Guild Wars 2

VOLKON.1290:

Jscull.2514:

Devon, don’t think it is highly unlikely people will (AND ALREADY HAVE) leave for that crap excuse. If you’re going to consider your company an “mmo powerhouse” deliver “powerhouse” gameplay. Excuses about why you can’t make a CRUCIAL game mechanic change are simply that… Excuses. Not professional. Gw2 lost almost all it’s competitive base and you aren’t willing to go the distance to capture the market share lost. Bad business model. Enjoy mediocrity.

Man, if I put the effort into working out that you put into trolling I’d be the next Mr. Universe. I’ve been programming for a couple decades now. It’s very easy to see how in incredibly large systems things that on the surface seem simple to a layman are in fact ungodly difficult if not nearly impossible to pull off without massive efforts due to the depth at which you have to make changes to the core of the system itself and how those changes radiate out to the system as a whole.

Buddy, check the math on their $$ coming in. Tell me there is plenty of room for their reasoning. It’s crap…. Bottom line is $. And bottom line is they don’t want zergers to leave due to skill levels because the zergers pay 99% of their bills…cut the nerd kitten. Someone on their team is a business major, with a model that looks like this:

Mmo population = 80% casuals (but $ spending customers) + 20% non-casuals/competitive natured players (also $ spending customers but not as much)

Anet = keep the 80% casual at all costs (well accept losing the 20% veteraned players)

Edit: VOLK I’m not trolling. It’s a crap excuse from Devon carver and Anet. And the blind 80% casuals believe it. When games 10 years ago did the same thing 10x better.

Trolling is exactly what are you doing but seeing a number of your posts, I came to the conclusion that it would be a complete waste of time to try and have a real deliberated, wighted and intelligent discussion with you. If you have black googles on, nothing will help here. kthxbye

Pretty much the solution is anet needs to put in some extra $$ which we know they have and make a major upgrade to their servers which are honestly crap for modern day tech

DevonCarver.5370:

Master of Timespace.2548:

Simple question. Why is there an aoe cap? And no, please do not come up with that “technical limitation” lie. There has been thousands games before this with massive pvp and no aoe cap, why would your engine be somehow so infernior to that of these older games?

What you seem to be missing is that technical limitations are not about the fact that a solution somewhere may have existed for some other thing. Our game is using an engine that has these technical limitations. We could, for instance, display everything as text, which would solve the problem quite nicely, however we’ve found that our graphics offer something a text-based MMO couldn’t quite deliver. The point is, it is very much a limitation of our engine. The load on the server CPU would be quite simply unsustainable if we were to increase the AoE cap as the more players hit by skills the more calculations it has to do and it actually starts increasing exponentially, rather than sequentially. We continue to seek out ways to squeeze more performance out of our game and our servers, but it is highly unlikely we would ever make a change to the AoE limits on player skills.

Or you could just say, “Because skills are balanced that way, duh.” … I’m sure we’d all understand.

dunnberry.2964:

Pretty much the solution is anet needs to put in some extra $$ which we know they have and make a major upgrade to their servers which are honestly crap for modern day tech

Never thought I’d do this but +1

dunnberry.2964:

Pretty much the solution is anet needs to put in some extra $$ which we know they have and make a major upgrade to their servers which are honestly crap for modern day tech

I’d be interested to see exact specs. Do you have a source or can you elaborate more?

Yaro.3251:

dunnberry.2964:

Pretty much the solution is anet needs to put in some extra $$ which we know they have and make a major upgrade to their servers which are honestly crap for modern day tech

I’d be interested to see exact specs. Do you have a source or can you elaborate more?

Of course he doesn’t have a source. Neither does anyone else trying to say they know what Anet does/uses for their servers. All they know is that they don’t like it so it must be crap.

The truth of the matter is, regardless of their capabilities with their servers or the game’s engine, the skills are balanced around having an AoE cap. Deal with it or play another game. Here’s an option, go back to DAoC!

Yaro Devon has said that the servers wouldn’t be able to hold higher AOE so simple solution upgrade servers, there are many other games out today that can hold amazing amounts of action and graphics for their games namely example the battlefield franchise with their frostbite engine! If you are talking about their money than I’m sure that I formation is available with their yearly profits reports and such along with over 3 million copies sold within a year

dunnberry.2964:

Yaro Devon has said that the servers wouldn’t be able to hold higher AOE so simple solution upgrade servers,

They also said that they have pretty much what the money can buy hardware-wise. If you in turn would ask me for a source, I could dig up some red posts from forum history but that may take some time so don’t expect quick answer.

If you are talking about their money than I’m sure that I formation is available with their yearly profits reports and such along with over 3 million copies sold within a year

No I mean specifically servers specs which are “crap for modern day tech” according to you.

dunnberry.2964:

Yaro Devon has said that the servers wouldn’t be able to hold higher AOE so simple solution upgrade servers, there are many other games out today that can hold amazing amounts of action and graphics for their games namely example the battlefield franchise with their frostbite engine! If you are talking about their money than I’m sure that I formation is available with their yearly profits reports and such along with over 3 million copies sold within a year

Simply upgrading the servers will most likely not solve anything, and for all we know they already have the best possible servers so why assume they can simply upgrade them?

The fact that you even compare Battlefield to GW2 makes it really hard to take you serious.

dunnberry.2964:

Yaro Devon has said that the servers wouldn’t be able to hold higher AOE so simple solution upgrade servers, there are many other games out today that can hold amazing amounts of action and graphics for their games namely example the battlefield franchise with their frostbite engine! If you are talking about their money than I’m sure that I formation is available with their yearly profits reports and such along with over 3 million copies sold within a year

“Action” is a subjective term but a game like Battlefield 3 (soon to be 4, yay!) does have superb graphics. They are indeed superior to GW2. However, Battlefield 3 only has a small selection of actions players can take on a limited amount of gamespace with a maximum of 64 players. GW2 trumps BF3 in number of actions, number of players, and amount of access to gamespace at any one particular time during WvW.

I’d rather have the current system over unlimited AoE targets on a 64-player map of “Stonemist Castle”.

dunnberry.2964:

Yaro Devon has said that the servers wouldn’t be able to hold higher AOE so simple solution upgrade servers, there are many other games out today that can hold amazing amounts of action and graphics for their games namely example the battlefield franchise with their frostbite engine! If you are talking about their money than I’m sure that I formation is available with their yearly profits reports and such along with over 3 million copies sold within a year

Devon also said “exponentially”. That means x to y. Just adding “X times” more servers wouldn’t be required, you need “to the X” more servers.

Anet def seems to have some lemmings…

Jscull.2514:

Anet def seems to have some lemmings…

I know right? Whats with all these people coming up with intelligent counter-arguments to the moronic “just add more” stance that is so OBVIOUSLY right. I mean geez…what lemmings…

BTW, check your sig.

Yaro.3251:

King Amadaeus.8619:

The reality is this game (WvW), is in decline
…
…
just go browse matchup threads, and recruiting threads. There are plenty of people recruiting in both

Just a side note – isn’t that kind of contradiction?

There is a finite amount of players available for transfer…The fact that recruiting has increased could indicate that fewer and fewer are transferring.

This could be for many reasons, one of them is that there are fewer players period, and fewer still willing to pay to move to a server that has the same dead WvW. So to answer your question: No it isn’t.

Nikola.3841:

If true, that just means you have badly coded engine. I don’t see what damage calculations have to do with displaying things in fancy graphics, or text, as that is mainly client side. Also, how do you think DAOC managed to have no AOE cap, on Pentium 3 servers (it was not text based, mind you)

A rather poor comparison considering how much simpler the calculations in DAoC were compared to GW2. Any single skill in this game, usually, has more things to compute than several skills all going off concurrently in DAoC, and the stat breakdown in one game vs. the other is vastly different. Just look at one simple auto-attack in this game: condition damage, duration, critical damage, critical change, power vs. toughness, cleave for position, boon alterations to anything above, condition alterations to anything above, fields and finishers (and % therein). DAoC? Comparatively could be simplified to a D&D dice roll.

If you want a more ample comparison, look to Wintergrasp from WoW when it was first launched and everyone was trying to play to unlock the Raid therein. The moment everyone got to the gate, spamming skills, the game simply locked down and became unplayable. Its the exact same phenomenon and cannot be countered with “add more servers!”. WoW servers (at that time) were top of the line and ample, but with so many people spamming so many abilities… nothing could cope with that stress.

You could say that both WoW and GW2 had crap optimization… which is a likely suspect statement.

Another game of interest to look into, would be Aion. However, I honestly have no memory of that game anymore or what happened when 200-some people all piled up in a room within the Abyss. I’ve stricken it from memory… the grind, all of that grind.

Battlefield was the first big game that came to mind an yes while there are max of 64 players there are also things like vehicles being driven and giant explosions from them and for battlefield 4 every building will be destroy able, that requires quite a large server and an advanced one. Yes I’m assuming they don’t have the best servers out there but they should have a game that can be played without simple restrictions like that which change the game…also for reference I love WvW an think Devon does a fantastic job but believe he has limited resources from the higher ups

dunnberry.2964:

Battlefield was the first big game that came to mind an yes while there are max of 64 players there are also things like vehicles being driven and giant explosions from them and for battlefield 4 every building will be destroy able, that requires quite a large server and an advanced one. Yes I’m assuming they don’t have the best servers out there but they should have a game that can be played without simple restrictions like that which change the game…also for reference I love WvW an think Devon does a fantastic job but believe he has limited resources from the higher ups

Destructible buildings are calculation light. Calculations per action (cpa) in BF3/4 will still be woefully incomparable with what cpa is in GW2 on a character to character basis.

Vena.8436:

Nikola.3841:

If true, that just means you have badly coded engine. I don’t see what damage calculations have to do with displaying things in fancy graphics, or text, as that is mainly client side. Also, how do you think DAOC managed to have no AOE cap, on Pentium 3 servers (it was not text based, mind you)

A rather poor comparison considering how much simpler the calculations in DAoC were compared to GW2. Any single skill in this game, usually, has more things to compute than several skills all going off concurrently in DAoC, and the stat breakdown in one game vs. the other is vastly different. Just look at one simple auto-attack in this game: condition damage, duration, critical damage, critical change, power vs. toughness, cleave for position, boon alterations to anything above, condition alterations to anything above, fields and finishers (and % therein). DAoC? Comparatively could be simplified to a D&D dice roll.

If you want a more ample comparison, look to Wintergrasp from WoW when it was first launched and everyone was trying to play to unlock the Raid therein. The moment everyone got to the gate, spamming skills, the game simply locked down and became unplayable. Its the exact same phenomenon and cannot be countered with “add more servers!”. WoW servers (at that time) were top of the line and ample, but with so many people spamming so many abilities… nothing could cope with that stress.

You could say that both WoW and GW2 had crap optimization… which is a likely suspect statement.

Another game of interest to look into, would be Aion. However, I honestly have no memory of that game anymore or what happened when 200-some people all piled up in a room within the Abyss. I’ve stricken it from memory… the grind, all of that grind.

Its pretty obvious you never played DAOC.

1. DAOC melee was POSITIONAL…that means server had to compare your position vs target at all times to see if you executed it right. Also, most of melee styles were chained, and game had to check if your previous style failed, for one of many reasons (miss, block, parry, not positioned right, PBT…)
2. DAOC melee damage was much more complicated than GW2 because of armor vs melee type calculations (slash/thrust/crush). Also, it had whooping 46 classes, all with much more abilities than GW2 classes…I mean, my warden and cleric both had about 60-70 buttons to use
3. DAOC also had lots of types of spell damage (spirit, body, …), and all of those had their own resistances that could be both crafted and by buffs
4. Game kept insane amount of data about everyone (you could see your number of kills, deaths, heals done, damage done…in real time)

DevonCarver.5370:

Master of Timespace.2548:

Simple question. Why is there an aoe cap? And no, please do not come up with that “technical limitation” lie. There has been thousands games before this with massive pvp and no aoe cap, why would your engine be somehow so infernior to that of these older games?

What you seem to be missing is that technical limitations are not about the fact that a solution somewhere may have existed for some other thing. Our game is using an engine that has these technical limitations. We could, for instance, display everything as text, which would solve the problem quite nicely, however we’ve found that our graphics offer something a text-based MMO couldn’t quite deliver. The point is, it is very much a limitation of our engine. The load on the server CPU would be quite simply unsustainable if we were to increase the AoE cap as the more players hit by skills the more calculations it has to do and it actually starts increasing exponentially, rather than sequentially. We continue to seek out ways to squeeze more performance out of our game and our servers, but it is highly unlikely we would ever make a change to the AoE limits on player skills.

This is pretty awful….

If 10 people decide to run up on me, all 10 can hit me….But I can only hit 5 of them? How is that right?

If you cannot fix the AoE cap, then why not add a defensive cap to where only 5 people can hit you at a time?

Nikola.3841:

Its pretty obvious you never played DAOC.

No, I did play DAoC ’til it became a trademarked Mark Jacobs crapshoot.

You are comparing apples and oranges, the damage types are simple checks and a spell doesn’t need to check for any other armor types the moment it hits a target aside from one specifically related to it, same for melee. This is simple calculations per action (cpa) because its only looking at a small sample (even if the overall sample is huge) of statistics and making a calculation. In GW2 there is one armor type for all damage but a plethora of other things that need to be checked along side of it, conditions being some of the biggest resource hogs because of how frequently and specifically they work (as well as all counter effects) on every 1/4 second interval.

Moreover, all melee is positional, such a statement is pointless. What I was speaking of was positions needed to be checked for cleave which means checking not only yours and your targets position, but all position with the 200 or so arc of your attack. I was also referring to position with respect to any and all fields in the area, all of which need to be checked to then check for charges left on the field, % chance of triggering said field, the effects of said field, and then any other fields if the first field did not proc the % finisher. This mere comparison of positional importance should make the difference in the games rather apparent.

The number of classes or buttons is irrelevant from a server point of view, all that matters is the cpa whether you have a billion classes with 1 cpa, or 1 class with a billion cpa.

Grove.2835:

Jscull.2514:

Redscope.6215:

Jscull.2514:

Anet def seems to have some lemmings…

I know right? Whats with all these people coming up with intelligent counter-arguments to the moronic “just add more” stance that is so OBVIOUSLY right. I mean geez…what lemmings…

BTW, check your sig.

We run with 5 or less nightly… We start fights with 5 and end fights with 5… There are a handful of teams with that same mentality…so when people lose to us…. We rarely see them return with the same numbers. Diff topic.

And telling me to be believe Anet is truthful and that their head is in the right place (when for the last year their “upgrades” to Wvw have been siege masteries and allowing porting thieves) is about as believable as Obamacare being what the US needs….

Please don’t call your comments intelligent counter arguments.

Quit with the kittenin troll comments Jscull. You’re an effing clown, calling Anet liars and all this bullkitten. The dude was nice enough to post a comment on something that has already been explained a few times; Physical technical limitations in the game and coding. Now you may think money can buy and fix everything but it ain’t quite that easy. Bush may have thrown around $ like no one’s business bankrupting the country and see where that got us.
You play a guardian any way, what do you care about the aoe cap, staff spam tags most players and retal doesnt care about an aoe cap.

Lol I don’t use staff buddy. And because our 5 man comes across 20+ 80% of the fights…. That’s why goon. Plus, if I was getting paid like Devon is I’d write whatever excuses as well… How are you that much of a lemming? Their big “updates” add supply mastery…. Are you kidding me Lol and you think that’s headed in the right direction?

Jscull.2514:

Their big “updates” add supply mastery…. Are you kidding me??

I’m looking for a quote that says “big” or even “big wvw” update somewhere… but I can’t seem to find it.

Its also quite obvious that this game’s patching cycle of 2 weeks, has completely ruined your perception and expectations. Most games patch once per half a year and will thusly have updates that are “big” for everything across the board. Such a thing is impossible in 2 week cycles.

Vena.8436:

Moreover, all melee is positional, such a statement is pointless. What I was speaking of was positions needed to be checked for cleave which means checking not only yours and your targets position, but all position with the 200 or so arc of your attack.

DAOC AOE damage spells not only had to check if you’re in range, they adjusted damage proportionally to your distance from caster. Imagine that!

Nikola.3841:

DAOC AOE damage spells not only had to check if you’re in range, they adjusted damage proportionally to your distance from caster. Imagine that!

Right, and? You know what else does that? A bunch of skills in GW2!

Vena.8436:

Nikola.3841:

DAOC AOE damage spells not only had to check if you’re in range, they adjusted damage proportionally to your distance from caster. Imagine that!

Right, and? You know what else does that? A bunch of skills in GW2!

Also, i played it on exactly 156 times slower line and lagged less…do GW2 really have to transfer 200 times more data?

Nikola.3841:

Also, i played it on exactly 156 times slower line and lagged less…do GW2 really have to transfer 200 times more data?

Well thats an ISP/bandwidth issue, though the answer to that is probably yes because that no longer cares about just cpa of the engine but also all other details (graphical, other player positions/appearances, and otherwise) that need to be sent.

Vena, my point is in a years time thy haven’t done kittenttt…. And the meta is beyond boring for anyone with more than just a pulse.

Edit : entire reason for this thread is that removing the aoe cap would force the issue of less zerging… Force the issue of lemmings graduating Zerg school and learning to use the characters to a fuller ability…. Right now this is Zerg mode for 99% of the games population. I question if I’m becoming a worse (skill wise) gamer because 99% of our competition are brand new pvpers…brand new to hardcore pvp..

GW2 features a trait system that has to be checked per character every damage tick which is partially why CPU expense to damage dealt is high. The reason the AoE caps are higher on siege is because 1) siege doesn’t account for offensive stats or traits, 2) siege is locally limited (5 in a 1,000 range area or so).

I want you to write out, in pseudo code, jscull a single damage tick. Compare it to, in pseudo code to DaOC’s damage calculations.

This is not the answer:
damage = attack *rnd / mitigation factor

The answer will use up more than 5,000 words. You have to consider every trait, every condition, everything that affects damage (weakness, traits), offensive traits that may increase damage or apply additional effects, boons on the target such as protection, defensive traits that can do a wide variety of things. Rune sets with on-hit and when-hit effects. Also consider that every time damage is dealt the server has to update all clients in an area with the new health level. It is by no means simple.

AC’s don’t have to consider over half that list. And are location limited, which is why the cap is higher.

But you can continue to demonstrate your lack of understanding about anything to do with programming and computer systems, that will do just fine.

Oh and WAR had no aoe cap, and servers lagged to hell and back, where brightwizards killed everything in large fights and everyone else was just fodder. Even 30 on 30 would lag pretty badly in a chokepoint getting blasted by aoe.

Jscull.2514:

Vena, my point is in a years time thy haven’t done kittenttt…. And the meta is beyond boring for anyone with more than just a pulse.

As far as I’m concerned, WvW didn’t exactly have a dev until about three or four month ago.

As for the meta… that’s a subjective question. I think the meta has seen several rather large shifts due to certain additions of certain lines (arrow carts and catapults, specifically). Now, I would love to see actual mechanics additions to replace the orbs to really shift the meta in how its overall played, but such additions take time…

… or you get the watered down garbage that heralded the end of WAR because everything was rushed out the door before the drool could be wiped from its face. A game which had no AoE cap and was a piece of kitten because of BW and other terrible game design.

Vena.8436:

Nikola.3841:

Also, i played it on exactly 156 times slower line and lagged less…do GW2 really have to transfer 200 times more data?

Well thats an ISP/bandwidth issue, though the answer to that is probably yes because that no longer cares about just cpa of the engine but also all other details (graphical, other player positions/appearances, and otherwise) that need to be sent.

What appearances? All enemy players look the same because when I’m in WVW i put gfx to minimum, and still die unable to use skill because of skill lag in bigger fights (not that it would help me, anyway). So game actually looks worse than DAOC, too

Btw, do you even have idea how big is 200 times difference in something?

Draygo.9473:

GW2 features a trait system that has to be checked per character every damage tick which is partially why CPU expense to damage dealt is high. The reason the AoE caps are higher on siege is because 1) siege doesn’t account for offensive stats or traits, 2) siege is locally limited (5 in a 1,000 range area or so).

I want you to write out, in pseudo code, jscull a single damage tick. Compare it to, in pseudo code to DaOC’s damage calculations.

This is not the answer:
damage = attack *rnd / mitigation factor

The answer will use up more than 5,000 words. You have to consider every trait, every condition, everything that affects damage (weakness, traits), offensive traits that may increase damage or apply additional effects, boons on the target such as protection, defensive traits that can do a wide variety of things. Rune sets with on-hit and when-hit effects. Also consider that every time damage is dealt the server has to update all clients in an area with the new health level. It is by no means simple.

AC’s don’t have to consider over half that list. And are location limited, which is why the cap is higher.

But you can continue to demonstrate your lack of understanding about anything to do with programming and computer systems, that will do just fine.

Oh and WAR had no aoe cap, and servers lagged to hell and back, where brightwizards killed everything in large fights and everyone else was just fodder. Even 30 on 30 would lag pretty badly in a chokepoint getting blasted by aoe.

Luckily, DAOC didn’t have to adjust players health after they been hit :rollseyes

WAR can’t be compared because of single reason…collision detection…without that, performance would be fine

Nikola.3841:

What appearances? All enemy players look the same because when I’m in WVW i put gfx to minimum, and still die unable to use skill because of skill lag in bigger fights (not that it would help me, anyway). So game actually looks worse than DAOC, too

Btw, do you even have idea how big is 200 times difference in something?

That data is still sent to your computer, the only difference is that those settings tell your computer not to render it off of the hard drive and to save your own, personal, cpu/gpu capabilities in rendering everything else.

Yes, I know how big two orders of magnitude are… and you could probably take a moment to consider that data traffic from individual products nowadays is several orders of magnitude larger than what it was even just a decade ago.

Don’t advertise the game as the real deal when the company won’t back up anything but upgrading it so more 8year olds can play this. Adding siege does literally ZERO in fact negative in progressing towards a more skillful game. They keep catering to mmo babies and casuals who want to come home from work and feel like they are living lord of the rings. Sorry, If I’m gonna spend 2-3 hours a night I’m gonna show up and compete to run the best small man team out there…. Guys that don’t rely on anything other than the capability of the 4 others around us.

Anet keeps giving everyone outs from being forced to grow up in a pvp platform… It should be brutal and not easy. Instead it’s just boring and the same redundant crap. So much to the point where zergers complain about the redundancy.

Vena.8436:

That data is still sent to your computer, the only difference is that those settings tell your computer not to render it off of the hard drive and to save your own, personal, cpu/gpu capabilities in rendering everything else.

Yes, I know how big two orders of magnitude are… and you could probably take a moment to consider that data traffic from individual products nowadays is several orders of magnitude larger than what it was even just a decade ago.

And how much more data is sent? I mean, it still has to send 6 pieces of armor per pesron, and color of each piece, same as in DAOC…it doesn’t have to send each pixel so that increased resolution would mean difference…same with color of armor…try to explain WHAT is that additional 199 times more data needed to be sent, because I really can’t figure it out

Nikola.3841:

And how much more data is sent? I mean, it still has to send 6 pieces of armor per pesron, and color of each piece, same as in DAOC…it doesn’t have to send each pixel so that increased resolution would mean difference…same with color of armor…try to explain WHAT is that additional 199 times more data needed to be sent, because I really can’t figure it out

Here’s a basic one, make all files 1600×1200 for normalcy:

Make a .jpg file and use one color and save that file.
Make a .jpg file and use 256 colors all at the same time and save it.

Make a .jpg file and have a pixel density of 2^4.
Make a .jpg file and have a pixel density of 2^8.

Compare file sizes. I hope you don’t think the linear mesh of DAoC that is wrapped around a character to form the skin has the same file size as that of a GW2 mesh.

Vena.8436:

Nikola.3841:

And how much more data is sent? I mean, it still has to send 6 pieces of armor per pesron, and color of each piece, same as in DAOC…it doesn’t have to send each pixel so that increased resolution would mean difference…same with color of armor…try to explain WHAT is that additional 199 times more data needed to be sent, because I really can’t figure it out

Here’s a basic one, make all files 1600×1200 for normalcy:

Make a .jpg file and use one color and save that file.
Make a .jpg file and use 256 colors all at the same time and save it.

Make a .jpg file and have a pixel density of 2^4.
Make a .jpg file and have a pixel density of 2^8.

Compare file sizes. I hope you don’t think the linear mesh of DAoC that is wrapped around a character to form the skin has the same file size as that of a GW2 mesh.

You mean GW2 sends us video frame by frame as jpegs? That sounds extremely inefficient?

Nikola.3841:

You mean GW2 sends us video frame by frame as jpegs? That sounds extremely inefficient?

No…

That was more a point to show you how data size have changed over the years, hence why I said a simple example.

Vena.8436:

Nikola.3841:

You mean GW2 sends us video frame by frame as jpegs? That sounds extremely inefficient?

No…

That was more a point to show you how data size have changed over the years, hence why I said a simple example.

Let me tell you how I would do it.
My necro uses Carrion Leggionaire Staff of Corruption…lets assume there is less than 65536 different weapons in GW2…I would give that staff a 2-byte code, and send only those 2 bytes over network…I would then render it completely on client side…same in GW2 as in DAOC…same for each of 6 different armor parts, I really doubt theres more than 65536 parts of any of 6 armor positions. Now, why would GW2 need 400 bytes instead 2?

Nikola.3841:

Let me tell you how I would do it.
My necro uses Carrion Leggionaire Staff of Corruption…lets assume there is less than 65536 different weapons in GW2…I would give that staff a 2-byte code, and send only those 2 bytes over network…I would then render it completely on client side…same in GW2 as in DAOC…same for each of 6 different armor parts, I really doubt theres more than 65536 parts of any of 6 armor positions. Now, why would GW2 need 400 bytes instead 2?

Each bit of data sent has to incorporate and cover all: skin, stats, and sigils for weapons, and skin, several dye channels, stats, and runes/orbs for armor, and stats/jewels for jewerly. There are ~4 weapon slots (none is also a data value), 6 armor slots, and 6 accessories. Each string of data has to cover, therefore, 16 locations with an average of three to four possible value combinations per slot, ie 48 to 64 units, merely for appearance. Now, each character also has a specific coordinate string, data values that are updated on a 1/4 second tick for conditions and boons and any other buffs like food/oil, this alone is probably more units than appearance, and damage and healing.

This is merely all that you see for a single character.

Its questionable whether or not the data of accessories and upgrade slots is ever sent beyond the server where calculations occur, so appearance units may be less than stated, being limited to 4+6 with only skins/dye variations or roughly 20 units. But I hold to the point that the majority of the data has to do with conditions/boons (and all timestamps there in) and many other non-appearance related effects all of which are sent to you because you need to know about them.

Sometimes I wonder if the aoe limit is really just another excuse for helping promote skill-less play similar to the downed state. It almost seems unreal that they can’t match the tech of a game that’s over a decade old.

Vena.8436:

Each bit of data sent has to incorporate and cover all: skin, stats, and sigils for weapons, and skin, several dye channels, stats, and runes/orbs for armor, and stats/jewels for jewerly. There are ~4 weapon slots (none is also a data value), 6 armor slots, and 6 accessories. Each string of data has to cover, therefore, 16 locations with an average of three to four possible value combinations per slot, ie 48 to 64 units, merely for appearance. Now, each character also has a specific coordinate string, data values that are updated on a 1/4 second tick for conditions and boons and any other buffs like food/oil, this alone is probably more units than appearance, and damage and healing.

This is merely all that you see for a single character.

Its questionable whether or not the data of accessories and upgrade slots is ever sent beyond the server where calculations occur, so appearance units may be less than stated, being limited to 4+6 with only skins/dye variations or roughly 20 units. But I hold to the point that the majority of the data has to do with conditions/boons (and all timestamps there in) and many other non-appearance related effects all of which are sent to you because you need to know about them.

Everything you mentioned is similar in DAOC, except amount of conditions, because yes, DAOC had them too, just not as many. You could get several types of DOTs on you, and there was melee bleed, too. Also you had stats (6 basic stats and 6 types of resists) but those weren’t the set in stone, either…you could debuff someone on all those stats and resists.
Debuffs were timed, so game had to take timers on all of those, dots/bleeds had ticks too, and you could also purge them…and purge as ability was timed too

Holdyir.2918:

Sometimes I wonder if the aoe limit is really just another excuse for helping promote skill-less play similar to the downed state. It almost seems unreal that they can’t match the tech of a game that’s over a decade old.

Dude at least 90% of their population wants skill-less play. So they cater.

lordkrall.7241:

Nikola.3841:

Weak? Please explain before you get your MMO license revoked

Weak as in not requiring as much power from the servers and such due to graphics and other limitations of that age.

graphics has absolutely zero to do with server calculations.

Vena.8436:

A rather poor comparison considering how much simpler the calculations in DAoC were compared to GW2. Any single skill in this game, usually, has more things to compute than several skills all going off concurrently in DAoC, and the stat breakdown in one game vs. the other is vastly different. Just look at one simple auto-attack in this game: condition damage, duration, critical damage, critical change, power vs. toughness, cleave for position, boon alterations to anything above, condition alterations to anything above, fields and finishers (and % therein). DAoC? Comparatively could be simplified to a D&D dice roll.

Firstly, both games were very similar in terms of the server.

Second, all of those stats are all pre-computed, meaning it all boils down to simple health -= dmg * dmgFactor type calculations, which have minimal CPU cost.

Vena.8436:

Nikola.3841:

And how much more data is sent? I mean, it still has to send 6 pieces of armor per pesron, and color of each piece, same as in DAOC…it doesn’t have to send each pixel so that increased resolution would mean difference…same with color of armor…try to explain WHAT is that additional 199 times more data needed to be sent, because I really can’t figure it out

Here’s a basic one, make all files 1600×1200 for normalcy:

Make a .jpg file and use one color and save that file.
Make a .jpg file and use 256 colors all at the same time and save it.

Make a .jpg file and have a pixel density of 2^4.
Make a .jpg file and have a pixel density of 2^8.

Compare file sizes. I hope you don’t think the linear mesh of DAoC that is wrapped around a character to form the skin has the same file size as that of a GW2 mesh.

The server sends only itemIds to clients, eg: player id 3455 wears items 1234, 2345, 3456 etc. All the models, textures etc are loaded from disk on the client. Graphical complexity has zero impact on server performance. The only thing that comes close is the complexity of the collision scene (ie: world geometry) and whether player collision is done as a single cylinder/box or multiple (GW2 does only single).

DevonCarver.5370:

Master of Timespace.2548:

Simple question. Why is there an aoe cap? And no, please do not come up with that “technical limitation” lie. There has been thousands games before this with massive pvp and no aoe cap, why would your engine be somehow so infernior to that of these older games?

What you seem to be missing is that technical limitations are not about the fact that a solution somewhere may have existed for some other thing. Our game is using an engine that has these technical limitations. We could, for instance, display everything as text, which would solve the problem quite nicely, however we’ve found that our graphics offer something a text-based MMO couldn’t quite deliver. The point is, it is very much a limitation of our engine. The load on the server CPU would be quite simply unsustainable if we were to increase the AoE cap as the more players hit by skills the more calculations it has to do and it actually starts increasing exponentially, rather than sequentially. We continue to seek out ways to squeeze more performance out of our game and our servers, but it is highly unlikely we would ever make a change to the AoE limits on player skills.

With respect, capping the number of AOE targets is not a technical limitation. I’m quite sure your server team are not the ones telling you this. If you were talking unlimited target AOE then sure, you have a point, but capping at 5 or capping at 8-12 (what most here are advocating) is not a technical limitation.

The reason is that the computationally complex part of the calculation (ordering entities by distance to avatar) has already been done in order to calculate the 5 targets, so the only impact of bumping 5 targets to e.g. 8 is a network cost (as dmg packets need to be sent to more players), not a CPU cost. The computational cost of calculating dmg for a few extra players per AOE cast is miniscule.

The comparison to DAOC is a fair one as WVW is indeed a very similar to DAOC’s RVR in terms of server requirements. Granted you have true projectiles in GW2, and you have additional projectile/player-volume collision (blasts/leaps etc), but then server hardware is a few orders of magnitude more powerful.

Ultimately it all comes down to server bandwidth. You guys are making good money, time to bump up your outgoing cap.

mjharrison.3209:

The server sends only itemIds to clients, eg: player id 3455 wears items 1234, 2345, 3456 etc. All the models, textures etc are loaded from disk on the client. Graphical complexity has zero impact on server performance. The only thing that comes close is the complexity of the collision scene (ie: world geometry) and whether player collision is done as a single cylinder/box or multiple (GW2 does only single).

If only you’d bothered to read anything else you’d know that I wasn’t talking about the servers at all but alas… you didn’t bother.

Would it kill you to multi-quote in a post rather than spam the thread as well?

mjharrison.3209:

The reason is that the computationally complex part of the calculation (ordering entities by distance to avatar) has already been done in order to calculate the 5 targets, so the only impact of bumping 5 targets to e.g. 8 is a network cost (as dmg packets need to be sent to more players), not a CPU cost. The computational cost of calculating dmg for a few extra players per AOE cast is miniscule.

Except that is incorrect. Each of those new 3 targets have to have everything calculated for them as well (ie. condition/boon/etc modifiers) but you seem to be ignoring any and all such details to talk about distance based calculations.

they can match the technology but they don’t want to. they enjoy the zerg ball system they have and i guess they think its the cool thing to do, what they dont know is that in a year, half of those zerg ballers will be bored and will want something with more skill or pretty lights.

Jscull.2514:

Say what you want about “Zergs owning due to retaliation” guess what??? My group is smart enough not to continue attacking when that is up…. We’d smoke 30- 40 mans with 5 if we didn’t have Aoe cap. We already wipe 20.. And there are other 5 mans that do the same. The Aoe cap helps zergers stay alive to people like us…. That’s THE fact.

you think?
you wont attack when they have retaliation gess what if the aoe cap where removed they would have perma retaliation with perma 25 stacks of might and able to buff it up each time your groupe could remove it.