifications to run this game smoothly are :

1. A dual i7 16 core 10GHZ Nitrogen cooled Intel Haswell CPU
2. 128 GB of 2333MHZ ram running on triple buffer
3. 8x NVIDIA Titan cards
4. A G-sync Monitor

Kind Regards,
Anet Support

So what ppl do not understand what AoE caps do for the game and players game play beyond letting more ppl fight in one big fight it gives reason for ppl to move as groups to be well organized and to time there attks with there other team mates. For there to be no AoE you will see spam spam spam with no real organization other then do not get to close to each other making the game less about tactics and more about staying away from your own team.

Fuzzion.2504:

This is an email i recieved from Anet’s Techincal support on the issue

---

Dear Fuzzion.2504,

Thank you for your email. The recommended specifications to run this game smoothly are :

1. A dual i7 16 core 10GHZ Nitrogen cooled Intel Haswell CPU
2. 128 GB of 2333MHZ ram running on triple buffer
3. 8x NVIDIA Titan cards
4. A G-sync Monitor

Kind Regards,
Anet Support

Gimmie them titans.
On another note, I have a Nvidia GTX 670 4GB and it runs very well for the game. I still get crazy lag in WVW when zergs collide (like 100+ players/skills on screen) and sometimes it gets to be a slideshow when all 3 zergs meet, but other than that it runs fairly well. You can always use the zerg lag as a early warning thing so you don’t turn a corner and get demolished by an entire server. On highest settings I can get about 20-30 FPS, Auto Detect 30-60 FPs, and Best Performance 90+ FPS (it literally does so well that everything goes in slow motion, it’s crazy).

ScaryHydra.3165:

Fuzzion.2504:

This is an email i recieved from Anet’s Techincal support on the issue

---

Dear Fuzzion.2504,

Thank you for your email. The recommended specifications to run this game smoothly are :

1. A dual i7 16 core 10GHZ Nitrogen cooled Intel Haswell CPU
2. 128 GB of 2333MHZ ram running on triple buffer
3. 8x NVIDIA Titan cards
4. A G-sync Monitor

Kind Regards,
Anet Support

Gimmie them titans.
On another note, I have a Nvidia GTX 670 4GB and it runs very well for the game. I still get crazy lag in WVW when zergs collide (like 100+ players/skills on screen) and sometimes it gets to be a slideshow when all 3 zergs meet, but other than that it runs fairly well. You can always use the zerg lag as a early warning thing so you don’t turn a corner and get demolished by an entire server. On highest settings I can get about 20-30 FPS, Auto Detect 30-60 FPs, and Best Performance 90+ FPS (it literally does so well that everything goes in slow motion, it’s crazy).

i run an i7 OC to 4ghz, 2x 460gtx sli and 6bg tripple buffer ram with 128sd HD and i get the same readings as you. Maybe Anet should let another company have a look at the code. You know, get another perspective. Because its been 2 years.

Fuzzion.2504:

This is an email i recieved from Anet’s Techincal support on the issue

---

Dear Fuzzion.2504,

Thank you for your email. The recommended specifications to run this game smoothly are :

1. A dual i7 16 core 10GHZ Nitrogen cooled Intel Haswell CPU
2. 128 GB of 2333MHZ ram running on triple buffer
3. 8x NVIDIA Titan cards
4. A G-sync Monitor

Kind Regards,
Anet Support

That was a nice chuckle, thanks for that

ScaryHydra.3165:

Fuzzion.2504:

This is an email i recieved from Anet’s Techincal support on the issue

---

Dear Fuzzion.2504,

Thank you for your email. The recommended specifications to run this game smoothly are :

1. A dual i7 16 core 10GHZ Nitrogen cooled Intel Haswell CPU
2. 128 GB of 2333MHZ ram running on triple buffer
3. 8x NVIDIA Titan cards
4. A G-sync Monitor

Kind Regards,
Anet Support

Gimmie them titans.
On another note, I have a Nvidia GTX 670 4GB and it runs very well for the game. I still get crazy lag in WVW when zergs collide (like 100+ players/skills on screen) and sometimes it gets to be a slideshow when all 3 zergs meet, but other than that it runs fairly well. You can always use the zerg lag as a early warning thing so you don’t turn a corner and get demolished by an entire server. On highest settings I can get about 20-30 FPS, Auto Detect 30-60 FPs, and Best Performance 90+ FPS (it literally does so well that everything goes in slow motion, it’s crazy).

There’s the issue, the servers can’t handle 100+ players on screen but Anet hasn’t made any decisions to MAKE the servers handle 100+ players. We need patches and updates that make things function 100% of the time. Why would I want to run into a 3 way fight if I know the servers won’t be able to handle it and I won’t even be able to use my healing skill for an entire minute after pressing it? The major issues are in-game skill lag, then under that is CPU optimization, those are some of the biggest issues in this game. We don’t need “April Fun content Patch” we need serious commitment from the devs to get rid of these wrinkles in the game that cause this lag.

Jski.6180:

So what ppl do not understand what AoE caps do for the game and players game play beyond letting more ppl fight in one big fight it gives reason for ppl to move as groups to be well organized and to time there attks with there other team mates. For there to be no AoE you will see spam spam spam with no real organization other then do not get to close to each other making the game less about tactics and more about staying away from your own team.

Gettin’ off topic man, this post wasn’t for “balancing” issues with WvW, If you want that then make a post about AoE cap limits. This is about lag in game and what Anet needs to do to patch it and make everyone happier

Abe Kleine.3568:

Jski.6180:

So what ppl do not understand what AoE caps do for the game and players game play beyond letting more ppl fight in one big fight it gives reason for ppl to move as groups to be well organized and to time there attks with there other team mates. For there to be no AoE you will see spam spam spam with no real organization other then do not get to close to each other making the game less about tactics and more about staying away from your own team.

Gettin’ off topic man, this post wasn’t for “balancing” issues with WvW, If you want that then make a post about AoE cap limits. This is about lag in game and what Anet needs to do to patch it and make everyone happier

I get what your saying sry i went off topic with that i was just trying to point out there more to AoE cap then just lag along but lag is a major part of it. Back to lag in wvw maybe its time to remove all non hostel mobs from wvw keep the mercenary but remove the random dear etc.. from wvw they do take up some spaces (not likely a lot though). They could also lose some of the nodes but add in the few nodes that are left to be rich.

Over all i think chasing things out side of combat may help the lag in wvw to a point.

Abe Kleine.3568:

lioka qiao.8734:

I agree with the optimizations. Only ANET would truly know what they need to optimize. I was suggesting places to start looking though.

I want them to work more on the AMD optimizations. I think they may have mentioned it at some point. I built a new gaming rig with an Intel processor after noticing my Intel based gaming laptop performed better at GW2 than my AMD desktop (with a better gfx card) when they were both set to the same graphics settings. That 220% performance boost is a fairly accurate estimate of going from 20hz framerate in the middle of the vigil keep to 44 hz in the middle of the vigil keep on max settings.

It’s seriously THAT good on intel?

Yes it is. I used the FPS readout from the options menu and measured 3 systems I have. All my systems have 8gb ram. These tests were done during fairly peak hour on saturday in the middle of the vigil keep looking west from the mystic forge. All systems set to the same graphics settings.

System 1: Intel i7 2.0ghz (fairly old i7 from 3 years ago) Geforce 540m (laptop) – 26fps
System 2: AMD Phenom 3ghz 8 core black edition (first gen of this one), Geforce 760, GW2 on SSD (desktop)- 22fps
System 3: Intel i7 3770k 3.5ghz, same Geforce 760 from system 2, SSD for OS and GW2 on separate SSD (same ssd from system 2) 48fps.
Max settings 42fps.

Something was up when I saw that my 2ghz i7 laptop (first gen i7 mind you) was outperforming my 3ghz AMD desktop. Now I see a lot of talk that straight up clock rate isn’t a good comparison. The way I understand it is that the clock rate does play an important factor in how well a processor can process its threads.
The comparison between system 1 and 2 is where I notice the intel optimizations in GW2’s client though. System 2 should all around destroy system 1 in performance right? Faster processor, faster video card. Same other components. So why was it slower in FPS than the laptop? This prompted me to build a new gaming rig with the same processor I use at my work for biometrics.

I chose the i7 3770k for that third one based on a comparison test I did at work on an i5 system. Application I was using matched biometrics at .20 seconds for a 300 record db at first. Upgrading from i5 to i7 dropped that to .10 seconds, a whole 100% speed boost. Applying the intel compiler to the code optimized it even more, down to .07 seconds.

I was quite pleased and shocked to see the performance boost in GW2 that I did. Max settings and it only flinches with Maguuma’s 70 man map blobs and then it only goes down to 20hz. Compared to the 5hz I was getting in those map blobs it’s a major improvement. Being able to fight at 20hz made me able to dodge hammer trains in those blobs.

TL;DR
Switching from my AMD cpu to an intel CPU increased performance that much. It highlights the need for ANET to implement AMD optimizations. Granted my old AMD CPU is no match for a latest Intel i7. The performance increase should not have been that great.

lioka qiao.8734:

Abe Kleine.3568:

lioka qiao.8734:

I agree with the optimizations. Only ANET would truly know what they need to optimize. I was suggesting places to start looking though.

I want them to work more on the AMD optimizations. I think they may have mentioned it at some point. I built a new gaming rig with an Intel processor after noticing my Intel based gaming laptop performed better at GW2 than my AMD desktop (with a better gfx card) when they were both set to the same graphics settings. That 220% performance boost is a fairly accurate estimate of going from 20hz framerate in the middle of the vigil keep to 44 hz in the middle of the vigil keep on max settings.

It’s seriously THAT good on intel?

Yes it is. I used the FPS readout from the options menu and measured 3 systems I have. All my systems have 8gb ram. These tests were done during fairly peak hour on saturday in the middle of the vigil keep looking west from the mystic forge. All systems set to the same graphics settings.

System 1: Intel i7 2.0ghz (fairly old i7 from 3 years ago) Geforce 540m (laptop) – 26fps
System 2: AMD Phenom 3ghz 8 core black edition (first gen of this one), Geforce 760, GW2 on SSD (desktop)- 22fps
System 3: Intel i7 3770k 3.5ghz, same Geforce 760 from system 2, SSD for OS and GW2 on separate SSD (same ssd from system 2) 48fps.
Max settings 42fps.

Something was up when I saw that my 2ghz i7 laptop (first gen i7 mind you) was outperforming my 3ghz AMD desktop. Now I see a lot of talk that straight up clock rate isn’t a good comparison. The way I understand it is that the clock rate does play an important factor in how well a processor can process its threads.
The comparison between system 1 and 2 is where I notice the intel optimizations in GW2’s client though. System 2 should all around destroy system 1 in performance right? Faster processor, faster video card. Same other components. So why was it slower in FPS than the laptop? This prompted me to build a new gaming rig with the same processor I use at my work for biometrics.

I chose the i7 3770k for that third one based on a comparison test I did at work on an i5 system. Application I was using matched biometrics at .20 seconds for a 300 record db at first. Upgrading from i5 to i7 dropped that to .10 seconds, a whole 100% speed boost. Applying the intel compiler to the code optimized it even more, down to .07 seconds.

I was quite pleased and shocked to see the performance boost in GW2 that I did. Max settings and it only flinches with Maguuma’s 70 man map blobs and then it only goes down to 20hz. Compared to the 5hz I was getting in those map blobs it’s a major improvement. Being able to fight at 20hz made me able to dodge hammer trains in those blobs.

TL;DR
Switching from my AMD cpu to an intel CPU increased performance that much. It highlights the need for ANET to implement AMD optimizations. Granted my old AMD CPU is no match for a latest Intel i7. The performance increase should not have been that great.

Man that is a bummer :/

Intel processors outperform AMD for like 3-4 years straight so it shouldn’t be surprising. MMO’s are CPU bound by nature, Intel makes better CPU’s, so if you are building for this game get an Intel CPU.

The only thing they need to fix is is server side issues like skill lag in large fights. Increasing AoE caps just isn’t going to happen when you think about how much server stress you’d be adding.

Pinko.2076:

Intel processors outperform AMD for like 3-4 years straight so it shouldn’t be surprising. MMO’s are CPU bound by nature, Intel makes better CPU’s, so if you are building for this game get an Intel CPU.

The only thing they need to fix is is server side issues like skill lag in large fights. Increasing AoE caps just isn’t going to happen when you think about how much server stress you’d be adding.

Just looked up the pricing for some intel processors, that is absurdly expensive. It doesn’t matter if they out perform them, if the game was properly optimized to use cores efficiently then overclocking would be an easy solution

Abe Kleine.3568:

Pinko.2076:

Intel processors outperform AMD for like 3-4 years straight so it shouldn’t be surprising. MMO’s are CPU bound by nature, Intel makes better CPU’s, so if you are building for this game get an Intel CPU.

The only thing they need to fix is is server side issues like skill lag in large fights. Increasing AoE caps just isn’t going to happen when you think about how much server stress you’d be adding.

Just looked up the pricing for some intel processors, that is absurdly expensive. It doesn’t matter if they out perform them, if the game was properly optimized to use cores efficiently then overclocking would be an easy solution

I don’t know why in every MMO people assume the game creators are at fault for AMD processors continuing to get worse and worse. The company is not competitive at all anymore in any mid-high end gaming builds.

I had a similar performance jump going from AMD to Intel. The price difference of a $140 AMD vs a $180 intel would be made up for in electric bills alone.

Paavotar.3971:

You do know that with the current state one ele lavafront is able to deal 7k to 15k DPS, yes damage per second.

Lolwut?
Full zerk ele with maxdps dungeon setup and 25 stacks of might will do a lucky 6k lava font crit on another ele without gear and traits. Considering around 80% of WvW players play heavy classes amd the average armor for a player is around 2.8k the best you can do is 2k per second per target which is 10k AoE dps if you get 5/5 crits. Considering random aegis, protection and evades 15k is not possible. And then ofc your ele will die from 3 guardian staff autos.

DanyK.3842:

Paavotar.3971:

You do know that with the current state one ele lavafront is able to deal 7k to 15k DPS, yes damage per second.

Lolwut?
Full zerk ele with maxdps dungeon setup and 25 stacks of might will do a lucky 6k lava font crit on another ele without gear and traits. Considering around 80% of WvW players play heavy classes amd the average armor for a player is around 2.8k the best you can do is 2k per second per target which is 10k AoE dps if you get 5/5 crits. Considering random aegis, protection and evades 15k is not possible. And then ofc your ele will die from 3 guardian staff autos.

On 3.7k armor some eles do 2k -5k(max i noticed was ~7.3k meteor ) per hit on me while on wall.

I concur. It should be a high priority to get some client optimizations in. Especially when we have got none since launch, pretty much.

I should not have to crank my culling settings down on my rig (i7-3770k @ 4.2Ghz and GTX780) to keep a consistent framerate, but I do.