Guild Wars 2

So many people are complaining about skill lag and I’ve experienced this a bit when zerging. It didn’t both me a great deal because I was zerging and there were a billion people on the screen, making it mostly a spamfest anyway.

Yesterday I had a 1v1 with no other players in sight and I pretty much got obliterated because I couldn’t activate any utilities. Seemed weird but I figured maybe I was just not paying attention and kept getting interrupted or something. I head back to the WP where there are literally no other players, try to fire off a utility skill and nothing. It took a good 10 seconds of spamming the skill before it finally fired.

I was under the impression that skill lag was caused by being around many other players. Is it actually being caused just by being in the same zone as many of other players?

joshisanonymous.5270:

Is it actually being caused just by being in the same zone as many of other players?

Yes. Specifically when there is a large zerg vs zerg fight. It will affect the whole zone. Proximity to the fight doesn’t matter.

It caused by anet’s servers being bad, for whatever reason.

Xirin.8593:

joshisanonymous.5270:

Is it actually being caused just by being in the same zone as many of other players?

Yes. Specifically when there is a large zerg vs zerg fight. It will affect the whole zone. Proximity to the fight doesn’t matter.

This. Skill lag also seems to stick to you as well for some reason. After you are involved in a situation with extreme skill lag you will find it re-occurring more frequently in less skill lag prime situations for the rest of your play session but this is only based on anecdotal evidence so far. A guildie has even reported skill lag following a map switch to a less populated border after a particularly brutal three-way caused us all to give up on a map for the evening but that still needs more confirmation.

Halo.8976:

It caused by anet’s servers being bad, for whatever reason.

I doubt this is hardware related. I’m sure their engine isn’t optimized to handle that kind of load. Designers making games with a rule set that goes beyond the capabilities of their own engine is an entirely different discussion.

FYI – you will also experience some lag when large groups enter the map. This can indicate an incoming group to an otherwise lightly-manned borderland.

There is something to this. I’ve had the lag follow me into pve. Sounds insane, but there it is. I’m not sure I’d believe me either.

Lots of possible causes for skill lag.

Most usual is heavy server load caused by large numbers of players. But it can also happen if you get a slow internet connection.
If your commands take a long time to get to the server and/or the responses are slowed, the client will try to keep the movement animations going. Particle effects and suchlike will still display, even the framerate will stay high but the critical fight action will have to wait until the news arrives.

Result, rubber-banding, opponent teleporting about. no response to skill buttons. = skill-lag