Guild Wars 2

If anyone here has played EVE Online within the past two or three years, they would know what I am talking about. CCP introduced Time Dilation to EVE Online to help deal with massive server constraints during massive battles. Time Dilation would activated on a server node when said node experienced too much stress. This stress originally would cause tremendous amounts of module activation delay (AKA Skill lag) and other things (Such as movement delay.) Upon activation Time Dilation would slow down all activities on said server by around 30%; this, while slowing everything down and making battles last longer, allowed the server to deal with everything in a much easier manner.

Less server clog meant less skill lag, less skill lag meant less frustration for the players, less frustration for the players meant CCP did not have to listen to our complaints anymore regarding large space battles.

Alongside this CCP also kept upgrading their servers and even added more of them during this time. Not that I am accusing Anet of not doing this (I honestly hope they are, it would be a bad idea for them not to).

WvW suffers the same way EVE suffered. Comparing WVW to EVE is a bit crazy for me and not the best example but: The battles that occur in EVE happen on a node, or server, that runs that particular area of EVE. EVE Online’s universe is a ton of servers running to keep a massive world going. Those servers that have kept EVE running for the past ten years have crashed because of player usage, shutting down an entire area of the EVE Universe all at once.

WvW is like this. Four large maps, each having their own server, supporting hundreds of players who want to beat the living tar out of other players. On many occasions these players gather into large groups and clash with other large groups, battles sometimes reaching 200 players in higher tiers, if not more. This puts a tremendous amount of stress on the servers, clogging them and making everything slow down in negative manners. The main issues is that the servers just have too much of a hard time processing the usage of skills by all these players (Thousands of skills going off all at once or over the course of ten second, etc).

I honestly believe Time Dilation or a form of it would fix this: As soon as the server becomes clogged, it slows us all down by 30%…heck, why not just 20%? so it can stay caught up with all out button mashing.

I think it would work wonders, though it would also take a lot of work on Anet’s part. CCP put a lot of work into their Time Dilation system and took many months testing it out on their Experiment Server before they released it.

Opinions?

(Edit) Sorry if this has been mentioned before. I could not find anything in search (I am not a ninja at searching functioning stuff like some of you are).

Interesting idea.

This is a good idea.

The trade-off is the impact on those elsewhere on the map. “Why’s it taking sooo lllooonnngggg to get to the supply camp” Oh, that’s right; those two zerg blobs must finally be doing battle."

But if it cuts down on death-by-skill-lag, then I’m all for it.

Zenguy.6421:

This is a good idea.

The trade-off is the impact on those elsewhere on the map. “Why’s it taking sooo lllooonnngggg to get to the supply camp” Oh, that’s right; those two zerg blobs must finally be doing battle."

But if it cuts down on death-by-skill-lag, then I’m all for it.

Yes, that is the only issue for players in EVE too. It slows everything else on the server down.

No. While a decent attempt I hate time dilation. I hate when any game slows down. This takes away from players fighting each other and the skill aspect. People experience performance issues at different levels of stress. How would anet decide when it will activate? If I’m doing just fine and time dilation kicks in, I’m gonna be kitten ed off. The problem needs to be solved at the source.

Is it going to kick in for the whole map or server or what? Getting slowed down because too many people want to pile into SM would annoy everyone else greatly. If you only use it in the immediate area, those outside can do more in a shorter period of time. That wouldn’t be fair and the forcing everyone else to slow down wouldn’t go over well either.

While it could be a temporary bandage, it would be a bad one. It would make the game less enjoyable. You’d unfairly punish smaller groups/fights and take up lots of the devs time and effort. It does need to be fixed, but without compromising quality. While the current state can be bad I think time dilation would be worse.

Elochai.1280:

No. While a decent attempt I hate time dilation. I hate when any game slows down. This takes away from players fighting each other and the skill aspect. People experience performance issues at different levels of stress. How would anet decide when it will activate? If I’m doing just fine and time dilation kicks in, I’m gonna be kitten ed off. The problem needs to be solved at the source.

Is it going to kick in for the whole map or server or what? Getting slowed down because too many people want to pile into SM would annoy everyone else greatly. If you only use it in the immediate area, those outside can do more in a shorter period of time. That wouldn’t be fair and the forcing everyone else to slow down wouldn’t go over well either.

While it could be a temporary bandage, it would be a bad one. It would make the game less enjoyable. You’d unfairly punish smaller groups/fights and take up lots of the devs time and effort. It does need to be fixed, but without compromising quality. While the current state can be bad I think time dilation would be worse.

Fantastic rebuttal I did consider this I just did not post about it as I was being a bit quick with my post before I lost interest and decided to not even post it.

Syktek.7912:

Elochai.1280:

No. While a decent attempt I hate time dilation. I hate when any game slows down. This takes away from players fighting each other and the skill aspect. People experience performance issues at different levels of stress. How would anet decide when it will activate? If I’m doing just fine and time dilation kicks in, I’m gonna be kitten ed off. The problem needs to be solved at the source.

Is it going to kick in for the whole map or server or what? Getting slowed down because too many people want to pile into SM would annoy everyone else greatly. If you only use it in the immediate area, those outside can do more in a shorter period of time. That wouldn’t be fair and the forcing everyone else to slow down wouldn’t go over well either.

While it could be a temporary bandage, it would be a bad one. It would make the game less enjoyable. You’d unfairly punish smaller groups/fights and take up lots of the devs time and effort. It does need to be fixed, but without compromising quality. While the current state can be bad I think time dilation would be worse.

Fantastic rebuttal I did consider this I just did not post about it as I was being a bit quick with my post before I lost interest and decided to not even post it.

I didn’t mean to come off harshly. Server data management is also less of a dev job and more on the networking guys. Time dilation makes it more of a dev issue and takes up more of there time. Anet needs to think more about what networking magic they can do. Whether it be better hardware or interconnectivity between their current hardware or more. Have more hardware pick up the work and interconnect them to transition seamlessly or work side by side. Still require some from devs, but much less.

I doubt that time dilation, which is a linear function (actually almost a fixed constant) as you described it, would make a significant reduction in lag, which is a quadratic function of the number of players in close proximity. A few extra players would totally defeat the intent of time dilation while simultaneously ruining the experience for everyone.