Guild Wars 2

Maladon.5760:

Do you honestly think culling is the reason stealth is so overpowered in WvW? Most thief fights are small scale or even 1v1. Do you really think the only opponent on your screen is being culled?

Culling is the reason why you don’t see all those ranged guys in the back or why you’re not sure how many people just portal bombed you and even the reason you got wiped in the lord room because an extra 20-30 enemies never showed up on your screen. It’s not the reason stealth is overpowered in WvW.

I am not arguing that culling is the only reason that stealth is broken. However, some thieves cite culling as the only thing broken. I’d like to get past that excuse and tackle the real issues.

Is this patch addressing culling AND rendering issues? Which are uniquely different.

According to this interview, they are removing culling all together. Instead players can set the graphic level of the opponents, to not bog down in lag.

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/473/feature/7169/Guild-Wars-2-What-Marchs-WvW-Patch-Will-Bring.html

I think what they are trying to do is allow people to “self cull” to achieve a balance between lag and ability to see.
Just my guess at the reason for it.

Yes, this option is usually called draw distance or “x number of players drawn” or some such in most games (e.g. every other MMO released in the past decade). There are also typically settings to “dumb-down” animations and other tweaks available. Animation Level-of-Detail for example.

MikeFerguson.8921:

Culling is absolutely a fixable problem, and as Habib mentioned in his MMORPG interview, we are planning to completely remove it from the game in march.

Why is it taking so long? Well, I think the best way I can describe how we’ve had to approach this problem is that it’s almost like changing a flat tire on a car that’s still moving. That’s a really rough analogy, but hopefully it helps illustrate just how difficult this would be in terms that are easier for everyone to understand.

Something like the way players render is extremely core to the engine and any change to that sort of thing could cause all kinds of other issues throughout the game. There are a lot of really complex technical problems that we needed to solve, then make sure that our changes don’t actually cause any of those odd side effects.

That being said, we’re confident that been able to solve those problems on the technical side. We still have a bit more testing to do, but we’re not expecting any major issues to pop up at this point, so we’re really looking forward to flipping that switch and getting rid of culling for good!

We’ll have a blog post coming up sometime in the next month to go into more details about the culling fixes and what you can expect.

Could we expect to get better fps too?

That would be amazing! looking forward to it

MikeFerguson.8921:

Culling is absolutely a fixable problem, and as Habib mentioned in his MMORPG interview, we are planning to completely remove it from the game in march.

Why is it taking so long? Well, I think the best way I can describe how we’ve had to approach this problem is that it’s almost like changing a flat tire on a car that’s still moving. That’s a really rough analogy, but hopefully it helps illustrate just how difficult this would be in terms that are easier for everyone to understand.

Something like the way players render is extremely core to the engine and any change to that sort of thing could cause all kinds of other issues throughout the game. There are a lot of really complex technical problems that we needed to solve, then make sure that our changes don’t actually cause any of those odd side effects.

That being said, we’re confident that been able to solve those problems on the technical side. We still have a bit more testing to do, but we’re not expecting any major issues to pop up at this point, so we’re really looking forward to flipping that switch and getting rid of culling for good!

We’ll have a blog post coming up sometime in the next month to go into more details about the culling fixes and what you can expect.

This is awesome to hear, Mike, and as a Commander I’m really looking forward to it.

Have you guys considered implementing a public test realm? I know a lot of crazy problems pop up when you implement large changes, so it might be a good idea to allow for large scale testing with a PTR before patches. Plus, it’d let people get used to the idea/balance of new content, and they wouldn’t be so whiny each patch.

Just a thought! Thanks for all the great work.

@MikeFerguson
Have you all been able to achieve being able to see people “across the map”? If on a mountain looking out, can we see the enemy as little ants moving in a Zerg?

This intrigues me because of the strategic implications.

I’m asking because Habib mentioned within range of the player. Does this mean a radius around the player or anything that the player can see (aka an enemy standing on a hill in the distance)

Columba.9730:

Any input to my question about what the back up plan is or should be with respect to culling and stealth?

The dev Habib Loew stated culling will be eliminated in the coming March patch, so your hypothetical is moot.

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/473/feature/7169/Guild-Wars-2-What-Marchs-WvW-Patch-Will-Bring.html

/thread

hm, are we talking reroll engine or new core engine? As culling wasnt so bad before xmas patch if im correct?

MikeFerguson.8921:

Something like the way players render is extremely core to the engine and any change to that sort of thing could cause all kinds of other issues throughout the game. There are a lot of really complex technical problems that we needed to solve, then make sure that our changes don’t actually cause any of those odd side effects.

That being said, we’re confident that been able to solve those problems on the technical side. We still have a bit more testing to do, but we’re not expecting any major issues to pop up at this point, so we’re really looking forward to flipping that switch and getting rid of culling for good!

is that the reason culling appears more often in PvE ever since the 2/26 patch?

Can you imagine how many people will come back to W3 and give it another go if they see reports that it is fixed. It’s gonna be the cause of an all new mass server exodus. Awesome!!

Comments like “culling hasn’t been fixed yet so it’s clear it will never ever be fixed” honestly make me weep for the logic and reasoning skills of future generations.

MikeFerguson.8921:

Why is it taking so long? Well, I think the best way I can describe how we’ve had to approach this problem is that it’s almost like changing a flat tire on a car that’s still moving.

Best analogy ever!

Diashame.6328:

Can you imagine how many people will come back to W3 and give it another go if they see reports that it is fixed. It’s gonna be the cause of an all new mass server exodus. Awesome!!

fear the queues :/

Lilsteele.4567:

MikeFerguson.8921:

Why is it taking so long? Well, I think the best way I can describe how we’ve had to approach this problem is that it’s almost like changing a flat tire on a car that’s still moving.

Best analogy ever!

It’s almost like they think none of their players are software developers.

Culling was introduced on purpose by the development team. In effect was “flipped on” because not running it caused tremendous lag.

When the game initially launched, it was not in effect. Do you guys not remember the horrible rubber-banding in the headstart? That is what we would have been stuck with if they hadn’t turned culling on while they worked to fix the engine problems.

Now that they have the engine fixed, it’s a simple matter of just flagging the culling system “off”.

I think everyone here should read this and learn exactly what culling is and know that by “turning it completely off” means and what it doesn’t mean. In short they could just allow more optimization by the client to fix things for the most part on a per user basis.
http://www.gamedev.net/page/resources/_/technical/graphics-programming-and-theory/geometry-culling-in-3d-engines-r1212

This turning it off measure is exactly what I knew they would do I believe I compared it to removing orbs from wv3.

LOCO.1785:

Columba.9730:

Any input to my question about what the back up plan is or should be with respect to culling and stealth?

The dev Habib Loew stated culling will be eliminated in the coming March patch, so your hypothetical is moot.

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/473/feature/7169/Guild-Wars-2-What-Marchs-WvW-Patch-Will-Bring.html

/thread

I will wait to see the results before I drop this.

MikeFerguson.8921:

Culling is absolutely a fixable problem, and as Habib mentioned in his MMORPG interview, we are planning to completely remove it from the game in march.

Why is it taking so long? Well, I think the best way I can describe how we’ve had to approach this problem is that it’s almost like changing a flat tire on a car that’s still moving. That’s a really rough analogy, but hopefully it helps illustrate just how difficult this would be in terms that are easier for everyone to understand.

Something like the way players render is extremely core to the engine and any change to that sort of thing could cause all kinds of other issues throughout the game. There are a lot of really complex technical problems that we needed to solve, then make sure that our changes don’t actually cause any of those odd side effects.

That being said, we’re confident that been able to solve those problems on the technical side. We still have a bit more testing to do, but we’re not expecting any major issues to pop up at this point, so we’re really looking forward to flipping that switch and getting rid of culling for good!

We’ll have a blog post coming up sometime in the next month to go into more details about the culling fixes and what you can expect.

Its why ANET should really consider using the BWE model in its live game to test new builds you will never be able to simulate live conditions in a closed enviroment.

The interview and Mike’s post are pretty definite when it comes to what they will change: Culling will be (almost) completely gone when the march patch hits the game. Bang, number 1 problem in wvw solved!

It’s not vague, pr blabla you usually hear. It’s direct and allows no misinterpretation. When? March. What? Culling will be thing of the past.
I’m more then excited to see if it’s gonna happen. People will also be more harsh in reaction if it fails. Talking to guilds and people, a ton of them are only waiting for that patch to leave the game for good if it fails to deliver (previous of the culling fix announcement). Seems like ANet really feels the pressure from its customers to get rid of this problem, I can’t explain an outcoming like that otherwise.

Culling isn’t “broken” It isn’t “unfixable”

Culling is a measure purposely put in to help the systems involved in GW2. It’s a matter of optimising, not “fixing”. Once done, the devs can simply remove culling from the game. It’s not some bug or glitch. It seems like 80% of you don’t know that…Research what culling actually is before commenting on it, otherwise it just looks like blind rage.

I’d also suggest everyone complaining to see when the WvW march update hits to see how that fixes culling.

MikeFerguson.8921:

Culling is absolutely a fixable problem, and as Habib mentioned in his MMORPG interview, we are planning to completely remove it from the game in march.

Why is it taking so long? Well, I think the best way I can describe how we’ve had to approach this problem is that it’s almost like changing a flat tire on a car that’s still moving. That’s a really rough analogy, but hopefully it helps illustrate just how difficult this would be in terms that are easier for everyone to understand.

Something like the way players render is extremely core to the engine and any change to that sort of thing could cause all kinds of other issues throughout the game. There are a lot of really complex technical problems that we needed to solve, then make sure that our changes don’t actually cause any of those odd side effects.

That being said, we’re confident that been able to solve those problems on the technical side. We still have a bit more testing to do, but we’re not expecting any major issues to pop up at this point, so we’re really looking forward to flipping that switch and getting rid of culling for good!

We’ll have a blog post coming up sometime in the next month to go into more details about the culling fixes and what you can expect.

Could you clarify that the reason why culling existed in first place has also been fixed?. This is not a straight swap culling to lag is it?. Since there is even zone crashes now on some servers, 2-3 sec lag, Rubber banding. This is just with what 45-50ish? on screen at one time friendly/enemy? as it stands live at this time. Add in 270 90×3 zone size.

So the new engine changes i am guessing can handle everyone in zone spamming skills?. add in garrison(closed space) siege being used at same time. mass stealth skills where server must tell the enemy and friendly when to become visible and not?. Thats one big stress hodgepodge going to server and back. I noticed the other day the backup models when to many in one spot?.

I just hope this is not nice in theory but in reality change. We talked about all this before anyways mike. I gotta say epic props if it comes off i will be waiting in anticipation. However i wont hide my skepticism after playing many WvW games that have failed because of WvW or mass RVR lag on large scale. I would seriously give this a test run before in 100% stress situations on live.

MikeFerguson.8921:

Culling is absolutely a fixable problem, and as Habib mentioned in his MMORPG interview, we are planning to completely remove it from the game in march.

Why is it taking so long? Well, I think the best way I can describe how we’ve had to approach this problem is that it’s almost like changing a flat tire on a car that’s still moving. That’s a really rough analogy, but hopefully it helps illustrate just how difficult this would be in terms that are easier for everyone to understand.

Something like the way players render is extremely core to the engine and any change to that sort of thing could cause all kinds of other issues throughout the game. There are a lot of really complex technical problems that we needed to solve, then make sure that our changes don’t actually cause any of those odd side effects.

That being said, we’re confident that been able to solve those problems on the technical side. We still have a bit more testing to do, but we’re not expecting any major issues to pop up at this point, so we’re really looking forward to flipping that switch and getting rid of culling for good!

We’ll have a blog post coming up sometime in the next month to go into more details about the culling fixes and what you can expect.

Pre-Culling update – Enemy disappear frequently (culling) but no skill lag
Post-Culling update (now) – Enemy are there (no culling) but there are massive skill lags (Unable to press skill/heal or anything for 5sec+) during intense battle/heavy populated battle

I suspected there are something about conditions as well since if you face a big zerg with heavy condition necro (guilds like Warmachines, kaineng), skill lags always there badly and can happen anywhere on the map/borderland not to limit to SM EBG.

Please look into it. We all count on you and dont want it to be failed.

nalenb.1425:

Lilsteele.4567:

MikeFerguson.8921:

Why is it taking so long? Well, I think the best way I can describe how we’ve had to approach this problem is that it’s almost like changing a flat tire on a car that’s still moving.

Best analogy ever!

It’s almost like they think none of their players are software developers.

It’s almost like they realise the majority of them aren’t.

Tajz.9826:

I suspected there are something about conditions as well since if you face a big zerg with heavy condition necro (guilds like Warmachines, kaineng), skill lags always there badly and can happen anywhere on the map/borderland not to limit to SM EBG.

That’s actually server lag when the machine has a delay in processing all information and yes, condition damage is managed by the server side just like regular damage. But, when you figure reg/dam just goes ‘Bang’ once and either does damage, glances, crits or doesn’t do damage- con/dam has a constant ticking of timers, cleanses, reductions and variable power levels during the course of it running, being stopped or reapplied.
Doing my own calculations on this to figure out my actual dps from dots… it is very complicated, in fact I dunno why Anet went this route, but meh, glad they’re not my dev’s

This isn’t the first time we’ve had it either, it was in other patches depending on ‘who’ you faced and how many conditions they where laying down. Back when KnT where going up against big guilds like Tysm in T1 last time we had the same problems against their con/dam mesmers. Provided you could keep the noobs from standing in the red circles, the lag wasn’t too bad as the machine just had to process the fields location and not calculate anything else.
Big buff-stacks at the same time will also do it but not quite to the same extent.

I am betting on unfixable, sorry Dev’s its not that I do not trust you, and I am sure you will get close but as long as WvWvW is based around mindless zerging with the biggest numbers possible it will never happen.

Is there a population cap increase?

Culling fixed will make wvw so dreamy it could cause a massive activity in wvw after that, especially followed by march updates wich could lead to endless queues on weekends.

Timze.7980:

MikeFerguson.8921:

Culling is absolutely a fixable problem, and as Habib mentioned in his MMORPG interview, we are planning to completely remove it from the game in march.

Why is it taking so long? Well, I think the best way I can describe how we’ve had to approach this problem is that it’s almost like changing a flat tire on a car that’s still moving. That’s a really rough analogy, but hopefully it helps illustrate just how difficult this would be in terms that are easier for everyone to understand.

Something like the way players render is extremely core to the engine and any change to that sort of thing could cause all kinds of other issues throughout the game. There are a lot of really complex technical problems that we needed to solve, then make sure that our changes don’t actually cause any of those odd side effects.

That being said, we’re confident that been able to solve those problems on the technical side. We still have a bit more testing to do, but we’re not expecting any major issues to pop up at this point, so we’re really looking forward to flipping that switch and getting rid of culling for good!

We’ll have a blog post coming up sometime in the next month to go into more details about the culling fixes and what you can expect.

Could we expect to get better fps too?

No you cant have the whole pie and eat it. FPS is not just the issue here. Latency is the other. If everything is shifted to client side, the problem may be much worse for some.
ALso what about window dragging exploits? If everything is client, expect them.

Fuzzion.2504:

Timze.7980:

MikeFerguson.8921:

Culling is absolutely a fixable problem, and as Habib mentioned in his MMORPG interview, we are planning to completely remove it from the game in march.

Why is it taking so long? Well, I think the best way I can describe how we’ve had to approach this problem is that it’s almost like changing a flat tire on a car that’s still moving. That’s a really rough analogy, but hopefully it helps illustrate just how difficult this would be in terms that are easier for everyone to understand.

Something like the way players render is extremely core to the engine and any change to that sort of thing could cause all kinds of other issues throughout the game. There are a lot of really complex technical problems that we needed to solve, then make sure that our changes don’t actually cause any of those odd side effects.

That being said, we’re confident that been able to solve those problems on the technical side. We still have a bit more testing to do, but we’re not expecting any major issues to pop up at this point, so we’re really looking forward to flipping that switch and getting rid of culling for good!

We’ll have a blog post coming up sometime in the next month to go into more details about the culling fixes and what you can expect.

Could we expect to get better fps too?

No you cant have the whole pie and eat it. FPS is not just the issue here. Latency is the other. If everything is shifted to client side, the problem may be much worse for some.
ALso what about window dragging exploits? If everything is client, expect them.

Could it really get any worse now?

Also, i thought I just asked for “Could we expect to get better fps too?” not “making everything clint side”

I, along most, (maybe all) can’t get acceptable fps during zerking in WvW and I have quite high end computer, so can’t even think how low end computers work here.
I just asked now, if we finaly could get improved fps too once they now start to make engine rework. The current CPU domination is just unacceptable…

Columba.9730:

It’s been 7 months, and culling remains badly broken. worse yet, one class can leverage it to remain stealthed during entire fights without speccing for high stealth and get the highest burst dps of any class. further, said class get 50% run speed.

The apologists defend stealth as it is, blaming the problems on culling, even though in spvp, thief dps has been significantly nerfed for balance. So my question is, what’s the plan for stealth once it’s clear that culling cannot be fixed. I personally think culling wont be fixed, so i am anxious to see a backup plan.

Thieves have kitten defenses, with their mobility and stealth being their ONLY real line of defense. Nerfing stealth harder than it already has been is stupid and nearsighted for anyone to suggest.

In fact, we should remove Stability and Retaliation from any heavy plate class, because you what, how dare they be able to live. To hell with it, let’s also remove their Vitality and Toughness stacking. And rangers should have their pets removed, how dare they have a pet for them to help stay alive. Mesmers? kitten their illusions, obviously the whole cause of server lag. They should just take a beating to the face like a man.

I am looking forward to the culling fixes slated for March. If it is true that I will be able to see all players within range of me, this will be the single best change to go live since I first played the game back in April. It’s taken a LOT longer than I would have hoped to get here, but if it really gets fixed, that is all that matters.

MikeFerguson.8921:

Culling is absolutely a fixable problem, and as Habib mentioned in his MMORPG interview, we are planning to completely remove it from the game in march.

Why is it taking so long? Well, I think the best way I can describe how we’ve had to approach this problem is that it’s almost like changing a flat tire on a car that’s still moving. That’s a really rough analogy, but hopefully it helps illustrate just how difficult this would be in terms that are easier for everyone to understand.

Something like the way players render is extremely core to the engine and any change to that sort of thing could cause all kinds of other issues throughout the game. There are a lot of really complex technical problems that we needed to solve, then make sure that our changes don’t actually cause any of those odd side effects.

That being said, we’re confident that been able to solve those problems on the technical side. We still have a bit more testing to do, but we’re not expecting any major issues to pop up at this point, so we’re really looking forward to flipping that switch and getting rid of culling for good!

We’ll have a blog post coming up sometime in the next month to go into more details about the culling fixes and what you can expect.

i think you guys can do it.

imalog.7689:

MikeFerguson.8921:

Culling is absolutely a fixable problem, and as Habib mentioned in his MMORPG interview, we are planning to completely remove it from the game in march.

Why is it taking so long? Well, I think the best way I can describe how we’ve had to approach this problem is that it’s almost like changing a flat tire on a car that’s still moving. That’s a really rough analogy, but hopefully it helps illustrate just how difficult this would be in terms that are easier for everyone to understand.

Something like the way players render is extremely core to the engine and any change to that sort of thing could cause all kinds of other issues throughout the game. There are a lot of really complex technical problems that we needed to solve, then make sure that our changes don’t actually cause any of those odd side effects.

That being said, we’re confident that been able to solve those problems on the technical side. We still have a bit more testing to do, but we’re not expecting any major issues to pop up at this point, so we’re really looking forward to flipping that switch and getting rid of culling for good!

We’ll have a blog post coming up sometime in the next month to go into more details about the culling fixes and what you can expect.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSDeMN5_Guw

i think you guys can do it.

That made my day.

I feel we get now easy fix for this.

Asglarek.8976:

I think everyone here should read this and learn exactly what culling is and know that by “turning it completely off” means and what it doesn’t mean. In short they could just allow more optimization by the client to fix things for the most part on a per user basis.
http://www.gamedev.net/page/resources/_/technical/graphics-programming-and-theory/geometry-culling-in-3d-engines-r1212

This turning it off measure is exactly what I knew they would do I believe I compared it to removing orbs from wv3.

erm, geometry culling and character culling are two completely different things.

with geometry culling, the computer realizes that the side away from the player from something isn’t calculated and drawn on screen. say, you stand before a mountain, the computer realizes that only the part of the mountain facing you needs rendering and not the other side. the part of the mounntain facing away from you can be completely ignored and not rendered with no ill effects to what you see.

with the character culling Anet uses, the server tries to make a selection of which players it should notify the client about and has a max number of players that it will send information about to the client to reduce their outbound volume of data which might otherwise saturate their upload bandwith.

i’m gone shake some numbers out of nowhere to illustrate. say that the upload capacity of anet is 1GB / sec (yeah, rediculous number, i know) which has to be shared between all the users. for most purpose, this is enough to send everything needed to each person, especially if most players are in some sort of instance where there are only the player + 4 extra players that the server has to send data about. but during some large scale pve events and w3, the server doesn’t have to send data about 4 players and some other stuff to players but potentially data about 100+ players and thousands of effects, spells, buffs, etc. in that case the totall outbound volume needed to send all the data might easely surpass the 1 GB limit of their internet connection which would result in some players not getting any data at all or some other things that might be very bad. therefore they impose a limit on the amount of players that info is send about so that their 1 GB is not exceeded. the only way to fix that is to upgrade their internet connection to say 10 GB /sec. after doing that, they can remove the cap of players that the server can send data about to the players.

this might not be totally accurate, but hey, it’s my best try to explain :p

its going to be fun seeing the MASS of complaining once the patch comes and people are lagging all over :P

Im gonna be fine, and sounds like they will add options to make sure you dont lag if you just lower the graphics.. not that people seems to understand how these things work.

Oh you lag, have you tried to lower your graphics? no? well then DO IT.

This is a awesome thing and Im very happy. please make sure your forum servers will be handle to handle the “OMG LAG ANET BOO” posts that will come from people who will never be happy with anything.

Great patch, gonna be nice to see it

MikeFerguson.8921:

Culling is absolutely a fixable problem, and as Habib mentioned in his MMORPG interview, we are planning to completely remove it from the game in march.

Why is it taking so long? Well, I think the best way I can describe how we’ve had to approach this problem is that it’s almost like changing a flat tire on a car that’s still moving. That’s a really rough analogy, but hopefully it helps illustrate just how difficult this would be in terms that are easier for everyone to understand.

Something like the way players render is extremely core to the engine and any change to that sort of thing could cause all kinds of other issues throughout the game. There are a lot of really complex technical problems that we needed to solve, then make sure that our changes don’t actually cause any of those odd side effects.

That being said, we’re confident that been able to solve those problems on the technical side. We still have a bit more testing to do, but we’re not expecting any major issues to pop up at this point, so we’re really looking forward to flipping that switch and getting rid of culling for good!

We’ll have a blog post coming up sometime in the next month to go into more details about the culling fixes and what you can expect.

Ill be straight up and to the point. I do not believe your servers can handle this game without the culling issue. Unless you intend on upgrading them, I don’t think you will ever fix culling.

you think it took them this long and they didnt notice if the server coudnt handle it?

Timze.7980:

MikeFerguson.8921:

Culling is absolutely a fixable problem, and as Habib mentioned in his MMORPG interview, we are planning to completely remove it from the game in march.

Why is it taking so long? Well, I think the best way I can describe how we’ve had to approach this problem is that it’s almost like changing a flat tire on a car that’s still moving. That’s a really rough analogy, but hopefully it helps illustrate just how difficult this would be in terms that are easier for everyone to understand.

Something like the way players render is extremely core to the engine and any change to that sort of thing could cause all kinds of other issues throughout the game. There are a lot of really complex technical problems that we needed to solve, then make sure that our changes don’t actually cause any of those odd side effects.

That being said, we’re confident that been able to solve those problems on the technical side. We still have a bit more testing to do, but we’re not expecting any major issues to pop up at this point, so we’re really looking forward to flipping that switch and getting rid of culling for good!

We’ll have a blog post coming up sometime in the next month to go into more details about the culling fixes and what you can expect.

Could we expect to get better fps too?

Based on what I’ve read about how they are planning to fix culling, part of their solution includes heavily optimizing the client’s rendering of characters. If I were to make a rough educated guess, I would say that it’s not impossible that we see a better frame rate or in some way more fluid graphics.

Do you run the game on low graphics settings while in WvW?

sostronk.8167:

Ill be straight up and to the point. I do not believe your servers can handle this game without the culling issue. Unless you intend on upgrading them, I don’t think you will ever fix culling.

Are you privy to the server hardware specifications / capabilities? If so, can you please share them with us? Also, can you explain what specific aspect in the impending update will be responsible for the servers being unable to perform?

Xirin.8593:

sostronk.8167:

Ill be straight up and to the point. I do not believe your servers can handle this game without the culling issue. Unless you intend on upgrading them, I don’t think you will ever fix culling.

Are you privy to the server hardware specifications / capabilities? If so, can you please share them with us? Also, can you explain what specific aspect in the impending update will be responsible for the servers being unable to perform?

Yes and no.

sostronk.8167:

MikeFerguson.8921:

Culling is absolutely a fixable problem, and as Habib mentioned in his MMORPG interview, we are planning to completely remove it from the game in march.

Why is it taking so long? Well, I think the best way I can describe how we’ve had to approach this problem is that it’s almost like changing a flat tire on a car that’s still moving. That’s a really rough analogy, but hopefully it helps illustrate just how difficult this would be in terms that are easier for everyone to understand.

Something like the way players render is extremely core to the engine and any change to that sort of thing could cause all kinds of other issues throughout the game. There are a lot of really complex technical problems that we needed to solve, then make sure that our changes don’t actually cause any of those odd side effects.

That being said, we’re confident that been able to solve those problems on the technical side. We still have a bit more testing to do, but we’re not expecting any major issues to pop up at this point, so we’re really looking forward to flipping that switch and getting rid of culling for good!

We’ll have a blog post coming up sometime in the next month to go into more details about the culling fixes and what you can expect.

Ill be straight up and to the point. I do not believe your servers can handle this game without the culling issue. Unless you intend on upgrading them, I don’t think you will ever fix culling.

i think that is exactly what is ment with “we can make culling go away by throwing money at it”.

sostronk.8167:

Xirin.8593:

sostronk.8167:

Ill be straight up and to the point. I do not believe your servers can handle this game without the culling issue. Unless you intend on upgrading them, I don’t think you will ever fix culling.

Are you privy to the server hardware specifications / capabilities? If so, can you please share them with us? Also, can you explain what specific aspect in the impending update will be responsible for the servers being unable to perform?

Yes and no.

Please elaborate.

muylaetrix.2096:

sostronk.8167:

MikeFerguson.8921:

Culling is absolutely a fixable problem, and as Habib mentioned in his MMORPG interview, we are planning to completely remove it from the game in march.

Why is it taking so long? Well, I think the best way I can describe how we’ve had to approach this problem is that it’s almost like changing a flat tire on a car that’s still moving. That’s a really rough analogy, but hopefully it helps illustrate just how difficult this would be in terms that are easier for everyone to understand.

Something like the way players render is extremely core to the engine and any change to that sort of thing could cause all kinds of other issues throughout the game. There are a lot of really complex technical problems that we needed to solve, then make sure that our changes don’t actually cause any of those odd side effects.

That being said, we’re confident that been able to solve those problems on the technical side. We still have a bit more testing to do, but we’re not expecting any major issues to pop up at this point, so we’re really looking forward to flipping that switch and getting rid of culling for good!

We’ll have a blog post coming up sometime in the next month to go into more details about the culling fixes and what you can expect.

Ill be straight up and to the point. I do not believe your servers can handle this game without the culling issue. Unless you intend on upgrading them, I don’t think you will ever fix culling.

i think that is exactly what is ment with “we can make culling go away by throwing money at it”.

Id like to hope so. But I doubt it. I think they are just tossing up how they can improve the code a bit to reduce culling enough without increasing lag so people don’t get kitten about it.

TimeBomb.3427:

Timze.7980:

MikeFerguson.8921:

Culling is absolutely a fixable problem, and as Habib mentioned in his MMORPG interview, we are planning to completely remove it from the game in march.

Why is it taking so long? Well, I think the best way I can describe how we’ve had to approach this problem is that it’s almost like changing a flat tire on a car that’s still moving. That’s a really rough analogy, but hopefully it helps illustrate just how difficult this would be in terms that are easier for everyone to understand.

Something like the way players render is extremely core to the engine and any change to that sort of thing could cause all kinds of other issues throughout the game. There are a lot of really complex technical problems that we needed to solve, then make sure that our changes don’t actually cause any of those odd side effects.

That being said, we’re confident that been able to solve those problems on the technical side. We still have a bit more testing to do, but we’re not expecting any major issues to pop up at this point, so we’re really looking forward to flipping that switch and getting rid of culling for good!

We’ll have a blog post coming up sometime in the next month to go into more details about the culling fixes and what you can expect.

Could we expect to get better fps too?

Based on what I’ve read about how they are planning to fix culling, part of their solution includes heavily optimizing the client’s rendering of characters. If I were to make a rough educated guess, I would say that it’s not impossible that we see a better frame rate or in some way more fluid graphics.

Do you run the game on low graphics settings while in WvW?

I can run game normally on high and quite easily too. No matter if I change it to low/high in WvW. It’s completely CPU problem, and not on my end.
I really hope we get also better fps.

I’ll believe it when I see the enemy invader :P

Disabling player culling results in rendering more stuff. A higher rendering workload typically results in the same or lower FPS, all other things being equal.

It’s possible they will make some massive rendering optimizations to offset the additional workload created by the removal of player culling, but I would expect the most likely result will be seeing more characters on screen sooner, at the expense of a reduction in FPS and/or smoothness. Which would still be a win, since the end user can throw hardware at the problem to make it better. It’s anybody’s guess though really.

A plan B for culling:

Why is there culling currently:
If every team has 100 player on map this is 300 in total.
In principle it must be assumed that everyone can see everyone, i.e. all 300 are in sight-range (if you set the range to the whole map this is sure, if you set the range very small, it is unlikely, but can still happen e.g. during SM lord room fights).

For that the server must receive per “update” 300 infos (i.e. one per player) and send out 89’700 infos (every player needs to be informed about all others: 300*299).

If your server can do that fine. If not the easiest way to handle it is reduce the number of players. And this makes things much easier.

If you say 50 per team, only 22’500 infos must be send.
If you say 33 per team, only 10’000 infos must be send.

30vs30vs30 battles would be still nice, 50vs50vs50 battles would be still epic,
you hardly want larger ones.

Of Course, if ANet would just say only 30 (or 50) per team and map, prime-time queues will be a mess for everyone.

Here are two possible ways to handle that:

1) Overflow maps (not like the current bugs).

When EB has queue for 2 of the three servers a copy of EB is started (resumed from last save). When the total population of all active EBs would fit into WvW with one less active EB, one EB is shutdown (1min pre-anounced) and saved till next activated.
Ticker is running for all active maps, so the total ticker varies (only 695 if there is exactly 1 EB active).

Beside being Plan B for Culling it has two other good (in my view) effects:
During “not prime-time” the total number of payers may fit into just the BLs, in that case maybe no EB is active. i.e. night-capping is (fully-automatic by the amount of players that WANT play, and without any definition of primetime) reduced to BLs only. If you want to maximise that effect: Shutdown all BLs if all active player fit onto just one map, i.e. EB.

Setting a smaller number of maximal players makes the maps virtually larger (each player has more space).

2) Replace WvWvW by GuildAlliance vs GuildAlliance vs Guild Alliance.

People have no influence on how many players on their world likely want to play at which time, as they have no influence on who is (or joins or leaves) their world.
This changes when player-build alliances fight each other instead.
People can build their alliance for coverage and distribution, they can choose if they prefer the risk of queue over the risk of being out-manned and add guilds according to that or not.

Removing culling sounds legit.

Your real concearns are how the new behaviour affects bandwith on the server side, where activating skills will not go off ie. The Lord Room Syndrome.

OR

How your PC responds to the amount of things the client is telling your PC to render, causing performance problems that your PC didnt experience prior. Ideally this can simply be solved by dropping some of the settings down.