Guild Wars 2

In the another skill lag thread you pitched a fit when someone said transfer down a tier and while I agree with the sentiment that asking us to fix the problem is not a logical long term solution, it is something we as players have control over right now. The problem is no one wants to do it because there is no reward for doing so and guilds having to start over and pay for it is actually a disincentive instead.

I am a huge proponent of realm pride and building strong WvW communities which takes time but GW2 has been screwing it up since before launch starting by not giving us the proper tools to gather our communities together to the broken guesting system which made free world transfer last much longer than they should have and the creation of the world boom and bust cycle that plagued the first 5 months of the game. So now here we are, culling is fixed but culling might have been the one the thing that was keeping skill lag in check and the bigger our zergs get the worse skill lag is. Every reset seems worse since early May. Sometimes we the players just have to take things into our own hands. I want to play the game not wear out my #1 key.

We get a ton of these threads every single reset but they are usually gone and buried by the time Monday rolls around. Do your part if skill lag is effecting your enjoyment of the game to make sure we have massive bunch of these skill lag posts front page come the beginning of the work week if we want ANET to start taking us seriously and stress the point if you would rather see lower world and WvW map population caps (and hence sadly, longer queues) than suffer another reset weekend of intense skill lag.

PariahX
Leaving one’s guild and friends to be able to play on another server alone is not a solution. The problem is a hardware one and moving to another server will not fix the issue.

It is up to us to keep pressure on Anet so that at least they acknowledge the issue and fix it. For as long as the game was released it has been virtually impossible for more than 2 servers to try to take on SM at the same time.

Pariah I am having the same problem on ET. This isn’t a Tier thing. There is something wrong with Anets servers.

The server lag also seem to favors an attacker versus a defender since the only skill that seems to be able to fire is #1 so strategies are used to take the lag and use it as an advantage. It is easier to attack with a single skill then defend.

I’m just about ready to move on to other games because of this issue. I’ve waited a long time for Anet to sort this thing out and it has only gotten progressively worse since it’s inception.

If it wasn’t for WvW I wouldn’t even be playing this game to begin with and now every night when it matters most no one in my guild can even use their ability’s which inevitably leads to everyone dropping off like fly’s within 20 minutes of starting our campaign.

I am absolutely fascinated that nothing has been done about this yet.

Your game can’t handle the numbers. Period. Do something about it, please. Another 1-2 weeks of this and I’m out.

noreaster I am in the same boat…been playing since launch and watching things get worse mainly for wvw. Maybe MMO’s need to have monthly subs since that seems to help with maybe better servers and maintenance. Because the server that are used are a joke IMO this is 2013 not 2004. I and a lot of my guild are on the edge esp. after last nights drop outs in EB and making us all wait in qeue again…

nirvana.8245:

Pariah I am having the same problem on ET. This isn’t a Tier thing. There is something wrong with Anets servers.

Something clearly happened on reset, I was fine in EB all last week, as soon as reset happens I dc from EB, I get into other BLs and am fine but as soon as I go into EB bang I dc again.

I heard they plan to cap AOE damage to hit 2 enemies, that would help reduce server lag

ANET is making tons of money from this game, hand over fist, a sub fee isn’t going to help this issue. You can’t always just throw money at everything. People going on about the old games that didn’t have this issues forget they also did not have a fraction of bonus goodies that GW2 comes with (w/o out a sub I might add), especially the eye candy. The first seriously “pretty” MMO with something like WvW, Aion did have serious issues with lag as I recall (WAR wasn’t pretty in my book but I seem to remember some lag problems there as well).

I think guesting and multi-server tech is actually just bogging those poor suffering server farms. It is not simple stuff they are asking their engine to do but we all act like they are purposely not fixing easy stuff to frustrate us. Maybe we need to take some responsibility here and spread our darned selves out a bit to give them some breathing room. Maybe then we once we all see some improvement it’ll start to sink into their heads that the dream of 100vs100vs100 battles may not be meant for this game with these graphics. Bummer but if so I’d like to know sooner rather than later. ><

Look on the bright side.. this is one area where Rangers excel! Put your pet on guard in the area and it’ll tear through everyone while everyone just stands there lol

morrolan.9608:

nirvana.8245:

Pariah I am having the same problem on ET. This isn’t a Tier thing. There is something wrong with Anets servers.

Something clearly happened on reset, I was fine in EB all last week, as soon as reset happens I dc from EB, I get into other BLs and am fine but as soon as I go into EB bang I dc again.

I noticed EB seems to be the worst also. There were a few hours where nobody from ET could connect to EB at all but could still connect to the borderlands and most of us were lagging out or disconnecting in there.

I dont know why they dont just do the obvious and reduce the amount of players by a 3rd in all borderlands. They have implemented somthing that technically cannot be accomplished.

That or upgrade their servers, but at least do one of them.

Better to just give this game up and move on to something else, Anet have proven to us all that they don’t give a monkey’s about the frustration the Skill Delay issue is causing and moreover the lack of any information whatsoever from them.

dan.3618:

I dont know why they dont just do the obvious and reduce the amount of players by a 3rd in all borderlands. They have implemented somthing that technically cannot be accomplished.

To do that they would have to put a 5th map in. They can;t just reduce the no. of players and have the long queues it would lead to.

Cant belive this kitten isnt fixed yet.

/clap

ha yeah after last reset when everyone was being dropped etc we had 3 people basialy quit on the spot and im bout done myself and those people spent a lot on gems so sad….

PariahX.6970:

ANET is making tons of money from this game, hand over fist, a sub fee isn’t going to help this issue. You can’t always just throw money at everything. People going on about the old games that didn’t have this issues forget they also did not have a fraction of bonus goodies that GW2 comes with (w/o out a sub I might add), especially the eye candy. The first seriously “pretty” MMO with something like WvW, Aion did have serious issues with lag as I recall (WAR wasn’t pretty in my book but I seem to remember some lag problems there as well).

You think graphics is server side, not client side?

morrolan.9608:

dan.3618:

I dont know why they dont just do the obvious and reduce the amount of players by a 3rd in all borderlands. They have implemented somthing that technically cannot be accomplished.

To do that they would have to put a 5th map in. They can;t just reduce the no. of players and have the long queues it would lead to.

How about we stop stacking the top 4 servers and spread the populations back out a bit instead of having long kitten queues as a result of lower WvW map populations caps. Sure ANET can’t do one thing without a cascading effect so I am sure that is why they are waiting to get their ducks in line so they can push out several changes simultaneously that will hopefully address skill lag, zergs, WvW population caps, server population caps, guild transfers, the outmanned buff & off peak hour population swings all in one big package. I’ve got my fingers & toes crossed for it and if this super fix it all in stroke WvW patch doesn’t hit before the anniversary it is going to be sad times and maybe the problem will fix itself when more players move on to other games.

Nikola.3841:

You think graphics is server side, not client side?

Obviously skill lag is not a client side issue while the graphic settings part of the “pretty” is but I am thinking more of the over all bells and whistles that have to be sent back and forth like particle effects, glowies, flapping wings on dead & dying bodies, siege weapon skills, guesting and the like. I am total technophobe and have no clue what I am talking about when it comes to this junk, just that skill lag is a real issue in this game and it gets much worse the more players you have in one location and the more patches full of more shiny pretty flapping stuff that gets added. Coincidence? I haven’t a clue but it seems fishy.

Monsoon.2589:

Still no comment or answers from Anet even with the multiple threads and requests for answers

The lack of any response means they haven’t got anything positive to reply with, I wouldn’t expect any kind of fix anytime soon.

terrible skill lag in zerg fights has been in this game since the betas. nothing is going to change.

Is there honestly any game engine/server setup that would be able to handle 200+ people standing in a large room all attacking each other while the server calculates who’s doing damage to who, what abilities are applying conditions/boons, what attacks bounce between targets and which ones they hit, which AOEs affect what, how much health all those players have, their positions, who’s dodging, blocking, healing, who has stability, etc. Then throw in 10 arrow carts dropping AOEs on all those players.

Just imagine all the info that needs to be processed.

I don’t think any current technology can handle that. Am I wrong? Has anyone seen a game and server setup that can handle that?

I played a game a decade ago without server lag that had uncapped AoE, way more abilities than this game, and vastly more complex game play …all this along with much larger scale fights.

@EvilSardine: even an average CPU is able to process more than 50 millions of instructions per second nowadays and I don’t think that ArenaNet does only use average CPUs (hopefully^^). So I guess it’s very unlikely that it’s some server CPU issue.

But we neither know ArenaNet’s game server infrastructure, nor their internal/external network communications setup/bandwidth, nor all the other factors which could impact performance.

Only ArenaNet staff can tell, but afaik the technical backgrounds were never explained to the public.

morrolan.9608:

nirvana.8245:

Pariah I am having the same problem on ET. This isn’t a Tier thing. There is something wrong with Anets servers.

Something clearly happened on reset, I was fine in EB all last week, as soon as reset happens I dc from EB, I get into other BLs and am fine but as soon as I go into EB bang I dc again.

I DCed four times last reset…. SoR took SM before my server could get a stable force on the map. By the time we got to the gate half the force had DCed and as soon as we started hitting the gate I DCed and so did a many others. by this time the force was to small to take it.

The disconnects are getting increasingly bad as well. I can’t stay in a match longer than 40 min before getting the boot. It always seems to happen right before I take over a tower.

I think the obvious solution is to just reduce the amount of people per map to say 60-70. I also think it would help if they’d add 4 servers per match up (automatically creating another borderland), then reducing the number of players per map to 60.

dan.3618:

I dont know why they dont just do the obvious and reduce the amount of players by a 3rd in all borderlands. They have implemented somthing that technically cannot be accomplished.

That or upgrade their servers, but at least do one of them.

We already have 3 hour queues on reset. Reducing the number allowed on the maps would make the game even more unplayable because you physically could not play unless you are unemployed or have massive amounts of time to waste sitting in queue. Not everyone has 8 hour blocks of time to play. Monday night I sat in queue for an hour and a half, It wasn’t even a weekend. If you reduce the player limit the time could double. Then what, 6 hour queue on reset? May as well not even play. Don’t tell me to switch servers, I’ve been on BG since launch and I’m not going to pay to switch just because my home server is good at WvW and has active members. I would possibly consider it if it was free but paying extra for something that shouldn’t be necessary is out of the question. I’m supposed to pay because the severs, that I already payed to use, don’t function properly. If you ordered some pants online but they show full of holes, is it fair to say you should have to pay for a new pair, even at a discount? No, it is expected that they take responsibility for there mistake and send you a new pair.

Arkay.5230:

No, it is expected that they take responsibility for there mistake and send you a new pair.

Yup and i have just asked for a full refund, Whether i get one or not i couldn’t care less but i certainly am not going to carry on playing this game when the Dev’s don’t even have the common decency to inform the community where they are at with the issue.

As someone said earlier and i will say the same! I have played mmo’s almost 10+ Years old (with large scale fight’s, Large scale AoE) that ran a kitten sight better than this trash.

Arkay.5230:

dan.3618:

I dont know why they dont just do the obvious and reduce the amount of players by a 3rd in all borderlands. They have implemented somthing that technically cannot be accomplished.

That or upgrade their servers, but at least do one of them.

We already have 3 hour queues on reset. Reducing the number allowed on the maps would make the game even more unplayable because you physically could not play unless you are unemployed or have massive amounts of time to waste sitting in queue. Not everyone has 8 hour blocks of time to play. Monday night I sat in queue for an hour and a half, It wasn’t even a weekend. If you reduce the player limit the time could double. Then what, 6 hour queue on reset? May as well not even play. Don’t tell me to switch servers, I’ve been on BG since launch and I’m not going to pay to switch just because my home server is good at WvW and has active members. I would possibly consider it if it was free but paying extra for something that shouldn’t be necessary is out of the question. I’m supposed to pay because the severs, that I already payed to use, don’t function properly. If you ordered some pants online but they show full of holes, is it fair to say you should have to pay for a new pair, even at a discount? No, it is expected that they take responsibility for there mistake and send you a new pair.

This is a Tier 1 problem.

Even on Tier 2 with TC, I’ve never seen us que all 4 maps, except on reset night. I’ve only ever seen a 3 way SM lag fest battle 3 times on TC. Aside from that it never happens. So I’m going to guess that every server below TC doesn’t que all 4 maps either, which means reducing the number of players wont affect any matches except T1.

So the question is, does Anet anger the T1 server while making the other 7 happy? It seems only fitting they do.

I don’t think you or anyone else whose been with your server since launch (including SoR and JQ) should have to leave; I do believe the guilds transferring to those servers are causing the problem and consequently should not be going there. This now ties into a WvW population problem and imbalance. They are contributing to the additional ques and lag.

What would you prefer? To be able to come home from work log on and play WvW immediately and enjoy lag free battles? Or would you prefer having your server flooded with WvW guilds in favor of possibly having a better PPT score?

A lot of this could probably be solved if they just opened up free transfers, or just forced the semi-recent guild transfers out of T1 and return them to their former servers. You’d drastically reduce your que time and lag if these guilds joined other servers that could use them.

I often wonder just how many of these lag threads/posts are coming from people in T1 servers? I know they occur in other servers; they occur on mine as well, but it isn’t that common. I have noticed a spike in disconnects since the last patch though.

PariahX.6970:

In the another skill lag thread you pitched a fit when someone said transfer down a tier and while I agree with the sentiment that asking us to fix the problem is not a logical long term solution, it is something we as players have control over right now. The problem is no one wants to do it because there is no reward for doing so and guilds having to start over and pay for it is actually a disincentive instead.

I am a huge proponent of realm pride and building strong WvW communities which takes time but GW2 has been screwing it up since before launch starting by not giving us the proper tools to gather our communities together to the broken guesting system which made free world transfer last much longer than they should have and the creation of the world boom and bust cycle that plagued the first 5 months of the game. So now here we are, culling is fixed but culling might have been the one the thing that was keeping skill lag in check and the bigger our zergs get the worse skill lag is. Every reset seems worse since early May. Sometimes we the players just have to take things into our own hands. I want to play the game not wear out my #1 key.

We get a ton of these threads every single reset but they are usually gone and buried by the time Monday rolls around. Do your part if skill lag is effecting your enjoyment of the game to make sure we have massive bunch of these skill lag posts front page come the beginning of the work week if we want ANET to start taking us seriously and stress the point if you would rather see lower world and WvW map population caps (and hence sadly, longer queues) than suffer another reset weekend of intense skill lag.

I agree Server / team /guild pride is the only reason to stay on the server you are on. I applaud you for that. However I am constantly seeing upper tier servers posting threads to try and get people to transfer, or when a guild is looking to transfer they are jumping on them to sway a decision. When you get these guilds doesn’t it just add to the problem?

It all boils down to hardware, It has never been able to keep up with software. By reducing the amount of stress on the hardware the lag goes away. In order to do this you have to reduce the amount of players on a single map to reduce the lag. Until the hardware companies can better the hardware used, or untill people purchase enough gems for Anet to increase their servers. This just isn’t going to change.

Just my thoughts.

Arkay.5230:

We already have 3 hour queues on reset. Reducing the number allowed on the maps would make the game even more unplayable because you physically could not play unless you are unemployed or have massive amounts of time to waste sitting in queue.

Ok, seriously? What server are you playing on with 3 hour queues?! You know the queue system still borked right? We so rarely see queues these days due to fewer people playing WvW for a myriad of reasons (lag and population imbalance likly being high on the list there) that ANET never did figure out why it wasn’t working properly. I play on JQ and we can still field some decent numbers at times but nothing close to anything more than 30 minute queues. If your queue is longer than 15 minutes you should really try again. Are there really servers left out there where queues longer than that are common? Admittedly, I am very ignorant about what is going on over the EU side of things so maybe longer queues are a thing over there.

From reading way too many of these threads, it appears the skill lag getting worse lately issue is not a tier 1 only problem but those of us who play in the more WvW stacked servers have it more often than others so logic seems to dictate that our over stacked servers are making the game unplayable for us which seems to suggest if we want to play the game without skill lag we would start transferring down to less populated servers and spreading ourselves back out. I hope ANET is on board and trying to find a way to incentivize the un-stacking of our WvW populations before they lower the map population caps.

Wouldn’t it be cool to see where todays worlds would stand in the ranking and population if we were all magically returned the server we started out on and given one free world transfer to get back together with newly made friends and guilds before being locked into a much more strict world transfer system that only lets you move down and never up? /ponder

Best and easiest way to solve this problem as well as the population imbalances is to remove the “fight for your server” aspect and make it a straight up matchmaking queue like in SPvP and just about every other PvP enviornment on any game. I’ve been sayin this for months and it would probably bring players back to the game, as well as more.

Which means more players, which means more profit for you, which means those players actually getting to enjoy the game, which means there will be less problems to worry about in WvW so you can actually fix spvp, which means you can focus on giving us real content instead of these boring holidays, which means WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!!!!!! DO IT ALREADY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

/end desperate plea that falls on deaf ears…… :’(

Arkay.5230:

I DCed four times last reset…. SoR took SM before my server could get a stable force on the map. By the time we got to the gate half the force had DCed and as soon as we started hitting the gate I DCed and so did a many others. by this time the force was to small to take it.

At the same time SOR players were dcing as well, I know because I was one of them, dc’ed as soon as I zoned into EB on reset.

PariahX.6970:

Arkay.5230:

We already have 3 hour queues on reset. Reducing the number allowed on the maps would make the game even more unplayable because you physically could not play unless you are unemployed or have massive amounts of time to waste sitting in queue.

Ok, seriously? What server are you playing on with 3 hour queues?! You know the queue system still borked right? We so rarely see queues these days due to fewer people playing WvW for a myriad of reasons (lag and population imbalance likly being high on the list there) that ANET never did figure out why it wasn’t working properly. I play on JQ and we can still field some decent numbers at times but nothing close to anything more than 30 minute queues. If your queue is longer than 15 minutes you should really try again. Are there really servers left out there where queues longer than that are common? Admittedly, I am very ignorant about what is going on over the EU side of things so maybe longer queues are a thing over there.

From reading way too many of these threads, it appears the skill lag getting worse lately issue is not a tier 1 only problem but those of us who play in the more WvW stacked servers have it more often than others so logic seems to dictate that our over stacked servers are making the game unplayable for us which seems to suggest if we want to play the game without skill lag we would start transferring down to less populated servers and spreading ourselves back out. I hope ANET is on board and trying to find a way to incentivize the un-stacking of our WvW populations before they lower the map population caps.

Wouldn’t it be cool to see where todays worlds would stand in the ranking and population if we were all magically returned the server we started out on and given one free world transfer to get back together with newly made friends and guilds before being locked into a much more strict world transfer system that only lets you move down and never up? /ponder

SOR still has 1.5hour queues on weekends (at least the did around 3 weeks ago when I played with them). BG had a 30 minute queue on two maps last night during off peak hours (Oceanic-Sea) and ~3 maps queued during prime. Having played on around 10 servers now, Id say the queues don’t really reflect the population accurately though. Some servers have guilds that have larger numbers and coverage than entire servers. But if they can’t queue onto the winning map / karma train map then they don’t join. Whereas, on some of the lower population servers, players put more time into WvW and will fight to do what they can under any circumstances (this goes for servers like ET and FC). Once you get a few rankings above players will either zerg and will only fight with significantly superior numbers or run away.

What I would love to see is some maps with lower population cap. Right now Im jumping tiers/servers because sometimes I just want to brainless zerg and to do that the best place is on BG, SOR or JQ. But other times I want a serious/skilled small group or solo fight and the best place for that is on or against a server like ET of FC. By giving the option to go onto a map with a smaller cap it would give me the option to do whichever I want.