Guild Wars 2

Thieves really should have no c/d on their weapon swap.

I mean their entire initiative system is one single resource pool. Without it, all they can do is auto-attack.

It makes very little sense for warriors to have a trait that reduces their weapon swap c/d by 5s, when they can do some amazing combos with their disjointed skills…while thieves, whose skills are all restricted by a single resource, have a c/d, let alone a longer c/d.

Interesting. It would give thief more utility and more reflexe tools but I don’t believe they have a test server and do everything on paper this is brand new as well,we got stuff way old that never happen except of course those from the Nerf Wish List post it on that with some reverse psychology and you have increased chances.

You’re right … it should cost some initiative to swap weapons as much as you want with no cooldown. How much do you think is reasonable?

3 would be fair. Then quick pockets would stand out as an awesome trait.

IIRC, at one point thieves had separate initiative pools for each weapon set. Can anyone confirm?

Obtena.7952:

You’re right … it should cost some initiative to swap weapons as much as you want with no cooldown. How much do you think is reasonable?

I like me some hateful nonconstructive responses too when I see something posted that I don’t agree with, but I can’t explain why I don’t agree with it logically…because I simply dislike it for no reason at all.

What was hateful about his response? I agree, that if you remove the CD on weapon swapping for thieves, then it should cost initiative. Otherwise, it’s just too OP.

morbidillusion.2759:

IIRC, at one point thieves had separate initiative pools for each weapon set. Can anyone confirm?

They have never, as far as I can remember, had separate initiative pools by weapon set. It was highly requested at one point. Someone even crunched the numbers and found that every single other profession had better skill use/damage output based on weapon swapping when compared to thieves. old thread on here, not sure if it’s still around.

This would require a re-work of all on-weaponswap sigils

Turk.5460:

This would require a re-work of all on-weaponswap sigils

Not really it just wouldn’t proc just like kits etc. I believe this could cele thief meta and should be looked at, thief is the class that swaps the less, this can refresh it. Just post it on the Nerf Wish List.

Turk.5460:

This would require a re-work of all on-weaponswap sigils

Dont they have internal cooldowns already? That should be enough, Ele can swap attunements very fast as well without having unbalanced on-swap sigils, or dont they trigger on attunements?

This would be nice. Just put internal cd on quick pockets and swapping cost 2 init.

Meryn.6875:

Turk.5460:

This would require a re-work of all on-weaponswap sigils

Dont they have internal cooldowns already? That should be enough, Ele can swap attunements very fast as well without having unbalanced on-swap sigils, or dont they trigger on attunements?

9s icd

Maybe you Kurow should not be creating threads if you read people agreeing with you being hateful

I would love this, with some proper balance changes it could add some new useful tricks/combos and increase skillcap further.

Could be something like using 1/3 of the time remaining on a full swap CD as initiative, allowing for quicker repeated swaps at the cost similar to basic abilities, but not punishing too much for swapping very close to the actual timer.

i love reading stuff like this knowing it will never happen.

Not only would that be crazily OP (If I could swap for a quick SB3 or SB5 every time I needed too, not many build could resist me), but I think it would step on the specific mechanics of the warrior and the engineer, who can swap weapons really fast. In addition, Anet won’t change core class mechanics when the game is already 3 year old.

Kurow.3076:

Obtena.7952:

You’re right … it should cost some initiative to swap weapons as much as you want with no cooldown. How much do you think is reasonable?

I like me some hateful nonconstructive responses too when I see something posted that I don’t agree with, but I can’t explain why I don’t agree with it logically…because I simply dislike it for no reason at all.

Jeez, I agree with you and think it’s a good idea. It costs everyone else time because of the CD on swaps and weapon skills … if you don’t think it’s reasonable to swap weapons on thief with the same ‘time currency’ because they use an initiative mechanic … then it’s logical to assume they would use initiative for swapping instead.

If that wasn’t your intention with the thread … then what was?

Kurow.3076:

Thieves really should have no c/d on their weapon swap.

Short Answer: The game cannot handle it.

Long Answer: The server will get bombarded by packet requests that your game play as a Thief will not be satisfactory due to lag and packet loss. Besides, there is no real benefit in swapping other than combining skills across two sets — which you can already do. The cost of having access to 8 initiative skills is not balance to the current amount of Initiative we currently have. So for ArenaNet to allow a “no CD swap”, they would have to calculate that the amount of Initiative we’re getting is enough to support this mechanic. As of now, even at max 15 init, it’s not even enough for a single weapon set.

I wish we had no swap CD, but unless Warrior gets a better version of even that, we probably won’t. :<

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Kurow.3076:

Thieves really should have no c/d on their weapon swap.

Short Answer: The game cannot handle it.

Long Answer: The server will get bombarded by packet requests that your game play as a Thief will not be satisfactory due to lag and packet loss. Besides, there is no real benefit in swapping other than combining skills across two sets — which you can already do.

You realize you can swap weapons without cooldown when out of combat right? I do it constantly to BP+Clusterbomb. This is the steamiest pile of “trust me, my dad is a computer-maker” bs I’ve ever read.

morbidillusion.2759:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Kurow.3076:

Thieves really should have no c/d on their weapon swap.

Short Answer: The game cannot handle it.

Long Answer: The server will get bombarded by packet requests that your game play as a Thief will not be satisfactory due to lag and packet loss. Besides, there is no real benefit in swapping other than combining skills across two sets — which you can already do.

You realize you can swap weapons without cooldown when out of combat right? I do it constantly to BP+Clusterbomb. This is the steamiest pile of “trust me, my dad is a computer-maker” bs I’ve ever read.

You realize that swapping out of combat functions very differently while in combat, right? This is the steamiest pile of “i know all about cooldown and why it exist” bs I’ve ever read.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

morbidillusion.2759:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Kurow.3076:

Thieves really should have no c/d on their weapon swap.

Short Answer: The game cannot handle it.

Long Answer: The server will get bombarded by packet requests that your game play as a Thief will not be satisfactory due to lag and packet loss. Besides, there is no real benefit in swapping other than combining skills across two sets — which you can already do.

You realize you can swap weapons without cooldown when out of combat right? I do it constantly to BP+Clusterbomb. This is the steamiest pile of “trust me, my dad is a computer-maker” bs I’ve ever read.

You realize that swapping out of combat functions very differently while in combat, right? This is the steamiest pile of “i know all about cooldown and why it exist” bs I’ve ever read.

I don’t get how it would be harder on the system than engi kits.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

morbidillusion.2759:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Kurow.3076:

Thieves really should have no c/d on their weapon swap.

Short Answer: The game cannot handle it.

Long Answer: The server will get bombarded by packet requests that your game play as a Thief will not be satisfactory due to lag and packet loss. Besides, there is no real benefit in swapping other than combining skills across two sets — which you can already do.

You realize you can swap weapons without cooldown when out of combat right? I do it constantly to BP+Clusterbomb. This is the steamiest pile of “trust me, my dad is a computer-maker” bs I’ve ever read.

You realize that swapping out of combat functions very differently while in combat, right? This is the steamiest pile of “i know all about cooldown and why it exist” bs I’ve ever read.

But it doesn’t other than adding a cooldown trigger on weapon swap. Which in the grand scheme of things, has very little impact on performance.

Maugetarr.6823:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

morbidillusion.2759:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Kurow.3076:

Thieves really should have no c/d on their weapon swap.

Short Answer: The game cannot handle it.

Long Answer: The server will get bombarded by packet requests that your game play as a Thief will not be satisfactory due to lag and packet loss. Besides, there is no real benefit in swapping other than combining skills across two sets — which you can already do.

You realize you can swap weapons without cooldown when out of combat right? I do it constantly to BP+Clusterbomb. This is the steamiest pile of “trust me, my dad is a computer-maker” bs I’ve ever read.

You realize that swapping out of combat functions very differently while in combat, right? This is the steamiest pile of “i know all about cooldown and why it exist” bs I’ve ever read.

I don’t get how it would be harder on the system than engi kits.

There is a cooldown of approx. 1s when swapping Engi’s kit.

And the difference with Engi’s kit and Thief’s weapon is that, Thief can spam skill until Initiatives are depleted, Engi cannot do that since their skills have individual cooldowns.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

You realize that swapping out of combat functions very differently while in combat, right? This is the steamiest pile of “i know all about cooldown and why it exist” bs I’ve ever read.

In that it has a cooldown while in combat for balance reasons? I can see players use their abilities when they are out of combat, so the information is still getting sent to the server. Clearly there is no “packet issue” that is kicking players for using abilities quickly on weapon swap because players can already kittening do it.

You literally made that kitten up and now you’re trying to defend it. You are the worst kind of human. Your best option was to just say you were drunk and don’t know why you posted that.

morbidillusion.2759:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

You realize that swapping out of combat functions very differently while in combat, right? This is the steamiest pile of “i know all about cooldown and why it exist” bs I’ve ever read.

In that it has a cooldown while in combat for balance reasons? I can see players use their abilities when they are out of combat, so the information is still getting sent to the server. Clearly there is no “packet issue” that is kicking players for using abilities quickly on weapon swap because players can already kittening do it.

You literally made that kitten up and now you’re trying to defend it. You are the worst kind of human. Your best option was to just say you were drunk and don’t know why you posted that.

The fact is, it is a lingering problem in the game when there are too many players sending skills request at the same time.

Stop acting like you know. If you don’t notice that your skills fails to activate during combat, then you are not in a position to say what you’re saying because you honestly don’t know anything.

Here, educate yourself

When playing a Thief, a 1/4s lag is very noticeable because it screws up your over all timing. This is not the same things as playing a Warrior where you can spam-press your skill button so it will activate as soon as it goes out of cooldown — if you do that while playing a Thief, you’ve just wasted your initiatives.

morbidillusion.2759:

You literally made that kitten up and now you’re trying to defend it. You are the worst kind of human.

Not to derail the thread or anything, but huh?

That’s a bit personal. I can imagine tons of things that is worse than having a different opinion than I. I could justify that kind of comment if he was responsible for a holocaust, but not really in this case.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Here, educate yourself

I think you need to “educate yourself” before trying to act smart.

Server lag is not the same as packet loss, nor is either the same as fps loss.

Removing the c/d on weapon swap will not kill the servers.

Now stop derailing the thread, thanks.

Kurow.3076:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Here, educate yourself

I think you need to “educate yourself” before trying to act smart.

Server lag is not the same as packet loss, nor is either the same as fps loss.

Removing the c/d on weapon swap will not kill the servers.

Now stop derailing the thread, thanks.

Who said anything about “kill the servers”? Reading Comprehension 101.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

The fact is, it is a lingering problem in the game when there are too many players sending skills request at the same time.

<snip>

Here, educate yourself

Vincent, to be fair, that page discusses skill lag as a server-side problem due to the high number of players in WvW. This creates a race condition when executing skills on the server, and some skills will not even execute as a result (a race condition occurs when the ordering of the results of two or more processes is highly contingent on the smallest of time delays between them, so the output is unpredictable and can give rise to undesirable consequences). The “skill lag” discussed is purely server-side and has nothing to do with network communication, but is rather (I presume) due to the way the skill execution queues are implemented in the code.

Swapping weapon sets can be thought of as an atomic (or unitary) command – there is no need to send a lot of data to the server, just the command that “weapon swap has taken place”. The client and server can then simultaneously perform the requisite game logic (in fact, the server does not implement all of the details of the client because of lack of a graphical environment – a toggle in the database is simply flipped).

Accordingly, whether a weapon swap happens every few seconds or every second, should not in theory impact the communication between server and client any more than other atomic commands like executing skills. There shouldn’t be anything particularly “heavy” about swapping weapons, from the server’s perspective.

— CS grad with some networking & OS kernel programming experience (usually not needed but everyone is a little uppity about each other’s credentials on this thread, so…)

EDIT: to be clear, I’m certainly not claiming that I know the ins and outs of the GW2 code, only that from a general perspective of server-client programming, I don’t see why weapon swaps should be any more demanding than other commands. This is contingent on design decisions on Anet’s part, of course.

alccode.1297:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

The fact is, it is a lingering problem in the game when there are too many players sending skills request at the same time.

<snip>

Here, educate yourself

Vincent, to be fair, that page discusses skill lag as a server-side problem due to the high number of players in WvW. This creates a race condition when executing skills on the server, and some skills will not even execute as a result (a race condition occurs when the ordering of the results of two or more processes is highly contingent on the smallest of time delays between them, so the output is unpredictable and can give rise to undesirable consequences). The “skill lag” discussed is purely server-side and has nothing to do with network communication, but is rather (I presume) due to the way the skill execution queues are implemented in the code.

Do you ever have a skill on your skill bar that continues to pulse as if you have pressed it? This is your client waiting for the server data to tell it that the command has been executed, but for some reason that packet of data was lost.

The skill lag being discussed is to determine whether it is client-side, server-side, or the network that was causing it. Nobody is saying with certainty that it is server-side.

Swapping weapon sets can be thought of as an atomic (or unitary) command – there is no need to send a lot of data to the server, just the command that “weapon swap has taken place”. The client and server can then simultaneously perform the requisite game logic (in fact, the server does not implement all of the details of the client because of lack of a graphical environment – a toggle in the database is simply flipped).

I don’t believe that the weapon swapping is toggle in the database, otherwise the client will send multiple request to query the database just to flip the switch. That’s even a much worst situation than we have now. Good thing that is not the case.

All the skills are instead loaded into the Memory, making a single query whenever we enter a zone. So the weapon swapping is happening on the client side, but as far as the server is concerned, we have all 10 weapon skills available and only using 5 of them at a time.

Accordingly, whether a weapon swap happens every few seconds or every second, should not in theory impact the communication between server and client any more than other atomic commands like executing skills. There shouldn’t be anything particularly “heavy” about swapping weapons, from the server’s perspective.

It’s not about the weapon swapping that will cause the problem, it is the request of all skills placed in the queue to be executed. Without cooldown, the client can easily bogged down the server with a massive queued skills. The 10 seconds cooldown allows the server to clear up the queue before accepting new requests.

— CS grad with some networking & OS kernel programming experience (usually not needed but everyone is a little uppity about each other’s credentials on this thread, so…)

Yes it is not needed, especially stating that the weapon swapping is switch in the database without realizing that each swap will create a query, which adds up to the server load, just to flip a switch — when a more feasible and logical approach is to conduct a single query and load all data into the Memory. This is why GW2 has a long loading time from zone to zone.

EDIT: to be clear, I’m certainly not claiming that I know the ins and outs of the GW2 code, only that from a general perspective of server-client programming, I don’t see why weapon swaps should be any more demanding than other commands. This is contingent on design decisions on Anet’s part, of course.

Because it was never about the weapon swap, it is about the skills made available when a weapon is swapped without cooldown.

Wow, I honestly didn’t expect you to become so confrontational, Vincent! (edit: because what I wrote was not really up to debate, it was just stating what the issues in client-server communication can possibly be from a technical standpoint)

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Do you ever have a skill on your skill bar that continues to pulse as if you have pressed it? This is your client waiting for the server data to tell it that the command has been executed, but for some reason that packet of data was lost.

This is irrelevant. I’ll address it very briefly. Sure, that happens all right, and when it does, everything else is non-responsive. That’s when all packets are being dropped between the server and client. But that’s not the skill lag being discussed. Sorry, this is a non sequitur. Like I said, and like Arena.net dev BillFreist has confirmed, it’s a server-side processing problem:

BillFreist.1527:

As far as skills just not executing (noticed some people claiming utilities are more susceptible to this), its mostly just a race-condition as far as processing on the server. You’ll notice that your auto-attack skill seems to process more reliably than other skills. This is mostly due to the fact that we process things like auto-attack timers before player input. Obviously that sounds like a bug (and honestly now that I think about it, I want to look into doing something about it), but the reality is that under normal circumstances, the player input would process before the auto-attack timer triggers. Something you can try to verify this is disabling your auto-attack and see if your other skills become more responsive.

You continue:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

The skill lag being discussed is to determine whether it is client-side, server-side, or the network that was causing it. Nobody is saying with certainty that it is server-side.

On the contrary, Arena.net devs are saying with certainty that it is server-side (added emphasis below):

BillFreist.1527:

Part 1:

To clarify some common questions:

• What does optimization mean in terms of the original post?
  …
  • Though server CPU usage is the biggest factor here, there are other optimizations as part of the changes going on. Bandwidth is another thing that plagues players with slower internet connections. That is something that we’re actively rolling out changes for, with the next set of changes coming at the end of October.
  • Removes the bottleneck in almost all of the game systems. Most of what goes on in the game is processed on the server, including combat, skills and movement. When this bottleneck is relieved, the changes will pretty much speak for themselves. A common example goes back to skill usage where in heavy battles, you press and skill key, but that skill never fires or your auto-attack skill fires instead.

What may be confusing for you here is the conflation of “latency” and “lag” with network slowdown/bandwidth or server-client communication issues. In computer science, latency is the delay between the execution of an action broadly construed (CPU instruction, network packet sending, initiation of task scheduling) and the desired end result. Network latency or lag is but one type of “latency”. But just because the discussion is about “skill lag”, this does not at all mean that it is de facto a network problem. As we can see, Anet does not have a bandwidth issue. It is surely a server-side issue because there are a limited amount of threads on the server to handle all of the players in a single instance.

I don’t believe that the weapon swapping is toggle in the database, otherwise the client will send multiple request to query the database just to flip the switch. That’s even a much worst situation than we have now. Good thing that is not the case.

How does weapon swapping being a toggle in the database require multiple requests? It does not need to retrieve the current state. It just pushes the client state.

All the skills are instead loaded into the Memory, making a single query whenever we enter a zone. So the weapon swapping is happening on the client side, but as far as the server is concerned, we have all 10 weapon skills available and only using 5 of them at a time.

No, it happens on the server. Test it for yourself (I just did). Load the game with one weapon set. Then swap sets and quit the game entirely. Load it again. The second set that you swapped to will be set as your main set. Even if you uninstalled and reinstalled, the weapon swap will persist.

(continued)

It’s not about the weapon swapping that will cause the problem, it is the request of all skills placed in the queue to be executed. Without cooldown, the client can easily bogged down the server with a massive queued skills. The 10 seconds cooldown allows the server to clear up the queue before accepting new requests.

It absolutely IS about the weapon swapping, remember?

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Kurow.3076:

Thieves really should have no c/d on their weapon swap.

Short Answer: The game cannot handle it.

Moving on…

— CS grad with some networking & OS kernel programming experience (usually not needed but everyone is a little uppity about each other’s credentials on this thread, so…)

Yes it is not needed,..

Well clearly education and expertise counts for nothing on the internet when random opinions can be offered as a legitimate counter-argument (hint: they’re still just opinions, and usually wrong).

… especially stating that the weapon swapping is switch in the database without realizing that each swap will create a query, which adds up to the server load, just to flip a switch — when a more feasible and logical approach is to conduct a single query and load all data into the Memory. This is why GW2 has a long loading time from zone to zone.

No, you’re confusing two separate issues. (I’m very tempted to ask you if you have any programming experience, but it’s actually irrelevant since your argument is still incorrect.)

There is a huge difference between (1) loading weapon assets and (2) preserving weapon state. The two are entirely different. Yes, #1 makes sense to do when you load your character (however I highly doubt it has to be loaded when you enter a zone, it is loaded when you log on and then updated only when you actually equip weapons). Nevertheless, it does not obviate the need for #2. It’s a design decision. Anet wanted weapon swaps to be preserved across game sessions and zones. Why? Because you would have a bad and unpolished gaming experience if you didn’t. Here’s a demonstration.

Let’s say weapon state was not preserved. Assume you have D/D (weapon set 1) and SB (weapon set 2). Assume the server does not keep track of which weapon set is currently equipped. Then, when you enter another zone, how does the server know which weapon set to load? It doesn’t keep track, so it just assigns weapon set 1. So then you have the experience that if you are using SB and transition to another zone, you’ll suddenly find that D/D is equipped, which is jarring and a bug. “But this is kept track on the client!” you say. Not so. Assume it is, and you have SB. Then you transition, but your game client crashes (sadly can happen especially e.g. using the Mac Beta client), or the connection is dropped and you have to reconnect. When you do, the server has to update your client as to the state your character was in. If it doesn’t tell the client what the weapon set currently equipped was, you’ll be back to weapon set 1 and the D/D, which is not what you had before you crashed/dropped.

“But this is STILL saved on the client!” you continue to protest. Not so. Assume you uninstall and reinstall the game, or you connect on another computer. The server needs to keep track of what your current weapon set was, otherwise you’ll get the wrong one. And it really matters to the gameplay. Let’s say you keep a single weapon set 95% of the time, like D/D, and only swap to SB in particular situations (heavy mob and have to use SB 3 a lot, etc.) If you normally use one weapon set but then get strangely swapped to another in between game transitions, you’ll start using a D/D skill but it’ll be the unexpected SB one (or vice versa). This is breaking the gameplay experience and is a bug.

This is why saving the weapon swap state on the server is required.

See, as a game programmer, when you get to the nitty gritty of server-client architectures, the server has to keep track of all or most of the client state in order to preserve the user’s experience regardless of the client. Anet cannot guarantee that the client will maintain its state across logins – the user has full control over their system and can fiddle with it (yes and this opens the possibility to exploits – another reason to keep track of everything server-side). Everything pertaining to the game logic has to be maintained on the server. Anet dev Bill confirms this, remember: “most of what goes on in the game is processed on the server.”

(…continued…)

Because it was never about the weapon swap, it is about the skills made available when a weapon is swapped without cooldown.

Except that skills are immediately made available upon cooldown, this is how the game works. Why would an additional swap suddenly choke the server’s bandwidth? It’s just one additional bit of information. “Bit” meant in the technical sense, so assuming an 8-bit int as the smallest amount of information, i.e., Anet is not using bitwise operations which I seriously doubt, then weapon swap is literally one additional byte at most. Weapon-based skills are just a fraction of all of the data the client has to send to the server.

When dealing with large amounts of concurrent users accessing a single server, although bandwidth is a factor, it can be easily corrected for – just add a bigger pipe (and Anet did this, again it’s in that other thread). The biggest bottleneck by far is the server’s CPU. The problem is not getting the data to the server. The problem is processing that data simultaneously.

Ok, that’s it for addressing your direct responses to me. Now to address one other response you made in this thread (to someone else).

Sir Vincent III.1286:

You realize that swapping out of combat functions very differently while in combat, right?

Yes, there is a cooldown, but the game logic is otherwise the same. As far as the discussion is concerned (about this taxing the servers) it makes absolutely no difference if you swap weapons in or out of combat (as exhaustively discussed above). The whole point of having a cooldown is not to take it easy on the servers, it’s to prevent players from having too much of an intermixed weapon situation. Anet did not want players be able to mix and match at will skills between weapons because this would break game balance. There would be a particular combination of weapon skills between two sets that would always work better than any other for a class, and players would stick with that without varying. Anet designed each weapon set to work cohesively and be balanced, but only within that weapon set. This is why cooldowns exist. They force the player to work with the designed skills per weapon set, and not mix and match too much.

EDIT: ^ this was needed to point out to you because you have a wrong idea of why cooldowns exist, as evidenced in your comment:

Without cooldown, the client can easily bogged down the server with a massive queued skills. The 10 seconds cooldown allows the server to clear up the queue before accepting new requests.

That’s not why the weapon swap cooldown exist at all (like I said it’s for game balance issues). But treating the “bogging down” of the server aspect, aside from the technicalities discussed ad nauseam above (TL;DR the bottleneck is the server CPU not the bandwidth), you are completely forgetting that skills have individual cooldowns. There is no way to initiate that many skills, and even if there was ZERO cooldown, or infinite initiative for a Thief, there wouldn’t be a problem with choking the server because the bandwidth is not the issue. Another game programming aspect here is the concept of skill buffering. Even if you could activate many skills with zero cooldowns, it does not even make sense from a game point of view to activate them all at once or even to keep them all in a buffer, because say you mash 10 skills one after the other in rapid succession. By the time you’re in the middle of the chain of skill execution there, the goings on in the game will have changed so much that it won’t make sense to be executing any more of those skills you pressed earlier, and you will be trying to enter new commands that will not be executed because they’re so backlogged in the buffer. The experience this would be from the player’s perspective is that your character is “stuck” in executing these other skills and is not responding to your current commands. This is why a very short buffer actually exists, maybe 1 or 2 seconds long at most, enough to keep track of only the very next skill you tried to execute and nothing beyond that.

alccode.1297:

This is irrelevant. I’ll address it very briefly. Sure, that happens all right, and when it does, everything else is non-responsive. That’s when all packets are being dropped between the server and client. But that’s not the skill lag being discussed. Sorry, this is a non sequitur. Like I said, and like Arena.net dev BillFreist has confirmed, it’s a server-side processing problem:

~snip~

On the contrary, Arena.net devs are saying with certainty that it is server-side (added emphasis below):

~snip~

What may be confusing for you here is the conflation of “latency” and “lag” with network slowdown/bandwidth or server-client communication issues. In computer science, latency is the delay between the execution of an action broadly construed (CPU instruction, network packet sending, initiation of task scheduling) and the desired end result.
~snip ~

It is very clear that there are server issues, yes, but the dev never confirm that IT IS THE ONLY source of the players problem.

They acknowledge that they will fix their end, but it’s not a guarantee that your skill will not lag.

You insist that it is server-side, yet your request travels thru a number of other servers within your network before it reaches their server.

So which part of their post again where they mention with certainty that it is only a server-side issue?

How does weapon swapping being a toggle in the database require multiple requests? It does not need to retrieve the current state. It just pushes the client state.

That comment is within the context of swapping without cooldown which will result in multiple requests.

No, it happens on the server. Test it for yourself (I just did). Load the game with one weapon set. Then swap sets and quit the game entirely. Load it again. The second set that you swapped to will be set as your main set. Even if you uninstalled and reinstalled, the weapon swap will persist.

That doesn’t even prove anything. The client can easily send your current state as one request that updates the database when there’s no active connection.

If you find yourself “rubber-banding” back to where you were, that’s a proof that what you do is not happening on the server-side.

It absolutely IS about the weapon swapping, remember?

cherry picking

There is a huge difference between (1) loading weapon assets and (2) preserving weapon state. The two are entirely different. Yes, #1 makes sense to do when you load your character (however I highly doubt it has to be loaded when you enter a zone, it is loaded when you log on and then updated only when you actually equip weapons).

Um, no. The client is also loading other players’ skills within range of your character, so that when those players use their skills, you don’t have to load them individually. However, as more player gets within range, you start to lag because your client is trying to load all the additional players’ skills — this is where the main issue is in WvW.

Nevertheless, it does not obviate the need for #2. It’s a design decision. Anet wanted weapon swaps to be preserved across game sessions and zones. Why? Because you would have a bad and unpolished gaming experience if you didn’t. Here’s a demonstration.

Weapon state does not need to be preserved on the server side because the client is already controlling with skills you have access to.

Let’s say weapon state was not preserved. Assume you have D/D (weapon set 1) and SB (weapon set 2). ~snip~

Um, no.

“But this is STILL saved on the client!” you continue to protest.

That’s what you think I said, but not what I said at all.

This is why saving the weapon swap state on the server is required.

This is getting ridiculous.

See, as a game programmer, when you get to the nitty gritty of server-client architectures, the server has to keep track of all or most of the client state in order to preserve the user’s experience regardless of the client. Anet cannot guarantee that the client will maintain its state across logins – the user has full control over their system and can fiddle with it (yes and this opens the possibility to exploits – another reason to keep track of everything server-side). Everything pertaining to the game logic has to be maintained on the server. Anet dev Bill confirms this, remember: “most of what goes on in the game is processed on the server.”

Keyword: “most”

Thank you for your feedback.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

It is very clear that there are server issues, yes, but the dev never confirm that IT IS THE ONLY source of the players problem.

They acknowledge that they will fix their end, but it’s not a guarantee that your skill will not lag.

The network will be a wildcard no matter what. But it doesn’t create a general problem. In this case, a general skill lag problem was resolved due to server-side fixes.. Read the title of that thread again (if not the dev answers, which you totally ignored). “Official state of skill lag and server optimizations”.

You insist that it is server-side, yet your request travels thru a number of other servers within your network before it reaches their server.

(Ignoring your blooper about travel through “a number of other servers”… network traffic is relayed via switches, routers, and hubs – not ‘servers’)

The fact that it must go through the network does not mean the network is a problem. I already went over why it isn’t – you didn’t address any of it.

Your statement is logically unsound. Yes, the skill commands always go through the network, and they also are always entered by the keyboard. That doesn’t mean the skill lag problem is due to keyboards.

So which part of their post again where they mention with certainty that it is only a server-side issue?

I already quoted it. Go back and read it.

How does weapon swapping being a toggle in the database require multiple requests? It does not need to retrieve the current state. It just pushes the client state.

That comment is within the context of swapping without cooldown which will result in multiple requests.

Cherry-picking your own words?

Sir Vincent III.1286:

I don’t believe that the weapon swapping is toggle in the database, otherwise the client will send multiple request to query the database just to flip the switch. That’s even a much worst situation than we have now. Good thing that is not the case.

“the client will send multiple request to query the database just to flip the switch”
^^ I was addressing THAT.

Care to try again?

That doesn’t even prove anything. The client can easily send your current state as one request that updates the database when there’s no active connection.

If you find yourself “rubber-banding” back to where you were, that’s a proof that what you do is not happening on the server-side.

So you’re saying the game client communicates with the server (requiring a connection) when there isn’t a connection? (facepalm) And remember, we’re talking about weapon swap state being maintained on the server, which I am arguing for in the quote you are disagreeing with. Yet you say “one request that updates the database” in this context of weapon swaps, which is agreeing with me. Your argument is not even coherent. Do you even understand why you are disagreeing with me?

Rubber banding? Where does rubber banding come into play here? I am talking about preservation of weapon swap state independently of the client, thus indicating it is stored on the server (which you originally disagreed with).

It absolutely IS about the weapon swapping, remember?

cherry picking

Just stating it doesn’t make it so. For example, I showed above where you cherry picked your own words.

Care to elaborate on how it is cherry picking?

There is a huge difference between (1) loading weapon assets and (2) preserving weapon state. The two are entirely different. Yes, #1 makes sense to do when you load your character (however I highly doubt it has to be loaded when you enter a zone, it is loaded when you log on and then updated only when you actually equip weapons).

Um, no. The client is also loading other players’ skills within range of your character, so that when those players use their skills, you don’t have to load them individually. However, as more player gets within range, you start to lag because your client is trying to load all the additional players’ skills — this is where the main issue is in WvW.

What? Does each player have totally different skills? Only 8 professions’ worth of skills need to be loaded at once. What weapons and skills each player has is just a pointer to these assets that are loaded once. You are still confusing asset loading with state preservation.

Weapon state does not need to be preserved on the server side because the client is already controlling with skills you have access to.

Repeating yourself after I disproved you does not make your point legitimate again! Please address the individual statements I made because this is not good enough. If you want to argue, back your statements up. Especially if you’re just repeating old arguments. Otherwise you are just a troll.

Let’s say weapon state was not preserved. Assume you have D/D (weapon set 1) and SB (weapon set 2). ~snip~

Um, no.

Seriously? I’m laughing pretty hard right now. You have nothing to say and nothing to stand on.

“But this is STILL saved on the client!” you continue to protest.

That’s what you think I said, but not what I said at all.

First, I am actually helping you by arguing for you, it’s a common tool in argumentation. I’m presenting the most obvious counter to my argument, and then addressing it. Second, yes it is. You are saying it’s saved on the client! You did it in the very same breath! Just a few lines up you said “weapon state does not need to be preserved on the server side because the client is already controlling with skills you have access to.” That means you’re saying the weapon state is stored on the client!

This is why saving the weapon swap state on the server is required.

This is getting ridiculous.

I argued very clearly and you didn’t address anything whatsoever. What is truly ridiculous about this, and this is a first that I’ve EVER seen, is a troll that not only doesn’t read properly the counterarguments, but fails to even understand what he is saying.

<snip>Anet dev Bill confirms this, remember: “most of what goes on in the game is processed on the server.”

Keyword: “most”

Yeah, most. Obviously things like whether you have opened up your main menu or not is not stored on the server. But weapon swap definitely is.

Thank you for your feedback.

What about the cooldowns? You totally ignored that part. Vincent, I’m sorry, I really only joined this thread to bring some light into the innards of programming to help with the discussion about server lag. I wasn’t trying to argue in the first place, yet you incredibly found a way to disagree with this. Why do you even feel like arguing? You are not a bad person if you are wrong. It’s ok to be wrong. Just… tone down your ego, man. And when dealing with a topic with which you have no training in and no sensible ideas, it’s best to not continue arguing.

EDIT: to be clear, I’ve seen your posts in this forum and you have good advice about being a Thief, so I’m obviously cool with you. It’s just about this issue… it really shouldn’t even be an argument!

Can we go back to discussing whether Thief weapon swap should depend on initiative and not have a cooldown?

This is a very interesting suggestion and at first glance it seems “obvious” that it would be very congruent with the Thief playstyle, but I don’t think it would make that much of a difference. If the swap cost was not insignificant, it would still be penalizing to swap multiple times rapidly, thus rendering it very expensive to use whatever skill you’re trying to focus on your other weapon set.

I think a good way of going about this would be to think about a concrete example that shows how using initiative-based swap would make things better for Thieves without being OP.

I.e., what is the problem that initative-based weapon swap would be solving? Just the fact that weapon swap has a cooldown? But every class has that. What is it about the Thief that requires them to not have it? It has to be a bit more concrete than just “it’s totally the Thief’s style”, I think.

alccode.1297:

EDIT: to be clear, I’ve seen your posts in this forum and you have good advice about being a Thief, so I’m obviously cool with you. It’s just about this issue… it really shouldn’t even be an argument!

It wasn’t even an argument. You believe one thing, I believe on one thing. Whether any of us is right, only ArenaNet can tell.

My post was solely based on my observation since I frequent WvW and PvP. As I’ve stated above, whatever they did on the server-side to alleviate the “skill lag” didn’t work because it still happens — even when playing in the middle of the night.

ArenaNet sure mentioned where the bottle neck is, but that is hard to believe when they expect at least 500 players going out on each other in a massive zerg vs zerg scenario. So either they are full of kitten into believing that their server can handle that many players or they are full of kitten into saying that the server CPU causes the bottle neck — take your pick. I simply choose to believe the former while you choose to believe the latter.

It’s getting ridiculous because were arguing something based on what they said, when in fact, both statements could be wrong and ArenaNet is full of kitten no matter what they say.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

ArenaNet sure mentioned where the bottle neck is, but that is hard to believe when they expect at least 500 players going out on each other in a massive zerg vs zerg scenario. So either they are full of kitten into believing that their server can handle that many players or they are full of kitten into saying that the server CPU causes the bottle neck — take your pick. I simply choose to believe the former while you choose to believe the latter.

Isolated networking issues will always persist, which explains why you still see skill lag in the middle of the night. Your traffic was choking somewhere even prior to getting to Anet’s servers. This will not and cannot be fixed in a general way (until the day that all ISPs upgrade to gigabit+ speeds on all routes).

On the other hand, the server-side race condition was indeed a general problem that impacted a lot of players, and stopped impacting them once resolved (some even commented to that effect directly in that thread). You can rest assured that Anet monitors the results of these changes and will have been satisfied with the fix (or not – and then fix it again, but from the looks of it the server-side optimizations succeeded).

It’s getting ridiculous because were arguing something based on what they said, when in fact, both statements could be wrong and ArenaNet is full of kitten no matter what they say.

Actually, what they said pretty clearly favours the server-side issues being dominant, as do the technical considerations once you think about them.

As for Anet being full of kitten, they are actually quite competent people! You might find this GDC presentation interesting, it goes into some detail regarding all the complexities that go into optimizing the server architecture to make it scalable for lots of players:

http://www.above-the-garage.com/blog/2013/4/2/gdc-2013-talk-on-guild-wars-2-scalability.html

And going back to the original issue – making thief weapon swap based on initiative will most certainly not choke the servers.

(At this point I’m fine with agreeing to disagree.)