Guild Wars 2

For those of us who enjoy WvW and would love to have larger populations in the game fighting against each other. I was curious if you all would prefer really low lower textured and semi uglier character avatars over the current system of culling and invisible characters.

Honestly i would rather see all of my enemies no matter how blocky or low poly they might be, over not seeing alot of them and pretty faces i want to smash.

So i would ask the players for input here.

Low poly avatars and no culling.

High poly avatars with culling.

Thanks in advance for any replies.

Culling is produced mainly server-side not on your Client.

So the change you suggest would not make any meaningless difference, besides Anet is already doing exakt this by using Fall-Back-Models.

Midius.6501:

Culling is produced mainly server-side not on your Client.

So the change you suggest would not make any meaningless difference, besides Anet is already doing exakt this by using Fall-Back-Models.

So umm not sure i understand, if Anet is doing exactly this then wouldn’t my premise for my OP be in line with what needs to be done to fix the issue ?

Meaning maybe culling is done client side, your computer tells how many avatars are culled from your view based on its performance ?

Fall-Back-Models would kind of back up my argument.

Low poly avatars are obviously preferred to not seeing anything, but I don’t think it’s the end all solution to the problem.

I’d much rather see my frame-rate drop to 20 before culling even takes effect.

I’ve always liked games that let you set limits on #of high detail characters rendered, allow auto use of LOD meshes, and setting distance for LOD meshes to kick in.

Games have had these options for years. Along with particle slider, I am amazed that options like these are missing from the game.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

I’ve always liked games that let you set limits on #of high detail characters rendered, allow auto use of LOD meshes, and setting distance for LOD meshes to kick in.

Games have had these options for years. Along with particle slider, I am amazed that options like these are missing from the game.

I do not think i can agree with you more, this was such a short sighted design choice.

I will try to explain, there was a Post but I don’t find it.

There are 2 Effekts that creats Culling:
1. Is the effekt you describing, that your graphics is so low it cant show all the Clients that are reportet to you at the speed they are coming in.
In this case you would at least see name tags, shadows etc. while the character is rendering.
This effekt will hardly make a difference, because most of the players have at least a System that is required for GW2 and not below and you would see name tags etc.

2. Is the Culling that you really expirience:
The Server only sends a fix ammount of players per second to your client, that it has time to render etc. So if a Raid of 30 Ppl hits you and only 5 players send to your client it will take 6 Sekonds untill you can see all enemys. In which quallity and how fast the models are renderd doen’t matter all all.

Here’s the post in question:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/January-WvW-culling-loading-changes/first#post1272774

Culling used to be an episodic problem for me. Since the 1/28 patch it is universal in any moderate sized DE like harathi hinterlands or pent/shelt. In the past I used to see it occasionally in the hinterlands but never at pent/shelt. I rarely see enemies approach anymore; it’s more like combat is inferred by friendlies beating the air. Because of the nature of culling I’m thinking it can’t be just me. Has anyone else noticed this?

In terms of PvE, I’d confirm your observations. Since the recent update, culling issues with event mobs seem to have gotten worse, not better.
Can’t comment on WvW, didn’t do enough before the patch to make a comparison.

I think the main issue with culling is not that your PC is taking too long to render the other players, it is that the server itself is not sending the other players’ data to your PC at all, so your PC’s rendering play very little part.

For example, let say the server is configure to sent to your PC data of 10 nearest players, at every 5 seconds it rechecks which players are 10 nearest.

Let say 5 of those 10 players move away and another 5 new enemy player move closer to you and begun attacking you within the 5 seconds, the problem is the server won’t even tell your PC about those 5 new enemy players till the next recheck cycle kicks it to change what are the closest 10 players.
Another problem is let say if there are 20 players move close to you, the server will still only send data of 10 of those 20 players.

Dradiin.8935:

Low poly avatars and no culling.

High poly avatars with culling.

Culling has nothing to do with polygon count.
The amount of data sent to clients does take a part however and the change with the fall-back models enables a future optimization in that area. That is my understanding of the reason behind the recent update to the renderer.

Dradiin.8935:

Midius.6501:

Culling is produced mainly server-side not on your Client.

So the change you suggest would not make any meaningless difference, besides Anet is already doing exakt this by using Fall-Back-Models.

So umm not sure i understand, if Anet is doing exactly this then wouldn’t my premise for my OP be in line with what needs to be done to fix the issue ?

Meaning maybe culling is done client side, your computer tells how many avatars are culled from your view based on its performance ?

Fall-Back-Models would kind of back up my argument.

he should have said Anet is working on exactly this, as of right now there doing the huge task of rewrighting how moddels render. something like that will take some time

a screenshot with low polygon count might hurt further sales as people will say uh, bad graphics, i don’t want that game.

a screenshot in full detail that only displays a fraction of the players it should display will not have that effect.

Anet seems to think eye candy and sales are more important than playability for the people who already bought the game.