Guild Wars 2

First of all this post is not to complain (well okay sort of)

I’ve been doing a lot of sanctum sprint. I can quickly get into first place thanks to much practice. However this is where my problems start.

As soon as I get into first place my first 3 abilities start acting up.

1. Assisted jump: Makes me hang in the air repeating the falling animation 2 or 3 times, and teleport me back to random areas ive ran through a while ago.
2. will often make me stand still at the end of the ability even though both my mouse buttons are still pressed.
3. When targeted at crystals. Will always stop responding completely. Often stopping midway making me fall to my death. Often it will activate more than 3 seconds after the press.

In short in my many runs I’ve failed to get through the course in 1st place thanks to what appears to be weird skill lag. None of these problems occur when i’m in anything lower than 3rd place.

I assure you it is not because I don’t understand how these abilities work or a lack of skill/practice on my part. Even though that might sound arrogant.

I’m curious if I’m the only one.

Wikipedia defines lag as… “In online gaming, lag is a noticeable delay between the action of players and the reaction of the server. Although lag may be caused by high latency, it may also occur due to insufficient processing power in the client and/or server.”

This explanation deals with two entities talking to each other and reacting in a timely manner to instant events happening. What this DOESN’T explain is what is involved in getting the signal out from your PC through the maze of communications protocols and into the receiving server, acted upon and sent back.

For instance, I live in Australia, infamed for being the farthest place from any ANet server. I link to a US server because the ping is marginally better than going through an EU server, and a lot more consistant. Even when people in the Great Southern Land have the best connection available (ADSL2+ which is 24Mb/sec, excluding those already on the NBN) and with the best gaming rig around, the ping still averages out to be ~350-450ms to talk to any US-based ANet server.

The issue with this is the number of gateways our communication has to deal with to get a successful signal through. Last time I looked when I had to talk to an ANet server it was something around 23-24 different gateways before it got to it’s destination, and then had to come back again.
To put this in perspective, my signal being tested on speedtest.net to a local Brisbane-based server has to go through 7 different gateways which creates a ping of about 45ms (latency). The same test to any Los Angeles-based server or thereabouts gets me to 220-250ms ping, all because of distance travelled and gateways that the signal has to go through. The signal will only go through the gateways/paths that are necessary, and speedtest minimises on the necessary pathing to create a better and more accurate ping. With GW2, the signal has to be bounced around various internal gateways which take my ping from 200-odd ms latency to almost double.

If you live in the US you have a distinct advantage over anyone else in the world because of your relative proximity to the server. On average, you’re getting 10ms-100ms pings depending on where you are, and low numbers are good.

Back to GW2… during this minigame, you’re asking the client to talk to the server at a ridiculously fast-paced rate, and lag will take over sooner or later. So towards the end of the race It’s more probable that the lag will set in than the start, because of such little activity and movement, let alone placement of the character on the map relative to where the game sees you and how/where you see yourself, which is where the REAL lag starts to kill the player experience. The lag creeps in faster the quicker you go and the faster you ask the client to talk to the server, and vice-versa.

Sorry for being long-winded, but I felt a decent explanation of how it works would promote a better understanding of why it happens. Keep pressing on and good luck in your fight for 1st.