Guild Wars 2

Ele skill “Ride The Lightning” (dagger #4) has been broken for approx 2 years, but now another Ele skill “Burning Retreat” (staff #4) has recently also become similarly bugged.

The animation for these skills is wildly out of sync with play position, causing weird server/client position snaps at the end of the skill, and for the skill effects not to be correctly applied.

The “snapping” is pretty gamebreaking. As you can see in the video, the explosion at the end of RtL hits no targets and results in the full 40sec CD for RtL, even when the player character is nestled amongst a dozen heavy golems.

This is pretty gamebreaking. It’s worth noting that both of these skills worked perfectly at release.

Posting it in two different subforums does not make it true. What you are describing is a bad internet connection → in other words: lag

I main an ele btw. and know these problems – they come with a high ping. You can check your ping in the bottom right corner of your options window.

Yeah this has been happening to me for years with both skills, and it’s because I am from America and play on EU servers so I constantly have 180ish or higher ping.

It’s lag-related, not a bug.

there are numerous skill that leap forwards or backwards, yet none of those lag, it’s only these skills, and even then, burning retreat didn’t show this level of position snapping before the patch.

there is around half a second between animation end and position correct, and this is with ~230msec ping.

burning retreat doesn’t collide with entities, it always rolls the full distance (unless collision witn world geometry, but that’s static), there is no excuse for these to be any position snapping.

this is clearly a bug, or terrible coding, or both.

Ehh… I’ve had horrible position snapping like this since forever. It gets worse the more packet loss that I have.

You really should run pingplotter to see what kind of packet loss you probably have. If you’re at 300ish ping, you’re likely going to see some pretty unsettling results.

I’m not saying that there’s no problems with the way these skills behave, I’m just saying that if you were to cast these skills with say, 40 ping instead of 230, you would see none of these problems.

I tested it on an NA account and surely enough I have no position snapping at all, unlike on EU. It is 100% definitely lag-related.

Rayti.6531:

What you are describing is a bad internet connection -> in other words: lag

Although these skills proper work actually heavily depends on latency atm – I don’t think that should be like that. That simply renders those skills useless unless you have latency less than 30-40 ms.

You might be snapped like in OP video if you have latency issues, that is fine if the technology behind those skills doesn’t allow making this smooth. Though the actual damage from RtL should occur properly and the field from BR should be placed properly, otherwise it is simply a broken skill.

Wiella.8567:

the actual damage from RtL should occur properly and the field from BR should be placed properly, otherwise it is simply a broken skill.

exactly. that’s why i videoed it. you can clearly see there is no damage applied at either the animation endpoint nor the server reposition. it’s broken.

RTL and Burning Retreat have a mechanic most (targeted) leaps and teleports don’t have.

In case of ground targeted leaps and teleports, the server needs to know your current position, and the position you will end up at (= target position). That’s a fixed point that is being sent to the server on skill cast. In this case, when you have packet loss it very seldomly “snaps” – but it does happen. A very good example for that is lightning pull in Dry Top.

In case of RTL, it seems that multiple points you travel through have to be sent to the server. There might be several reasons why this is necessary, like in order to calculate where you end up if your target moves, etc. etc. and where to apply the final “hit” of the skill. However, if you lose packets on the way that leads to “rubber banding”. You get propelled to the maximum distance of the skill first, and then go back to the point you actually should have ended up at…

I guess the packet with the last position gets resent as soon as the connection is back again, and in the meantime you just end up at the max distance until the server “knows” where your character actually should be. I don’t know how this is really implemented in the background though. But there certainly is a reason why it works the way it does.

It’s similar with Burning Retreat. There are also several points on the path that have to be sent to the server, so that the fire fields are positioned correctly and are not overlapping and the dmg doesn’t tick at such insane rates as it did before the dmg fix. (Depending on how far you travel, there have to be more or less fire fields and the distance between them also varies.)

So you experience the same rubber banding when you lose packets on the way with Burning Retreat. Burning Speed shows the same behaviour, but it is not that noticable due to the shorter distance you travel.

It still all boils down to a bad connection…

I understand the issue you have with these skills, but I doubt they will change the mechanic of those skills with the people with a ping of 200+ms in mind.

EDIT: maybe queueing a certain amount of coordinates locally and resending all of them to the server when the connection problem is over would be a solution. But I don’t know if this wouldn’t cause a huge performance hit, or maybe it is even partly implemented already…?

Also Ride the Lightning only hits hits if you have a target selected. If you don’t have a target selected, it doesn’t hit and so it goes on a 40s cd.

Rayti.6531:

So you experience the same rubber banding when you lose packets on the way with Burning Retreat. Burning Speed shows the same behaviour, but it is not that noticable due to the shorter distance you travel.

It still all boils down to a bad connection…

I understand the issue you have with these skills, but I doubt they will change the mechanic of those skills with the people with a ping of 200+ms in mind.

It’s not necessarily an issue of changing the mechanic, but rather implementing it better.

If planetside, darkfall, savage among others can manage smoother movement with a lot more players and similar latency, i’m sure Anet could too, if they made an effort.

Lendruil.9061:

Also Ride the Lightning only hits hits if you have a target selected. If you don’t have a target selected, it doesn’t hit and so it goes on a 40s cd.

I could make another video but around 50% of the time even with a stationary target selected it still manages to miss and go on a 40sec CD.

note also from the video there are 2 position snaps and they are more than 230msec (my latency) apart. some aspect of their implementation is magnifying the lag, instead of covering/predicting it as other games do.

I had a look at the games you mentioned as examples. Apart from the fact that those games use totally different combat mechanics, there is not much to cover up for when movement is mostly based on WSAD. The skills are either close range cleaving auto-attacks or differently coloured light beams wich are being aimed directly (in case of strategy FPS at least). Those don’t/cannot suffer from pathing problems like targeted movement skills like RTL in the first place… Apples and oranges…

What happens in shooters though is, that you move normally/lag-free locally and don’t notice the lag in your movement while others see you lag – a lot. So I understand why these games feel smoother for someone with a bad connection in regards to movement.

I doubt ANet can do much about the problems you described, except for tracking your movement/coordinates locally (what I wrote before). I personally think they should have a look at server side lags first though, since it affects ALL players. Finding a fix for problems that only occur when you have a terrible internet connection and high packet loss would be a waste of resources compared to fixing problems that affect the majority.

Rayti.6531:

Those don’t/cannot suffer from pathing problems like targeted movement skills like RTL in the first place… Apples and oranges…

It’s very obvious you don’t know anything about game dev so why bother commenting.

scerevisiae.1972:

Ele skill “Ride The Lightning” (dagger #4) has been broken for approx 2 years, but now another Ele skill “Burning Retreat” (staff #4) has recently also become similarly bugged.

The animation for these skills is wildly out of sync with play position, causing weird server/client position snaps at the end of the skill, and for the skill effects not to be correctly applied.

The “snapping” is pretty gamebreaking. As you can see in the video, the explosion at the end of RtL hits no targets and results in the full 40sec CD for RtL, even when the player character is nestled amongst a dozen heavy golems.

This is pretty gamebreaking. It’s worth noting that both of these skills worked perfectly at release.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZZLSh9IQA0

its awful fighting eles atm because of this

scerevisiae.1972:

Rayti.6531:

Those don’t/cannot suffer from pathing problems like targeted movement skills like RTL in the first place… Apples and oranges…

It’s very obvious you don’t know anything about game dev so why bother commenting.

Since you seem to know a lot about it, why don’t you just offer suggestions on how they should/could fix it, instead of trying to compare different games/combat mechanics/engines with one another. I bet that would help a bit more than “game xy feels smoother”.

I hope for you that they will find a fix for this issue. I wouldn’t hold my breath though.

Thanks. I’d be happy to help, but I’d need to see some code.