Guild Wars 2

Transfer. There are 22 Servers in North America and 27 in Europe. The game was not designed with the idea that people would frontload 5 servers and ignore the other 20. If you are getting skill lagged all the time in your server, odds are good there are too many people on it. I know I almost never get skill lagged on my server unless its a triple qued Eternal Map in the Lords Room of Stonemist.

I don’t disagree with the sentiment but I think ANet needs to find a solution that encourages players to distribute populations beyond limitations in their engine.

What does the amount of people on a server matter when there is a cap on how many people can be in a WvW zone at a time? If that is the only issue why doesn’t anet lower the cap on the maps till skill lag is resolved? Maybe skill lag isn’t 100% a population issue…Maybe this is another QQ stacked servers thread?

Zikory.6871:

What does the amount of people on a server matter when there is a cap on how many people can be in a WvW zone at a time? If that is the only issue why doesn’t anet lower the cap on the maps till skill lag is resolved? Maybe skill lag isn’t 100% a population issue…Maybe this is another QQ stacked servers thread?

This is spot on. The number of active WvWers on a server is irrelevant when there are caps on each map. The only way to realistically spread out the player base would be to reduce those caps. However, Anet tried this late last year, and the result was no meaningful improvement in skill lag while also adding in some glaring issues with their queue system as queues shot up for many servers and some very angry and frustrated players.

Here is what Mike Ferguson said about it in an interview back in February …

We generally try to avoid changing the [map] limits as it greatly impacts the game, but it is one of the things we can manually adjust to help us evaluate our changes when they go live. After the last patch we tried reducing the limit quite a bit more than what has been typical for the last few months to see if we could ease some of the lag issues players experience during some of the larger fights around Stonemist, but changed it back after a few days because we didn’t see a major improvement and it was just too detrimental to the game.

Later regarding queues …

Queues do indeed behave in a strange manner. Unfortunately, I don’t have any more news about that as it does boil down to resources. It’s a fixable problem, but we need some time from a very specialized type of programmer for that job and they’re all currently busy with other tasks.

Source: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/196tgh/jeuxonlineinfo_made_an_interview_with_mike/

Anet basically painted themselves into a corner on this issue, and the only real option they have at this point is to increase server processing capacity or find a way to reduce processing lag with engine/code improvements. The simple fact remains however that one should expect that the game should operate flawlessly within the currently set map population limits. It’s doesn’t, but Anet can’t lower the limits without causing a large uproar from a good chunk of the WvW playerbase. It’s quite the problem.

24 NA, 27 EU.. 22 isn’t evenly divided by 3. Not to troll or anything..

But yes, Spread out populations but it isn’t going to happen. Even guilds move from T1 to T1 now..

We did not have the same level of skill lag back when ANET did their little lower WvW population map cap experiment. Just because they did not see a noticeable improvement in the 3 way lagfest that is SM at that time (Jan/Feb) does not necessarily mean a reduction in those same caps today would not help make the borderlands a bit more playable in primetime. By all means . . . please do not discourage any further experimentation. Experiment away, I’d love to know what lower map caps feel like in the current meta. Maybe there is nothing that can be done for SM but at least I use to have 3 other maps to avoid skill lag on. Not so these days.

Yeah the whole queue bug issue only makes lowering the WvW map population caps that much bigger of a mess that I don’t blame anyone for trying to avoid but all we are doing now is making both problems potentially much worse for the future with all our crazy super stacking in tier 1. A little foresight from all sides would be greatly appreciated.

Aeros.2046:

Transfer. There are 22 Servers in North America and 27 in Europe. The game was not designed with the idea that people would frontload 5 servers and ignore the other 20. If you are getting skill lagged all the time in your server, odds are good there are too many people on it. I know I almost never get skill lagged on my server unless its a triple qued Eternal Map in the Lords Room of Stonemist.

Nope. Do you know what WvW is about?

‘Server pride’, server attachment, many of us grew too attached to our server, as it was intended by the devs. If I transferred now, assuming it were free, all that would be lost. The whole point of playing would be lost. Your solution works for new players, not however for people who played for months already.

zerospin.8604:

Nope. Do you know what WvW is about?

‘Server pride’, server attachment, many of us grew too attached to our server, as it was intended by the devs. If I transferred now, assuming it were free, all that would be lost. The whole point of playing would be lost. Your solution works for new players, not however for people who played for months already.

I have server pride with Dragonbrand but this latest matchup with Blackgate and SoR is making me rethink it.

I thought the T1 players were exaggerating the skill lag but they were not. The skill lag is nearly continuous and unplayable from my point of view.

I play this game for fun but playing under these conditions is taking the fun right out of the game. So while I have server pride and have been DB since release I’m going to have to consider transferring.

I can play through all the changes (nerfs etc.) but I draw the line at performance. They will not see another penny from me until the performance issues in WvW are addressed.

Crappy deal no matter how you cut and I’m not happy about it at all!

zerospin.8604:

Aeros.2046:

Transfer. There are 22 Servers in North America and 27 in Europe. The game was not designed with the idea that people would frontload 5 servers and ignore the other 20. If you are getting skill lagged all the time in your server, odds are good there are too many people on it. I know I almost never get skill lagged on my server unless its a triple qued Eternal Map in the Lords Room of Stonemist.

Nope. Do you know what WvW is about?

‘Server pride’, server attachment, many of us grew too attached to our server, as it was intended by the devs. If I transferred now, assuming it were free, all that would be lost. The whole point of playing would be lost. Your solution works for new players, not however for people who played for months already.

Maybe I’m in the minority but server pride means absolutely squat to me, case in point, I’ve been on like 6 different servers (some multiple times). I’ll go where I have fun in WvW.

The biggest problem with transferring over is that I didn’t pick my server based on WvW prowess. No, SoR wasn’t always at the top of the line. I picked it because, after playing on another server, I decided I liked the SoR community better.

I don’t want to risk paying real money to transfer to some other server where 3 out of 5 players are entitled elitists.

Aeros.2046:

Transfer. There are 22 Servers in North America and 27 in Europe. The game was not designed with the idea that people would frontload 5 servers and ignore the other 20. If you are getting skill lagged all the time in your server, odds are good there are too many people on it. I know I almost never get skill lagged on my server unless its a triple qued Eternal Map in the Lords Room of Stonemist.

Name ONE MMO that hasn’t had most people piling onto the top 3-5 servers.

This happens in every single MMO. To not plan for it is neglectful. If they wanted to get rid of skill lag, they would decrease the map cap, and increase the amount of maps to play on.

Aeros.2046:

Transfer. There are 22 Servers in North America and 27 in Europe. The game was not designed with the idea that people would frontload 5 servers and ignore the other 20. If you are getting skill lagged all the time in your server, odds are good there are too many people on it. I know I almost never get skill lagged on my server unless its a triple qued Eternal Map in the Lords Room of Stonemist.

You don’t have a clue what you are talking about. Server population is not the critical variable here, although certainly map population has a strong influence. In addition, because of the way that ANet dynamically manages/shares server capacity for WvW, what goes on in WvW on a high population server can briefly and intermittently cause annoying lag on low populations servers. The problem is fully in ANet’s lap … it is caused by them short-sheeting server capacity, network bandwidth, and game engine proficiency.

Nah, I am playing on ET atm and getting skill lag. Anet needs to work on it. Its obviously worse one higher tiers, but the fact that it is happening on the lowest populated server in NA is a clear sign.

There is another solution – remove all skills from the game.

The only available weapon would be AI controlled arrowcarts.

Some people want to be on servers that can field each map with coverage when we go to bed. We like knowing that there is a really good chance that the upgrades on keeps and towers will still be there when we log back on. There are only so many players to go around, not every server would be able to get a guild for the time you are wanting. Then there is the personalities on each server and some may not want to go to other servers. Some guilds like to work with other guilds specifically, some want to fight others specifically. People have reasons for being on the server they are on.

How about we push the players off the low wvw pop servers into upper tiers? That would help some of your coverage issue also. Why don’t you force them to move instead?

As pointed out by another, skill lag wasn’t impacted enough to warrant reduction in map population.

Some players also like having huge 3 ways.

Since skill lag is a problem across all servers, mid and low tiers have said they can field enough to get skill lag, you even stated that you get that where you are at, the better solution to skill lag is to make the code more efficient. Upgrading of the hardware would be a option if it wasn’t already quality but since this game is still new, hasn’t been out a year, I would bet that the servers are still quality as long as they purchased a decent enough set up in the first place.

CreativeAnarchy.6324:

Some players also like having huge 3 ways.

Dont we all?

Straegen.2938:

I don’t disagree with the sentiment but I think ANet needs to find a solution that encourages players to distribute populations beyond limitations in their engine.

One would think the ridiculous que times and skill lag would be reason enough to distribute themselves to lower servers. Then again, one would think (knowing full well what the top servers were like), that whole guilds would know better not to transfer to them..

I suppose it’s best to ask these guilds exactly what was going on in their heads at the time they decided to transfer to one of the top 3 servers. You know what they are like.. there have been continuous threads in regards to the skill lag and que times.. sooooo.. why on earth would they move there as opposed to a lower server?

As Zickory said.. we don’t even know if this is a population issue. There was skill lag tonight in a small group battle. The thing is, this had not happened before on reset night when there were 300 players on the map.

I do know the lower servers do not suffer the same problems as the higher servers so population is a factor, but I don’t think it’s the whole factor

I wish Anet would actually encourage more guilds to run on their own, instead of blobbing up with the rest of the zone. But the fact that they can’t even add a simple guild commander icon just shows how little they actually care. A small step maybe, but a welcoming one at least.

It’s also pretty obvious that the limit of people being able to be on a map at a given time needs to be decreased again temporarily, until a proper fix is in place.

Tellerion.8102:

I wish Anet would actually encourage more guilds to run on their own, instead of blobbing up with the rest of the zone. But the fact that they can’t even add a simple guild commander icon just shows how little they actually care. A small step maybe, but a welcoming one at least.

It’s also pretty obvious that the limit of people being able to be on a map at a given time needs to be decreased again temporarily, until a proper fix is in place.

If that were the case and if I were in a guild that didn’t WVW, I would just wait at spawn. Eventually they’ll port back, or another guild would form up that I could join with. Guild tags aren’t the saving grace that people think they would be.

Clockradio.3257:

If that were the case and if I were in a guild that didn’t WVW, I would just wait at spawn. Eventually they’ll port back, or another guild would form up that I could join with. Guild tags aren’t the saving grace that people think they would be.

You missed my point, it would be a small step in order to encourage more guilds to run on their own, and hopefully separate themselves from the zoneblobbing that is currently the meta in WvW. I’ve never said it would be the saving grace that would remove the whole blobbing-fetish people seem to have, it would however, send out a message that Anet wants guilds to do things “on their own”.

Regardless, small addition, yet I doubt it’s even considered, despite being suggested a dozen times on this forum already. What exactly does that tell you?

Tellerion.8102:

Clockradio.3257:

If that were the case and if I were in a guild that didn’t WVW, I would just wait at spawn. Eventually they’ll port back, or another guild would form up that I could join with. Guild tags aren’t the saving grace that people think they would be.

You missed my point, it would be a small step in order to encourage more guilds to run on their own, and hopefully separate themselves from the zoneblobbing that is currently the meta in WvW. I’ve never said it would be the saving grace that would remove the whole blobbing-fetish people seem to have, it would however, send out a message that Anet wants guilds to do things “on their own”.

Regardless, small addition, yet I doubt it’s even considered, despite being suggested a dozen times on this forum already. What exactly does that tell you?

During reset this weekend against BP and Ebay i was quite amazed, outside of EB i did not see a single zerg, not one all groups running in coordinated groups of max 30-40 was amazing.