Guild Wars 2

Not having the most powerful PC around (although I do intend to get a better one soon), I and I suppose many others have experienced the extremely frustrating delays in making large enemy crowds visible before it’s too late. (I think it’s termed “culling”, i.e. the game’s client/server software/hardware’s incapacity to quickly draw a large number of fast moving players at a far enough distance).

I don’t want to blame neither the software nor the hardware of neither the servers nor the player PCs. The last update did slightly improve things for me: instead of seeing the hoard after I’m dead, I now see them about 1 sec before impact. But I do think there is a very easy and quick solution to this problem.

What we need to see from a far enough distance is really not a full rendering of enemies, but just their names in red. Text is a lot faster to draw. That will be sufficient to see how many and how far, and is a lot lesser of a load than rendering whole characters in 3D. However, we need to be able to see those red names from a greater distance than they currently show.

Today you can see a mob/character from far away, but their names only appear when they come a lot closer. How about doing it the other way around? Show us the red names at a distance of minimum 8000-10000 units, and let the rest of the character render at whatever speed the hardware can manage. That is not too big a distance since you can see trees/buildings/trebuchets that are at least that far away. Whatever the distance decided upon, it has to be reasonably large to give time to react, and realistic in terms of range of sight. After all, 10000 units can be crossed in about 10 secs with speed boosts. If you can see a zerg rushing in at you, you can at least decide whether you want to continue on a collision course or do something else.

Here is an additional request:
To make it clear who is fighting whom, the 2 enemy teams need to have names in different colors. I suggest the following:
- Our team: green
- Enemy1: red
- Enemy2: violet (sufficiently different from Enemy1)
Right now all you see is red-red-red-red. How many of each team are there, approximately? Are we being attacked by both enemies at the same time? Different enemy name colors will make it a lot clearer than having to actually read all those names one by one.

Corollary:
Team/Map/Icon/Tier Rank colors can also be changed to correspond to the above:
- Our team: always the green one (green camp/fort/… icons, green name text)
- Enemy1: red
- Enemy2: violet

I think the above changes make sense and will solve the culling problem while the clever brains at Anet look for a better solution to full character rendering of large groups at far enough distances.

Finally, I have a last request. Currently, we are shown a crossed-sword icon on the map when a battle or skirmish is taking place. However, there are 2 problems with that icon:
- It does not tell me who is fighting whom
- It does not refresh fast enough (only once every 10 sec AFAIK)

If we’re not supposed to know who is fighting whom from a large distance, then the crossed-sword icon should not be displayed at all unless one of our team is close enough to observe the battle. Since it has been deemed necessary to display it, then why not make it more useful? Drawing crossed swords of different colors can tell us who is fighting whom (red+violet swords or red+green, violet+green, red+violet+green). And updating the icon more frequently (once every second or two) will make the information a lot more useful. What harm can come from us all having more useful information?

Thank you for your attention.

Your attention has been noted.

What we need to see from a far enough distance is really not a full rendering of enemies, but just their names in red. Text is a lot faster to draw. That will be sufficient to see how many and how far, and is a lot lesser of a load than rendering whole characters in 3D. However, we need to be able to see those red names from a greater distance than they currently show.

The culling is about the server not sending information to client for every unit out there. This information includes the data needed for the text.

I would imagine that for some technical reason it is not possible to reduce the amount of data to bare minimum of rendering text only. I also assume it is not possible to send updates to distant units less frequently. Thus the limit of 25 nearest visible enemy units + 25 nearest friendly units + unit you are targetting. (or whatever the culling is set today).

There will always be limits. But the amount of information sent by the server about each enemy character can be reduced by not sending details of face customizations, tattoos, etc… We don’t really have the opportunity to see such details in the enemy. It can be further reduced by not sending any color information, and imposing the “enemy is painted red or violet” principle.

I believe the user should determine the limits of how many characters can be drawn, based on their observations. If necessary, the client can then inform the server of that limit in the hope that it will further lessen the load on the server.

Alad QB.8904:

Finally, I have a last request. Currently, we are shown a crossed-sword icon on the map when a battle or skirmish is taking place. However, there are 2 problems with that icon:
- It does not tell me who is fighting whom
- It does not refresh fast enough (only once every 10 sec AFAIK)

I would personally prefer to see those sword disappear completely. Imho it would completely break up zerging an encourage much more coordination and map awareness on a server.

And is that a “bad” thing?

Alad QB.8904:

There will always be limits. But the amount of information sent by the server about each enemy character can be reduced by not sending details of face customizations, tattoos, etc… We don’t really have the opportunity to see such details in the enemy. It can be further reduced by not sending any color information, and imposing the “enemy is painted red or violet” principle.

I believe the user should determine the limits of how many characters can be drawn, based on their observations. If necessary, the client can then inform the server of that limit in the hope that it will further lessen the load on the server.

Enemies are already coloured according to their team colour if you haven’t noticed already. The colours are also assigned according to the server’s ranking, so introducing a 2nd set of colours may be confusing.

Opc.4718:

Enemies are already coloured according to their team colour if you haven’t noticed already.

That’s an option that you set. Since some people choose not to set it, the server still has to send color info today. I’m proposing to make the color “paint” the norm, if necessary, to reduce server and client load.

Opc.4718:

The colours are also assigned according to the server’s ranking, so introducing a 2nd set of colours may be confusing.

Precisely, hence my proposal to not set color by server ranking, at least not for the team you’re in, which will always be green, since your allies’ names are in green. Since the Enemy1’s names will be in red, all colors associated with them should be red, including their armor and map icons. And the same in violet for Enemy2. Who gets to be red and who violet is a detail, IMO. At least you can see immediately who you’re up against from their name color, from far away, and their armor colors when they come closer. The confusion you mention actually exists in today’s scheme, since you can be on the “red” team, while your enemies’ names all and indistiguishably appear in red.

Yes, this means “Green is First, Blue is Second and Red is Third” will no longer apply. But is that an issue?

About the enemy armour colour thing, I never noticed it was an option since I set everything down to the lowest possible setting first day into wvw.

I agree having different coloured names for different invaders would really help you judge situations at a single glance instead of trying to differentiate the massive blob of red, but I DO rather like the colour associated ranking system as it is. Removing it so it appears the same from all perspectives can potentially really screw up the design of the leaderboard layout and everything.