Guild Wars 2

So yeah, a few things for those who are still having this issue (ie. everyone I know who does WvWvW):

1. Your super-amazing-freaky-elite computer does not matter. I have one of those too (i7 / ASUS P8Z68-V PRO / 16G RAM / SSD / dual GTX560Ti / Comcast high speed broadband) and it doesn’t change a thing. I’ve had this machine the whole time and I obviously had a problem or I wouldn’t have written the original post. Also note that the Dev kittenplied pretty much directly said this wasn’t the issue. He hinted that maybe it would help but that’s just kittens. Stop thinking client-side specs are the problem or the solution. It’s neither.

2. Now that people are fully aware of this bug (sorry, “feature”), I get killed by it often. I don’t blame people for using it as it’s apparently a valid tactic but it still sucks. Whether or not they intend to take advantage of culling, I die to it nightly or thereabouts.

3. I still can’t hit enemies at maximum Ballista range. Even if I can see them, I can’t click on them to target so the Ballista won’t fire.

4. Trebuchets and Catapults are still mainly “shoot & pray” at great distances. The occasions where they are good for anything beyond shooting a wall are few and far between because you can’t even hit the enemy by the time you can see them as they are too close.

I still play WvWvW and it’s still pretty fun but darn does this needs a fix badly. The fact that it’s frequency has increased makes it an even more pressing matter. Hopefully ANet is still thinking it through and considering ways to fix this. Please do not just let it go and slip to the wayside, ANet. It’s a real problem and frustrating enough to make many people quit WvWvW….which I do not want to happen.

Yea – getting killed by no one there really sucks all the fun out of life. I pretty much stop at that point.

Hi , this issue has been reported since September 19, 2012 is time to do somthing about few weeks passed since , players abusing this too often every single zerg fight now happens , this way wvwvw is just pointless and just favors the abusers

also whats the point of outmanned buff it gives absolut nothing the tolltip says 33% + karma money and xp while does not give nothing more than without also sometimes the buff just vanishes some players have it others don’t otmanned buff should be somthing more like the orb incresse the power of the fewer players to have a chance to fight since we are not in wvwvw to kill scripted mobs being outnumbered you have almost no chance to kill anything to gain from those what outmanned buff gives now

I agree that this needs to be addressed, or at the very least a status update from arenanet, since they already said how popular WvW is, one would think they would keep that playerbase informed.

On a side note it sure is fun to read people’s “theories” about the cause and solution. It’s like comparing a professional to the kind of answers you’d get at geek squad.

PoiSonPeZ.4286:

The problem with showing everyone in LOS is that it is impossible for the server to handle that amount of outbound traffic.

Lineage 2 says hi.

And that’s a game running on a decade old unreal engine.

mcl.9240:

@funforums (sorry, the quote function keeps mysteriously disappearing): that’s not true these days. almost any modern NIC uses TCP offload, and Windows has it enabled by default. Even if it weren’t, the amount of packet data being received per second by a single client wouldn’t be enough to create a noticeable increase in CPU load. Not only are there several research papers published on this in general as well as on the specific offload algorithms used and why they increase performance in this case, I deal with EXTREMELY high volume network performance testing and tuning on a daily basis as part of my job. Things that can saturate a GigE or 10GigE connection, as well as the switch backplane the load generators are connected to.

As for the server: It’s actually a cluster, and each machine in the cluster would also be using TCP offload (all major *nixes have it enabled these days as well). Which is probably one culprit here (or at least a tweak they’d want to look into), since using TCP offload when you’re dealing with a very high number of simultaneous connections and a high traffic volume is actually inefficient for a number of reasons.

Actually I didn’t know of TCP offload, sincerely speaking. And now that I think about it, without such a technology MMOs wouldn’t be possible, lol.
Anyway can you link me some type of inefficiencies of this TOE? Maybe some are related to our situation, and anyway I’m actually pretty much curious about this right now.

I read most of this and there’s one thing I haven’t seen mentioned. when I get killed by an invisible zerg, all the enemy players load in instantly. where does the throttling go? does anyone else experience this? just not too sure why it would suddenly stop, when you need it least (dead btw, not downed).

funforums.4850:

Actually I didn’t know of TCP offload, sincerely speaking. And now that I think about it, without such a technology MMOs wouldn’t be possible, lol.
Anyway can you link me some type of inefficiencies of this TOE? Maybe some are related to our situation, and anyway I’m actually pretty much curious about this right now.

There’s a paper published in the ACM about a decade ago by a guy from HP; he gave a talk on it at USENIX one year, and his slides are fairly easy to follow: http://static.usenix.org/events/hotos03/tech/talks/mogul_talk.pdf

If you google for the title of the talk, you’ll also find the original ACM paper. He points up both the good and bad with TCP offload. However, it’s a good idea to read his work with an eye to the fact that what you’re reading is a decade old, and advances have been made since then.

It’s an interesting area of study, but it’s a delicate balancing act that’s highly dependent upon the particular use cases for it — much like every other high-performance tuning situation. Sadly, the days of surly old neckbeards who understood the machines from the bare metal, up through the kernel, and into userspace in excruciating detail being the ones actually responsible for making server configuration choices are long gone…those people either retired, became academics, entrepreneurs, management, or much higher-level architects.

That, and the general complexity of most OS kernels and the traffic flows being handled these days have mostly eliminated the gurus of old. Everyone specializes now, and it’s rare that the person hired to do “highly-scalable datacenter clustering architecture” will give any thought at all to ANY particular settings on individual servers in the farm, and the front line ops guys tasked with staging and deployment either don’t have the experience and knowledge, or have it and don’t have the leverage to do anything with it when it comes to things like telling the senior datacenter architect that disabling TCP offload in the datacenter may significantly improve overall throughput for that particular use case. Because it’s almost impossible to model in a lab setting, so you can’t argue from the standpoint of a demonstration, and getting them to make the changes on a live cluster is often like pulling teeth in most organizations.

…which is one reason why I tend to stay with small- to mid-sized companies. When they get too big to listen to reason, the frustration level exceeds my ability to care about my paycheck, which is typically substantial.

Bump!

This issue is one that must be resolved, preload standard models while we load into the borderlands if thats what it takes… 50 guys high on swiftness buffs running into you in wvw is a complete joke right now… you might see 1/5 guys loaded up before 30/40 are trampling your corpse.

When combat is less mobile it’s fine.. while sieging etc, mobile groups running around together cause unplayable problems for opponents.

Bump.

HabibLoew.2590:

In WvW one of the things that we see exacerbating the issue is this: From the moment a character is first reported to your client to the first moment that your client is able to render it a non-zero amount of time passes. During this time your client is doing things like loading textures from disk, which can be (at least in computer terms) fairly slow what with all that accessing of spinning, physical storage media. So that means that a character who is moving towards you can potentially appear first at a much closer point even than the one at which they were reported because, of course, they were still moving during that load time.

Why not at least show something – even a person-like blob – that doesn’t need to load various armors and whatnot from disk? Just keep a generic “attacker” in memory all the time. Sure, this doesn’t solve the problem, but it’d be a lot better to know where someone -was- even if you didn’t know what they were doing/holding/wearing.

Very pro keybinds indeed!

Tab-Target….it works pretty well, for now….

40k views. Everything else getting updated much love and attention going to SpVp. No update from Anet on this invisible pvp game. Not going to be fixed?

not askin for miracles here guys just a hey this is our progress you know some communication….

It is hard to fix Arson. They did limit themself to 32 bit and well it did kitten them up so they now come up with something very cerativ to fix it or macke a new client based on 64 bit

The most common and detrimental scenario is when one Zerg jumps in on another Zerg. It becomes an invisible battle where typically the surprise attack is successful since they have a better idea of the destination and situation, where to AoE, etc.

Culling still needs a role in this game in order to alleviate performance issues. We want more people playing the game which means being able to support a variety of client computers…

The GW2 team needs to come up a clever solution, such that gives added flexibility in the graphics options menu. Ideally, in a way that does not give unfair advantages.

Culling level: Off, Minimum, Medium, Maximum. This defines the level (of culling), how many character models to load per interval and an adjustment to the maximum character models at any given time and range. Off equates to no culling at all and can be extremely system intensive. Maximum culling is for low end machines.

Type of culling: Invisible, Name Tags Only, Pacman Models, Low Detail, Medium Detail. This allows the user to customize the culling so that the battles can still be meaningful in extreme situations.

It has nothing to do with whether the client is 32-bit or 64-bit. It has nothing to do with the client. It was a change made on the servers. Read the dev post.

64bit would solve the disk access issue, as it could store a kitten load in physical memory, which everyone has plenty of. However, if you have a SSD this is a moot point. I find it hard to believe that it’s a networking issue with today’s high speed lines, look at your network throughput during the peak times, its not that.

I think this all comes down to we are in a PC world and not all PCs are the same, so the game developer has to weigh performance ratios. People who have real gaming machines could handle the higher volume load, but average joe can not.

Look at WoW, it’s designed to be medicore graphics to be ran on anything…. just the nature of MMOs unfortunately. DAoC had the same problem until PC hardware was commodities and everyone had powerful enough rigs.

But then there is also the server performance and here the issue is battle mechanics, the server has to process everything and with huge battles it simply is overwhelmed. Sure they can throw more hardware at it, but doubtful with this model (free to play).

zerph.1482:

64bit would solve the disk access issue, as it could store a kitten load in physical memory, which everyone has plenty of. However, if you have a SSD this is a moot point. I find it hard to believe that it’s a networking issue with today’s high speed lines, look at your network throughput during the peak times, its not that.

I think this all comes down to we are in a PC world and not all PCs are the same, so the game developer has to weigh performance ratios. People who have real gaming machines could handle the higher volume load, but average joe can not.

Look at WoW, it’s designed to be medicore graphics to be ran on anything…. just the nature of MMOs unfortunately. DAoC had the same problem until PC hardware was commodities and everyone had powerful enough rigs.

But then there is also the server performance and here the issue is battle mechanics, the server has to process everything and with huge battles it simply is overwhelmed. Sure they can throw more hardware at it, but doubtful with this model (free to play).

There is no disk access issue. People with SSD’s have exactly the same problem as everyone else.

This was a change made to the servers. It has absolutely nothing to do with the client.

I have a very high end system running raided SSD’s and I get the same issue. It was fine before some changes they made have totally ruined WvW.

Last night I was in a battle defending stonemist, where I couldnt see ANY enemy players for OVER 45 minutes which is a kittening joke. I managed to tag random people by throwing down AOE once or twice. Then I gave up and spent the rest of the hour just occasionally reviving allies as those were all I could see and being hit by kitten I couldnt see. First time playing guild wars I thought – hmm this game is kitten I need to find something else to play.

Im surprised they are not frankly embarrassed by this.
THIS HAS TO BE FIXED.

@Cub Discus Gig: true story. That’s how it will end.

Giving my support for this thread, it needs to be sticked at the top and on the Developers monitors until its fixed.

Thanks. You gain much goodwill just by taking the time to acknowledge the issue.

Could we see the option like in the other games, the maximum distance that servers starts to report that there’s a player? I know, there’re many people that play WvW on high or ultra settings comfortably, and I’m sure they’ll accept to lose some of the visual effects in order to increase viewing distance. I mean, we need a more precise instrument to choose, do we want to play on high spec and see fewer enemies, or on low-medium and see further.

Dont worry i got hacked last night, had to pull my network card when i saw what was coming, different game. Hope you understand i play for fun, personally i think this game would make me accept f2p despite the fact i hate it

Tonight i plan on playing WvW, i’ll try not to offend my team

Would it be possible to say….load the model and then replace the textures with a uniform gray( to the outside observer)? Aion used(uses) a system like this to deal with large scale fights in addition to model “culling”.

The limits of server technology and what you do with it ?

ice cube tells me to keep “pushing it”

Hey thanks alot for the update. It really goes along way to just say hey we havn’t forgotten about you. Glad your still working on it my faith is renewed.

Thank you again, Habib.

On the issue of the client-side asset loading, those of us with quite high-end systems (including both the OS and the game on separate high-performance SSDs) with more than enough GPU and RAM to handle anything you can throw at it, and a gigabit home network all the way to the router and modem (yes, there are cable modems with gigabit Ethernet ports these days) would argue that the delta between a system like that and a mid-to-low-end system just isn’t that great in terms of the overall issue.

Yes, the mid-to-low-end system may take half a second longer to render the player models once the cluster finally sends the information to the client. But the end result is almost identical (and I know, having done a literal side-by-side comparison between my high-end gaming rig and my spouse’s mid-range system, in the same map at the same time, in the same location, watching the same problem occur).

I’m glad you’ve got a fix to largely alleviate that, but let’s be honest, that was not only low-hanging fruit, but speeding up asset loading on the client side is only going to help those at the absolute bottom of the range of acceptable hardware. I.e., your minimum hardware specs. Nobody with even remotely decent machines will see a bit of difference with that change.

I don’t mean this as a criticism of your post, or your technical ability. I am deeply grateful you followed up on this issue, and were once again as forthcoming as you were.

But I fear that you’re going to leave people with the false impression that upgrading their hardware will make one bit of difference with this problem, or that responses along the lines of, “you need more memory/a better GPU/a faster hard drive or an SSD” are in any way going to help.

You yourself acknowledged that even the highest end systems suffer from this, and my only quibble is that you left the impression that the delta between the absolute top-of-the-line, state-of-the-art, complete overkill hand-built gaming rig and a 3-year-old Dell is quite large in terms of this issue, when in fact it’s rather small.

I really appreciate that ANet is looking into the problem. There are several other MMOs that have this same issue (TERA, FFXI, for example) and the developers there pretty much rely on the players upgrading the computers they run their clients on, and little to nothing is done beyond that. At least you guys are actively working on this on your end.

I forgot to add, it’s really brilliant that you guys designed the WvW queue to instantly reset if the server kicks you or the client crashes. Nothing like spending 2 hours in a queue only to be pushed to the back because the server disconnects you from too much stress.

How hard would it be to keep your spot in WvW for a couple of minutes to prevent this? Does no one think of these simple things?

At the moment its 500 slots per WvW Map / 2000 per entire Matchup. So thats 166 slots per faction per map.
The biggest gains will come from the coding, i do wonder though when is this game going to be running on GPU ? Will this eventually come with the DX11 update ?

166 slots per faction? Are you kidding me? No wonder why queue times are egregious and most of the maps are empty. 500 per WvW map is pretty small potatoes.

Thank you very much for checking back in on this thread HabibLoew and giving us more feedback.. I was actually stunned to see it, games i’ve played in the past would just let a thread like this die.

We players really hope you can do something to resolve this, ‘fighting the good fight’ only goes so far when you get ran over by 40 people who don’t even appear on your screen until you are dead.

Hope you guys and gals can nail the issue once and for all.

Thanks for letting us know that this isn’t just client based. I was reading the min system specs this morning and my machine smokes those but I was still thinking it was me.

you guys here have to realize that the issue of invisible enemies is not an issue of your computer. even the NASA computers would have invisible enemies.

it is an issue with Arenanet and the way they have developed this game. at the beginning this game didnt even have this “feature”. then people complained about performance issues, so Arenanet put in this “barrier-feature” for everyone – in order to have less complaints from users and better server stability for themselves.

give them time to fix it.

Riyu.2103:

you guys here have to realize that the issue of invisible enemies is not an issue of your computer. even the NASA computers would have invisible enemies.

it is an issue with Arenanet and the way they have developed this game. at the beginning this game didnt even have this “feature”. then people complained about performance issues, so Arenanet put in this “barrier-feature” for everyone – in order to have less complaints from users and better server stability for themselves.

give them time to fix it.

I wish this was more realised, every night I see people bewildered that there i7 rig is suffering from invisible player syndrome… it is a restraint put in place by the devs.. nothing to do with your pc specs!

Steveo.1574:

At the moment its 500 slots per WvW Map / 2000 per entire Matchup. So thats 166 slots per faction per map.
The biggest gains will come from the coding, i do wonder though when is this game going to be running on GPU ? Will this eventually come with the DX11 update ?

those were the projected numbers in beta.

Every attempt to get a count on how many are in has come up with numbers more like 80-100 per faction per map.

The only time i notice the problem is when a Mesmer uses his portal skill. Just Limit this Portal for Partyonly or 5 People only, so there won’t be an invis zerg fest.

Fiora Maelstrom.4350:

The only time i notice the problem is when a Mesmer uses his portal skill. Just Limit this Portal for Partyonly or 5 People only, so there won’t be an invis zerg fest.

I assure you, it happens way way more often then that.

At sometimes comical moments. Last night, I was leading a fight in the Crystal Desert Borderlands as the TC army. Our zerg was getting ready for a siege in our typical fashion, ransacking some supply camps of the enemy to fuel up for a large battle. Then suddenly, we noticed that Dragonbrand was in the way of one of the supply camps owned by Crystal Desert. Well, we thought it was only a small force.

Then the rest of them appeared.

Oh, and the Crystal Desert zerg coming to meet the Dragonbrand zerg in defense also showed up. We became a Tarnished Toast sammich by two half-invisible armies. It was kind of funny, because since I play a thief, I was one of the last alive… rending + stealth = where is he?! So I saw this carnage and points where pockets of TC pushed on or retreated, thinking there was a safe spot, only to die from ghost armies.

Worst culling to date last night in the top bracket atchup. Even my own teammates were culled to me at times.

I have noticed that this issue seems a lot more pronounced lately. Not even just on the part of enemy players but for allies as well. I understand the need for such rendering but if the game wants to stress WvW as much as it wants to stress the eSport potential of sPvP (and whole knows, maybe, ANet doesn’t want that)…well, they’re going to need to make some tweaks to how some of this is handled.

While I know this wont help with the server side issue but couldnt the client side problem be somewhat mitigated by causeing the client to load a cashed placeholder model/texture as soon as it recieves the information from the server and load the proper one as it has a chance? Even if we still run into situations where there are too many players around and we run into hardcaps on how much information the server can send us eliminating that nonzero delay between information recieved and full rendering would make the issue somewhat more barable. I’d happily have a generic racial model show up in generic armor in its teams color pop up and have that morph into the properly customized character model a few moments later as it would at least alow properly targeted attacks and tactical decisions.

Right now the meta game is evolving to take advantage of this system. We have been faceing one guild this week that has only 1 trick in their bag. They cluster up out of rendering range of our forces, send a mesmer at us to kamakazi drop a portal and then all come in and unleash AOE hell. The only way we’ve found to counter this is to keep a close watch for the entry portal to pop up as that will tend to render even if the army about to use it will not and as soon as the Mesmer drops the portal in our midst we AOE the proverbial furry cute hairball out of that area and hope we get them all. They drop in as blind to us as we are to them but have the advantage of having the Mesmer effectively targeting for them by dropping them in the right spot.

I got the feeling that it gets worse and worse, current matchup Desolation vs Kodash vs Seafarer in Kodash Borderlands, either we run through them killing them all without real fights or they do the same to us while we sit on a door only realising that we just got roflstomped from a invisible army.
Hackers, invisible armies, free server transfers kill the fun in WvW.

Sounds like their devs need to open some channels and get some advice from soe and ccp…. no invisible spacemarines in ps1 or ps2 and EVE is doing amazing things with numbers wayyy larger than 166 v 166 v 166

I guess, games you mentioned doesn’t have half-non-target system, siege weapons, lots of mobs and NPC and that quality of tons of visual effects?

+1 for that, wvwvw is unplayable if you see only the nearest 60 players