Guild Wars 2

I was wondering if we could get some kind of update on the culling issues in wvw right now. What kind of progress has been made? Will we be getting a fix for it soon? Right now I’m fighting an invisible zerg in our EB keep and this is getting rather pointless seeing that I can’t see anyone but our own players.

Yes that is the ‘progress’ that has been made on culling. How are you liking it?

makes you wonder if culling exists because Anet is soo kitten cheap on THEIR hardware or because they don’t like the popularity of w3 and want us all to crawl in instances that are resource friendlier for their hardware.

Muylaetrix, don’t be absurd.

I’d also like a peek into what they’re doing about culling/why it’s an issue/etc.

Considering I was doing one of the Temple events in Straights of Devastation the other day and all of a sudden I couldn’t see anyone except for random effects on the ground and a person popping in and out of existence here and there I’d say it’s not just w3 since they said in PvE it should be much better. If it’s still happening in PvE they need to do something.

This is probably the biggest problem with WvW atm. I started dropping wells, traps you name it to hit the invisible mobs so that when they go off I would at least know “something” is coming. Problem is, that the invisble mobs go right past them without setting them off, because the game doesn’t register everything that is going on. Later, after I have been trampled, and no one is around, they might go off.

I still haven’t seen a satisfactory answer to why this is even a problem or why culling is in the game at ALL. Tons of other games have huge numbers of players on the screen at once with no problems whatsoever. Seems to me there must be another reason, like Anet wanting to save on bandwidth or something.

I came from playing WoW, spending a majority of my time doing the open world PvP (Wintergrasp, Tol Barad), and was especially excited about WvW in GW2. I am still to this day absolutely amazed at what I CAN’T see during the battles. No matter what video settings I run with, I can only see half the distance I could in WoW, and the fact that entire groups of enemy players can run right by me either invisible or without ID tags above thier heads is shocking.

I thought WoW was based on a much older engine, yet could handle this much better?

I know it’s only been a few months, but if we have another large content update with added ‘fluff’, new gem store stuff, new class tweaks and even new areas or stuff to do, and the culling STILL isn’t fixed, I’m going to have a hard time spending my free hours in WvW.

Yesterday when I played W3. I found a lonely ranger who is not 80 on my way to keep. I chased him, but so surprisingly, I was killed by him, a fully equipped bunky build lv80 was killed by a lv80- ranger , and it’s within 15 sec (coz my skill CD is 16 sec, I was downed just right before I can use it again).
I was soooooo frustrated after this happened coz I never have problem during 1v1 (sometime I can’t win but I always can run away and there is no way someone can take me down in just 15 sec) .
After checking battle log, I finally found the truth —- the ranger only did ~100 (200 at most) damage to me every shot with his shortbow, but in the log, I found 2x back stab + 6x heartseeker + countless double strike which is the main reason to take me down in 15 sec. But for total 20+ sec (from the very beginning till I was finished and ranger ran away), I never see anyone else except the ranger and his pet.
Same thing happened to me, to others, now and then, here and there, for now and maybe forever…….

Kuldred.2436:

I came from playing WoW, spending a majority of my time doing the open world PvP (Wintergrasp, Tol Barad), and was especially excited about WvW in GW2. I am still to this day absolutely amazed at what I CAN’T see during the battles. No matter what video settings I run with, I can only see half the distance I could in WoW, and the fact that entire groups of enemy players can run right by me either invisible or without ID tags above thier heads is shocking.

I thought WoW was based on a much older engine, yet could handle this much better?

I know it’s only been a few months, but if we have another large content update with added ‘fluff’, new gem store stuff, new class tweaks and even new areas or stuff to do, and the culling STILL isn’t fixed, I’m going to have a hard time spending my free hours in WvW.

You’re really silly if you think comparing a graphically intensive game like GW2 is the same as WoW, a game that can literally run on toasters (LITERALLY). There are many things to consider when trying to explain the culling issue, the fact that WoW is not handling, sending, and receiving the same amount and weight of information to scores of players at once AND in a high resolution (regardless of your settings) is one of them.

Both games are not created equally or by the same minds. Don’t expect it work like it is. Not trying to sound snobby, just saying.

elderan.2638:

I still haven’t seen a satisfactory answer to why this is even a problem or why culling is in the game at ALL. Tons of other games have huge numbers of players on the screen at once with no problems whatsoever. Seems to me there must be another reason, like Anet wanting to save on bandwidth or something.

Habib gave the best explanation in this thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Can-you-fix-it-culling/first

Whether or not that answer is satisfactory is another matter.. because too much emphasis is being directed toward client-side resource/bandwidth issues when the problem is almost entirely server-side. The specifications of player PCs are important when discussing the ramifications of reducing player culling.. but it has little relevance until they actually come up with a way to do that.

Server-side player culling is the same for everyone, regardless of their PC specs. However, as Habib stated, after that information has been sent to the client it still has to be rendered. This is the point where having a stronger rig allows you to load player models faster. As far as client-side bandwidth usage goes.. it’s a complete non-factor unless you’re on dial up or something.

Great post by the anet dev, thanks.

Thanks for the update Habib

Nice to hear some good news, Habib. Thanks for that!

Do you have any kind of estimate of how long it will take? I am not asking for a date, but even some vague no sooner then X and no later then Y would be nice.

Given how little has been done for WvW since release, we still have one set of armor as purchasable rewards for example, I think popular opinion is that it is not a priority and as such is culling in WvW a priority?

Thanks

Yay feedback. This is awesome thanks Habib!

Thank you for the response. Anything helps at this point.

Habib Loew.6239:

Issue #1 was the easiest to deal with because we can basically just throw money at the problem. When we first started down the road toward removing culling from WvW I took a bunch of bandwidth measurements and then went to the executives and said, essentially, “Hey, if we disable culling our network traffic will increase by X%. Are we ok with that?”. The answer I got was a clear and unambiguous “yes!” So issue #1 isn’t a problem after all.

Thanks for the update but if this part of the issue has been dealt with why has culling gotten worse? A couple of days ago in my tier all 3 servers were battling in the Stonemist Lords Room, I circled the room for probably 5 minutes without a single enemy or enemy siege rendering. I then went down and thats when they began rendering. Why did it take going down to render?

Niim.9260:

Do you have any kind of estimate of how long it will take? I am not asking for a date, but even some vague no sooner then X and no later then Y would be nice.

Given how little has been done for WvW since release, we still have one set of armor as purchasable rewards for example, I think popular opinion is that it is not a priority and as such is culling in WvW a priority?

Thanks

I’d be happy with just a standard “no sooner than X” portion of that answer.

Great response from Habib. Thanks for providing all the details on the progress being made.

morrolan.9608:

Habib Loew.6239:

Issue #1 was the easiest to deal with because we can basically just throw money at the problem. When we first started down the road toward removing culling from WvW I took a bunch of bandwidth measurements and then went to the executives and said, essentially, “Hey, if we disable culling our network traffic will increase by X%. Are we ok with that?”. The answer I got was a clear and unambiguous “yes!” So issue #1 isn’t a problem after all.

Thanks for the update but if this part of the issue has been dealt with why has culling gotten worse? A couple of days ago in my tier all 3 servers were battling in the Stonemist Lords Room, I circled the room for probably 5 minutes without a single enemy or enemy siege rendering. I then went down and thats when they began rendering. Why did it take going down to render?

Likely because they didn’t tell the client to stop doing what it has all along. Just because their would be more bandwidth means nothing if the client isn’t programmed/utilized to use it. If they don’t turn the culling off, that extra bandwidth is doing nothing. Essentially, they are catering to the lower spec PC user right now and leaving high spec PC with wasted hardware.

OK … I’ve scoffed harder than anyone at all the end-of-the world prophecies that have been floating around the last several months, but I’ve just witnessed the most conclusive sign ever that armageddon is imminent. ANet in the form of Habib just quickly responded with a candid, comprehensively descriptive, insightful, and encouraging post on a significant issue for GW2. I truly never thought I would see this day, but if I could buy Habib a case of Negra Modelo I most certainly would do so.

Habib Loew.6239:

snip

Thank you for responding and I enjoyed reading your reply since it cleared up most of my confusion.

As far as points 2 and 3 are concerned, it seems to me that the limitations of the lowest common denominator shouldn’t be affecting every player like they are now. I have high speed internet and a decently fast computer (like most players), my setup would have no problems whatsoever with the increase in bandwidth or the increased number of players to render. You could turn off culling right now and the problem would instantly be fixed. I understand that you need to consider those people who would have bandwidth or rendering issues, but that seems like their problem, not mine. If their system can’t handle it, make it so they can go into Options and turn on/off culling if they want to. This seems like something that could be implemented rather quickly and would make everyone happy.

Everyone even partially interested in WvW should read this thread.

Thanks a bunch Habib!

There have been many industry “leaders” that have driven the market by having a product that is both high-end spec’d and very desirable. But in those cases, quality is also a battle standard.

I believe the business decision making is overly risk averse (conservative).

You’ve solved #1, you’re in the middle of fixing #2, and #3 …well, frankly, at some point you have to tell the people with the bottom-end machines that they simply can’t expect the same performance as people willing to spend $2000+ on a good gaming rig.

In short, setting your criteria to completely fixing #3 before removing culling is basically saying, “We’ll never remove culling”. If you want an equal experience for all players, develop for consoles. PCs vary in spec. People spend more because they want and expect better performance than those who spend $300 on a generic, low-end PC.

I don’t mean to sound bitter in this post, merely realistic. You have to have some point at which the low-end, min-spec performance is “good enough” and realize that people with better machines are going to get a better experience. That is, after all, the entire point of having a better machine.

How about restoring the trial culling method from a couple weeks ago until culling can be completely removed? Or perhaps just make on official poll here to see if the majority of players would want that? The trial thread had many negative responses, but I believe many (like myself) thought it was obviously so much better that we were just enjoying playing WvW rather than even visiting the forums.

Since my server moved into tier 2, our competition is more highly organized, and this makes culling all the more painful. Most of the tactics I see now are simply “stack and portal”. Get 20 or more people piled up, move by mesmer portal if possible and spam aoe/autoattack at what appears to be thin air until one invisible army wipes the other and renders to their corpses. Sure, there are counters (and counters to the counters as well….) to this tactic, but it’s not fun (in my opinion, of course).

With the trial culling method, I saw quite a few allies running from fights because they thought we were outnumbered (seeing mostly/only enemies even with a horde of allies). I’d prefer learning to work around that and communicate though, to having to blindly huddle in a clump spamming buffs/heals/attacks not knowing if we’re fighting 10 people or 50.

mcl.9240:

You’ve solved #1, you’re in the middle of fixing #2, and #3 …well, frankly, at some point you have to tell the people with the bottom-end machines that they simply can’t expect the same performance as people willing to spend $2000+ on a good gaming rig.

In short, setting your criteria to completely fixing #3 before removing culling is basically saying, “We’ll never remove culling”. If you want an equal experience for all players, develop for consoles. PCs vary in spec. People spend more because they want and expect better performance than those who spend $300 on a generic, low-end PC.

I don’t mean to sound bitter in this post, merely realistic. You have to have some point at which the low-end, min-spec performance is “good enough” and realize that people with better machines are going to get a better experience. That is, after all, the entire point of having a better machine.

From what I read in Habib’s post, that’s exactly what they are doing. Making sure the min spec users will have a basic playable experience, as you say “good enough”. No doubt higher end machines will play better.

Quality software development takes time. If they have relatively new programmers (to the project) there is a learning curve which adds time. It sounds like they are working on a solution for the majority of players, which is good, not sure how you could read it otherwise.

Thanks for the update!

2 – Should be moot the the vast majority of users are on broadband circuits, very few are playing on dial-up. Hell cell phone data plans are faster than dial-up.

3 – Note this is a personal preference, if I had a mid to low end rig, I’d trade hands down the overwhelming amount of particle effects to have player models drawn, even if it’s just colored Gumby avatars. I would love to see options to lower or selectively disable enemy or friendly particle effects to some super base level or not show some at all.

Thrashbarg.9820:

mcl.9240:

You’ve solved #1, you’re in the middle of fixing #2, and #3 …well, frankly, at some point you have to tell the people with the bottom-end machines that they simply can’t expect the same performance as people willing to spend $2000+ on a good gaming rig.

In short, setting your criteria to completely fixing #3 before removing culling is basically saying, “We’ll never remove culling”. If you want an equal experience for all players, develop for consoles. PCs vary in spec. People spend more because they want and expect better performance than those who spend $300 on a generic, low-end PC.

I don’t mean to sound bitter in this post, merely realistic. You have to have some point at which the low-end, min-spec performance is “good enough” and realize that people with better machines are going to get a better experience. That is, after all, the entire point of having a better machine.

From what I read in Habib’s post, that’s exactly what they are doing. Making sure the min spec users will have a basic playable experience, as you say “good enough”. No doubt higher end machines will play better.

Quality software development takes time. If they have relatively new programmers (to the project) there is a learning curve which adds time. It sounds like they are working on a solution for the majority of players, which is good, not sure how you could read it otherwise.

How I can read it otherwise is this: Habib says he wants the min-spec machines to be able to render everyone, all the time.

Today, we have a situation where nobody is rendering everyone, all the time.

I’m suggesting that the cut-off for declaring the disabling of culling to be “the majority of players are rendering almost everyone, almost all the time”, which is a distinct improvement over today’s performance — indeed, it’s orders of magnitude better than what we have today — rather than “every single player’s machine, no matter how weak, is rendering everything all the time”.

I’m okay with the min-spec machines, and those on the lower end of the spec spectrum, having trouble with rendering most of the friendlies and enemies. Let them suffer with what we are expected to play with today, which is the vast majority of enemies not rendering at all. Let those willing to spend the money to have a more powerful machine reap the benefits of so doing and render everything, or almost everything, most of the time.

I suspect many other people are okay with that as well. Habib and his team are bending over backwards for the min-spec crowd, and we’ve yet to even see statistics demonstrating that the min-spec crowd make up more than a tiny percentage of players.

I’d much rather have the majority of players able to play WvWvW with better rendering than we have today, with culling off, than have them artificially hamstrung by leaving culling in place until the engine’s been so completely overhauled that even the min-spec PC has no trouble rendering anything with a full map of zerg v. zerg.

morrolan.9608:

Habib Loew.6239:

Issue #1 was the easiest to deal with because we can basically just throw money at the problem. When we first started down the road toward removing culling from WvW I took a bunch of bandwidth measurements and then went to the executives and said, essentially, “Hey, if we disable culling our network traffic will increase by X%. Are we ok with that?”. The answer I got was a clear and unambiguous “yes!” So issue #1 isn’t a problem after all.

Thanks for the update but if this part of the issue has been dealt with why has culling gotten worse? A couple of days ago in my tier all 3 servers were battling in the Stonemist Lords Room, I circled the room for probably 5 minutes without a single enemy or enemy siege rendering. I then went down and thats when they began rendering. Why did it take going down to render?

Because they haven’t moved any of the fixes into production, yet. Remember those three things are all things they have to do before they can remove culling without having a potentially negative impact on overall performance.

Habib Loew.6239:

Thank you, Grit, for posting that link. It points to a post in which I describe the culling issue in some detail and discuss a few of the issues involved with changing culling. An even more in depth explanation of what culling is can be found here https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/The-real-problem-here-is-invisible-enemies-Give-their-algorithms-time-to-match-servers-properly/page/4#post356817 (be sure to read both that post and the next – my description exceeded the post size limit).

As you know we’ve been working on this problem for a while but what I think we haven’t ever said before is that our goal is to remove culling completely from WvW. In order to remove culling completely we have to address three issues:

1) Bandwidth out of our servers/datacenter (traffic would increase without culling)
2) Bandwidth in to each client (traffic to each client would also increase without culling)
3) Client performance issues related to rendering (potentially) all the players on a map at once. (Note that we base our performance requirements in this case on min-spec clients. We don’t want to stop anybody being able to play the game after all.)

Until all three of those issues have been dealt with we can’t turn culling off because doing so would cause something to break or perform poorly.

Ok, now let’s talk about what progress we’ve made!

Issue #1 was the easiest to deal with because we can basically just throw money at the problem. When we first started down the road toward removing culling from WvW I took a bunch of bandwidth measurements and then went to the executives and said, essentially, “Hey, if we disable culling our network traffic will increase by X%. Are we ok with that?”. The answer I got was a clear and unambiguous “yes!” So issue #1 isn’t a problem after all.

Issue #2 is a little harder. We need to ensure that folks with a min-spec network connection won’t be overwhelmed by the data we send them and we obviously can’t just buy a better connection for all of our players. So we put our heads together and came up with a plan to reduce the bandwidth required for WvW (and Gw2 in general) as much as possible. Those changes are in testing now and will be rolled out as soon as we’re convinced that they’re solid. Assuming we’re able to get everything working the way we’d like (and I’m fairly confident that we will) then this will address issue #2.

So that leaves us with issue #3: client performance. Some time ago the WvW team acquired an engine programmer who is focused 100% on this issue (and he is being assisted by another engine programmer who isn’t officially on the WvW team). They’re working on some really fantastic optimizations and engine modifications which we hope will allow even min-spec clients to render all the players on a WvW map. We’ll be talking in more detail about the specific changes they’re making when things get just a little more nailed down, but I can say right now that I’m very impressed with the work they’ve done already.

So that’s where we are. Engine programmers are working their magic even now and we’re testing the networking changes that will be required. I believe that our goal of removing culling from WvW is achievable and I’m looking forward to the day that I can announce to you all that we’ve pulled it off!

Culling is fine. Please keep culling.

From your friendly thief player.

This is a great look into actual software development that most developers don’t really let the end user see.

For all of those claiming “I have a good machine, let me use it!” they have an obligation to abide by the minimum specs they sold the game with. Similarly, if they let the high end users turn culling off, then you are essentially paying real money to gain an unfair advantage, which is completely against the entire goal of normalization in this game.

It may seem like a long time, but 3-4 months to fix an issue that requires optimizing the engine to this extent is blazingly fast work. If they manage to pull it off by February, it will be quite an accomplishment.

Scarn.6810:

This is a great look into actual software development that most developers don’t really let the end user see.

For all of those claiming “I have a good machine, let me use it!” they have an obligation to abide by the minimum specs they sold the game with. Similarly, if they let the high end users turn culling off, then you are essentially paying real money to gain an unfair advantage, which is completely against the entire goal of normalization in this game.

It may seem like a long time, but 3-4 months to fix an issue that requires optimizing the engine to this extent is blazingly fast work. If they manage to pull it off by February, it will be quite an accomplishment.

They also have an obligation to anyone who bought the game to make WvWvW playable. Culling, as things stand today, makes WvWvW essentially unplayable.

Which would you rather have: No one being able to render most enemies most of the time, or many if not most people being able to render most enemies most of the time? I know I’d prefer the latter. So would a great many other people.

If you want equal performance for every customer, consoles exist to serve that purpose. The PC market, is, has been, and always will be about people spending money to get better performance. Suggesting this is unfair is disingenuous at worst, and shows a lack of understanding of the PC gaming market and its evolution at best.

Krakah.3582:

2 – Should be moot the the vast majority of users are on broadband circuits, very few are playing on dial-up. Hell cell phone data plans are faster than dial-up.

3 – Note this is a personal preference, if I had a mid to low end rig, I’d trade hands down the overwhelming amount of particle effects to have player models drawn, even if it’s just colored Gumby avatars. I would love to see options to lower or selectively disable enemy or friendly particle effects to some super base level or not show some at all.

I just checked the min specs, and it lists “Broadband Internet connection” so they aren’t designing this for dial up speeds. Unfortunately they don’t list what the minimum speed to be considered “broadband” is.

In case you’re interested, the min specs on the website are as follows:

Windows® XP Service Pack 2 or better
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo 2.0 GHz, Core i3, AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 or better
2 GB RAM
NVIDIA® GeForce® 7800, ATI Radeon™ X1800, Intel HD 3000 or better (256MB of video RAM and shader model 3.0 or better)
25 GB available HDD space
Broadband Internet connection
Keyboard and mouse

Scarn.6810:

Krakah.3582:

2 – Should be moot the the vast majority of users are on broadband circuits, very few are playing on dial-up. Hell cell phone data plans are faster than dial-up.

3 – Note this is a personal preference, if I had a mid to low end rig, I’d trade hands down the overwhelming amount of particle effects to have player models drawn, even if it’s just colored Gumby avatars. I would love to see options to lower or selectively disable enemy or friendly particle effects to some super base level or not show some at all.

I just checked the min specs, and it lists “Broadband Internet connection” so they aren’t designing this for dial up speeds. Unfortunately they don’t list what the minimum speed to be considered “broadband” is.

In case you’re interested, the min specs on the website are as follows:

Windows® XP Service Pack 2 or better
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo 2.0 GHz, Core i3, AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 or better
2 GB RAM
NVIDIA® GeForce® 7800, ATI Radeon™ X1800, Intel HD 3000 or better (256MB of video RAM and shader model 3.0 or better)
25 GB available HDD space
Broadband Internet connection
Keyboard and mouse

You forgot the fine print which says…

“Note: Due to potential changes, system requirements may change over time and you may be required to upgrade your current system (or obtain a new system) to continue to play the game.”

They can change what the kitten they want…

Niim.9260:

Do you have any kind of estimate of how long it will take? I am not asking for a date, but even some vague no sooner then X and no later then Y would be nice.

Given how little has been done for WvW since release, we still have one set of armor as purchasable rewards for example, I think popular opinion is that it is not a priority and as such is culling in WvW a priority?

Thanks

I don’t blame them for not even giving a time frame, he basically said when its done we will be the first to know. The problem with giving time frame or even estimated time frames is we, as customers, are ruthless. If they have a hichup and they don’t get it ready by no later then X, there will be hell to pay, because we are not forgiving or understanding (well many of us I shouldn’t lump everyone in there). So I personally would not give any time frame, no good will come of it, when its fixed they will let us know.

From what Habib says, it sounds like the removal of player culling could (potentially) cause our clients to send requests to the server to load enemies that are literally outside of our view distance. And this could be a major problem for everyone unless the engine is tweaked appropriately. Similarly, we don’t know how powerful machines will actually perform in a large-scale Stonemist Castle siege. There’s already a serious (network?) lag issue for everyone in those battles.

For the brief time that I played Final Fantasy 14, I noticed that even while staring a wall.. player models were rendering all around me and causing a significant FPS drop. The same thing could happen in GW2 if player culling is removed without making tweaks in other areas.

Grit.9061:

I think what they are going for is a worst case scenario in that every person from each 3 servers fighting are in one location (Lets say Stonemist). That’s about 500 players all at once in one area which is where they would need to be able to render “everyone on the map”.

They wouldn’t render someone on the other side of the map you don’t have any business seeing.

Habib, thanks for the update and good luck on the optimizations.

thanks Habib for the detailed response, I really hope this would happen for the big Feb content patch…

Habib, will the fixes for culling in WvW work for PvE events too? Culling can be pretty annoying in the PvE world too.

Habib Loew … i got a question.

please excuse any odities or wrongfull ‘tone’ of my text, im dyslexic

How are you going to be able to allow WvW to go without culling on your minimum spec machines when even with current culling and minimum settings ..and OC’s ..a minimum spec machine will run under 10 fps in WvW battles???
..hell even top of the line machiens with OC’s can barely keep minimum FPS over 30.

Your minimum specs are wrong …plain and simple ..you cant ‘play’ GW2 on those minimum specs. it will ‘run’ ..but ‘play’ ? ..not a chance.

I can only asume ur ‘Engine programmers’ have some “super awesome special” modifications coming that increase GW2 performance by over 100% ..becouse thats what its going to take, from the ‘players’ perspective, for GW2 to be playable on ur current minimum spec machine.
And if they do have these optimizations/modifcatiosn coming ..i hope it isnt done by removing eye candy and/or features of the game.

I am glad that ur superiors seem to be ok with increasing urservers bandwidth, i know that isnt cheap.

Thanks for the update, everything you said sounds great next a time frame would be wonderful. Thanks again.

Would an option to set all opponent models to something completely generic help with the bandwidth issue?

It seems to me that just noting the race, gender, profession and weapon would be easier than transmitting all of the customizations and specific weapon skin info. Maybe that info is packaged efficiently, but it seems unnecessary.

One of the tradeoffs would be the meta information of seeing people in specific armor or weapon skins and knowing – oh, that’s the 252k karma armor or – oh, that guy is probably an upscaled lowbie, etc.

Just sayin…

Now that I say this, I’m going to think about how I could transmute some exotics to make me seem like a lowbie when I’m not

Scarn.6810:

Krakah.3582:

2 – Should be moot the the vast majority of users are on broadband circuits, very few are playing on dial-up. Hell cell phone data plans are faster than dial-up.

3 – Note this is a personal preference, if I had a mid to low end rig, I’d trade hands down the overwhelming amount of particle effects to have player models drawn, even if it’s just colored Gumby avatars. I would love to see options to lower or selectively disable enemy or friendly particle effects to some super base level or not show some at all.

I just checked the min specs, and it lists “Broadband Internet connection” so they aren’t designing this for dial up speeds. Unfortunately they don’t list what the minimum speed to be considered “broadband” is.

The point I’m bringing up with the bandwidth being a non-issue is that position and state is not a huge overhead that anyone on broadband couldn’t handle with ease. The biggest issue has always been server side. He even mentioned they currently have been stingy with bandwidth on the server end, thus in large fights we get skill lag.

Habib Loew.6239:

Issue #2 is a little harder. We need to ensure that folks with a min-spec network connection won’t be overwhelmed by the data we send them and we obviously can’t just buy a better connection for all of our players. So we put our heads together and came up with a plan to reduce the bandwidth required for WvW (and Gw2 in general) as much as possible. Those changes are in testing now and will be rolled out as soon as we’re convinced that they’re solid. Assuming we’re able to get everything working the way we’d like (and I’m fairly confident that we will) then this will address issue #2.

So that leaves us with issue #3: client performance. Some time ago the WvW team acquired an engine programmer who is focused 100% on this issue (and he is being assisted by another engine programmer who isn’t officially on the WvW team). They’re working on some really fantastic optimizations and engine modifications which we hope will allow even min-spec clients to render all the players on a WvW map. We’ll be talking in more detail about the specific changes they’re making when things get just a little more nailed down, but I can say right now that I’m very impressed with the work they’ve done already.

Question: why not temporarily solve both problems by allowing an option for wvwvw… super low res graphics with no culling. I’d choose that in a heartbeat.. i don’t care what the enemy looks like as long as i can tell that they are not my team and i can see them. Stick figures even. I’m in it for the fighting not the wizbang effects.

The man took the time to post a response to the question out of sheer generosity on his behalf and still others can not just be content.

….Sheesh give em an inch….

Thanks Habib for giving us some kind of insight as to what is going on behind the scenes. A lot of us appreciate the work all the ANet krewe are doing and some of us even understand that the magic wand stops in the game play. And keep in mind the amounts of variations in machines, net speeds, quality of info path and a lot of the other variables that can come into play and not just what they see in the microcosm of a specific neighborhood.

Keep plugging away, its much appreciated!

I understand all of the technical aspects of this problem. The thing I don’t understand is how ANet managed to create a game mode like WvW without doing some simple math. You don’t even have to be in WvW, just stand around at a bank or trading post. Even without an actual stress test with hundreds of real players they should have come to the conclusion that there’s no way this could possibly work out. Somebody already mentioned that other games likes WoW are not directly comparable, but just considering the feeling: I’m playing an MMO, right? It doesn’t feel like one if you’re standing around and just see random players popping out of nowhere from time to time. I couldn’t achieve decent FPS in WoW with my rig back then, but at least I didn’t feel alone at the Ironforge AH – because I actually saw other players that didn’t (dis)appear randomly.