Guild Wars 2

This last attempt at a culling fix has made things exponentially worse, is there a way you can QA this stuff before it hits the live servers?

At least revert it while attempting a new fix, and roll them out over time, but if they really do break things further, please undo the changes.

agreed, wont be playing much if at all due to this

I’ve been routinely running at full speed into invisible zergs since this update. Today it was a golem zerg headed for our keep. Funny thing is that they usually don’t see me either, so I have time to freak out, burn through my AoEs and escape skills, and run away.

It can be fun but PLEASE fix or revert it.

I like the culling patch. You guys aren’t thieves and mesmers are you by any chance?

I have a mixed view on this “patch”.
On the one hand I experience culling A LOT more but they stay invisible for a shorter duration it seems.
So its an improvement when fighting solo thieves, its worse when fighting groups of enemies though.

I myself experience way better gameplay through this culling update, the only thing that was quite annoying was while capping a camp. While i could see all the NPC’s except for the supervivor who then almost stomped me to the ground because he appeared to be next to me.

It is a weird temp` patch.
I can be running along & see a friendly/enemy pop up right next to me heading the other direction.
Early hours, only 2-3 of us & 1-2 enemy in our zone.
I`m top of Titan & same thing. See enemy suddenly appear just behind me who obviously had same lack of rendering happen, both turn & scrap.

At least in the past it was zergs invisible & not just any player.

By nerfing perma stealth contesting camps, anet introduced a new culling system that buffs thieves and mesmers, which is a “=FAIR=” trade.
Ya know what I mean.

Yeh I’ve walked into enemy forces and they appear when I’m about 3 meters away from them. Not a good experience. I would support reverting to the old system until another patch comes out for it.

Last fix culling (the one that make NPC disappear after 1 hour) still working better than this (but yeah the weakness after 1 hour all NPC and players disappear).

Well “enemy” players seem to be showing up more to me. My own team and npcs seem to take longer to load but that isn’t as much of an issue for me as being able to properly see the enemy force I’m more than happy to sacrifice seeing some members of my own team temporarily while a proper fix is planned. Changing things in any kind of game/rendering engine is a monstrous task.

It’s way worse since the path in terms of how PCs get culled for me and I’m also having weird rubberbanding/desyncs I have not had before. Really making things frustrating.

Heru.5427:

I’m also having weird rubberbanding/desyncs I have not had before. Really making things frustrating.

This may be a different issue all together. I do not know anyone who has experienced this in relation to the culling issue. I play in a large guild and hang out on a couple other large guilds vents as well and we discuss stuff like this a lot and not once has rubberbanding/desyncing come up. Sounds like it may be a major latency related issue on your end some where.

I love anet, i really do but i know they wont revert anything. They will let it sit this way for the duration of their predetermined schedule before it gets changed. They are basically reaping all the rewards of rapid iterative development while their customers bear all the downsides. Would it not be more logical to put a slider in that lets users configure the max number of visible players while anet works on a real solution? At least that way we could adjust it based on our system specs for now and wouldn’t have to deal with all these kitten attempts at a stopgap solution…

Disastro.4086:

Heru.5427:

I’m also having weird rubberbanding/desyncs I have not had before. Really making things frustrating.

This may be a different issue all together. I do not know anyone who has experienced this in relation to the culling issue. I play in a large guild and hang out on a couple other large guilds vents as well and we discuss stuff like this a lot and not once has rubberbanding/desyncing come up. Sounds like it may be a major latency related issue on your end some where.

Never happened before the patch and constant latency of 40-60 for GW2.exe.

I’ve definitely run into the middle of more enemy players following this change. At the same time it’s also unhelpful to have our forces invisible because you don’t really know how much backup you have. And I wont mention being screamed at for a portal into a target from people who you cannot see on the radar!

It’s a tricky problem and one I’ve seen cause a fair amount of ignorance about the realities of the technology available be spouted about on the forum . Culling will always be necessary so calls for it to be abandoned are silly – if the server sent the movement of every player on your radar to you the bandwidth usage would be ridiculous. If they up the amount of bandwidth per player then more people on bad links will be unhappy as their experience is reduced. Network load will increase on the server and increase everyone’s latency. Throwing more hardware at a problem will only get you so far when you deal with systems of this size.

I do not envy Anet the task of making an acceptable solution to this challenge. This is a situation where an optimum solution for all players is not attainable – reaching a point where an acceptable solution is provided to a high majority of players is the best we can realistically expect. Nobody can deny the scale of battle is right up there with the best any MMO can offer – the fact I can see so many people, so many spells, PVE mobs, siege equipment and chat all at the same time is very impressive. But nobody will ever be happy with that It’s the nature of technology to want more.

The old system mostly seemed to work fine for me, except on reset nights, those were always bad.
The new system though for me has allies phasing in and out without enemies necessarily popping up faster, people not being able to see the person they’re supposed to follow, we’ve had a few guildies who have the problem at times that they can’t see anyone, friendly or enemy, and more of the like.

It’s pretty annoying

The culling is so random now. The worst part though is even when it works it has a bad side effect. It makes your side look smaller than it really is at times which is really bad in huge fights because people start retreating thinking they are out numbered when in actuality its even or you might even have MORE on your side.

I’ve seen more stupid actions today than i have ever seen before (ie people running into huge zergs they couldn’t see, both my server and other server’s players). Perma stealth is even worse now also; sometimes i see the animation of the thief leaving stealth, and the actual model, but i can’t target him until another ~2 seconds later.

Plz at least save sPvP. this culling issue is probably too hard to fix, but give us a good/fun/nonbuggy pvp to play at least

New patch feels way worse by far for me. Today we lost our tower because an invisible golem was with the enemy zerg and no one could see it meaning no targeting it with the two ballista’s we had set up. Also it seems that while before I would see 10ish enemies and find out that it was like 25 while now I see 1 or 2 then boom 25. Personally I would rather know it’s a lot then have all of them pop up in my face. By the way I am a dd ele.

By the way I thought before was fine all they need to do is nerf the classes that can abuse the rendering accordingly. treat it as if there is no fix and build the game around that rather than testing out new fixes on us with no testing done.

papacooldown.9482:

I love anet, i really do but i know they wont revert anything. They will let it sit this way for the duration of their predetermined schedule before it gets changed. They are basically reaping all the rewards of rapid iterative development while their customers bear all the downsides. Would it not be more logical to put a slider in that lets users configure the max number of visible players while anet works on a real solution? At least that way we could adjust it based on our system specs for now and wouldn’t have to deal with all these kitten attempts at a stopgap solution…

I would prefer this kind of solution, maybe a player character quality slider ranging from show name → full character detail, then all players would be able to slide it to the best level for thier computer and still get all characters on screen.

I’d rather just see a name than not see anyone at all.

Ravbek.7938:

papacooldown.9482:

I love anet, i really do but i know they wont revert anything. They will let it sit this way for the duration of their predetermined schedule before it gets changed. They are basically reaping all the rewards of rapid iterative development while their customers bear all the downsides. Would it not be more logical to put a slider in that lets users configure the max number of visible players while anet works on a real solution? At least that way we could adjust it based on our system specs for now and wouldn’t have to deal with all these kitten attempts at a stopgap solution…

I would prefer this kind of solution, maybe a player character quality slider ranging from show name -> full character detail, then all players would be able to slide it to the best level for thier computer and still get all characters on screen.

I’d rather just see a name than not see anyone at all.

The culling is a server side mechanic and is done the same for everyone.

Who knows. They made a few comments in the sticky thread on Friday. 5 pages of almost unanimous negative feedback over the weekend, and they haven’t commented again. Baffling. Reverting a patch should be easy and quick to do.

I know that if my ranger is running with swiftness on, I can run right through the middle of entire zergs on the road and we will not see each other.

Mipx.3519:

Ravbek.7938:

papacooldown.9482:

I love anet, i really do but i know they wont revert anything. They will let it sit this way for the duration of their predetermined schedule before it gets changed. They are basically reaping all the rewards of rapid iterative development while their customers bear all the downsides. Would it not be more logical to put a slider in that lets users configure the max number of visible players while anet works on a real solution? At least that way we could adjust it based on our system specs for now and wouldn’t have to deal with all these kitten attempts at a stopgap solution…

I would prefer this kind of solution, maybe a player character quality slider ranging from show name -> full character detail, then all players would be able to slide it to the best level for thier computer and still get all characters on screen.

I’d rather just see a name than not see anyone at all.

The culling is a server side mechanic and is done the same for everyone.

Are you implying that the bottleneck is network throughout or server related in any way? The problem is that most client machines cant render hundreds of players fast enough and culling is the workaround to the alternative which is unplayable low frame rates. The issue with the current approach is that everyone is forced to have the same culling ‘setting’ as defined by anet server side, which is always going to be suboptimal. A client setting would let users specify at which point their machine needs to start culling, perhaps even on low end machines turn off customization aspects (clothing, dye, face details, etc) to further improve performance, and anet can figure out the best way to make culling happen when it does.

papacooldown.9482:

Mipx.3519:

Ravbek.7938:

papacooldown.9482:

I love anet, i really do but i know they wont revert anything. They will let it sit this way for the duration of their predetermined schedule before it gets changed. They are basically reaping all the rewards of rapid iterative development while their customers bear all the downsides. Would it not be more logical to put a slider in that lets users configure the max number of visible players while anet works on a real solution? At least that way we could adjust it based on our system specs for now and wouldn’t have to deal with all these kitten attempts at a stopgap solution…

I would prefer this kind of solution, maybe a player character quality slider ranging from show name -> full character detail, then all players would be able to slide it to the best level for thier computer and still get all characters on screen.

I’d rather just see a name than not see anyone at all.

The culling is a server side mechanic and is done the same for everyone.

Are you implying that the bottleneck is network throughout or server related in any way? The problem is that most client machines cant render hundreds of players fast enough and culling is the workaround to the alternative which is unplayable low frame rates.

I’m not implying anything, I’m stating a fact.

There is a fairness-factor to think about with the user options as well though… hmm. I don’t have the solution but I do have faith i ANet.

how is this an issue in MMOs(ive seen this issue with laggy open world pvp before), but not in an FPS?

Is the issue 100% the gear/armor? Seems like with projectiles and collision detection, an FPS should have a harder time than the standard MMO.

FourTwenty.4268:

how is this an issue in MMOs(ive seen this issue with laggy open world pvp before), but not in an FPS?

Is the issue 100% the gear/armor? Seems like with projectiles and collision detection, an FPS should have a harder time than the standard MMO.

Simply put, bad design.

All the details are great, but not at the expense of playability. If I could engage in a fight with a hundred players on screen 8 years ago with little lag and all players showing up perfectly in a different game, there is no reason why this can’t be done with current technology given vast computing and bandwidth performance increases that have happened since then.

What is inexcusable is that this isn’t really a ‘test’ when they don’t roll back the changes when it fails. They basically threw a garbage solution onto the live servers and are leaving us to deal with it.

It is 100% bad design.
As others have said, why were we able to play DAOC 10 years ago with hundreds of players on the screen and not have culling ?
Sure it was choppy for those without the newest engines but I would prefer that over invisible zergs stomping me.
And it wasnt choppy with 20 players on the screen but I still get culling with 20 people here so its really all Anets fault.

I’ve had a few instances where I’ve been fighting with people and had them disappear for a second or two. These were non-stealth classes such as warriors. Also, these people weren’t close enough to anyone else to be receiving group stealth buffs either. Has anyone else had this happen to them since the patch?

Things have been worst since this last patch. Plz revert it.

With this patch the good part is that you can actually see the enemy before being in the middle of their bus.

The bad ones are that you’ll see only a fragment which give some surprise when you discover they are actually at least 30, that some will suddenly disappear from your screen as you are fighting them and that you’ll have culling on allies outside a 3m radius.

Is the issue the rendering, or letting the client know the character is there?

If it’s rendering, wouldn’t a decent stopgap measure be to simply render the text? At least you’d see the XXX Invader floating out there and have something to target/select/avoid.

I have discovered Anet’s strategy. They were so sick of all the culling complaints that they introduced a system so bad we would beg for a return to the old one.

New culling is better. Keep it.

The culling is improved to a degree yet worse at times. Thieves appear to come out of stealth better yet a group is still an issue.

Yet, while thieves do come out of stealth better for the most part, tabbing doesn’t appear to work when you can first see them. You have to mouse click on them half the time. This is a one on one situation.

as long as Anet runs the servers on C64’s who are hooked up to the ’internrz" via chimps with morse code…

xxxzavulonxxx.8413:

I like the culling patch. You guys aren’t thieves and mesmers are you by any chance?

I feel like a lion running inside a gazelle herd taking bites out of all of them without them noticing on my thief lol

FourTwenty.4268:

how is this an issue in MMOs(ive seen this issue with laggy open world pvp before), but not in an FPS?

Well, to be fair, there aren’t that many FPS games out there that allow 500+ players per map. And the ones that do are particularly designed around that feat.

covenn.7165:

Simply put, bad design.

Galrukh.6532:

It is 100% bad design.

I would’t call this an indicator of bad design. It seems to me that the culling problem is rather an unfortunate heritage from the old GW1 engine, which was designed to handle just 8 players per map (and a few dozens at towns and outposts). When you tweak and expand an existing engine into directions it wasn’t designed for, you sometimes hit limits and boundaries that need a lot (a lot, a lot) of work to circumvent.

I just hope that ANet realizes that much of the actual pain with the engine problems could have been avoided by running an extensive open beta testing period for WvW (instead of just three weekends). The problems with the engine would have been detected much earlier, the team could have started fixing them much earlier, and the community would have exhibited much less whining and ranting since “meh, it’s just beta”.

~MRA

xxxzavulonxxx.8413:

I like the culling patch. You guys aren’t thieves and mesmers are you by any chance?

same.

i was a bit upset at it at first. then i learned to understand it a bit more and how it works.

now i’m just fine with it, and prefer it.

Habib Loew.6239:

The current plan is for this test to run through the end of the current matchup. At that time we’ll go back to the previous culling setup. Please note that this is a trial of an interim change to culling. We are at work on a more comprehensive solution and that effort has not been impacted by this test. The point of the test was to determine if the community would prefer the new method while waiting for the more comprehensive fix. More details about the change can be found in the “New Culling Trial” thread which will remain stickied for the duration of the test.

Why not just create an instance, in the game world, that you can ask (in big fancy yellow letters) people to enter to test these things, if it is impossible or difficult to do internally.

Even if it is just a square room with controlled variables so you guys can actually test this properly.

Get a specific amount of players in each instanced room, maybe test NPC and object additions, etc. etc. etc.

Im sure the community would be more involved in a test, if it was actually a proper test, rather than us being the mice in a maze, where we are trying to play the game, but being tested by the ones “behind the scene”

I’m sure you would be amazed at how many people would probably take time out to test this for you.

Before I really found culling bothersome in huge battles like a 3 way battle for SM, but after the last update its become bothersome in any zerg even the smaller ones.

Please call up the developing company of Rift. They will introduce you to the this very novel concept called the “test server”. This “test server” allows you to “test” future upgrades to your actual game servers before you implement them. I would have further advice here but condensation about your last few years of work would simply alienate you from a 15 year, 7 mmo players feed back, i will save it for later. Seriously tho, i would at least spend 10 min googling advice from pay to play mmo game developers blog and learn how to test something proper. I would also ask your supervisors to upgrade your single wide trailers work space somewhere in Mississippi’s tornado ally to a double wide somewhere in Florida’s hurricane ally. I thank you for reading my feed back, and hope that the $10.40/hour they pay allows you to eat enough food that you don’t pass out from vitamin deficiency and lets you give your hard work to someone, somewhere to test for 5 minutes, before it goes live to 1million payed players. Thank You.

Not being able to see your own team is what the current culling patch applied. A revert is much welcomed.

Habib Loew.6239:

The current plan is for this test to run through the end of the current matchup. At that time we’ll go back to the previous culling setup. Please note that this is a trial of an interim change to culling. We are at work on a more comprehensive solution and that effort has not been impacted by this test. The point of the test was to determine if the community would prefer the new method while waiting for the more comprehensive fix. More details about the change can be found in the “New Culling Trial” thread which will remain stickied for the duration of the test.

Please please revert back to the old culling!

With the current system, I don’t know what’s what anymore. I have no idea how many allies I have around me, I have not idea how many enemies there are, even if I’m fighting in the area for minutes.

When I don’t know how many numbers my side as, nor do I know how many the enemy has, meanwhile the nearby players keep phasing in and out, it just makes me completely lost as to what’s going on.

With the old culling system, I was knew how many allies with me, and if the enemy had a large army, they would appear invisible at first, by the lighting, graphics, spells and fps lag would be a dead give away that the enemy army is large. After 10 seconds or so, the enemy fully loads on my screen and they stay there.

So with the old system I know how many allies have, and given a little bit of time I know how many the enemy has

With the new system I don’t even know what’s going on, no idea if I’m in a 20 vs 20 or a 50 vs 50, or a 20 vs 50, I can’t see the difference and it’s confusing.

For example, just yesterday I was outside Greenlake, I was scouting and I was reporting to the Commander on what the exact situation was. After inspecting several times over 5 minutes, I never saw more than 20. My commander came to rescue the tower with 20 as well, what he discovered in the battle field that the enemy was more like 50-60, we got slaughtered and we didn’t even know how many the enemy had.

Last week, I would be on the walls of Askalion Hills keep, I spot the enemy coming, before I report the numbers, I take a few seconds of observe. Once the enemy renders, I can see that they have a sizeable force of 30-40, and I report the numbers accurately to the commander and the commander responds with the right sized force.

The old culling system is way way better then what we have had this week.