Guild Wars 2

Please fix it. Culling ive gotten used to, culling sucks…. it sucks a whole lot..

But skill lag is gamebreaking, literally making the game unplayable.

agreed.I can’t even heal anymore and a lot of people dc too.

Yeah, the skill lag is crazy bad. I’ve died several times because all I could do was Auto Attack.

Skill lag is way OP!!!!! :P

On reset all 3 servers went to SM and god, the skill lag we got there, I tried to use my heal skill over 10 times in a row, nor once did it activate :P

Let’s see what the March update brings though.

The skill lag is getting insane and so are the size of the zergballs in WvW. Do something to make zerging not as useful and fix the skill lag.

It is the very definition of game breaking since you literally can’t play the game.

What I don’t get is why it is so much worse over the past week. They must have changed something. Maybe they are doing a lot of logging.

Anyways, 3-way fights should be the best part of WvW rather than nearly unbearable.

Ability lag is what you get without culling when you don’t have sufficient server-side data handling capacity. It seems almost certain that ANet is playing around with various live trials in advance of whatever they have planned for the March WvW update. They’re probably playing around with some minor game engine mods (compression algorithms, etc) and they’ve dropped a couple of undocumented stealth patches in the last couple of weeks that most likely include some trial client-side mods. The clumsy trick they pulled in WvW a few nights ago where they shut down some servers (but not all) suggests they are also trying out some hardware mods, keeping in mind that ANet uses some sort of server capacity sharing scheme for WvW.

All of these apparent trials have actually made things worse … we still have bad culling but the ability lag is now much worse and they’ve added random disconnects that put you all the way back to the character select screen. They seem to be trying to find the absolute minimum approach to fixing the game, and while that probably makes sense from a business point of view it’s likely to give us some scary surprises in the March patch given the various probabilities. The more complex the environment and the less you actually know about it (keep in mind that ANet has admitted they didn’t know queues didn’t correlate with the number of players actually active on the map), the less likely that a rifle shot will hit the target.

Anet better get their stuff together… a poster mentioned in a thread on guru that Anet “wrote the ten commandments on what NOT TO DO for large scale pvp combat” and all of their business competitors im sure have taken notice.

I couldnt agree more.

crewthief.8649:

Yeah, the skill lag is crazy bad. I’ve died several times because all I could do was Auto Attack.

Well, lucky you. I play mostly a grenadier and grenade kit has no auto attack above
water. :-P

The skill lag has been absolutely horrible in euro tier #1 in prime time. In worst case it can take several minutes to activate a skill. Last night I was several times pressing a skill button like 10 times in a row, still after 30 seconds no skill activation. I know it is as bad for everyone. Guild Wars 2 WvWvW = Lag Wars 2.

My team mate was also getting kicked out of the game, when a huge enemy zerg was around her, despite her net is usually very good.

This afternoon daytime there was much less people on the borderlands and much less lag as well. Nice fights against SFR, who was controlling VS BL completely until 4 of us came there. Culling is still broken and it is really annoying to fight against two enemy thieves, who are invisible 95% of the time. I actually should not complain as my team mates were also playing thieves + one elementalist.

Aurust.8961:

Anet better get their stuff together… a poster mentioned in a thread on guru that Anet “wrote the ten commandments on what NOT TO DO for large scale pvp combat” and all of their business competitors im sure have taken notice.

I couldnt agree more.

Rift (in the form of their Conquest 3-faction map) probably did it the worst, but GW2 is a close second. The trouble is, ANet seems to have neither the inclination nor the resources to fix the key shortfalls of WvW … points that two very large Tier 1 guild leaders seemed to reluctantly acknowledge when they publicly stated in one of the recent weekly GW2Junkies telecasts that GW2 was now merely a place holder for their members until TESO and ArcheAge come out later this year. I honestly don’t think WvW in GW2 will recover in time even though I truly wish it would.q

One person having lag with there skill means nothing in wvw and in a group fight now if every one is having this lag well then it becomes a problem.

Any way your chose is culling or lag take your chose.

Jski.6180:

One person having lag with there skill means nothing in wvw and in a group fight now if every one is having this lag well then it becomes a problem.

Any way your chose is culling or lag take your chose.

Heh, I choose neither of them because they aren’t an either or choice. Well, we have both now but anet is breaking stuff lately.

What is interesting is that I have found that some abilities usually fire, while others simply won’t fire without many attempts. The AOE abilities usually won’t fire while single target tend to fire off immediately or by the 2nd attempt. Except, oddly, some of my self-targeted defensive skills, but not heals. My self-heals go off fine but not AOE heals. Of course, sometimes I just freeze up but that is your basic ‘you just got run over by 40+’ GW2 culling lag. The enemies always appear as you go into your deaths throws.

If the March patch is meh I am back to WAR until I make a stab at the next MMO to get it wrong.

Cactus.2710:

Aurust.8961:

Anet better get their stuff together… a poster mentioned in a thread on guru that Anet “wrote the ten commandments on what NOT TO DO for large scale pvp combat” and all of their business competitors im sure have taken notice.

I couldnt agree more.

Rift (in the form of their Conquest 3-faction map) probably did it the worst, but GW2 is a close second. The trouble is, ANet seems to have neither the inclination nor the resources to fix the key shortfalls of WvW … points that two very large Tier 1 guild leaders seemed to reluctantly acknowledge when they publicly stated in one of the recent weekly GW2Junkies telecasts that GW2 was now merely a place holder for their members until TESO and ArcheAge come out later this year. I honestly don’t think WvW in GW2 will recover in time even though I truly wish it would.q

Yeah, Rift was fun but ultimately a big disappointment as they did nothing for PvP/RvR and just focused on PvE.

BrockMcCleery.9562:

Jski.6180:

One person having lag with there skill means nothing in wvw and in a group fight now if every one is having this lag well then it becomes a problem.

Any way your chose is culling or lag take your chose.

Heh, I choose neither of them because they aren’t an either or choice. Well, we have both now but anet is breaking stuff lately.

What is interesting is that I have found that some abilities usually fire, while others simply won’t fire without many attempts. The AOE abilities usually won’t fire while single target tend to fire off immediately or by the 2nd attempt. Except, oddly, some of my self-targeted defensive skills, but not heals. My self-heals go off fine but not AOE heals. Of course, sometimes I just freeze up but that is your basic ‘you just got run over by 40+’ GW2 culling lag. The enemies always appear as you go into your deaths throws.

If the March patch is meh I am back to WAR until I make a stab at the next MMO to get it wrong.

Well Anet cant do any thing about your pc or other ppl pc so i think your asking for something that cant be comply done. You have calling to keep ppl lower end pc running and you get lag if your pc is trying to lode too many. Your pc may be able to hand it but others cant.

Also you will not find any mmorpgs with out any type of lag or calling so… may be big mmorpgs are not for you there are some pure pvp games out there but its more of teams 5 vs 5 or so not 150 vs 150.

Til they fix this in march try scrolling all the way in your view and just look at the ground you can get some skills off that way. Still really sucks we have to wait til march

Sorry, the lag has nothing to do with one’s PC, but with the server’s ability to handle client data. As the number of clients increases linearly, the amount of data increases exponentially.

AKA anet upgrade your servers. but they dont want to spend money, so we have issues like this.

+1 to the OP, tired of the skill lag Anet.

Aurust.8961:

But skill lag is gamebreaking, literally making the game unplayable.

It just broke my game. I read this thread a few minutes before I logged on and get into game and can’t even auto attack. This after getting DCed the first time I logged on. I was not even in wvw I was in cursed shore.

Chaba.5410:

Sorry, the lag has nothing to do with one’s PC, but with the server’s ability to handle client data. As the number of clients increases linearly, the amount of data increases exponentially.

Hmm, its polynomial. F friendlies need updates on E enemies, and abilities are capped at affecting C friendlies/enemies. Movements based on a ranged circle are F * E updates. Circle checks are polynomial as well. When fighting each player can affect C friendlies and C enemies but that is additive. (F*E location updates + X * C friendly buff updates + X * C enemy updates + Y * C enemy updates) * some polynomials that do LOS checks, range checks, etc for who sees who and what abilities affect who. It isn’t small but it isn’t exponential (very roughly). X^Y isn’t what is happening.

The overhead for GW2 is all the pulsing AOE affects, that is info that needs to be ranged checked every tick (then updated in packets sent) and that is a costly check compared to most checks like a simple single target LOS check or range check. You get 20+ pulsing their various buffs and throwing around AOEs all the time at enemies and it is a large amount of data to be constantly sending and updating. If you think about past games, none of them had the amount of constantly spamming AOE effects (friendly or at enemies) GW2 has on EVERY class.

This makes for big packets and there is a strict upper bound on how much information can be sent over T1 lines. That is the problem and it is BAD DESIGN. Given the classes and abilities, you can calculate how much information you need to send. They didn’t do this and this is why they can’t easily fix the problem. I figure the March update will actually change a number of abilities and how they function in order to reduce the size of packet updates. Like you can check AOE friendly affect pulses (like banners) less often and other changes (like they pulse every 3 seconds, you make em pulse every 6 seconds because that is when you do the range checks and player updates, on an ability pulse). It is complex but anet dropped the ball.

I actually stepped off after 10 minutes of WvWvW on Friday. I went off to do some PVE, and the lag followed there too. Finally headed to the Mists where I found no lag at all.

Since the patch I’ve been seeing more and more lag. And unfortunately it’s left me on less and less. Hope it gets fixed soon, I do enjoy GW2, but I’m finding my favorite features now unplayable.

just stopped playing a few minutes ago because the lagg has started again, this has only been in the game (except when there was a massive 3 way fight) since the last larger patch I cant beileve they havnt hotfixed this yet as you literally cant play the game.

If you want to play WvW on the most populated servers then expect consequences (skill lag).

has culling been fixed? did i miss this patch?

All i typically played was WvW. But i just cannot bring myself to do it. 6 months on the same kitten map. Invisible armies, rediculous hand-holding pve events, and skill lag. Where all you get to do is sit back and watch your character get pummeled by an invisible enemy, and not a single skill you try to use goes off.

I just cant do it anymore. And this is getting worst and worst in pve aswell. Was trying to level an alt in Ashford and died to an invisible harpy zerg that was being culled. Bring that WvW experience to PvE…

Brock,

I think you missed my basic point. The growth is not linear. The amount of data the server has to process will grow faster than the number of clients. Whether the growth is exponential, cubic, or slower, is just a small side detail.

If Anet is unable to improve the efficiency of their algorithms, they should just do what Ops people since time immemorial have done: throw more hardware at the problem. (laugh)

WhiskeyJack.5839:

If you want to play WvW on the most populated servers then expect consequences (skill lag).

Like people quitting the game? What exactly is your point? To argue that we shouldn’t ask for something that they marketed the game as being able to do?

And this is actually a complaint over something they recently created. The lag delay on abilities used to happen every now and then, now it is always happening in all aspects of the game.

Eniav.9064:

just stopped playing a few minutes ago because the lagg has started again, this has only been in the game (except when there was a massive 3 way fight) since the last larger patch I cant beileve they havnt hotfixed this yet as you literally cant play the game.

I’ve said it before but it wouldn’t surprise me if they’re rolling culling fixes in now but without giving us the options to fine tune it yet.

OTOH culling seems worse for me since this last reset, it looks to me like they may have reduced the radius at which enemies and allies appear.

BrockMcCleery.9562:

WhiskeyJack.5839:

If you want to play WvW on the most populated servers then expect consequences (skill lag).

Like people quitting the game? What exactly is your point? To argue that we shouldn’t ask for something that they marketed the game as being able to do?

And this is actually a complaint over something they recently created. The lag delay on abilities used to happen every now and then, now it is always happening in all aspects of the game.

I play on tier 4 and don’t experience skill lag. That’s my point.

Chaba.5410:

Brock,

I think you missed my basic point. The growth is not linear. The amount of data the server has to process will grow faster than the number of clients. Whether the growth is exponential, cubic, or slower, is just a small side detail.

Well, I was trying to point out (obtusely in retrospect) that it seems to be a throughput issue. We have fast enough servers and clients, but you can only send so much data. It is pretty expensive to do a parallel data distribution setup, so they are (I believe) limited by their Internet lines. I don’t know if they do any packet compression.

Ability lag is an indication of server side computation bottlenecks but that is a recent problem so I believe it is more something they broke (or maybe they are doing lots of logging to check stuff).

Anyways, the problem could (imo is) be that they setup classes so that they have to constantly send way too much data every tick. There is no easy way to fix that. If you hit the transmission ceiling you are pretty much screwed and have to go back and rework abilities in ways that reduce necessary updates, or you just do necessary updates server side in large fights while only sending minimal information client side (like positions and damage taken, but not what buffs and debuffs you have on you) (would be better but not ideal).

I could be wrong, maybe they have slow code or need to just buy faster servers. Just seems unlikely, GW2 is a hit and they should have money for faster machines if they needed em. And the game is pretty solid. Like consider WAR. Early on so laggy but after a year it was working. How could such crappy code get that much better while GW2s code has been stuck in its current state since launch? They hit the transmission ceiling, something that can’t be fixed without a lot of effort.

Oh I see.

In some ways I think this game is made to be around awhile in that such issues will become obsolete as computing power and bandwidth increases.

I am on a Tier 1 server and sadly I’ve hardly done any WvW (which is the primary reason I play GW2) in the past two weeks because each time I do the server side lag makes it unenjoyable.

Chaba.5410:

Oh I see.

In some ways I think this game is made to be around awhile in that such issues will become obsolete as computing power and bandwidth increases.

Yeah, I hope so. Or maybe this march they will implement something clever. That would be great. Hell, just a nice improvement in lag and culling would be great. They said they will remove culling and everyone can choose rendering options. That can mean many things but at least it should mean if you have a good PC you won’t have any culling issues, you’ll see all the enemies and allies. I suspect they are prioritizing player positions so that they get updated much more often, which will be great if it works like it should. Maybe you can’t see everything that is happening but that isn’t needed in a really big fight (well, aoe circles are kinda up there on the list, but they are cheap and easy to render). Everyone would be very happy if they could see all the enemies and not have to wait for abilities. It should be doable with proper prioritization of what info is critical to send, along with what seems to be a means to reduce details so that slower PCs can also render 100+ players, reasonably.

Agree with OP this skill lag is really terrible and game breaking!

I went on WvW tonight, was in open field with no more than 10 people and the skill lag was awful!! could only use skill #1 :/

Played for around 5 minutes and couldn’t stand it any longer..

Please fix this Anet.

I never noticed any skill lag until a few days ago. So this seems like something new from a recent patch. We pretty much gave up on trying to take SM as the lag made it impossible to heal.

Chaba.5410:

Oh I see.

In some ways I think this game is made to be around awhile in that such issues will become obsolete as computing power and bandwidth increases.

Or, as people quit, the lag will reduce and the few players left will have less lag.

my lag 2 days ago…

That is not lag, u was disconnected from the server.

i agree with the op.

the skill lag is horrible now (seems like after last patch it did get a lot worse). regardless of what type of server you are on – large or small pop, this is unacceptable.

Friday was the worst I’ve seen it to date, both the skill lag and culling. Most of the time 6 would become 16 or 60 pretty quick, and I’ve learned to start spamming my heal when I see the first toon, because I know I’ve likely already been killed (or close) and the game just hasn’t told me yet.

But there were a few times trying to get into SM where I saw the Kaining zerg (30+ people) balling up around the corner so they could zerg bomb us. So, with a full 15-20 seconds of prep time I started trying to drop marks and wells to give us a chance. ZERO skills went off, we were than run over and killed and not by auto attacks. This happened in a few encounters for both sides where I could tell one side was clearly using skills and the other side just stood there not even auto attacking.

At one point we made it into the Lord’s Room and stacked up for the 3 way. About 20 seconds into the ball I hit plague form (which lasts 20 seconds) and looked at my game clock. Took about 5 seconds before plague form kicked in. 2 minutes later I was still in plague form and just standing there. We died shortly after that, but seriously…the server side lag in this case was ridiculous.

omg omg omg! I managed to heal! i was lagging so badly that i might have to buy a new keyboard soon as nr.6 might be broken. But hey after 16 attempts I managed to heal. Woot progress!……..and then I died right after….

Agree 100%. This shutdown our guild in WvWvW in a number of fights on Friday night. The culling is bad enough but this is no fun at all.

WhiskeyJack.5839:

BrockMcCleery.9562:

WhiskeyJack.5839:

If you want to play WvW on the most populated servers then expect consequences (skill lag).

Like people quitting the game? What exactly is your point? To argue that we shouldn’t ask for something that they marketed the game as being able to do?

And this is actually a complaint over something they recently created. The lag delay on abilities used to happen every now and then, now it is always happening in all aspects of the game.

I play on tier 4 and don’t experience skill lag. That’s my point.

And how is that related to a tier exactly? The wvw tier doesn’t say anything about the total server population through all parts of the game.
I’m on a server that has seen almost every tier (all except the lowest 2), past few weeks we’ve climbed up to t5 again and since the patch I have craptons of skill lag in any part of the game, PvE, WvW and even sPvP matches that are a relatively small instanced area.
Prior to the patch I had skill lag on avg 1x per month in a 3-way fight over SM (incl. for several weeks after launch in T1, you know when the population was at its peak and our server had status “full” almost all the time) and never at all in PvE.

Yeah the lag is quite insane. You can actually tell when the enemy zerg is nearby because of the skill lag. Even back at launch when WvW was full on most servers I don’t remember the lag being this bad, it must be something they did last patch? I’d almost guess they reduced the number of servers per cluster handling WvW as a cost cutting measure since most matchups aren’t anywhere near maxing out. However T1 is maxing out and it’s causing serious lag. Yesterday at JQ BL jq garrison I couldn’t get off a single ability, must have been about 5 minutes I ran around before suddenly getting yanked 2000+ yds off the keep lords roof to splat on the ground.

WhiskeyJack.5839:

BrockMcCleery.9562:

WhiskeyJack.5839:

If you want to play WvW on the most populated servers then expect consequences (skill lag).

Like people quitting the game? What exactly is your point? To argue that we shouldn’t ask for something that they marketed the game as being able to do?

And this is actually a complaint over something they recently created. The lag delay on abilities used to happen every now and then, now it is always happening in all aspects of the game.

I play on tier 4 and don’t experience skill lag. That’s my point.

Your point is….. we should all transfer to your server. That should fix it.

holska.4127:

WhiskeyJack.5839:

BrockMcCleery.9562:

WhiskeyJack.5839:

If you want to play WvW on the most populated servers then expect consequences (skill lag).

Like people quitting the game? What exactly is your point? To argue that we shouldn’t ask for something that they marketed the game as being able to do?

And this is actually a complaint over something they recently created. The lag delay on abilities used to happen every now and then, now it is always happening in all aspects of the game.

I play on tier 4 and don’t experience skill lag. That’s my point.

And how is that related to a tier exactly? The wvw tier doesn’t say anything about the total server population through all parts of the game.
I’m on a server that has seen almost every tier (all except the lowest 2), past few weeks we’ve climbed up to t5 again and since the patch I have craptons of skill lag in any part of the game, PvE, WvW and even sPvP matches that are a relatively small instanced area.
Prior to the patch I had skill lag on avg 1x per month in a 3-way fight over SM (incl. for several weeks after launch in T1, you know when the population was at its peak and our server had status “full” almost all the time) and never at all in PvE.

Must be some correlation as I play on Tier 3 and don’t experience skill lag except in an extremely large battles.

The combination of skill-lag (which is getting worse) and culling has finally pushed me away from the game, I was the last surviving member of my WvW guild, hanging on lol. Maybe it will be fixed in the WvW march update, personally I am not holding my breath!!

Never expected GW2 to be perfect…just playable! But this skill lag, culling and completly blindness for 1~3 minutes around the big fights in WvWvW is making this game very disappointing for me. I dont know what Anet will do about this, but I hope they do it fast. We worked hard to be competitive in Tier 1 and now we all just want to have fun. LAG is the real killler, skill, equips and tatics are secundary. Instead of working on my character, Im gonna improve my PC to minimize this issue and hope to have a bit of fun. Today I miss BWE…sad, but true!

Anet needs to be made aware of this problem as it’s been more apparent these days and it’s ruining the experience, rather than all the qq over thieves and stealth.

Bad skill lag in far shiverpeak aswell since yesterday,not just me i hear alot of people complain about it.Skill lag/delays/spikes.