Guild Wars 2

Same situation here, have been playing the game since the 28th very well at a decent FPS. For the last 3 days I have has excessive stuttering in large scale PvE and WvW and also have this issue of mobs and players appearing way after they should do.

I have static IP with all ports forwarded. My packet loss is 0% and my ping and DL speed are way in excess of what is needed to play modern games well.

My Specs:

AMD FX 4100 (4GB overclocked)
8GB ddr3 ram
AMD Radeon HD 6670

I completely agree, Masamichi. It makes WvWvW extremely problematic.

Ah, the invisible zergs in WvW, who doesn’t love them!

Same issue both in WvW and PvE. It is a serious issue, game breaking. In Orr, during dynamic events, when waves of mobs spawn, I often see them only after they have been killed by the masses of people with AoE. That means I get no loot, since to get loot you have to deal certain % of damage to the mobs health. And I can’t do that since the mobs can’t be seen. Let’s even forget immersion and realism here, invisible mobs are simply unacceptable.

Invisible players in WvW – no need to discuss that one right?

I’m glad to see people with strong rigs experience this, since mine is very weak, and I was afraid it was because of that, but now I see it’s a problem in the engine itself.

What seems to be happening, is that the engine can’t handle memory management very well. It seems to be juggling models, loading them in and out of RAM, as necessary, but it does it inefficiently, and too slow. And so it takes too long to load the textures and model – the object (mob or player) is there, and it does act, attack, move, take damage, but it’s not visible until it’s completely loaded. Since I have only 2 GB RAM I thought this would explain what I’m seeing. However I see people with 16GB RAM and fast disks have the same problem, so I am really puzzled. Is it really servers that can’t handle sending data to the client, informing it about the dynamic objects? Can we have some serious attention brought to this issue, it’s game breaking.

I’ve heard someone mention that this didn’t happen until after the 9/1 update. Not sure about that myself. I do believe that it’s not the servers being overwhelmed (I’d expect we’d see other issues in that case), but instead just optimization-gone-wrong, or an overzealous application of the Umbra Occlusion Culling (or something similar). Long story short — it’s supposed to make things go easier on our graphics cards, and instead … well. We get this. :\

Anyway. Someone made a quick video of a crowd standing around in Lion’s Arch where you can see a couple of people popping in/out:

I don’t believe it’s been linked in this thread, so hopefully this will be a good example if anet finds this thread in the pile.

In the meantime, guys, if you see other threads mentioning this issue, let’s see if we can’t follow mlc’s example and point them here (and drop a link in this thread to point back to those other threads). I think it would be great if we can keep the issue relatively consolidated! Certainly, it should make things a bit easier on the devs.

Otherwise, GW2 community, continue being generally awesome.

Yet another thread on the problem: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Anyone-else-dislike-the-AoE-trick-to-keep-players-from-rendering

And another: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/The-last-couple-patches-this-week-broke-WVW

And even more:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Too-difficult-to-defend-keeps/first#post143444

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Opinion-Zerging-is-an-exploit/first#post142562

That’s 19 threads so far dealing with the problem of enemies and/or mobs just appearing from out of nowhere due to server-side optimizations (NOT mesmer abilities, NOT consumables granting temporary invisibility, NOT thieves, and NOT lag-related issues), and still no response from ArenaNet.

And another: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Invisible-Army/first#post147189

One more: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Exploitable-Bug-Caught-in-Action-Abusing-the-Character-on-screen-limit

And another! https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Invisible-Army

Its making me not want to play anymore.

paultimate.8790:

Its making me not want to play anymore.

I’ll agree it’s making me not want to play WvWvW anymore … so far, I haven’t had huge problems with it in PvE, but I hear that events in Orr can be a nightmare, so hoping they get it fixed before I get that far. :x

Hopefully they’ll fix it, or at least let us know that they’re aware of the problem, soon.

Even more today: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Please-fix-the-character-draw-distance

Confirmed. It happened to me when our server was trying to take back Anvil Rock keep. I asked other players if they were experiencing the same issue and they confirmed it was happening to them as well. Anvil Rock battle went on from like 9am to around 2pm. Was pretty crowded as time went on. I could see the keep NPC archers firing on us but all the enemy players were invisible while I could clearly see their projectile effects/trails. They were up there for quite a while so it wasn’t invisibility ability or anything like that. Seemed to help at times getting closer to keep, but not always. Also, I couldn’t target invisible players.

I see this all the time and it is killing WvW for me. This issue deserves a response from Anet.

AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz processor
4GB RAM
NVidia Geforce GTX 465 graphics card
Windows 7 64-bit

Also, getting this problem. It only happens with a large population density. (such as gate smashers, WvW “portal waiters” in LA during a reset, crafting areas, etc.)

This has been driving me and my friends nuts for days now. Literally sucking the will to play WvW out of us, as there’s no way to counter an invisible zerg. I am spending so much oney on repairing from ghostly deaths that I will have to quit. It would be nice to have a word, Arenanet.

If we could just get some sign that this is at least being looked at or if its intended or not we can at least make choices if we want to keep playing.

Give us something, please, anet.

It’s getting worse. Guilds know about this behavior. Use Mesmers to port in large groups of guys to wipe the opposing team before the load happens. It’s becoming a tactical thing. That’s a big problem.

Yeah I noticed that too.

This quickly went from being the WvW (RvR) I’ve always dreamt about… to a meaningless game where the key to win is to jump with your zerg on the enemy zerg BEFORE you appear on their screen. This is particularly effective when you know a certain zerg is at the gate of one of your keeps, so you know where they are even if you can’t see them. By storming on them you are guaranteed the “surprise effect”, cause it’ll take them many AOE deaths before even realizing what hit them.

If organized groups are intentionally using this bug to gain an advantage, it should probably be reported in-game as an exploit, too.

More threads on the problem:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/The-enemy-team-must-be-full-of-ninjas

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Invisible-players-in-WvW

Another this evening: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/The-real-problem-here-is-invisible-enemies-Give-their-algorithms-time-to-match-servers-properly

WvW strategy. Mass large group Zerg into other large group AoE the ground render bags of loot then the players corpse actually render. Rinse repeat.

@arson
Eve online doesn’t have this issue and it’s been using umbra since release and in that you have thousands of ships rendered and fighting in space battles without a single one being “invisible” (Unless they cloak of course).

I encountered this issue a lot last night playing WvWvW – was my first time back to PvP since the last Beta weekend (PvE has been keeping me far too busy). At first it was amusing but after not long the play just got impossible with invisible mobs! I was hoping to get into PvP more, as it was something I never quite got a handle on in GW1, but if this problem is going to continue I can’t see me wanting to do much WvWvW.

Has there been any official word on this?

Sad to see this has been neglected. I’m stood in Cursed Shore atm and not even in a WvWvW worth blob and watching players and NPCs phase in and out feet away from me. Groups of people will simply disappear even though they are still there hitting the mobs. I know the path of these mobs too as I’ve done this event alot, yet the mobs just appear right on top of me.

Seriously game breaking stuff when it comes to wvw and you suddenly get ganked by 80 invisible people and generally annoying and disappointing throughout.

Masamichi.1724:

This is really problematic. Ran into it last night when we were assaulting a garrison. Got the gates down, rushed into the keep, slaughtered the lord….

…why are we all dying in this room where there aren’t any enemies? Map chatter: “How are they waypointing in?” “WTF just happened?” “Who’s killing us?”

I’m not going to call it an exploit, because it’s just a mass of defenders trying to defend — but when you get to the point where you cannot defend yourself because you cannot see any enemies at all, it’s not playable. Granted, we may have been killed by overwhelming forces anyway, but it would have been so much better to say, “Oh, wow, that’s a whole lot of enemies!” instead of just being easy/free kills with no ability to target our attackers.

I don’t know what they can do to fix it, but any solution that grants invisibility to enemies should be treated as a bug, not a feature, because it adversely effects users and is not the intent. The intent is smooth FPS, not ‘unplayable situation’. At least let me choose if I want my system to chug at 5 FPS, instead of looking beautifuly unplayable.

I know you guys are getting slammed, but please, Anet, this is a huge, huge issue — can you give us some acknowledgement that you understand that this is a problem and that you’re working on it? Otherwise, I’m afraid to WvWvW, because I never know when it’s going to pop up. And I’m pretty sure that’s not your intent. As it is, it turns the monthly into a chore instead of being fun, because it turns into trying to find a lone guy to 1v1, or a small group to zerg with a larger group, because there’s just nothing you can do against enemies you can’t see.

I agree this needs sorting. Ive experienced the same as you and its pretty annoying. I also have a very high end system compared to the rec. specs of this game.

Yes, it’s really boring… Mobs appearing on you, and the same for players (team mate or ennemy…), you need to do something…

I’ve had some crazy issues with this as well. I haven’t done a lot of WvW, so I can’t attest to that, but this has happened is several PvE DEs. One was during the centaur fortress meta-event chain in Hirathi Hinterlands, where there was (by my probably erroneous estimation) over a hundred players all running to and from event objectives. Neither my friend nor I could ever see any enemies, we could only see players running back and forth for no reason, spamming their AoE. This eventually got so bad that I didn’t get any event credit for the final boss of that chain because it only showed him near me when he was about half dead, and you know how stingy large boss events are with rewards.

I’ve also had this happen at the end of the Sunless event where you fight the dragon in Sparkfly Fen. The dragon loaded just fine, but none of this minions did. I died twice from invisible minion attacks, and when he summons the bone walls to block/split players up, they never loaded on my screen until they were just about dead.

Even more frustrating, this happens in non-crowded areas too. I will be exploring, trying to get map objectives far out of the way of normal players, and I will see a large enemy fighting an invisible something far in the distance. I want to help, so I give myself bunches of swiftness, but when I arrive, the enemy itself has de-loaded and I can only see the player fighting it. Several seconds later, its corpse appears. This happens maybe once every 2 or 3 minutes of running around.

Here’s my specs:
Windows 7 64-bit
Intel Core i5-3210M CPU, 2.5 GH
6 GB of memory
My internet ranges in speed from 133 to 156 Mb per sec, and has enough bandwidth to handle anything I’ve tested it with.

This is extremely frustrating for me and as I’ve read, for bunches of other players as well.

I’m rather hoping ArenaNet can address thi

Just thought I’d add my two penneth.

I’ve had this problem as well, occurs mainly in larger scale battles in WvW, which I have consequently stopped playing now because of the problem. It can also be seen in for example the Trading House room in LA.

I was contemplating getting a new video card as mine is pretty old and I’m also experiencing some lag in larger battles, which makes WvW basically a crap shoot for me. Sometimes feels like I’m wading through glue but PvE is fine for me.

Still no answer? Really?
I feel like referencing the ghost army in The Return of the King, but you could see those guys too, kitten <lol

I’ve had this happen before, but usually things would appear with enough time for me to reach them, or react to them.

It’s been really terrible today, though. Things taking an eternity to appear in towns, mobs not showing until it’s too late, and earlier I walked into a fight with the gigantic champion boar and didn’t realize until I inexplicably died and the huge thing popped into visibility right above me, along with all the people attacking it. I don’t know why it’s so bad today.

This happens in large-scale battles for me. There is usually no lag present, no graphical anomalies, temps are good, etc. I can’t quite put my finger on it.

This is really awful in towns especially for me, but I’ve seen it in WvW as well. I’m fairly certain this is not an issue on my computer’s end, particularly. This invisibility problem did not always exist.

I thought the LOD fix might actually fix this problem but it still remains. Drivers are updated aswell was everything else. The issue occured for the first time like mid sept. I hope they fix this soon as this is making GW unplayable.

Still no word on what they are going to do to optimize this mess. WvW is horrible, large events are horrible, even town is horrible, all full of invisible people popping in and out of being rendered right on top of me.

Please remove or re-work the rendering restrictions you added it’s killing the game for me, at the very least some acknowledgment would be nice.

I, too, also have this issue in large PvE and WvWvW areas, as well as major towns like Lion’s Arch. As I approach the crowds, I see the creatures collapsing as if they were being killed right then, only they weren’t.

My specs:
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP 1
Intel Core i7-3610QM CPU @ 2.30GHz (8 CPUs), ~2.3GHz
6GB ram

I really hope they work on this.

Im no computer genius but it seems Umbra 3 occulsion is killing the game…does anyone know anything about this engine?

Had the same problem in sPvP just now, which I really don’t understand.
Was fighting a guy 2v1 when suddenly 5 more popped up out of nowhere.
Have also been experiencing this in towns, mainly LA.

Specs:
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP 1
Intel Core i7 CPU @ 3.20GHz (12 CPUs), ~3.2GHz
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580
12GB Ram
Bandwidth: 100 MB/s

Any updates about this issue? It affects Orr, WvW, and Cities. It’s a game breaking issue. I can’t do major chunks of content because of how the most important aspect (the enemy) renders last.

I’ve seen tons of videos and screenshots, but haven’t found an ArenaNet response. I’ve found responses to other issues, along the lines of “be patient as we’re looking into it” which is a relief as it is acknowledged as not intended. But not for this invisible enemy issue.

It is obviously not intended, but is it considered how it will be? Is this the type of bug that is just accepted as part of the game?

I am encountering the same issue and it’s a game breaker. Here is an example. I am standing in Lion’s Arch and MY OWN character is invisible, not to mention the 30 or so other npc / players around me.

In the attached screen shot you can see a bubble where an npc is talking and should be standing. Of course, if not for the bubble I would never know there is an npc there. Please address this. The game is pointless to play if you can’t interact with NPCs / Players.

This bug causes me to not want to do any of the following:

1.) Continue my personal story since, I don’t want to spend extra time trying to find invisible NPCs / Mobs.

2.) Explore. I want to encounter everything I can in a single zone at one time. Since I don’t know what I’ll miss because it’s invisble, I cannot accomplish everything at once and eventually will have to make trips back to experience everything.

3.) PVE – Fight invisble mobs you can’t target…. No thanks.

4.) PVP – No need to explain.

There is a certain way I like to play games and if this is the way Guild Wars 2 was intended, then that’s a shame. If that’s the case or a lack of a response to this continues, then perhaps I need to realize that NCSOFT games aren’t for me.

Okay this issue as driven me to post here finally. Having an issue like this in PvP is unacceptable. Rendering these player models is left entirely to our machines, the servers aren’t affected at all whether its loading on my screen or not. If you are having this issue in PvE then the underlying problem is even worse than it looks like. I can understand if the client is reluctant to load 100 player models and their information. But if this game has any dreams of having legitimate PvP, it has to load everything accurately 100% of the time. If my actions are decided using faulty information, then I am not in control of the outcome at all. This makes PvP pointless. Please have some faith in my machine, I spent the money on it so I wouldn’t have this issue. Now the issue is being forced on me.

ArenaNet has responded in another thread. They are working on it.

Thanks.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Everyone-went-invisible-during-WvW-including-NPC-s/first#post380494

i also have this problem, everyone was just fine before it happened my laptop had no problems running it,

general specs:
i7 2,9 ghz quad
nvidia geforce 540gt m 2gb
8gb ram