Guild Wars 2

You’ll like this.

This stands out:

MMORPG: Back in January, one of the fixes for culling went into place, and it seemed to help a bit. But how will the changes coming in March eliminate this completely? There are a few skeptics in Bill’s (Murphy) guild that think it can’t be done.

Habib Loew: Hah, yeah we have seen a lot of the skepticism on the Internet. The change we made in January was really just a tweak to the system. It changed the priorities of Culling but did not eliminate it. The change in March will turn off Culling completely. You will now see every character within range of you. There will be several different options for how other players are presented to you, on the client side that you can choose from so you can control how it works for you.

MMORPG: Back in January, one of the fixes for culling went into place, and it seemed to help a bit. But how will the changes coming in March eliminate this completely? There are a few skeptics in Bill’s (Murphy) guild that think it can’t be done.

Habib Loew: Hah, yeah we have seen a lot of the skepticism on the Internet. The change we made in January was really just a tweak to the system. It changed the priorities of Culling but did not eliminate it. The change in March will turn off Culling completely. You will now see every character within range of you. There will be several different options for how other players are presented to you, on the client side that you can choose from so you can control how it works for you.

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

Well, that is good news. Might make the patch wort the extra month wait if true. Except the problem I see is where he says within range of your character. watch they just redefine the range to be within 5 feet of your toon.

I like but I don’t tust.

Just make it happen!

I’ll believe it when I see it!! (pun intended)

Space.8053:

I’ll believe it when I see it!! (pun intended)

lol

Hopefully they will make an official announcement about the upcoming patch or atleast give us confirmation that its true.

Ariel Cor Leonis Inferi.2894:

Hopefully they will make an official announcement about the upcoming patch or atleast give us confirmation that its true.

I’m pretty sure its true, since it’s in an interview of them talking about it.

talk is cheap, seeing is believing.

if true, Anet REALLY deserves respect.

MrLT.6028:

Except the problem I see is where he says within range of your character. watch they just redefine the range to be within 5 feet of your toon.

That was what WOW did. When WOW was in beta you could see other characters from a mile away. Sometime shortly after release they changed the rules and frequently if you were on a mount going south and another player was on a mount going north along the same road, they would appear literally right as you passed each other. The frequency of it checking to see who it should draw combined with the lower range of visibility meant that sometimes they’d be on top of you before you saw each other.

Hopefully that doesn’t happen here.

The only reason I’m skeptical is because they still refer to the new culling system as being an improvement when it is most definitely not. That doesn’t exactly instill confidence.

Slamz.5376:

MrLT.6028:

Except the problem I see is where he says within range of your character. watch they just redefine the range to be within 5 feet of your toon.

That was what WOW did. When WOW was in beta you could see other characters from a mile away. Sometime shortly after release they changed the rules and frequently if you were on a mount going south and another player was on a mount going north along the same road, they would appear literally right as you passed each other. The frequency of it checking to see who it should draw combined with the lower range of visibility meant that sometimes they’d be on top of you before you saw each other.

Hopefully that doesn’t happen here.

That already happens here.

Watch the last part of this movie.

MrLT.6028:

Habib Loew: Hah, yeah we have seen a lot of the skepticism on the Internet.

Yup… don’t get your hopes too high. If it is really fixed, then we can all be shocked and excited when it happens. But I wouldn’t call it a guaranteed thing.

I hope this happens

If this does happen I bet it’s gonna crash servers because they didn’t go threw enough testing.

Emmet.2943:

If this does happen I bet it’s gonna crash servers because they didn’t go threw enough testing.

Please elaborate. What specifically about culling being remedied do you think might cause the servers to “crash?”

muylaetrix.2096:

talk is cheap, seeing is believing.

if true, Anet REALLY deserves respect.

They deserve respect in what way? That it took them 7 months to fix something that should never had made it out of beta? Culling is worse now than at release, and thier ‘minor fix patch’ actually made things worse.

There are parts of this game that are unplayable because of culling, and you want to bow down and kiss thier feet because they ‘might’ have an improvement after 7 months. Wow.

Right now we see a combination of lag + culling, post fix we are gonna see the lag portion clearly (and there is a lot lately esp after patches)

Its one step in a very broken game, but its a good one anyways.

Kuldred.2436:

muylaetrix.2096:

talk is cheap, seeing is believing.

if true, Anet REALLY deserves respect.

They deserve respect in what way? That it took them 7 months to fix something that should never had made it out of beta? Culling is worse now than at release, and thier ‘minor fix patch’ actually made things worse.

There are parts of this game that are unplayable because of culling, and you want to bow down and kiss thier feet because they ‘might’ have an improvement after 7 months. Wow.

if they fix it, it means they threw (a lot of ?) money at their server infrastructure. that would impress me, and i totally agree that culling never should have been there in the first place.

If culling is truly fixed in this patch then I believe that ANet should supply me with fresh boxers alongside the patch.

Looks promising, I’m surprised he said “turn off Culling completely” I wasn’t sure they would try that.

I don’t believe them. If this were true they would have demonstrated that its possible on a small scale by now. They haven’t.

Why do the interviewers ask suck kittenty questions, this is what happens when PVE carebears do the interview.

Riiiiight. Because doing an event at Pent/Shelt with 10 other people and not being able to see a single mob until they are within one yard of you is playable. Because solo wandering in WvW and not seeing a small group of players until they have ran right past you is playable. You’re right, it’s just an ‘annoyance’.

Garbage. You are making excuses for a technical problem in a game that should have seen some form of fix or improvement over the past 7 months. There have been none.

Read the quote again, they aren’t fixing culling. They are turning it off. I can only imagine what that’s going to cause.

In reading the articles, the OP one and the one from Mike Ferguson discussing queues, I get the feeling that Anet didn’t budget enough resources to fix/develop WvW past release and as the players evolved faster than the environment, Anet didn’t have the ability to make corrections. PvE has had Halloween, Wintersday, Fractals, and now Flame and Frost. Plus there has been numerous fixes to dungeons each patch.

WvW got orbs and yak escort rewards removed. Paid transfers, which hasn’t stopped transfers (SoS), Queues are still not transparent to the player, culling has been adjusted. Oh, and no more siege in the JP!

Hopefully the added resources brought on specifically for WvW will deliver needed updates but as has been said before, I’ll believe it when I see it.

Your righteous anger is cute, Kuldred. If culling didn’t make it out of beta, WvW wouldn’t have made it out of beta.

WvW must have been in some way playable, because plenty still do play it, and it still can illicit such reactions on the forums. It’s fine to be skeptical. I hope we can all look forward to enjoying a better WvW going forward.

Will this fix thief rendering as well? Or is that a separate issue?

Columba.9730:

I don’t believe them. If this were true they would have demonstrated that its possible on a small scale by now. They haven’t.

How do you do a small scale demonstration of a solution to a problem that only exists on a large scale?

Kuldred.2436:

Riiiiight. Because doing an event at Pent/Shelt with 10 other people and not being able to see a single mob until they are within one yard of you is playable. Because solo wandering in WvW and not seeing a small group of players until they have ran right past you is playable. You’re right, it’s just an ‘annoyance’.

Garbage. You are making excuses for a technical problem in a game that should have seen some form of fix or improvement over the past 7 months. There have been none.

Read the quote again, they aren’t fixing culling. They are turning it off. I can only imagine what that’s going to cause.

Wow, high maintenance much?

You’re playing the same game as the rest of us, yet somehow we seem to not be having too much of a hard time dealing with culling.
Calling the game “unplayable” just shows how poorly you played it to begin with.

Get used to tab targeting and make use of auto-targetting on single target skills, you can still target things affected by culling. Being invisible does not mean it can’t be killed, if you’re sitting there waiting for monsters to show up on your screen and then kittening about culling because you don’t know where to click-target a mob, it sounds to me like that is you choosing not to adapt.

I also solo wander in wvw pretty much exclusively lately and I can count the number of times on one hand that culling has caused me to die in the past several months.

You have no right to insult Anet for your own shortcomings

Straegen.2938:

BS. The game is extremely playable and while culling is annoying at times it hardly makes the game unplayable for me.

Fixed that for you.

Amazing news and yet still some whine.

It gives you wrinkles you know…

Watch the last part of this movie.

LOL! Yea, has happened a lot to me, too. I think perversely I’m going to miss those moments, where you go…
“There is one…, hmm, two guys in front of us on the road, everyone just take swipe while running past, they’ll be…, holy kitten, kitten, kitten, there’s more, there’s more, at least 20, argh (wild hammering on keyboard and frantic mouse clicking)… well, crud, where did these guys come from? @$%# culling…”

Straegen.2938:

Kuldred.2436:

They deserve respect in what way? That it took them 7 months to fix something that should never had made it out of beta? Culling is worse now than at release, and thier ‘minor fix patch’ actually made things worse.

Pretty much no MMO ships with PvE, WvW and sPvP out of the box. Those that have, suffered bugs well beyond what ANet currently has. ANet could have kept WvW out of the game until the first major expansion but they didn’t and I for one am glad. People yammer on in forums about what they would have done or what ANet should have done with virtually no acknowledgement of how much ANet has delivered compared to their competition. 7 months (assuming the get it right) to fix a major engine deficiency shows they are listening to their user base and they are fixing significant issues.

While I think the current culling patch isn’t any better as a whole, I can at least see some of what is headed my direction compared to the old system where none of it showed up.

Kuldred.2436:

There are parts of this game that are unplayable because of culling, and you want to bow down and kiss thier feet because they ‘might’ have an improvement after 7 months. Wow.

BS. The game is extremely playable and while culling is annoying at times it hardly makes the game unplayable.

Very good point.

EnRohbi.2187:

You have no right to insult Anet for your own shortcomings

I love the defenders of a game that doesn’t work as it should.

He has every right to criticize Anet for continually delivering a sub-par experience in WvW. He (as did we all) paid for this game. Just because you aren’t experiencing the problem, or don’t feel it’s unacceptable doesn’t invalidate others experience. There are many, many, many threads where the overwhelming majority of people posting explain how bad it is.

For myself: unplayable in large group battles due to culling and skill lag. Even solo roaming if I run into a large group I generally don’t see them until they are on top of me.

Xirin.8593:

Emmet.2943:

If this does happen I bet it’s gonna crash servers because they didn’t go threw enough testing.

Please elaborate. What specifically about culling being remedied do you think might cause the servers to “crash?”

Not speaking for Emmet as I don’t know him/her but to reply to your question anyways: the required increased bandwidth and load balancing.

To quote Habib:

In order to remove culling completely we have to address three issues:

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

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Update-on-Culling/first#post1137307

Now I know he also mentioned #1 was the easiest to tackle and they got permission to get bigger bandwidth, but will this be enough for the servers to hold it when it gets deployed for the live game where a lot more players are active in all game modes across the whole datacenter than they’re accurately able to test / reproduce?

Tyaen.5148:

EnRohbi.2187:

You have no right to insult Anet for your own shortcomings

I love the defenders of a game that doesn’t work as it should.

He has every right to criticize Anet for continually delivering a sub-par experience in WvW. He (as did we all) paid for this game. Just because you aren’t experiencing the problem, or don’t feel it’s unacceptable doesn’t invalidate others experience. There are many, many, many threads where the overwhelming majority of people posting explain how bad it is.

For myself: unplayable in large group battles due to culling and skill lag. Even solo roaming if I run into a large group I generally don’t see them until they are on top of me.

So what would you like Anet to do?
They’re putting a solution to that problem out and all you have to do is kitten about it like a whiny little spoiled kid.

“You: We have a problem with culling”
“Anet: No worries, we’re fixing it next month”

And you take this as a negative thing.
Do you have any brain in your head at all?

EnRohbi.2187:

Tyaen.5148:

EnRohbi.2187:

You have no right to insult Anet for your own shortcomings

I love the defenders of a game that doesn’t work as it should.

He has every right to criticize Anet for continually delivering a sub-par experience in WvW. He (as did we all) paid for this game. Just because you aren’t experiencing the problem, or don’t feel it’s unacceptable doesn’t invalidate others experience. There are many, many, many threads where the overwhelming majority of people posting explain how bad it is.

For myself: unplayable in large group battles due to culling and skill lag. Even solo roaming if I run into a large group I generally don’t see them until they are on top of me.

So what would you like Anet to do?
They’re putting a solution to that problem out and all you have to do is kitten about it like a whiny little spoiled kid.

“You: We have a problem with culling”
“Anet: No worries, we’re fixing it next month”

And you take this as a negative thing.
Do you have any brain in your head at all?

Do you have any reading comprehension at all?

Where did I say the fact that they are implementing a possible fix was a negative thing?

Tyaen.5148:

EnRohbi.2187:

Tyaen.5148:

EnRohbi.2187:

You have no right to insult Anet for your own shortcomings

I love the defenders of a game that doesn’t work as it should.

He has every right to criticize Anet for continually delivering a sub-par experience in WvW. He (as did we all) paid for this game. Just because you aren’t experiencing the problem, or don’t feel it’s unacceptable doesn’t invalidate others experience. There are many, many, many threads where the overwhelming majority of people posting explain how bad it is.

For myself: unplayable in large group battles due to culling and skill lag. Even solo roaming if I run into a large group I generally don’t see them until they are on top of me.

So what would you like Anet to do?
They’re putting a solution to that problem out and all you have to do is kitten about it like a whiny little spoiled kid.

“You: We have a problem with culling”
“Anet: No worries, we’re fixing it next month”

And you take this as a negative thing.
Do you have any brain in your head at all?

Do you have any reading comprehension at all?

Where did I say the fact that they are implementing a possible fix was a negative thing?

Okay, I will rescind that part.
I need to work on reading the forum names of people I’m responding to.

I just think it’s ridiculous that people call the game completely unplayable because of culling, don’t trust Anet to ever fix it, but they’re still here playing the game.

holska.4127:

Now I know he also mentioned #1 was the easiest to tackle and they got permission to get bigger bandwidth, but will this be enough for the servers to hold it when it gets deployed for the live game where a lot more players are active in all game modes across the whole datacenter than they’re accurately able to test / reproduce?

Yeah… Permission to get bigger bandwidth when they said they won’t make bleeding stack higher because it would take way too much bandwidth?

Lel.

If they’re so confident in giving the statement that the culling will be completely gone in March. Then it means it’s already fixed by now. Which means they’re just holding it back to present it in a goodie bag along with other stuff in the next patch.

EnRohbi.2187:

Tyaen.5148:

EnRohbi.2187:

Tyaen.5148:

EnRohbi.2187:

You have no right to insult Anet for your own shortcomings

I love the defenders of a game that doesn’t work as it should.

He has every right to criticize Anet for continually delivering a sub-par experience in WvW. He (as did we all) paid for this game. Just because you aren’t experiencing the problem, or don’t feel it’s unacceptable doesn’t invalidate others experience. There are many, many, many threads where the overwhelming majority of people posting explain how bad it is.

For myself: unplayable in large group battles due to culling and skill lag. Even solo roaming if I run into a large group I generally don’t see them until they are on top of me.

So what would you like Anet to do?
They’re putting a solution to that problem out and all you have to do is kitten about it like a whiny little spoiled kid.

“You: We have a problem with culling”
“Anet: No worries, we’re fixing it next month”

And you take this as a negative thing.
Do you have any brain in your head at all?

Do you have any reading comprehension at all?

Where did I say the fact that they are implementing a possible fix was a negative thing?

Okay, I will rescind that part.
I need to work on reading the forum names of people I’m responding to.

I just think it’s ridiculous that people call the game completely unplayable because of culling, don’t trust Anet to ever fix it, but they’re still here playing the game.

I play because I’ve figured out some settings that work for me, and I avoid situations I know are going to be terrible. I shouldn’t have to do that though, the game should work as advertised. I’m glad they are working on it, and really hope they have it fixed. You’ll forgive my skepticism though as the last change they made made my experience go from bad to worse. I already own the game, so my recourse is to play, give them feedback and hope they fix it. In the mean time I stop buying gems to further support them financially until it’s fixed.

I love the game, and it’s potential but I won’t support it indefinitely without progress.

Fingers crossed.

Columba.9730:

I don’t believe them. If this were true they would have demonstrated that its possible on a small scale by now. They haven’t.

They have.

sPvP and thieves. Research before posting.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

Columba.9730:

I don’t believe them. If this were true they would have demonstrated that its possible on a small scale by now. They haven’t.

How do you do a small scale demonstration of a solution to a problem that only exists on a large scale?

Demonstrate it on one tier first.

Yaaaaay~! (Hopfully)

EnRohbi.2187:

I just think it’s ridiculous that people call the game completely unplayable because of culling, don’t trust Anet to ever fix it, but they’re still here playing the game.

i bought this game for w3, w3 is the only reason i bought it, i don’t care for spvp (understatement) and i dislike pve (understatement). at te moment this game is the only game that gives that kinda gameplay so i put up with culling to get my large scale open world pvp fix.

but claiming that culling is not game breaking, especially in w3, untill they fix it is “insert explicit word”

muylaetrix.2096:

EnRohbi.2187:

I just think it’s ridiculous that people call the game completely unplayable because of culling, don’t trust Anet to ever fix it, but they’re still here playing the game.

i bought this game for w3, w3 is the only reason i bought it, i don’t care for spvp (understatement) and i dislike pve (understatement). at te moment this game is the only game that gives that kinda gameplay so i put up with culling to get my large scale open world pvp fix.

but claiming that culling is not game breaking, especially in w3, untill they fix it is “insert explicit word”

I never said it’s ridiculous to be frustrated about culling.
Or that it’s taken 7 months to get fixed.

Simply that if you consider it unplayable,
And also never believe anet will fix it,
I don’t see the reason why someone would still be playing.

They’re essentially saying “This is going to be a problem forever that makes the game unplayable. So I’m playing it.”

And I do claim that culling isn’t gamebreaking,
Seeing as that I’ve been playing since launch and it’s never been anything more than an annoyance. And I wvw every day.

why give players defense against siege? and why make them do more damage to it?

the point of defensive siege is to make it so the few can kill the many, and in general offensive siege is not about killing players, its about killing structures and siege. reducing the effectiveness of defensive siege is NOT needed with how easy it is to simply ignore when you have enough people.

did habib really say merc camp?

any plans to revamp the ratings system to prevent isolation between server groupings, creating traps with mismatched servers?

why change the orange swords threshold?

just a few real questions id like to see answered. something a little deeper than just “whats next… oooooohhhh shiny culling fix!”

Nothing about being able to earn or purchase Ascended or more options for exotic gear from WvW

Hurrah took long enough, the culling does verge on unplayable for me at times even though I solo roam/ alot lately to avoid the issue. Still I feel I need a break from the game from time to time due to this and other issues with wvw. If it actually works out and doesn’t get delayed maybe I’ll be able to use more stealth in my build without feeling guilty and maybe we’ll see less thief bashing threads for once heh?

ps. Had to edit cause it got merged thanks. :p

Everything in the interview was great, but there was one glaring omission that really has me concerned.

There was no mention of WvW gear improvements: new stat options for badges, and Ascendant options.

Gear is the 4th leg of the WvW table along with progression, culling and titles. Without it the table still sucks.

Barab.9016:

Nothing about being able to earn or purchase Ascended or more options for exotic gear from WvW

Yeah.

I still have hopes though. Maybe they haven’t finished the details on that part yet so they’re keeping it under wraps. Not adding a way to obtain Ascended in WvW besides dailies, or at least add more items that can be purchased with Badges, in the March patch would be a massive mistake.