Guild Wars 2

Guild wars 2 is an exceptional game in so many ways, and a great disappointment in many others. For a while now there have been many a thread, discussing why this is. I believe that a consensus can be achieved that of all the possible reasons, the greatest by far is the terrible performance.

If you never do WvW, PVP, or participate in any crowded dynamic events or visit any major city, you might be prone to disagree on this. For the rest of us this issue is a latent, constant let down and is shoved in our faces daily. Turning an otherwise enjoyable experience, into a cesspool of frustration and sourness.

Countless of times I’ve asked and seen others ask Anet; what is going on with the game, why this atrocious performance and what are they doing about it. All questions falling on deaf ears. They haven’t even acknowledged the issue.

Why is this so ? Why haven’t they at least given us some comfort in the fact that they recognize there is a problem, instead of attributing any performance issues to a user-related problem that only affects a small portion of the players instead of being a game-wide issue? IMO the answer is very simple: Because they can’t do anything about it.

Many have achieved the same conclusion. Some attribute this inability of Anet to fix the game to the way the game was programed; only directX9 and poorly threaded.
Solving this would mean going back to the workbench and working on the game engine almost from scratch. Too late to do it now.

Attributing the reasons for this to a console port is just a conjecture. Personally I think they programmed the game that way to target windows XP users, and because dividing some problems into smaller chunks (multithreading) is not always easy…for less skilled developers. Not to mention they probably weren’t concerned about performance until very late in the development process. (The game wasn’t even optimized until after the first BWE) Probably they expected compiler optimizations would be enough.

In any case, with their latest announcement, The End of Culling, we have finally received our much sought answer. The answer to the infamous question “Will the Lousy FPS be fixed” Now we know what the game programmers have been working on for the past few months.

The performance issue is simple: The game clientt slows down to a slide-show when having many players in the area. What is the solution?
Well they can either:

1-) Investigate the bottleneck in their implementation and rewrite their algorithms to either be more efficient or to utilize more efficiently the machines resources.

2-) Create a “workaround” to the problem.

They went with choice number two. Which essentially consisted of releasing culling computations from the CPU and putting it under your control. To let you decide what is or not to be displayed.

This will most definitely NOT improve performance. At least not by much, or to the extent that is needed. But then again that wasn’t their intention. They simply aimed to fix the “mob invisibility” problem, which resulted from a faulty culling implementation.

Occlusion Culling is a technique used in video games to tell the game engine what to display and what not to, in order to save graphics resources at the expense of adding some CPU burden.
Now, not only was Anet’s culling implementation malfunctioning, but their programmers could not find an adequate solution for it, so they decided to eliminate it and create an alternate system whereas users get to decide what they want to be displayed on the screen. (as far as characters is concerned).

Now if they were unable to properly fix a relatively simpler issue such as culling (instead they removed the system altogether) in the five or so months they’ve been working on it (and they acknowledged the problem), how can we expect for them to fix the much harder, bigger issue that is game performance (which they have never admitted to be a problem with in the first place).

Similarly to a building’s foundation that can’t be changed after the building is built, they can’t make the game engine to perform adequately without tearing down the whole (recycled) thing and making it anew.

Will the lousy FPS be fixed ?
The answer is no my friend. Don’t count on it. Accept it or request a refund and move on. Your call.
I certainly know what I’ll be doing.

I’ll be playing Elder Scrolls Online before the expansion to this game comes out. Better to play something that doesn’t have this kind of problem than to give Anet more money.

They’re never gonna fix it, it’s baked into the game. They may add in some options for WvW, but that doesn’t fix anything, that just allows us to choose how sucky the experience is.

Well written and concise. I really really hope that when they introduce the culling “patch” that the will put at lease some performance fixes into the game as well.
Having nameplates as placeholders, I am sure, is not what the designers had in mind when they created GW2.
The game is fast paced and action oriented, so who in competitive WvW will display full renders? Even people with very high end systems that are culled are getting frame rate drops. Expect all future WvW videos to show nothing but nameplates since people will want performance. GG
I agree that the culling issue has now been placed on the end user.
Any issues regarding performance will be attributed to “its your system” “tweak yer settings right” instead of admitting the fundamental issue of the code itself being lacking.
I suppose we will have to wait and see but my faith in having GW2 run as intended by the designers is slowly fading away.

Sad but true.

Havnt played much in the last month myself. Not only becouse of the performance mind u, it was mainly due to lack of content for me.

I’m one of the lucky ones that has the ability to just through my computers muscle at the problem and have it pump out playable, but still woefull performance (30FPS at the minimum in crowed WvW). However those that cant do that are suffering with sub 30 FPS in such events and i know what that is like, my old rig, which is now in use by a family member , regularly gets sub 10 FPS in WvW zergs, its horrendous.

I for one wont be returning to GW2 till it gets far more content and hopefully better performance. Though i still pop ingame every week to check on the technical side of things so i can still help out in these Tech support forums.

If a 3930K@4.6 is getting 30fps in minimum crowded WvW, then why would anet allow for 0 culling options? It really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense unless they are introducing a patch to fix performance as a whole.
I know that sounds hopeful but there really isnt too much left to be hopeful for
I had been looking to upgrade to a i7 3770k with a H100 but I might hold off and see what the March patch brings. I can tell you though if/when I upgrade, if I get 30fps in WvW in a small zerg then I will probably stop playing altogether
I spent alot of money on GW1. Costumes, accounts, expansions etc and Anet will lose alot of money if this doesn’t get fixed

Holy crap the op has no idea what hes talking about.

Ok firstly, Occlusion Culling has nothing (at all) to do with the network culling they are talking about.

There is nothing specifically wrong with their implementation of network culling, its just that it created some rather bad gameplay issues. Furthermore you seem to associate network culling with client side performance which is also only tangentially has anything to do with each other.

By and large GW2 actually performs ok. The performance issues you are referring to are mostly the expected result of having hundreds of reasonably complex player models on screen at the same time. The game engine performance could be improved and I would welcome that, however there’s probably more important things to focus on, most notably about how WvW and sPvP gameplay aren’t particularly fun or well designed. Where’s the small scale pvp?

Paruza: your not gonna get alot of backing here to support anet, infact, most of us see your post and think “white knight”

gw2 has serious issues that, IMHO root back to the tricore optimization.

why would they do that if not for a tricore system?

the 360 is a tricore system…..so thats one pointer as to why they made it tri-thread optimized.

the skill systems well suited to a current and next gen console controller…..another point in favor of our theory its a console port that failed to be portable….

the fact they (ncsoft and anet) said they where looking into/investigating a console port during dev leads me to believe im correct in this belief that the major issue really is they didnt build a pc game, they build with eyes on the prize of the console market.

we shal see, im betting anet work on a console port+dx11 when the next round of consoles hit the market…..till then we arent gonna see any client side perf fixes.

Oh yeah and Paruza: for its day gw2 is no more complex then tribes1 was for its day, yet we could have 256 players in raging furballs with all sorts of effects going off….and even people on 56k with mid range systems for the day could play…….

tribes2, same deal…..

gw2 bogs down well below 256 players on screen…..well below 128 players infact…….

anets not impressed me with their lack of proper support and lack of proper acknowledgement of these problems, worse yet is the cover up actions that I see some of their forums staff engage in…..click the link in my sig to get what i mean…..

the fact is, anet know theres a problem, they COULD go back and fix it, BUT they wont because that would cost money that could be better spent on adding items to the gem shop…..quagan backpacks for all!!!!

Ok firstly, Occlusion Culling has nothing (at all) to do with the network culling they are talking about.

It has everything to do. It is an additional component of the occlusion culling implementation. In fact, we do not know if it is the only part of the culling implementation. We know for certain there is character culling, for evident reasons. But we can’t ascertain if there’s object culling. For all we know character culling could be the only culling system in the game.

Internally, there is no difference between the two, the same system that tells the GPU not to render a room behind a wall, tells it not to render a character that’s behind your back (Umbra). The difference lies in where the data come from. This game being an online game requires character position data to be supplied by a server, as opposed to the position of other objects/NPCs the game is well aware of.

There is nothing specifically wrong with their implementation of network culling

Tell that to the thousands of frustrated WvW players. They seem to disagree with you. Apparently Anet does too, after all they tried to fix it, and ended up discarding the whole thing.

you seem to associate network culling with client side performance

I make no such claim.
I simply state the fact that, after admitting there was a problem with their culling system and working hard to fix it, Anet developers decided to discard it and implement an alternative, player controlled system. Why this? Perhaps they realized fixing the problem would require making major changes into the network structure of the game engine and decided the alternative would be more feasible/cost effective.

My whole point is, if they decided fixing a relatively simpler issue such as culling would prove to costly/difficult, how likely is it that they’ll fix the infinitely more complex and entangled performance issue.

This is their response, subtle but clear as water.

I agree Ivan, I did have a funny idea to fix the culling in WvWvW issue, rather then display 3d models and modern gfx, they could go retro and make it look like daggerfall!!!!

http://youtu.be/I_MY0ihuJZc

http://youtu.be/D5OyPBEPLO0

that may help, i mean sprite based rather then 3d models!!!! and hey, if it made WvWvW playable…….:P

OP, you are mistaken, network culling as used in this game is not the same as occlusion culling. That’s an entirely separate process which is of course used and will continue to be used as it is an essential part of any 3D engine.

The culling system ANet used was a process where the server would decide how many characters it would report to the client, in order to save on bandwidth and/or server performance. It had nothing to do with occlusion.

Occlusion culling is part of a rendering process. Network culling is part of the networking process. They’re based in entirely separate areas of the engine. Occlusion culling happens entirely on the client. Network culling happens on the server.

No, this patch will not increase performance, unless they tie up effect rendering with how the WvW characters are displayed (for example if they turn off effect rendering for characters which are displayed as nametags only, which will be one of the options). In that case, players who experience framerate drop spikes and associated skill lag will see a marked improvement.

Otherwise FPS should remain pretty much the same, or slightly worse depending on what option you choose.

The point is, they never were working on improving engine performance. Network culling has nothing to do with that, but I agree they should have been clearer about what it means, as it can be confusing.

So shortly you agree with him:

Will the lousy FPS be fixed ?
The answer is no my friend. Don’t count on it. Accept it or request a refund and move on. Your call.
I certainly know what I’ll be doing.

For sure, it’s what most did (leave and eventually ask a refund), me included, and most of who is left online is waiting the real king

Socrates the mauler.4156:

I’ll be playing Elder Scrolls Online before the expansion to this game comes out. Better to play something that doesn’t have this kind of problem than to give Anet more money.

They’re never gonna fix it, it’s baked into the game. They may add in some options for WvW, but that doesn’t fix anything, that just allows us to choose how sucky the experience is.

This game is just a pure fail, hopeless. As OP said, the entire game engine must be rewritten from scratch. Too late, it’s a fail, will end up as deserved, a ghost town.

There is nothing we user can write on this thread to be helpful, contribute, or anything.
We are just realistic on what this game is and what we will have: nothing or worst.
We are at 7th month. Anet already proved his programming skills and intentions to fix.
But i guess my post is the kind of post so anti-PR on this forum and will be deleted quickly like other post who doesn’t contain “Anet da best” , as usually by this company, right?
Let’s see if a dev or Hrouda answer, now. Nah.
(Hey Hrouda, we are waiting a refund for dragon lag kicking out users, not giving us any chest logging back wasting our time )

Well I don’t agree with you! Don’t remember the last time I had so much fun in a game.

And if you think TESO will magically make it possible to see a 100+ characters on screen without a high end computer (the part devs never mention), you’re mistaken. There’s only so much you can do with current hardware limitations.

Well, i guess we’ll see. about TESO.

p.s. oh i had a lot of fun too, until the 4th month, completed my target (the pics you can see on signature) i just got bored of bugged content kept released more and more bugged and this culling stupid thing, even on festivities and great events (karka big event), and well… nothing else to do than grind mats and gamble. Time to leave. Look around you, who is left keep posting the same. I just log to check if i sold something else, and if my guild officer’s tasks are needed and logoff. At best when in the mood a quick daily ( i did 2 dailies on feb, 3 on this month)

Gaudrath.6725: your wrong, the servers report where all characters are, culling just limits how many you can see, this is needed because of how gw2 is designed, there are other games past and current that deal with this better then gw2 does.

you cant have an mmo with pvp that dosnt report the possitions/actions of all clients that would be on screen, even if it dosnt display them, it just wont work.

anyway, this is very clear by the fact that invisable people can attack you when your in wvwvw pre occlusion culling patch…

I understand what the problem is with Occlusion culling and why its needed, I also know its not easy to fix due to how they implemented it early on(umbra sucks).

all I can say is, they should have hired people with exp building a true mmo to help build this game from the start…..

EDIT: let me be clear though, I dont think the game needs a total rewrite to be fixed, but it needs enough work that they really just need a dedicated team working from the ground up to rebuild and optimize the portions of the client/engine that arent working well, the thing is, anet arent going to invest in that, because people are still playing and buying gems.

once numbers fall off noticeably OR the next round of consoles come out, thats when i bet we see them fix the game, till then, either play another game or accept that gw2 runs like kitten even on top end systems.

Gaudrath: if its impossible to show that many people on screen with reasonable perf, how did tribes1 and 2 manage it even on lower end game systems over 56k?

seriously, we had 256 player servers back in the day thanks to homelan (server hosting/clan hosting company/group) and they rocked, huge furballs with hundreds of people on screen, effects everywhere, and perf was good…..and for its day, tribes/tribes2 was at least a match for gw2 quality wise.

but, darkstar/torque netcode is likely more efficient then whatever anet used, as was the engine, also note: there was no player culling, IT JUST WORKED!!!!

how about everquest in cities…..you could easily see hundreds of people in crowded areas…..and on a half decent rig you didnt get a massive slowdown or slide show…..

no, the problem isnt that you cant do it, the problem is you have to build and optimize for it and test it early on and keep testing and tweaking to ensure that it will work, and i think its quite clear, anet didnt do that…..

I kinda feel sorry for anets engine developers honestly, because I dont know a single developer who would be happy leaving their title/work in the state gw2 is in, but they gotta do what they are told to do if they wana keep their jobs……..

oh well, again, im guessing they will get around to fixing it for the xbox720/ps4 port/ports.

Wow, this thread is full of fail. OP makes completely wrong assumptions, Paruza and Gaudrath are actually correct, yet people jump in and support the original claims without having any clue just because… why? ANet doesn’t know how to do stuff? They explained their decisions over and over again and everybody with basic knowledge of how these things work should be able to understand it.

IvanHoe.3468:

It has everything to do. It is an additional component of the occlusion culling implementation.

The issues we’re talking about are in absolutely no way related to occlusion culling. Just because something has “culling” in it doesn’t mean it automatically applies here. Occlusion culling is a basic rendering technique, the issue we’re facing here is network related.

Jazhara Knightmage.4389:

Gaudrath.6725: your wrong, the servers report where all characters are, culling just limits how many you can see

You’re* wrong, the servers don’t report the character positions.

Please do yourself a favour and read Habib’s extensive posts on this topic before making further wrong claims, he explained it really well, should be understandable for everybody:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/members/Habib-Loew-6239/showposts
Just search for “culling” in those pages. This one’s important for example:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Update-on-Culling/first#post1137307

So, Anet should improve their “network related” issue? When , exactly. It’s 7 months we are waiting. (Aren’t we used to those fake posts never realized and forgotten? I recall a couple..like scavenger hunt..). Because well, it’s not just wvw. Every mass fight (like dragons or shadow behemoth) behave the same. (let’s skip the unplayable part where players cannot move, use skills, and are kicked relogging on overflow losing the chest, lol)

In four days exactly.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/world-vs-worldthe-end-of-culling/

I see. And will fix dragons and other inworld culling too? (looking forward to test it)

No, the stuff they are implementing next week if ONLY for world versus world. Those culling options will not be available for open world dynamic event content, like the dragon events.

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

Well, i guess we’ll see. about TESO.

p.s. oh i had a lot of fun too, until the 4th month, completed my target (the pics you can see on signature) i just got bored of bugged content kept released more and more bugged and this culling stupid thing, even on festivities and great events (karka big event), and well… nothing else to do than grind mats and gamble. Time to leave. Look around you, who is left keep posting the same. I just log to check if i sold something else, and if my guild officer’s tasks are needed and logoff. At best when in the mood a quick daily ( i did 2 dailies on feb, 3 on this month)

Well, my goal is to have fun, so I guess we’re just different. And I play WvW mostly, which never gets stale due to its sandboxy nature. When that gets a bit old, I do a few PvE stints for a change of pace or just take a break.

And plenty of people on my server. Maybe it’s just your server that has low population.

Just to make thing more clear, there are two types of lag. One is network lag, where there is an issue with either client-server connection (which is constant and doesn’t depend on where the player is in the game, for example oceanic players have that problem because of distance) or with server overload where the client data (like the fact that you just activated #1 skill) just isn’t processed fast enough because the server is overwhelmed.

The other is FPS lag, where the client itself has overloaded the user’s computer.

If your framerate is fine, but your skills won’t activate, then you have network lag. If your framerate is dead, then you have FPS lag

Culling actually doesn’t have anything to do with performance as far as FPS (frames per second) lag is concerned, due to the way the game engine handles culled characters.

These days, 3D models are not much a problem for modern hardware to handle. You can easily have plenty of high polygon models on screen and not suffer performance issues.

What causes the greatest performance hit are in fact – particle systems and postprocessing. In other words, special effects for skills, environment (for example, fog, godrays, HDR) and such. Notice that FPS lags usually hit when there is a massive outburst of people using their skills, usually in WvW when two zergs (even culled ones) hit each other or in PvE during boss events when lots of people start firing off their abilities. This is because the game engine will attempt to render particle effects even for characters that have been culled. GW2 has pretty lush particle effects and when that is multiplied by several dozen players spamming skills, inevitably the game slows down to a crawl on all but the best gaming systems.

The issue is compounded with the fact that network lag (server being overwhelmed with the sudden influx of client data and the need to process it and report back to the client) also hits at the exact same time. So the two can and usually do happen simultaneously, but their causes are fundamentally different and require different solutions, as the devs have stated themselves.

And no, there aren’t any games that do not have this problem. You have plenty of games which display hundreds or even thousands of 3D models on screen (for example Total War series), but just take a look what happens if you go overboard with particles (like Empire Total War did with gunpowder smoke). An so far no MMO in history of gaming has ever been able to provide lag free gameplay where even a few dozen players are involved in a big fight.

The closest I’ve seen is EvE Online, which can support several dozen players duking it out without lag, but that game is almost all spreadsheets and math, is hosted on server cluster rated as a supercomputer, your target usually looks like a tiny red cross on the screen and even with that if you want to be able to do anything you have to tune the particle effects all the way down anyway.

So when TESO devs said their characters are designed for up to 200 of them to be rendered on screen, I believed them. They just haven’t mentioned what will happen on an average computer when those 200 players start firing off flashy spells and skills at the same time. The same thing that happens in GW2. Lag.

There’s only 1 type of LAG. Thats the type caused by high network latency which in turn can be caused by the servers or by somthing else between ur computer and the servers.

This whole notion of LAG = Low FPS has come up from those who have mistakenly called it LAG, and there have been so many people do it, that alot of people actually think its called LAG. I guess u cant really complain, new terms come along all the time, but in this case it just down to too many online players ,who are ignorant of even basic computer terms and knowledge, talking online in games and forums using the term incorrectly and others have just followed suit.
People will disagree with this, thats fine, but for me, som1 who has been around gaming long before the majority of current online gamers who started playing in the 00’s, LAG never reffered to frame rates.

LAG =/= low FPS
LAG = High network Latency

As for spell effects and such, tbh that isnt a problem, just turn the settings down, get a better graphics card, go SLI/xfire. The problem is CPU bottlenecking in MMO’s ..u cant xfire or SLI CPU’s ..not gaming grade ones anyway, and u can only OC so far. And u cant turn the things that are causing said bottlenck down.
The stuff being processed causing the issue is a core part to the games in question. The work around for GW2 is culling. .Make it so said ‘core component’ (the players) dont get processed till they r within X distance of ur character, and set a limit to how many u can process. Thats cutting out stuff ..not turning it down, and it impacts on gameplay.

give up sn, we all know nothing about this game, and the gme dosnt report where any player positions are to other clients, somehow it just magically shows where they are….or dosnt, or so the know it alls above say……………dont bother listening to anybody whos been on the dev or server side of an mmo….none of us know a kitten thing about how players are tracked(because they arent)

meh whatever…

IvanHoe.3468:

Attributing the reasons for this to a console port is just a conjecture.

got a lesson for you, dont in effect say im full of what the kitten left in the litterbox, i will prove im not.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/02/15/guild-wars-2-console-version-confirmed/

http://www.gamespot.com/news/guild-wars-2-console-version-in-preparation-stage-6350552

http://news.softpedia.com/news/MMOs-Have-Potential-on-Home-Consoles-Says-Guild-Wars-2-Director-330644.kittenml

http://www.justpushstart.com/2012/02/guild-wars-2-announced-for-consoles/

http://news.mmosite.com/content/q/2012-02-15/guild_wars_2_console_version_confirmed_large_scale_Beta_coming_soon.kittenml

perhaps a quick lesson on how to use google is in order

http://bit.ly/166Br6L

anet/ncsoft said they where working on/preparing a console version, since its not launched, im sure you can guess why….(hint: because it would run about as fast as turtles stampeding threw peanut butter in January)

hope this clears up why I and others feel we are playing an aborted console port.

Socrates the mauler.4156:

I’ll be playing Elder Scrolls Online before the expansion to this game comes out. Better to play something that doesn’t have this kind of problem than to give Anet more money.

They’re never gonna fix it, it’s baked into the game. They may add in some options for WvW, but that doesn’t fix anything, that just allows us to choose how sucky the experience is.

No Gamebryo based game have ever performed well or had any sort of decent scalability. Try Rift, WAR, or anything before that. They all had the same issues with mass battles. Except GW2 just doesn’t show people until it is too late, where as those quite literally were a slide show. So I wouldn’t hold my breath for ESO to be any better.

SolarNova.1052:

There’s only 1 type of LAG. Thats the type caused by high network latency which in turn can be caused by the servers or by somthing else between ur computer and the servers.

This whole notion of LAG = Low FPS has come up from those who have mistakenly called it LAG, and there have been so many people do it, that alot of people actually think its called LAG. I guess u cant really complain, new terms come along all the time, but in this case it just down to too many online players ,who are ignorant of even basic computer terms and knowledge, talking online in games and forums using the term incorrectly and others have just followed suit.
People will disagree with this, thats fine, but for me, som1 who has been around gaming long before the majority of current online gamers who started playing in the 00’s, LAG never reffered to frame rates.

Technically you are correct, but these days as networks have steadily improved from the days when network lag was the usual problem, people have started using the term FPS lag more often and now it’s pretty much established that there are two types of lag, both describing the delay between user input and software reaction.

As for spell effects and such, tbh that isnt a problem, just turn the settings down, get a better graphics card, go SLI/xfire. The problem is CPU bottlenecking in MMO’s ..u cant xfire or SLI CPU’s ..not gaming grade ones anyway, and u can only OC so far. And u cant turn the things that are causing said bottlenck down.
The stuff being processed causing the issue is a core part to the games in question. The work around for GW2 is culling. .Make it so said ‘core component’ (the players) dont get processed till they r within X distance of ur character, and set a limit to how many u can process. Thats cutting out stuff ..not turning it down, and it impacts on gameplay.

Only GW2 doesn’t allow you to turn down the effects. Go ahead and try. There is no way to use simplified particle effects or turn them off. And the stuff being processed as far as characters go isn’t the problem as far as FPS drop spikes are concerned. Most of the data processing happens on the server anyway, with the client only responsible for sending out user input data and applying feedback data it receives from the server.

As for what is causing the issues when it comes to FPS drops, I do game asset production professionally, and as I said, modern graphic cards can handle high polygon scenery very well, but when it comes to particle effects, party because some of that stuff is delegated to CPU’s (for example particle calculations), the strain on the system is higher.

Furthermore, not everyone can afford a high end graphics card. Some of those cost as much as a completely new machine.

The best solution would be for ANet to give users more options, especially the option to disable or simplify particle effects. Make the software more flexible instead of expecting people to upgrade their machines just so that they could play their game.

Why is everyone pretending to be Professor barabas on these forums ? Let anet figure it out and get off your high horse already “my friend”.

Anet already showed their programming skills and how to fix this issue (doing nothing), just look at client’s performance, and we are next to the first year, soon. We are enough lucky they are doing something about culling. And we still need to test it , be ready for a flamewar on the forum..

SolarNova.1052:

There’s only 1 type of LAG. Thats the type caused by high network latency which in turn can be caused by the servers or by somthing else between ur computer and the servers.

This is wrong, low FPS are not related to lag, but there are other types, input lag or display lag for example. Everything that causes a delay between your (re)actions and what’s actually happening is called lag. Which is kind of obvious considering lag is just another word for delay.

again read what they have said, the game will/does scale based on settings, the current assumption is that when you crank things all the way down as you would for old hardware, it will use very low res textures, little to no partical effects, exct, try turning gw2 down, then try turning tera down, there are 2 examples of scaling, gw2:not at all, tera: you gain fps.

your ASSumptions clearly show you didnt read the interviews or any of the other linked info.

please, do, they make it very clear the game wont look the same on high vs low end systems, but, their goal is to have a min of 200players visable during large battles even on old systems, again this is without all the fancy effects/high res textures that high end users get.

WoW is another beast, its based on the Warcraft 3 engine, its been updated but it was not an engine desiged from the start to be used for an mmo(nore is gw2’s engine, or any version of UE or cryengine or gamebryo or or or…)

nobody has put an mmo out on an engine built specifically for mmo use….ZMOS are saying they have developed the engine specifically for mmo use, using bits and peices here and there from other companies but not basing their engine off any engine thats been used before.

Im hopeful for ESO for just this reason, the team didnt take the easy rout and just use a readily available engine and try and make it work for their needs, they say they have taken the time and effort to do it right……something I really dont think anybody has bothered to do before…

look at todays mmo’s

UE2.5 or 3
cryengine
gamebryo
guildwars1
exct

nobody has developed an engine from the start to be designed for mmo use.

now, i will say, a good start would have been torque since it is what powered the tribes games, and, despite what some idiots here will say, tribes for its day was just as amazing gfx wise as gw2 or any top game today is, yet, we had 256 players on 1 server, with HUGE furball battles and even people on 56k where able to play.

also note: tribes1 and 2 both had deployable turrets and devices as well as “mounts” all of these where in use during these battles……yet the game ran smooth even on mid range hardware……and turned down, it could be played on lower end systems of its day.(needed a true 3d accelerator with opengl or glide but if you had that it could run)

it wasnt an mmo, there was no inventory/stat tracking other then per round, but, still, it shows that under the correct engine it can be done….and done well!!!!

Thanks for the link. I saw exactly what I was expecting to see. Jerky animations and very Skyrim-like movement. Strange that you haven’t, but I guess the hope dies last.

jerky animations?

guess your view of jerky is different from mine and most other peoples, i have shown that video and a few others to 20+ people and none of them viewed it as jerky, but from your statements I take it you dont like TES anyway so that explains your hate/pessimism for TESO since you also are just sure its gamebryo based…….

oh well, if it runs as well as they say it does or even 1/2 that well, your more then welcome to stick to gw2 or whatever floats your boat and you can even badmouth it without every playing it, by then, most of us will have moved on since anet clearly dont plan to do anything to make the game run decent in DE’s and WvWvW…..2 of the main selling points of the game.

btw, since you clearly dont get what i mean by black eye
http://waa.ai/Ssl
read those stories, and google it, the simcity 5 launch was a desaster, its cost EA and Maxis alot of money, it also cost them alot of future sales, because, honestly, whos gonna buy a game when they know the company making it couldnt give less of a kitten about them?

I know alot of people who where gonna buy the game or who did buy it, not a single one still has it, they all refunded, because after a week those who did buy it where still fighting to get online so they could play…..those that didnt saw how EA and Maxis lied threw their teeth about the game needing online to function at all(saying most of the caculations for the simulation was done on their servers) and then, flat out saying they didnt give a kitten about the opinion of players.

infact, their(ea+maxis) rep flat out said that.

well enjoy reading what i mean about black eye due to lies and how it can cost sales.(kinda like the min specs are costing anet alot of refunds on gw2)

Jazhara Knightmage.4389:

jerky animations?

guess your view of jerky is different from mine and most other peoples, i have shown that video and a few others to 20+ people and none of them viewed it as jerky, but from your statements I take it you dont like TES anyway so that explains your hate/pessimism for TESO since you also are just sure its gamebryo based…….

oh well, if it runs as well as they say it does or even 1/2 that well, your more then welcome to stick to gw2 or whatever floats your boat and you can even badmouth it without every playing it, by then, most of us will have moved on since anet clearly dont plan to do anything to make the game run decent in DE’s and WvWvW…..2 of the main selling points of the game.

Perfect truth. The game will perform as we saw on those videos, but fixed, better, faster. And as you said even if was 1/2, most of who is still left on this game will move out quickly. And no, not because is the new mmo. Just because it’s well.. better about everything hehe Expecially massive battles, the so beloved wvw.
I moved out yet, signed for beta, waiting the TESO launch like mad
Leave him on his illusion gw2 is a great game and everyone will stick on it lol , would be just an waste of time and a flame.

Aye oke, i’ll follow you.
1 Well, we both are realistic.
2 We’ll see. Yes, i saw loads mmo (gw2 on top) selling scams never improved or just a disappointment. I just have the “feeling” TESO will be as promised.
I guess the same feeling gw2 will be (as you agree) just a fail about this culling patch, and with loads threads yelling to Anet lol.
Still wondering when will be applied to the PVE part, like dragon events..

26th of march.
it will either be a day full of win or full of fail.
in other words: i will start playing hardcore or i’ll quit.

i just love this game, but the slideshows are making me hit alt+f4 everytime.
culling made it at least play- and enjoyable for me during larger DE’s.

oh and i’ll seriously slice a quaggan, the next time someone says “meh it’s like that in every mmo” or “no other mmo got that large battles so go easy on it”.
it’s like i am the only one, who have played and enjoyed other mmo’s with large battles before GW2.
i admit, at first, i was like this too, because i couldn’t accept that and did every tweak and tune (ranging from extreme OC to minor software tweaks) on my system to boost the performance – without any change.

all i want is the promised quality for the paying customer.

well said wauwi well said.

I and a large number of my friends bought gw2 (hell our core group got it prepurchase or preorder) because we wanted to play togather, but as we found, DE’s (dragon events/dynamic events) and WvWvW become unplayable for anybody who dosnt just button mash and pray….

I love some of what gw2 did, the event/quest system is bloody great, the combat is nice(but i would prefer to have to aim like in tera or neverwinter), the jumping puzzles and such are fun(at least for those of us who enjoy a challenge they are…for others they are frustrating and annoying.)

the fact is, to me, that video is very smooth(despite the flash player/encoding being sub par IMHO), teso looks like its gonna run alot better then gw2, so does kingdom under fire 2, so that leaves why anybody would continue to champion gw2….leaving me with the feeling/opinion that some people here are white knighting on anets behalf because they dont want to admit to themselves or others that anet did a poor job when they updated the gw1 engine for use in an mmo rather then co-rpg….

Neverwinter runs better then this for me, startrek online runs better then this for me…..and both have dx11 support….and sto came out years before gw2……

if you really think anet and gw2 are the penical of mmo’s in every way, then stick with it, but dont try and tell me its not anets fault the game runs like what the kitten left in the litterbox…….they created this game…..they could have done a better job testing.

they could have made DE’s instanced, they could have removed WvWvW or made it instanced in smaller map zones with limited people….

they didnt, they ran with something and advertised it as a main selling point……massive battles with lots of people……yeah you can do that if you got the money for exotic cooling and can push a current gen cpu to 6ghz or so……

I will leave an image for all of you who insist the games perfect as is and no other game will be or has been any better.

OH and a note: I also use to play some korean mmo’s, one called Kal Online has MASSIVE battles for control of the server economics each week, funny, it never became a slide show for me, even with hundreds of people rushing the pyrmid setting off all sorts of spell/skill effects…..sure its low poly and textures are MEH…..but, even on my old old old rig, it didnt bog down like gw2 does wen you get a few people on screen.

As anticipated, the removal of culling did little to nothing in favor of performance. I still get major FPS drops when more than a few players are in the area, even with the new settings in low/low. The only difference is that I get too see many more name plates.

I hope this patch is enough to convince those advocates of the theory proclaiming the game slowed down because of the engine was unable to render so many characters on the screen. What are you going to say now, are those name plates too graphically demanding?

There was no need of monitoring tools to realize that the severe bottleneck has nothing to do with 3d models or rendering, but lies in the way the engine handles data.
Are they passing objects by value, do they have costly constructor/destructor routines? who knows what the severe blunder is. I am positive directx9 isn’t the only guilty though.

In any case, this will be my last post. I have requested a refund for the game and shortly I’ll be unable to post on the forums anymore. As soon as my refund gets processed my forum and game accounts will be void.

I want to take the chance to wish y’all the best of luck, wherever your MMO activities take you. Whether you decide to stay here or move on to greener pastures.

Happy gaming!

And the exodus continues.
I feel like a refugee in the game lol