Guild Wars 2

I am not a computer programmer. I am not a game developer. I do not understand how these games function.

But anyone who’s played in t1 is very familiar with the technical limitations this game is facing.

Keep fights frequently slow to a crawl. Skills don’t work, heals don’t work. If Anet devs say that the aoe limit is in place to reduce the strain on the game’s servers then I believe them. If the game runs like this with an aoe limit I can only imagine what would happen if the aoe limit were removed.

I have said it before and I’ll say it again: if you want challenging small fights then go work your way up the leaderboards in tPvP.

I personally love people who think just because I play the game I know how it works and what needs to be fixed.

“Just add more servers” “Upgrade”

It’s kind of like your average every day citizen telling the treasury of it’s country that it can solve all it’s problems by throwing more money at it. As Devon said, it’s a technical limitation, not a technological one.

mjharrison.3209:

graphics has absolutely zero to do with server calculations.

It does however effect performance.
A text-based game does require WAY LESS server power and calculations than a graphical game.

Vena.8436:

If only you’d bothered to read anything else you’d know that I wasn’t talking about the servers at all but alas… you didn’t bother.

Then you’re in the wrong thread. This one’s about the AOE cap & technical implications thereof.

mjharrison.3209:

The reason is that the computationally complex part of the calculation (ordering entities by distance to avatar) has already been done in order to calculate the 5 targets, so the only impact of bumping 5 targets to e.g. 8 is a network cost (as dmg packets need to be sent to more players), not a CPU cost. The computational cost of calculating dmg for a few extra players per AOE cast is miniscule.

Except that is incorrect. Each of those new 3 targets have to have everything calculated for them as well (ie. condition/boon/etc modifiers) but you seem to be ignoring any and all such details to talk about distance based calculations.

See highlighted sentence. Geometry calculations are the bulk of the computational cost of the server. Case in point, player stat calculations such as those you describe are often done in script (python, boo, lua, unrealscript, etc) not C++.

IMO a lot of misconceptions in this thread. Processor speed is just one factor in the skill lag equation. Game engines such as these have contention in various places so making one area faster may have little payback. Read up on multi threaded environments and synchronization to get a feel for how many moving parts are in a system like this.

Network bandwidth (how much data can be transmitted) has increased a tremendous amount over the last decade but network speeds (how fast a packet arrives) have not. Ping times are what count not bandwidth. DAoC needed decent ping times, all action MMOs need good ping times.

BF3 is a horrible, horrible comparison. Limiting a fight to 64 players makes the programming MUCH easier and calculating 128 players isn’t twice as difficult it is exponentially more difficult. They also limit damage types, their damage calculation is much simpler, far fewer skills to resolve, fewer buffs to contend with, etc.

DAoC had lag, combat wasn’t nearly as fast paced, had far fewer 100+ player fights in the same area at the same time, lots of running between fights, far more stuns/dazes limiting skill output and people can still play it if they think it was miles better than GW2.

I know of no other action MMORPG that scales as well as this game. There probably is one out there and I would like to hear about it. I know DAoC was close but even it would at best struggle mightily under the fast pace, near constant zerg on zerg fights GW2 offers.

Those anonymous posts teaching other people’s job are always delicious. It really is a trend in our society, in computer science especially : everybody thinks that they’re experts in everyting and that their uneducated opinions are interesting.

Dev said that it’s a technical limitation of the engine. Thread closed, until they eventually change the engine or find a workaround.

Vena.8436:

Nikola.3841:

Let me tell you how I would do it.
My necro uses Carrion Leggionaire Staff of Corruption…lets assume there is less than 65536 different weapons in GW2…I would give that staff a 2-byte code, and send only those 2 bytes over network…I would then render it completely on client side…same in GW2 as in DAOC…same for each of 6 different armor parts, I really doubt theres more than 65536 parts of any of 6 armor positions. Now, why would GW2 need 400 bytes instead 2?

Each bit of data sent has to incorporate and cover all: skin, stats, and sigils for weapons, and skin, several dye channels, stats, and runes/orbs for armor, and stats/jewels for jewerly. There are ~4 weapon slots (none is also a data value), 6 armor slots, and 6 accessories. Each string of data has to cover, therefore, 16 locations with an average of three to four possible value combinations per slot, ie 48 to 64 units, merely for appearance. Now, each character also has a specific coordinate string, data values that are updated on a 1/4 second tick for conditions and boons and any other buffs like food/oil, this alone is probably more units than appearance, and damage and healing.

This is merely all that you see for a single character.

Easily < 64 bytes per character for all of the above. 100 characters enter your player’s area of interest, that’s <64KB (assuming no caching, which of course there would be).

That’s within a factor of 2 of MMOs made 10+ years ago. Point being the amount of traffic per character hasn’t changed much since the first MMOs.

Ouroboros.5076:

Those anonymous posts teaching other people’s job are always delicious. It really is a trend in our society, in computer science especially : everybody thinks that they’re experts in everyting and that their uneducated opinions are interesting.

Dev said that it’s a technical limitation of the engine. Thread closed, until they eventually change the engine or find a workaround.

More than just IT, just look at all the self-appointed authorities on climate change, science/religion, GM food, etc.

That said, some people who play GW2 actually are server programmers for one of the world’s top gaming companies.

lordkrall.7241:

mjharrison.3209:

graphics has absolutely zero to do with server calculations.

It does however effect performance.
A text-based game does require WAY LESS server power and calculations than a graphical game.

Not necessarily. You could design a text-based game with more gameplay elements that would consume more server bandwidth/cpu cycles than GW2. Point being, the graphical demands of the client are largely independent of the demands of the server.

mjharrison.3209:

Not necessarily. You could design a text-based game with more gameplay elements that would consume more server bandwidth/cpu cycles than GW2. Point being, the graphical demands of the client are largely independent of the demands of the server.

And yet people tend to lag less when they lower their settings (and I am talking about actual lag rather than FPS drops which some people seems to assume are the same).

lordkrall.7241:

mjharrison.3209:

Not necessarily. You could design a text-based game with more gameplay elements that would consume more server bandwidth/cpu cycles than GW2. Point being, the graphical demands of the client are largely independent of the demands of the server.

And yet people tend to lag less when they lower their settings (and I am talking about actual lag rather than FPS drops which some people seems to assume are the same).

network lag is a totally different beast than graphics lag.

Straegen.2938:

I know of no other action MMORPG that scales as well as this game. There probably is one out there and I would like to hear about it. I know DAoC was close but even it would at best struggle mightily under the fast pace, near constant zerg on zerg fights GW2 offers.

Darkfall routinely has sieges with >1K players in the same area, more than all 4 WVW instances combined. In the same area. Also, it’s an MMOFPS, faster-paced than GW2.

Also, planetside1 & 2, savage 1 and 2… there are quite a few games with faster gameplay and higher player density.

Jscull.2514:

Holdyir.2918:

Sometimes I wonder if the aoe limit is really just another excuse for helping promote skill-less play similar to the downed state. It almost seems unreal that they can’t match the tech of a game that’s over a decade old.

Dude at least 90% of their population wants skill-less play. So they cater.

As you’ve said before the 90% pays the bills, the 10% doesnt, unless you believe that the 90% eventually adopt the attitudes of the 10%, isnt all this griping pointless?

It’s probably more likely the 10% move on to archeage or cu rather than the 90% come round to your views.

Ouroboros.5076:

Those anonymous posts teaching other people’s job are always delicious. It really is a trend in our society, in computer science especially : everybody thinks that they’re experts in everyting and that their uneducated opinions are interesting.

Dev said that it’s a technical limitation of the engine. Thread closed, until they eventually change the engine or find a workaround.

Although I’m DAOC fan, which you can conclude from previous posts, DAOC devs said few things to be IMPOSSIBLE to do, then few years later they achieved impossible
Actually, I’m myself a programmer, and few times I did impossible things, too

• I will say it again*

Why do we think it is fair/balanced for 10 people to be able to hit me simultaneously, whilst I can only hit 5 of that 10? How is that right?

If you want an “offensive AoE cap”, then shouldn’t you have a defensive one to offset it? (Meaning I could only be hit by 5 people at maximum at once)

DevonCarver.5370:

Master of Timespace.2548:

Simple question. Why is there an aoe cap? And no, please do not come up with that “technical limitation” lie. There has been thousands games before this with massive pvp and no aoe cap, why would your engine be somehow so infernior to that of these older games?

What you seem to be missing is that technical limitations are not about the fact that a solution somewhere may have existed for some other thing. Our game is using an engine that has these technical limitations. We could, for instance, display everything as text, which would solve the problem quite nicely, however we’ve found that our graphics offer something a text-based MMO couldn’t quite deliver. The point is, it is very much a limitation of our engine. The load on the server CPU would be quite simply unsustainable if we were to increase the AoE cap as the more players hit by skills the more calculations it has to do and it actually starts increasing exponentially, rather than sequentially. We continue to seek out ways to squeeze more performance out of our game and our servers, but it is highly unlikely we would ever make a change to the AoE limits on player skills.

Arrowcarts?

Server CPU load and client graphics are not intrinsically linked. If you’re explaining to us that the AoE cap is in place because clients need to render spell effects then, i’m sorry, but I can’t see myself playing this game for too much longer; players will turn down their fancy graphics for a game mode that works. Hell, on the 6th we even get effect-culling.

This is a problem that pretty much exclusively effects WvW.

Do you at least acknowledge it as a legitimate player concern? I have no control over my AoE. I see 6 people I want to AoE; 5 of them on 100% HP, the other on 20% – I have no control over whether the guy on 20% HP is damaged. It’s maddening. If it were to prioritise the 20% guy, that would be better… but in order to do that you need to build collections of preferred targets, which again, costs the CPU.

If you can program in AoE logic like ignoring minions and prioritising boons/heals for players over guards, then surely you can experiment with the AoE cap. Your engine must already be building a collection of targets, ordered by distance from a player/AoE or have mechanisms for indexing and identifying players within an area… which are then reduced down to 5 (which is, ironically, a computational overhead). Have you internally tried bumping it to 8 and bench marking it? What about trialling it on ONE matchup for ONE week? Can we have an PTR? What if you opened your internal test WvW servers to the players and we helped you bench mark this stuff?

What if we actually got another map, and you lowered the player-cap by 25% on each map; would that provide enough CPU bandwidth? If you simply lowered the player caps on the existing maps by 10% would that provide more bandwidth to play with?

Every facet of WvW feels like a compromise at this point. Anything would be better than the subtle “it’s a limitation, because it is, now kitten off” lines we’re getting. There is no reason why, without effort and experimentation and commitment, this can’t be improved.

Three cheers for Supply Mastery.

Jscull.2514:

Holdyir.2918:

Sometimes I wonder if the aoe limit is really just another excuse for helping promote skill-less play similar to the downed state. It almost seems unreal that they can’t match the tech of a game that’s over a decade old.

Dude at least 90% of their population wants skill-less play. So they cater.

We have ourselves a professional statistician here…

King Amadaeus.8619:

• I will say it again*

Why do we think it is fair/balanced for 10 people to be able to hit me simultaneously, whilst I can only hit 5 of that 10? How is that right?

If you want an “offensive AoE cap”, then shouldn’t you have a defensive one to offset it? (Meaning I could only be hit by 5 people at maximum at once)

No we shouldn’t. Why increase server load to handle the defensive buff (in an offensive minded game), when the simplest, easiest, and quickest solution (not to mention the best defense) is to just split the zerg up?

We already know that a rain of arrowcarts does not cause skill lag, so they certainly have the capabilities of treating players AoE like their siege.

DeadlySynz.3471:

No we shouldn’t. Why increase server load to handle the defensive buff (in an offensive minded game), when the simplest, easiest, and quickest solution (not to mention the best defense) is to just split the zerg up?

What “split the zerg up” even means?

mjharrison.3209:

Straegen.2938:

I know of no other action MMORPG that scales as well as this game. There probably is one out there and I would like to hear about it. I know DAoC was close but even it would at best struggle mightily under the fast pace, near constant zerg on zerg fights GW2 offers.

Darkfall routinely has sieges with >1K players in the same area, more than all 4 WVW instances combined. In the same area. Also, it’s an MMOFPS, faster-paced than GW2.

Also, planetside1 & 2, savage 1 and 2… there are quite a few games with faster gameplay and higher player density.

Planetside is a shooter… if GW2 eliminated boons, removed most conditions, streamlined damage types, reduced gear modifiers and made most skills single target they could likely handle Planetside numbers with relative ease. There is A LOT more going on in a GW2 battle than Planetside 1/2.

Darkfall I don’t know much about (never played it). Looking at it quickly it seems it too has a pretty simplified combat system more akin to an FPS than a typical skill based MMO. It also falls under the… if it was so good why aren’t more unhappy GW2 people playing it banner.

In both cases these games were designed from the outset to be near solely PvP and every design decision is based around that.

Straegen.2938:

mjharrison.3209:

Straegen.2938:

I know of no other action MMORPG that scales as well as this game. There probably is one out there and I would like to hear about it. I know DAoC was close but even it would at best struggle mightily under the fast pace, near constant zerg on zerg fights GW2 offers.

Darkfall routinely has sieges with >1K players in the same area, more than all 4 WVW instances combined. In the same area. Also, it’s an MMOFPS, faster-paced than GW2.

Also, planetside1 & 2, savage 1 and 2… there are quite a few games with faster gameplay and higher player density.

Planetside is a shooter… if GW2 eliminated boons, removed most conditions, streamlined damage types, reduced gear modifiers and made most skills single target they could likely handle Planetside numbers with relative ease. There is A LOT more going on in a GW2 battle than Planetside 1/2.

Darkfall I don’t know much about (never played it). Looking at it quickly it seems it too has a pretty simplified combat system more akin to an FPS than a typical skill based MMO. It also falls under the… if it was so good why aren’t more unhappy GW2 people playing it banner.

In both cases these games were designed from the outset to be near solely PvP and every design decision is based around that.

DAOC in it’s prime could handle numbers of all the BL and EB maps combined in one frontier. DAOC had tons of buffs, debuffs, stats and far more skills than GW2. Yet it managed to be able to handle more players and not have an AoE cap, and it’s over a decade old. GW2 is a great game, no one is saying it isn’t. Most of us complaining love the game and want to see it succeed in all aspects, but are have trouble believing it’s tech can’t compete with that of a game that is over 10 years old. Especially when it is trying to emulate one of the major aspects of said game.

Holdyir.2918:

Straegen.2938:

mjharrison.3209:

Straegen.2938:

I know of no other action MMORPG that scales as well as this game. There probably is one out there and I would like to hear about it. I know DAoC was close but even it would at best struggle mightily under the fast pace, near constant zerg on zerg fights GW2 offers.

Darkfall routinely has sieges with >1K players in the same area, more than all 4 WVW instances combined. In the same area. Also, it’s an MMOFPS, faster-paced than GW2.

Also, planetside1 & 2, savage 1 and 2… there are quite a few games with faster gameplay and higher player density.

Planetside is a shooter… if GW2 eliminated boons, removed most conditions, streamlined damage types, reduced gear modifiers and made most skills single target they could likely handle Planetside numbers with relative ease. There is A LOT more going on in a GW2 battle than Planetside 1/2.

Darkfall I don’t know much about (never played it). Looking at it quickly it seems it too has a pretty simplified combat system more akin to an FPS than a typical skill based MMO. It also falls under the… if it was so good why aren’t more unhappy GW2 people playing it banner.

In both cases these games were designed from the outset to be near solely PvP and every design decision is based around that.

DAOC in it’s prime could handle numbers of all the BL and EB maps combined in one frontier. DAOC had tons of buffs, debuffs, stats and far more skills than GW2. Yet it managed to be able to handle more players and not have an AoE cap, and it’s over a decade old.

And yet we are playing GW2 and not DAOC. I wonder why. Is it just graphics?

I didn’t play DAOC and not a programmer so I’m being silent in this debate over which engine is superior. But I’m really having hard time believing DAOC engine had to deal with anywhere near same amount of work GW2 one is dealing with.

Just looking at YT DAOC videos battles seem to be so less dynamic than GW2. And i’m not talking about number of skills you need to keep track of and use timely, simply the general feeling of fight dynamics as an independent observer.

Yaro.3251:

I didn’t play DAOC and not a programmer so I’m being silent in this debate over which engine is superior. But I’m really having hard time believing DAOC engine had to deal with anywhere near same amount of work GW2 one is dealing with.

Just looking at YT DAOC videos battles seem to be so less dynamic than GW2. And i’m not talking about number of skills you need to keep track of and use timely, simply the general feeling of fight dynamics as an independent observer.

DAOC was far more strategic, and action was usually spread across all frontier. GW2 on the other side, has much faster bursts of action and although amount of action over time was maybe even bigger in DAOC, those bursts in GW2 probably spike server CPU…although as someone mentioned, hardware scaled enormously in last 12 years so its hard to believe it can’t keep up with demand

Edit: DAOC also made people actually think what they will do next…in GW2 I have feeling people just mash whatever ability is not grayed out atm…its pretty hard to notice who is making you bad, while in DAOC if sorc managed to mezz 20 people, just so some noob cabby would demezz everyone with AOE dot, would make poor cabby unable to find good group for a while

Yaro.3251:

Holdyir.2918:

Straegen.2938:

mjharrison.3209:

Straegen.2938:

I know of no other action MMORPG that scales as well as this game. There probably is one out there and I would like to hear about it. I know DAoC was close but even it would at best struggle mightily under the fast pace, near constant zerg on zerg fights GW2 offers.

Darkfall routinely has sieges with >1K players in the same area, more than all 4 WVW instances combined. In the same area. Also, it’s an MMOFPS, faster-paced than GW2.

Also, planetside1 & 2, savage 1 and 2… there are quite a few games with faster gameplay and higher player density.

Planetside is a shooter… if GW2 eliminated boons, removed most conditions, streamlined damage types, reduced gear modifiers and made most skills single target they could likely handle Planetside numbers with relative ease. There is A LOT more going on in a GW2 battle than Planetside 1/2.

Darkfall I don’t know much about (never played it). Looking at it quickly it seems it too has a pretty simplified combat system more akin to an FPS than a typical skill based MMO. It also falls under the… if it was so good why aren’t more unhappy GW2 people playing it banner.

In both cases these games were designed from the outset to be near solely PvP and every design decision is based around that.

DAOC in it’s prime could handle numbers of all the BL and EB maps combined in one frontier. DAOC had tons of buffs, debuffs, stats and far more skills than GW2. Yet it managed to be able to handle more players and not have an AoE cap, and it’s over a decade old.

And yet we are playing GW2 and not DAOC. I wonder why. Is it just graphics?

I didn’t play DAOC and not a programmer so I’m being silent in this debate over which engine is superior. But I’m really having hard time believing DAOC engine had to deal with anywhere near same amount of work GW2 one is dealing with.

Just looking at YT DAOC videos battles seem to be so less dynamic than GW2. And i’m not talking about number of skills you need to keep track of and use timely, simply the general feeling of fight dynamics as an independent observer.

On average a typical DAOC toon would have at least 3x the abilities that a GW toon would have. After that you have to look at using positionals, styles and etc. While GW’s combat now is more twitch and active I wouldn’t say it’s more dynamic as there was a lot of work going on with a toon in DAOC. Not just one skill bar and watching dodges. You conveniently didn’t quote the part where I said that I loved GW2 and wanted the best for it, which I do. But I think it’s fair that if you’re going to try and emulate an aspect of the game that one should be criticized when not doing it right. If automobile companies started releasing new vehicles with tape decks in the radio, don’t you think there would be a few complaints? As we all know games change and DAOC went from being the pinnacle of mmo pvp to what EA has made it now, which is why many don’t play it anymore and wish for what it once offered back again.

I always though the limit was here so aoe spam becomes less OP but its actually engine limitation? One question, what isn’t engine limited in gw2? Why did you use such as “limited” engine for a 2012 game? All i hear is “out engine is limited for this and that”, its 2013, why are we stuck with something as limiting as an engine made in 90’s? You have made a lot of money from gw2 sales, still making tones with gem store, i hope you remove that ‘limitation’ in the months/years to come because its kinda laughable.

Yaro.3251:

Holdyir.2918:

Straegen.2938:

mjharrison.3209:

Straegen.2938:

I know of no other action MMORPG that scales as well as this game. There probably is one out there and I would like to hear about it. I know DAoC was close but even it would at best struggle mightily under the fast pace, near constant zerg on zerg fights GW2 offers.

Darkfall routinely has sieges with >1K players in the same area, more than all 4 WVW instances combined. In the same area. Also, it’s an MMOFPS, faster-paced than GW2.

Also, planetside1 & 2, savage 1 and 2… there are quite a few games with faster gameplay and higher player density.

Planetside is a shooter… if GW2 eliminated boons, removed most conditions, streamlined damage types, reduced gear modifiers and made most skills single target they could likely handle Planetside numbers with relative ease. There is A LOT more going on in a GW2 battle than Planetside 1/2.

Darkfall I don’t know much about (never played it). Looking at it quickly it seems it too has a pretty simplified combat system more akin to an FPS than a typical skill based MMO. It also falls under the… if it was so good why aren’t more unhappy GW2 people playing it banner.

In both cases these games were designed from the outset to be near solely PvP and every design decision is based around that.

DAOC in it’s prime could handle numbers of all the BL and EB maps combined in one frontier. DAOC had tons of buffs, debuffs, stats and far more skills than GW2. Yet it managed to be able to handle more players and not have an AoE cap, and it’s over a decade old.

And yet we are playing GW2 and not DAOC. I wonder why. Is it just graphics?

I didn’t play DAOC and not a programmer so I’m being silent in this debate over which engine is superior. But I’m really having hard time believing DAOC engine had to deal with anywhere near same amount of work GW2 one is dealing with.

Just looking at YT DAOC videos battles seem to be so less dynamic than GW2. And i’m not talking about number of skills you need to keep track of and use timely, simply the general feeling of fight dynamics as an independent observer.

You never played daoc how can you say it seems it looks less dynamic when you dont even know exactly whats going on.

Mr Devon,

As a long time Guildwars player and WvW fanatic I have found the solution to all your problems.

Replace everything in WvW with the Super Adventure Box.

Complex skill calculations meaning AoE cap? Stick jab is all you need!
Graphical lag? How about Pixelate all the things!
Massive zergs ruining your day? Spawn da face laser!
“Uh no WvW is suh boringz lel”? Rainbows Rainbows Rainbows Monkeys flinging Poop!!

One massive team. SAB team. Super Arena Box. World vs Frog. PvAwesome.
Another solution masterpiece brought to you by Rob

#MootForCaptainsCouncil

PS. Still waiting for the Transformers, Sandwhichmancer, Commandos and Noob-Mounts (uplvls in WvW can be used as mounts for the PR0-S4UC3 players). Next patch? Yeh, Next patch knew it.

-Flies away-

Holdyir.2918:

You conveniently didn’t quote the part where I said that I loved GW2 and wanted the best for it, which I do.

I didn’t because it was irrelevant to what I was saying, and over-quoting makes baby electrons cry. I didn’t imply you don’t love or somehow “against” GW2

Puandro.3245:

You never played daoc how can you say it seems it looks less dynamic when you dont even know exactly whats going on.

I specifically pointed out what I mean by “dynamic” – just general feeling from the looks of it.

You see, this discussion is revolving around specifics of computational complexity and no one here has really concrete evidence, at best few may have educated guess being professionals in software development industry. Which is something to take note of, but still is a guess. And even these few disagree with each other.

Some time ago there was similar discussion here and someone brought up EVE online with its massive battles. I never played it. Looking at these battles though on YT I clearly see that they are far less dynamic in terms of ship maneuvering speed relative to the battlefield and other ships. Just scale the size of battlefield down and imagine, if PCs in GW2 were that slow relative to usual size of GW2 battlefield, we probably wouldn’t even have this conversation about lags.

Nuka Cola.8520:

One question, what isn’t engine limited in gw2?

Gem store?

Why did you use such as “limited” engine for a 2012 game? All i hear is “out engine is limited for this and that”, its 2013, why are we stuck with something as limiting as an engine made in 90’s?

Everything is limited in some way of another. Well, maybe except the cosmos, and even that is up to discussion. When you are saying however that something as complex as action MMO engine is as limited as another one based on such narrow sample, you can’t be serious here.

You have made a lot of money from gw2 sales, still making tones with gem store, i hope you remove that ‘limitation’ in the months/years to come because its kinda laughable.

Going back to my first comment and talking purely from position of business logic, how much money WvW brings to Anet? I can say that being dedicated WvW player, I spend NONE for what I need on WvW, it’s just self-sufficient. I’m even steadily in the black gold-wise spending 90% of my time on WvW.

I’m not trying to imply anything there, just approaching your argument logically.

People saying that they can just change the engine with the money they get are quite naive.

Changing the engine would more or less requiring rebuilding the whole game, which would take YEARS. One of the main reasons for the limitations is that it is built on a modified version of the GW1 engine, and it still took quite some time to build it.
Now think about how much time it would take to build a completly new engine from scratch.

lordkrall.7241:

People saying that they can just change the engine with the money they get are quite naive.

Changing the engine would more or less requiring rebuilding the whole game, which would take YEARS. One of the main reasons for the limitations is that it is built on a modified version of the GW1 engine, and it still took quite some time to build it.
Now think about how much time it would take to build a completly new engine from scratch.

Not sure about details and technicalities, but LOTRO managed to put dx9, then add dx10 and dx11 later on

Nikola.3841:

If true, that just means you have badly coded engine. I don’t see what damage calculations have to do with displaying things in fancy graphics, or text, as that is mainly client side. Also, how do you think DAOC managed to have no AOE cap, on Pentium 3 servers (it was not text based, mind you)

DAOC didn’t have up to 25 arrays of Conditions per stack per Condition type per player in Range … with extra particles & combos on top :p

(they really need to find a way to average it… so that it can be raised to 255 stacks on Temple Bosses and other huge D.E. Events)

ilr.9675:

Nikola.3841:

If true, that just means you have badly coded engine. I don’t see what damage calculations have to do with displaying things in fancy graphics, or text, as that is mainly client side. Also, how do you think DAOC managed to have no AOE cap, on Pentium 3 servers (it was not text based, mind you)

DAOC didn’t have up to 25 arrays of Conditions per stack per Condition type per player in Range … with extra particles & combos on top :p

(they really need to find a way to average it… so that it can be raised to 255 stacks on Temple Bosses and other huge D.E. Events)

Of course, because that is stupid…actually, they made it on purpose that you could not get more than 1 DOT per damage type on you

Jscull.2514:

Redscope.6215:

Jscull.2514:

Anet def seems to have some lemmings…

I know right? Whats with all these people coming up with intelligent counter-arguments to the moronic “just add more” stance that is so OBVIOUSLY right. I mean geez…what lemmings…

BTW, check your sig.

We run with 5 or less nightly… We start fights with 5 and end fights with 5… There are a handful of teams with that same mentality…so when people lose to us…. We rarely see them return with the same numbers. Diff topic.

I was referring to the part where your sig says “just add more”. Apparently that went over your head and you started getting mad about PvP-related stuff. You take this game too seriously.

Jscull.2514:

And telling me to be believe Anet is truthful and that their head is in the right place (when for the last year their “upgrades” to Wvw have been siege masteries and allowing porting thieves) is about as believable as Obamacare being what the US needs….

I never told you to believe every last thing Anet says, but you clearly have no concept of how servers, game engines, and APIs work (or anything program-related for that matter). Your “just add more” mentality is in the wrong place, sorry. Programming doesn’t work that way. Player skills are balanced around a small target limit and that’s where they should stay.

Just because they haven’t given WvW the same amount of added content that PvE has gotten doesn’t mean its terrible. And it certainly isn’t comparable to Obamacare. Their game is mostly PvE and their focus shows that. WvW will continue to get new content though, and they’re working on a new map as well.

Jscull.2514:

Please don’t call your comments intelligent counter arguments.

You can call my comments whatever you want, and so can I. Though, if you’d only comprehend what you read instead of getting mad, you’d have realized I was referring to others on the thread. You know, the ones you called “lemmings”.

Nikola.3841:

Ouroboros.5076:

Those anonymous posts teaching other people’s job are always delicious. It really is a trend in our society, in computer science especially : everybody thinks that they’re experts in everyting and that their uneducated opinions are interesting.

Dev said that it’s a technical limitation of the engine. Thread closed, until they eventually change the engine or find a workaround.

Although I’m DAOC fan, which you can conclude from previous posts, DAOC devs said few things to be IMPOSSIBLE to do, then few years later they achieved impossible
Actually, I’m myself a programmer, and few times I did impossible things, too

Did you make a computer-generated model of the universe where all stars are made out of cookies and use it to convince people that all stars are made out of cookies? If it was made on a computer, it just has to be true!

Redscope.6215:

Did you make a computer-generated model of the universe where all stars are made out of cookies and use it to convince people that all stars are made out of cookies? If it was made on a computer, it just has to be true!

Thanks for a great contribution to this thread

Redscope.6215:

Nikola.3841:

Ouroboros.5076:

Those anonymous posts teaching other people’s job are always delicious. It really is a trend in our society, in computer science especially : everybody thinks that they’re experts in everyting and that their uneducated opinions are interesting.

Dev said that it’s a technical limitation of the engine. Thread closed, until they eventually change the engine or find a workaround.

Although I’m DAOC fan, which you can conclude from previous posts, DAOC devs said few things to be IMPOSSIBLE to do, then few years later they achieved impossible
Actually, I’m myself a programmer, and few times I did impossible things, too

Did you make a computer-generated model of the universe where all stars are made out of cookies and use it to convince people that all stars are made out of cookies? If it was made on a computer, it just has to be true!

Im a developer as well….what are they supposed to come out say…. "hey guys….the people that created our engine were idiots…they really f’d up… they didn’t think ahead when designing and really didn’t take things into account like stress testing or scalability….these things…those are for good developers…but they cost money… we didn’t have enough money to purchase the “A-TEAM” of developers…so we’re stuck with what we got….sorry guys have a good day!"

The list of FUBAR programming standards is astounding….“New build will be released in an hour”…. 30 seconds later….NEW BUILD AVAILABLE….wow fastest hour I ever seen!

Gamadorn.2659:

The list of FUBAR programming standards is astounding….“New build will be released in an hour”…. 30 seconds later….NEW BUILD AVAILABLE….wow fastest hour I ever seen!

They have never said “New build will be released in an hour”, what they do say is “New build will be released WITHIN an hour”. The whole within part is quite important here.

My staff ele is finally fun. Don’t give them a reason to nerf it…

when it came to tactics and winning vs outnumbered opponents DAOC was garbage, go shadowbane or go home.

Folk.2093:

when it came to tactics and winning vs outnumbered opponents DAOC was garbage, go shadowbane or go home.

Only good thing about Shadowbane was how they made class spec/progress. Everything else was subpar to DAOC

DeadlySynz.3471:

King Amadaeus.8619:

• I will say it again*

Why do we think it is fair/balanced for 10 people to be able to hit me simultaneously, whilst I can only hit 5 of that 10? How is that right?

If you want an “offensive AoE cap”, then shouldn’t you have a defensive one to offset it? (Meaning I could only be hit by 5 people at maximum at once)

No we shouldn’t. Why increase server load to handle the defensive buff (in an offensive minded game), when the simplest, easiest, and quickest solution (not to mention the best defense) is to just split the zerg up?

We already know that a rain of arrowcarts does not cause skill lag, so they certainly have the capabilities of treating players AoE like their siege.

I laughed when I read this…Increase the server load? kitten the server load, they’re blaming the AoE cap on a method to REDUCE the server load……Sure a defensive cap would load down the server more, but it would also reduce calculations in the same manner that they offensive cap claims to do.

Has nothing to do with a zerg brah, has to do with the fact that 7 people wanna jump me, I gotta down 5 at a time, then work on the two, oh but I am still hitting 4 of the 5 downed ones…etc

There is no rhyme or reason to who you hit with AoE, it is kitten that 10 people can hit you at once and kitten near one-shot ya, while you have to be resigned to only being able to hit a random roll of 50% of that 10 (IE: 5 random people out of that 10).

A bit weird that in gw1 in foundry for instance a good shadowform tank could aggro the whole map and you could spike them dead in seconds. That was way over 5 and while it’s not in the open world terms but still 6 people spiking 50 foes at the same time.

But the limit of 5 seems odd, I would not be able to sleep if I am a programmer and could not figure this out while other mmo’s already have it :/

aspirine.6852:

But the limit of 5 seems odd, I would not be able to sleep if I am a programmer and could not figure this out while other mmo’s already have it :/

I think the point here is that very few MMOs have really figured out how to implement heavy action inside a skill based system. Most implement a player cap, simplify the combat system or have some other limitation to get more players into one area. In GW2’s case it is an AoE cap.

As for the “DAoC could do it” line my original points still stand: It did have lag, the combat was slower, the runs between fights were much longer, players spent much of a big fight chain stunned doing nothing, dodging wasn’t even part of the game, condition/boons were simpler and their devs certainly managed to F that game up. Even more to the point people can still play it and if it were that good, they wouldn’t be here.

Rofl at people who think GW2 handles zerg fights better then DAOC.

A. the zergs in DAOC were massive, and completely blow this game away in size…To give you an idea… Whenever we did an ML raid on Midgard Merlin, we had to run 2 Battlegroups, that’s 500 Players, all in one area… stuck together… That’s one Faction… When Frontiers were attacked, the zergs that poured out were massive….Now what kept most of the massive zerg battles in check though was the fact that an 8man could run by and blow an entire zerg up in seconds.

B. Warhammer Online, Is also comparable to this game, When did it lag? Not during open field or running around, The Major Complaint when it lagged was when you stacked the entire server in a small area that was comparable to EB Center Keep. That’s why they introduced the cap, Because the game couldn’t handle that many players (Neither could GW2, hence why you have a cap on the Maps)

Both games I consider honestly better than GW2..yes even Warhammer Online, despite its 2 factions, I consider it better then GW2 gameplay wise.

lordkrall.7241:

.. One of the main reasons for the limitations is that it is built on a modified version of the GW1 engine, ..

That’s the entire point. People need to stop believing they’re playing a 2012 game. MMOs have immense development times, so by the time you release your game, your engine is already guaranteed to be outdated.
What makes things so much worse for GW2 is the fact that they didn’t actually develop a new engine for GW2, but instead ‘updated’ their GW1 engine, which due to be being an MMO, was pretty much already outdated in 2005. Essentially, GW2 engine is the GW1 engine with an added z-axis (yes, GW1 was two-dimensional and only pretended to be 3D) and that’s about it. Welcome to your 2012 game .

Xsorus.2507:

A. the zergs in DAOC were massive, and completely blow this game away in size…To give you an idea… Whenever we did an ML raid on Midgard Merlin, we had to run 2 Battlegroups, that’s 500 Players, all in one area… stuck together… That’s one Faction… When Frontiers were attacked, the zergs that poured out were massive….Now what kept most of the massive zerg battles in check though was the fact that an 8man could run by and blow an entire zerg up in seconds.

DAoC solved their problems by implementing heavy crowd control so if a fight of 500 people broke out about 450 of them were turned completely off. I won’t argue that DAoC did more players in an area but their condition/boon system was simpler, it was far less action based (no kind of dodge mechanic) and the run times were yawn worthy… even dying had a nice lag on it if you missed the 5 minute window.

Xsorus.2507:

B. Warhammer Online, Is also comparable to this game, When did it lag? Not during open field or running around, The Major Complaint when it lagged was when you stacked the entire server in a small area that was comparable to EB Center Keep. That’s why they introduced the cap, Because the game couldn’t handle that many players (Neither could GW2, hence why you have a cap on the Maps)

You cannot possibly be serious with this one. They had to remove Frontier Wars because it was completely unplayable once 100 people showed up. The lag in this game was far worse than GW2, the bugs were horrible and the class balance atrocious.

I should not have a cap. Zergs should be easily punishable for their mistakes. Going into choke point blindly? BOOM! Static field, AOE, AOE, AOE, and go F yourself stupid zerg!

That’s what wvw should be like in my eyes.

DevonCarver.5370:

The load on the server CPU would be quite simply unsustainable if we were to increase the AoE cap as the more players hit by skills the more calculations it has to do and it actually starts increasing exponentially, rather than sequentially.

I am not arguing against your point of the load being unsustainable on the server without a certain AoE limitation, but I am pretty sure you are wrong that the load would be increasing exponentially.

Unless you are doing something truly crazy, the additional load should be more along the lines of a quadratic increase.

~MRA

I would have assumed that it’s a network bandwidth issue. The calculations for boons, conditions, and combat cannot be anywhere near as intensive as they say simply because these calculations happen in other games without any problems for large numbers. It gets worse for a RTS than for an MMO. The problem is how to funnel all of the data they want through the average user’s DSL line. They’re synchronizing animations at probably 10hz (maybe faster) including all of the combat data that comes across. If they used all 32 bit floats for the data here’s what we get. Each float is 4 bytes.

Position: 12 bytes
Velocity: 12 bytes
Animation: 1 byte ID, 4 bytes timing
Every damage indicator: 5 bytes per tick up to 50x for an arrow cart (200 bytes) 4 bytes amount, 1 byte type
Boons/conditions and timers: 4 bytes boon active flags, 4 bytes per boon (x9 for boons, x12 for conditions) plus flags and timers for class specific buffs and debuffs, makes out to about 150 bytes
healing ticks: same as the damage indicators but only up to 5, due to current aoe cap: 25 bytes

I’ll add 150 bytes for ??? data i didn’t cover. This makes out to 600bytes. For one player.
Now multiply that by expected server caps (80 per server I would imagine, or 240 total) makes out to be 141kb. How many frames of that can you get into a 300kbps DSL connection? 2 maybe.

That’s why you get skill lag. They shut off all of the AOE abilities and particularly the utilities. If they shut off aoes they save 240*5*5 bytes per frame just in damage ticks. They’re also pushing information for projectiles and sfx animations over that pipe and most of the data for that is used in AOE attacks. They save some minor server calculation time as well (manhattan distance calculation costs 6 multiplications and 6 additions and one less than comparison, that’s childs play for any CPU today) but it’s mostly bandwidth.
This especially if they’re trying to drive 20fps worth of data. That adds up to quite a lot of data to push over a gigabit ethernet connection. This also assumes they have gigabit internet with the ISP that serves their WvW servers (which is doubtful cause that costs $$$).

Why you should look forward to the LoD for special effects is in that statement above. If they do server-side LoD they save bandwidth by not pushing to you the AOE effects that they used to and they can put more of that bandwidth towards keeping skill lag effects at bay.

This is also why they’re not upping the AOE cap. Previous MMOs didn’t have such a high framerate for data so they don’t have to push so much over the connection. GW2 has a higher data framerate and needs to save bandwidth where it can and thus you get an AOE cap. If all aoes were allowed to have an unlimited cap they would take up too much bandwidth in a 50v50 fight. Maybe they’ll be able to expand the aoe cap when they clean up some more bandwidth hogs that are unnecessary (like SFX).

-My background on this idea:
I’m used to working with IP video systems where bandwidth is a significant issue (especially with megapixel MJPEG streams). I’ve also thought of the way to transmit and store MMO data or simple multiplayer data. The design above is how I would have done it. This isn’t necessarily how Anet did it. They probably have a more optimized approach to handling data. The thing i do know is that their server’s processor has much more power than they’re letting on.

MRA.4758:

DevonCarver.5370:

The load on the server CPU would be quite simply unsustainable if we were to increase the AoE cap as the more players hit by skills the more calculations it has to do and it actually starts increasing exponentially, rather than sequentially.

I am not arguing against your point of the load being unsustainable on the server without a certain AoE limitation, but I am pretty sure you are wrong that the load would be increasing exponentially.

Unless you are doing something truly crazy, the additional load should be more along the lines of a quadratic increase.

~MRA

That’s because the technical limitation is a BS response.

The original reason back months ago: http://gw2.junkiesnation.com/2012/05/01/dev-tracker-jon-peters-on-aoe-target-caps-for-all-skills/

It appears ANet has since removed all the original posts they made on the AoE cap, but it was put into place for balancing purpose NOT because of technical limitations….

Although their seems to be a growing number of excuses being used about all this technical limitation crap (Ever since the culling issue more and more things have been “technical limitations”)…