Guild Wars 2

Its called LAGZILLA !!

I’m on DH and last night we took SM. The current owners of SM was not pleased we wanted to barrow the nice castle for the week so they was arguing with us about this ordeal. Was AOE spamapalooza in there.
I was an engineer and could not deply any turrets for like 3+min or my Support Supplies for over 5min.

Was fun, but the having Lagzilla at full rage really put a damper on it.

If we turn out graphic effect down will that help at all?

I know in Eve when you know its going to be a big battle turning down the graphics fixed it. Not sure if that would be the same story here.

Hm can you try it and let us know? It sounds really complicated. By the way did you make any tests in regards with your Internet connectivity at this time?

Right after we took SM the fighting stopped and the lag was gone.

I doubt it. The lag is server side (I rather doubt that it is done client side, game would be too hackable otherwhise). Basically server is being swarmed with a lot of commands and because there are a lot of people in single area abilities like AoE ones can affect multiple people so it has to calculate the effects but because of lag it takes too long and commands are getting dropped.

But why does it work in Eve?

I will haver to try it at home later to see when i get off work.

I was there — Sorrow’s Furnace, defending. The lag was ridiculous. We wiped most of Sanctum of Rall in the throne room right before you guys entered, but then I couldn’t see half the enemies or use any of my abilities in less than 5-6 seconds.

Cal – i had this problem using internet connection with pretty nice pings, having 60down/6up bandwidth. I just couldn’t use skills for like 20 seconds and finally died …

Many times, when there are big battles on the battleground, all my skills have some big delay. Even if cooldown went down, i still cant use skills for even sometimes 10 seconds… this kitten is bananas.

I got fiber optic 25mb up/down
So internet connection was not the issue.

The ability lag has to do with the way the client/server handle processing game events. ANet knows about it, and I don’t think there’s much you can do to mitigate it.

As for invisible characters, this has to do with the delay in loading and preparing a character for rendering. Better hardware, in particular a faster HDD, can help with this, but even with great equipment it’s still very apparent — players still take forever to load in during situations like SM last night.

If you can get better framerates/less lag lowering GFX settings. Then its simply a client issue. Basicly too puny hardware.

If the lags happens at the same rate nomatter what you do. Its a serverside lag.

Servers do tend to lag quite badly now and then, both PvE and PvP.

Habib, so basically it’s about money. The more server power you employ to handle the load, the more people can join. Since there’s huge lag AND huge queue, you’re not employing enough. Is there any chance you could buy more clusters to actually handle the load? I’m sick of not seeing who I’m killing, sick of having to wait like 5 seconds for any of my skills to actually work. So please, buy more servers and make your game work.

Eve has one of the best servers on the market for modern mmo’s as far as i know.
The major question is how much do you wanne pay for your game to get rid of lag ?

This generation of servers just cannot handle 500 players using spells and effects in a small room.
There prolly are servers who might handle this, but they cost money…so much money that if a company could invest it the game would end up costing over 1000 dollars.
Maybe you can affort that price for a game, but 99% of the other people cannot.

So the good servers for mmo’s will always have this problem untill better and less costing servers get on the market.

Maybe in about 20 years from now we have servers that can handle 1500 players in a small room
hardware changes fast and become chealer and cheaper, so who knows.

But one thing is for sure, you cannot blame Arenanet for client lag, its our tech generation.

EvE still lags too.

Sometimes you cant throw enough money after it to solve it. If Anet bought the fastest Xeons there is. Then thats that. All they can do is to wait for the next generation to come. Alternatively they can optimize the code, but if thats been done too then you are also out of luck there.

this is rather BS.

even the 10 year old DAoC was able to handle 100+ players with massive effects and spells at the same place. without lags and invisibility of players.

get your game fixed, Arenanet.

Zireael, that isn’t what he means at all.

Think of it this way. In Eternal Battlegrounds, there are the following objectives: 1 jumping puzzle, 3 NPC camps, 9 control points, 6 camps, 12 towers, 3 keeps, and Stonemist. So, lets actually assume players are distributed equally (and not in a giant zerg) and just make up some numbers to see the dilemma ANet is facing.

We have Jumping Puzzle (5 players), 3 NPC camps (5 players x3 = 15), 9 control points -or- supply support (3 players x 9 =18), 6 Supply Camps (5 players x 6 = 30 players), 12 towers (10 players x 12 = 120), 3 keeps (20 players x 3 = 60), and Stonemist (30 players). That gives us a grand total of 278 players from the server across the map.

Now, assuming they square off against an exactly balanced force, the server has to track (IE: location, health, abilities, etc) all nearby players. So, it must send data about every player in the vicinity to all players in the vicinity. It must check incoming damage against every nearby player. (This is the N squared problem that was mentioned by Habib; you can see it below in the format: n*n * node_count = n^2 * node_count).

Lets run the numbers: Jumping Puzzle (5×5 = 25), 3 NPC camps (5×5×3 = 75), 9 control points -or- supply support (3×3x 9 =81), 6 Supply Camps (5×5x 6 = 150), 12 towers (10×10x 12 = 1200), 3 keeps (20×20x 3 = 1200), and Stonemist (30×30=900). That gives us a total of 3631 relevant changes that need to go out by the server.

Now, what if we have one massive zerg of 250 v 250? That’s 250×250 relevant changes. That gives 62500 relevant changes that have to be sent by the server. What if there are simply 5 groups of 50×50? That’s 12500 relevant changes that have to go out. What about 8 groups of 30×30? That’s 7200. How about 12 groups of 20×20? That’s 4800. What about 16 groups of 15×15? That’s 3600.

Do you see the problem? The server load isn’t constant. It depends on the distribution of players. Increasing player count (decreasing queues) introduces the potential for lag if players clump. Decreasing lag if players clump means reducing player count (increasing queues). This conflict can never be resolved. There is a conflict here that can never be resolved while both lag and queues exist.

TLDR: More players come at the cost of potential lag during zerging. Lag reductions come at the cost of players allowed entry. Which do you chose? ANet has striven for a balance with a bit of a focus on players over lag. Their hope is that there won’t be a massive zerg because it is so brutal on their server. I think they chose correctly. I also applaud Habib for being straightforward about the issue.

Player culling optimizations are a different subject; one that ANet is looking into.

EVE has completely different gaming mechanics and server cluster architecture. It’s just not technology, it’s the game itself helps EVE’s servers.

But still EVE has lag and a lot. Have anyone of you experienced 100% Time Dilation?

Eve does better because I forgot to mention there is less to render. There is not ground, buildings for the most part and sky and weather effects.

So anyone turn down the graphics and try it yet?

Zireael.3285:

Dosvidaniya, I don’t really want to discuss this with anyone. As Riyu stated, DAoC 10 years ago was able to sustain 100+ people in one spot without them being invisible or without lags. I want the same now and I don’t buy BS about technology and code. If the game lags and people are invisible then the code is badly written and the game runs on s h i tty servers. Period.

You must be amazed that most FPS game servers can’t really handle more than 64 players and it’s been like this for as long as I can remember. That’s more than a decade of technology advancement and yet there is still some relatively small limit on those server capabilities without massive lag.

You can look at a bottle neck and point it out as the problem, but need a solution for the bottle neck.
I always wanted to see Team Fortress with 64 players. Nope… still only 32.

This happened a couple of times yesterday in eternal battlegrounds on my server as well (Yaks Bend). The castle changed hands several times and all 3 servers ended up in the Lords Room at the same time at least two or three times, lag wiped us all out each time, the lucky side would keep the castle.

3 servers in the Lord’s room.LOL
Sounds like it was Spamapalooza for sure.

Hackuuna.4085:

Zireael.3285:

Dosvidaniya, I don’t really want to discuss this with anyone. As Riyu stated, DAoC 10 years ago was able to sustain 100+ people in one spot without them being invisible or without lags. I want the same now and I don’t buy BS about technology and code. If the game lags and people are invisible then the code is badly written and the game runs on s h i tty servers. Period.

You must be amazed that most FPS game servers can’t really handle more than 64 players and it’s been like this for as long as I can remember. That’s more than a decade of technology advancement and yet there is still some relatively small limit on those server capabilities without massive lag.

No, I’m amazed that companies sell BS and people buy it. I remember DAoC handling a lot more preassure then this game. I remember Lineage 2 handling epic battles of few hundred people at the same spot also sieging a castle. But if you want to blame technology, let’s imagine a situation where every person is represented by a square let’s say 10×10×10 pixels. Every person is capable of hitting one other person with one skill on a flat map. How many people represented that way at the same spot can current technology handle? And please don’t tell me that 500 people in a world like that would cause a massive multimillion dollar cluster servers to lag or stutter. It’s pure BS. So if they created a world with nice graphics and many skills so that now their engine couldn’t handle 200 people in one spot then they made a mistake which should be fixed or the next thing I’ll do is ask for a refund. They could make massive battle games 10 years ago, they can do it now. If they care to spend enough money on it and don’t put income vs. performance in the same equation.

I have no issue with this at all as I’ve fixed the simple problem that was causing it.
I’ve no intention of making the fix public however other than to the few I’ve given the help too already in game as it’s too much of an advantage to give away.
I’ll only give the information to a GW2 dev or something if required.

@MyDublin
Lets see video proof.
I’d like to see it myself.

This happens all the time on my server aswell.

All 3 sides gathered at lord room, i cant activate my skills at all and enemies dont spawn.

Thats on the 3 most populated servers so it gets kinda silly, theres no skill involved.

@HabibLeow, Would it be possible to request a 64-bit exe for GW2? As it is sitting in LA, the game is already using 1.7GB~ RAM.

64-bit GW2 would have no real effect at all.

Raffie.7865:

64-bit GW2 would have no real effect at all.

of course it would. part of the culling problem seems to be loading the enemy players, because each one has its ‘own’ model (gear, face etc). 64 bit would allow to cache more stuff instead of sending everything through the garbage collecter in order to save memory. This would also affect loading times between zones in pve, as your client could just cache all the necessary data.

I’m a bit bummed that my client has ~20 gigs of unused memory and gw is loading stuff from my harddisk all the time instead of caching it.

but all in all, yes, it wouldn’t have a gigantic impact, but you would be able to see a difference.

Yeah, kitten was pretty bad on Yaks last night. I remember one period where we broke through both gates and went to take it from GOM after alot of hard work taking out their supply and what not, when Blackgate just followed us in and we got surrounded on both sides and completely annihilated in a bottleneck. I think Blackgate ended up with it, but yeah I couldn’t heal anyone, let alone cast an AOE.

Anyways, im curious, I’ve never played Lineage 2 or DAoC. You all say that it was possible to have hundreds of players fighting each other at once in a small space (no server queues and less lag). Is this because the graphics were so kitteny back than, or are all of you unaware of how that was possible? Cuz all i’ve noticed so far is all the kittening with no one bringing forth any type of solution or suggestion.

Graphics have nothing to do with server lag. Something is definetely broken though. In massive lord room battles I’m unable to cast my heal skill yet I’m still able to use other skills.

Greets,
I’m playing gw2 on my i2 with 2gb ram +8400GS nvidia (yes, this is correct – no mistake here, I recall playing gw1 with integrated graphics card).
Running the game on lowest possible, forcing dx8 and no shaders, sometimes I even go windowed mode to get the most out of what I’ve got – and it works pretty alright!
But when the fights are involving more than ~25players, Lagzilla comes and says to both my performance and playability like: “Me will crush you! Crush you to GOO!”
The main reason Lagzilla comes after me is that it is attracted by all the shiny particle effects those players are spamming like there’s no tomorrow and if there would’ve been chance to reduce those – then it would be possible to avoid this unpleasant guest in our WvW fights.
I don’t think I’ve got the right to insert my word here – since my system is way below the min. requirements, but could someone else ask Anet to give us the possibility to tone down the particle effects, pretty please with omnomberry on top.

I love how people always throw out DaoC as in some kind of “but it worked before!” card, failing to realize that DaoC graphics are just a joke.

Well, I’m sure that my lag issues I’m experiencing from time to time aren’t client performance nor network issues…
It’s quite annoying to hear that the dev comment let us interpret that these lags will be present for as long as we play the game with more players around… With a combat system like in this game, having a delay when using skills and stuff is actually a no-go!
And I actually experienced lags in times where I was alone in story missions without much going on around me, but my skills took 3-5 seconds before they triggered, so it doesn’t necessarily need a lot of players. And I actually always heart of other players with these lags at the same time…

You can’t run away from lags, and that’s why they are the most annoying part in the (or actually every) game! No bug or missing feature can be that annoying like lags, just because of that fact!

And the absolutely most annyoing thing is if such things happens to a game that you actually really, really (want to) enjoy!!

Hrist.8972:

I love how people always throw out DaoC as in some kind of “but it worked before!” card, failing to realize that DaoC graphics are just a joke.

Graphics do not effect server performance.

Explain to me, why it does not affect server performance? I’m waiting.

Hrist.8972:

Explain to me, why it does not effect server performance? I’m waiting.

The servers do not render any graphics.

kwewu.3896:

Hrist.8972:

Explain to me, why it does not effect server performance? I’m waiting.

The servers do not render any graphics.

Then what is taxing the server?

Hrist.8972:

kwewu.3896:

Hrist.8972:

Explain to me, why it does not effect server performance? I’m waiting.

The servers do not render any graphics.

Then what is taxing the server?

Many things, positional data being a large one.

kwewu.3896:

Hrist.8972:

kwewu.3896:

Hrist.8972:

Explain to me, why it does not effect server performance? I’m waiting.

The servers do not render any graphics.

Then what is taxing the server?

Many things, positional data being a large one.

And nothing of these things, don’t relate to graphical complexity? Considering how many AE (Area Effect) animations and effects there can be around in a huge fight compared to DaoC, it still should perform the same?

The servers do not render the animations so the complexity of the animations has no effect on server load.

So all the information about their position and type, that goes in and out, updates and changes, don’t affect server load? I’m not talking about rendering now, but to me it sounds like you’re saying that all these things that happen around in GW2 server should work perfectly and no lag is excused.

No. I’m saying that positional information affects server load. The more characters moving, and the more movements those characters make all increase the load to the server. However, it wouldn’t matter if the spell effects are even rendered on the client or not. If the client didn’t render spell effects at all, the load to the server would be the same.

Then is just the cheapness of the servers since, from what I gather reading the forums, DaoC had no problems with huge fights? It’s all just about the lacking servers?

The DAoC “Lag-Free” discussion is just BS.

As explained before by Dosvidaniya the problem is how many request the server gets in that area..
A 3 faction inc in SM generate a server load comparable to a DAoC Relic Raid in prime time with just 2 faction involved… because if the third realm crashed the party you can simple go AFK because it was unplayble.
Tell me you ever played a smooth Relic Raid…. because i play DAoC a lot (both EU and US server) and i don’t remember a lag free Relic Raid or a simpler big-3 faction inc in old Emain.
WTH DAoC lagged in ToA PvE too…

And DAoC was a really lot slower game than GW2, so the input request sent to the server was quite lower…

GW2 allow a well setup 15-20 man team to do everything in WvW. Stop zerging your way trough Eternal BG.
The solution is simple atm. Less zerg = less lag and more fun gameplay.

Hrist.8972:

Then is just the cheapness of the servers since, from what I gather reading the forums, DaoC had no problems with huge fights? It’s all just about the lacking servers?

No, as the more complex a game get, the more information sent and received between server and client will be increased ‘per client’ and the information need to be processed will increase tremendously. In Lineage 2, there is no such thing as a tree obstructing an arrow. etc. There are lots of reason why large scale combats work in one game and doesn’t work in another game.

Yeah, that’s one of the reason I find myself a lot more in the Borderlands these days, people don’t tend to mass into one objective (I’m looking at you SM).

Hrist.8972:

Then is just the cheapness of the servers since, from what I gather reading the forums, DaoC had no problems with huge fights? It’s all just about the lacking servers?

I doubt its the cheapness of the servers. Powerful hardware will only mask problems with the software to a certain extent. They could say, double the power of the servers and they may only see a 10% performance improvement.

There’s something not happening properly by the servers code (or software). Like I said before, I’ll be in a massive battle in a Lord’s room and all my skills are reasonably responsive, regardless of how many invisible people may be there, and my frame rate dropping to around 20. The only real issue I have is when I cast my heal too close to one of these fights it just won’t go off even though every other skill is fine. Yes there is server lag happening in this case. Yes there is graphics lag happening on my side as well. This still doesn’t explain why every skill except my healing skill is still able to be cast. A friend of mine experiences this exact same problem as well.

Maybe heals are handled differently by the server than other skills. Maybe the heals being handled differently is contributing to the server lag overall in the large battles. Channeled skills haven’t been a problem for me, and other skills with cast times have not been a problem for me.

I should add that the distance I have to move away from these battles is not that large to be able to cast my heal. I might only have to move 2000 yards away at most and then my heal casts as fast as any other skill.

From what I gather, at least the first (“auto-attack”) skill from weapons and evade roll works always, regardless if it’s laggy or not. I think some skills are just forced to go through server before actually letting it cast, as opposed to roll and evade.

The people claiming that DAoC had no issues with large fights are simply wrong, but even if it was true, they are failing to take into account that GW2 requires a far higher number of calculations per character, and that the calculations involved are far more complicated. Cross-profession combos for example mean that every combo field must interact with the potentially hundreds of finishers being executed every few seconds in a large fight. Then you’ve got walls that reflect projectiles back to their source, dodging, active blocking, projectile obstruction etc.