Showing Posts For NeoTron.7268:
I’ve seen a lot of issues recently where I have frequent 1-4 second lockups (and with frequent I mean many times per minute, sometimes almost continuously on/off) in networking. This is not something I’ve noticed until (perhaps) the last (Teq) patch, at least not with any frequency. It often makes the game more or less unplayable.
I also seem to route through level 3 but as noted, any trace route that includes them might be incorrect because they ignore or deprioritize ICMP (apparently that’s a thing…).
I ran the diag test (see attached). A ping to one of the ip’s I connect also does show packet loss. It does seem to be more of an issue later at night or with more people around (Teq, or champ train in Queensdale for example):
64.25.40.116 ping statistics —-
48 packets transmitted, 44 received, 8% packet loss, time 47078ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 57.947/58.584/60.137/0.548 msNeoTron, welcome to the wonderful world of routing. You can do quite a lot of stuff based on ports/protocols to give priority/preference to one packet of internet data over another. 99.99% of the time, when you see 100% packet loss, the protocol is blocked. Even with protocols being prioritized, large packet losses can still point to an overall issue.
Yes, I’m aware (although I’m not a network admin, I used to work as a system admin and am a software developer by trade that do a lot of network related work). In either case, I admit I haven’t seen networks that would intentionally make ICMP packets completely unreliable measurements of actual packet loss. I tried using mtr using UDP packets, but it’s not looking terribly useful.
I’m somewhat at a loss on how to properly troubleshoot this issue when simple things like pinging isn’t reliable. Apparently Frontier does have some sort of capacity issue in my area, but it doesn’t seem like it’s the only issue unfortunately (if it was “just” Frontier, at least I’d have someone to pin the blame on :-)
Now, at 10:24 pm game is mostly unplayable. New trace attached.
Attachments:
I don’t think the level3 data is accurate for ICMP – they apparently deprioritize/drop ICMP packets giving false bad values.
I’ve seen a lot of issues recently where I have frequent 1-4 second lockups (and with frequent I mean many times per minute, sometimes almost continuously on/off) in networking. This is not something I’ve noticed until (perhaps) the last (Teq) patch, at least not with any frequency. It often makes the game more or less unplayable.
I also seem to route through level 3 but as noted, any trace route that includes them might be incorrect because they ignore or deprioritize ICMP (apparently that’s a thing…).
I ran the diag test (see attached). A ping to one of the ip’s I connect also does show packet loss. It does seem to be more of an issue later at night or with more people around (Teq, or champ train in Queensdale for example):
64.25.40.116 ping statistics —-
48 packets transmitted, 44 received, 8% packet loss, time 47078ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 57.947/58.584/60.137/0.548 ms
Attachments:
You’re probably correct that it’s not a bug per se. It’s a usability issue for a subset of the population.
GW2 is worse to me than other games/MMO’s due to the use of pastel colors and other design choices. WoW and SWTOR for example use bright red colors (and in the case of WoW, they also use other colors if red isn’t suitable like blue on orange/red backgrounds).
That’s not to say that other games are perfect. In WoW I have had issues with item quality colors and crafting difficulty levels for example. However with WoW you can easily mod the UI to fix these issue (one of the main reasons why having a fully moddable UI is a good thing).
A few changes in GW2 could go a very long way of resolving the issues.
I am in the unfortunate situation of being about 99% color deficient, in combination with reduced vision (keratoconus if you’re curious). A year ago I made some posts on how this made GW2 hard (and in some cases impossible) to play. A year later, most issues remain in the game. I did notice that enemy AoE circles at least have some height now. However they are still colored in such a way as to make it very hard if not impossible to determine if a particular AoE circle is from an enemy or ally
Another big one is using red on black/dark backgrounds. This is used for event timers, enemy health bars and enemy names. I can’t really see any of them (this is made worse by not having 20/20 vision for sure). The health bars are hard to see if the environment behind them is light since the lighter colors around the bars “outshines” the low contrast between red and black.
I’m more than happy to pop down to your office for a usability study or something, since I really would like to see GW2 improved. A lot of people are color deficient, although I am unusual in that I’m color deficient more or less across the spectrum.
For reference, here’s the earlier posts on the subject:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/I-m-colour-blind-here-are-some-major-problems-I-have/first
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Main-reason-I-hate-dungeons-in-GW2-Color-Blind-perspective/first
After the holidays, after not playing much, I started noticing micro-lag (1-3 second lockups). This isn’t something I had ever seen before Christmas. I seem to have issues at the same jump as the earlier ping tracker logs in this thread:
Packets Pings
Host Loss% Snt Last Avg Best Wrst StDev
12. ae-3-80.edge2.Dallas1.Level3.net 8.8% 693 43.4 45.7 42.7 176.8 11.9
ae-4-90.edge2.Dallas1.Level3.net
ae-2-70.edge2.Dallas1.Level3.net
ae-1-60.edge2.Dallas1.Level3.net
I don’t recall / notice any issue in any other networked games that mirrors my GW2 lag spikes.
I just realized that there’s examples of much better “AoE circles” in GW2 already – namely when you target an AoE as well as (At least) symbols on the ground. The AoE target has nice thick circles (still artistic), and multiple of them (so it’s filled in).
Symbols are even better in that their edges have a 3D effect (i.e they have height) in addition to an effect inside the circle.
Apparently my youtube link had some offensive random characters in it, making it kitten unclickable. Fixed it now.
Changing colors would help but I think even in general, that the AoE circles in particular just aren’t very visible (especially larger circles), since it’s just a thin outside line. It is a solvable problem – WoW at times had circles that were hard to see (red on orange for example) even though they were filled in – in that particular case they made the circle blue instead (which was very visible on orange). Both WoW and especially SWTOR has better visibility regardless of colors though – solely because they also fill the circle rather than just a thin red line.
I was pondering the bold subject, but I think it’s warranted given my frustration with this issue. It’s not a rehash of too hard / too long / no rewards / tedious fights – there are plenty of subjects on those issues (some that I agree with, some that I don’t).
This topic is about my inability to complete certain encounters due to my color vision deficiency. My overall color vision is about 1% of what a non-color deficient person sees. In addition I have an eye condition that causes some glare/blurry vision so it’s a double whammy.
In either case, the main reason I am not even going to try to do Giganticus Lupicus and in general don’t want to do dungeons at all, is that I can’t see the red circles. Most dungeons seems to be red on black (known bad combination) and red on green (really – red/green is the most common kind of color blindness). If the color wasn’t bad enough, all “circles” are exceedingly thin (artistic?) which makes it hard for me to even see friendly circles at times.
One thing SWTOR did well was this – a quick youtube search later:
This is the friendly AoE target. Enemy one is exactly the same but red. As you can see, it’s very for a number of reasons – well filled in area, 3D glow (it sticks up from the ground). It also pulses making it more visible than a static circle.
There are other color / vision related issues in GW2 but this is the number one issue I have (although I really wish the enemy target health bar wasn’t red on black – I can’t see that at all either, if the environment is light).
Thanks for the consideration.
(edited by NeoTron.7268)
More contrast, larger UI helps. One thing that’s bugging me a lot right now is the frequent use of read on black. Examples:
- Enemy target health bar.
- Text when about to enter story instance at too low level.
- “out of range” marker (I didn’t realize this was there until today, and I have to look 2-3 inches from the screen to see them).
- “Ground targeted ability” circle around the number of abilities (likewise, just saw that today)
I can’t see any of these without being very close to the screen. In short, red on dark is a combination that is bad in any situation, not just color blindness. It’s one of those old web jokes where people made a crappy Geocities webpage using red text on a black background with blinking stars.
Also a major issue with being able to see what’s going on (other than the glaring white light from all abilities), is that name plates and health bars are actually hidden behind other monsters on the screen.
So if I have my pet in front of an ogre and I’m behind the ogre, I can’t see why pet’s health (why is there no pet health bar btw?). It’s not because of colors, it’s because it’s literally not visible.
For the most part, this game is awesome but the usability of the UI/combat HUD, especially (but not only) for color blind / lowered vision people (or worse, those that are both such as myself), isn’t up to par.
Hopefully devs take note and work to improve this.
I fully agree with these options. Name plates (and health bars), especially enemy ones, are practically invisible to me. Likewise I don’t think I have ever seen any “red circles” on the ground. Fighting hard enemies in a party is mostly rolling of dice since I can never detect “bad stuff” to avoid it before it happens (so it depends on if bad stuff can be avoided after I take some damage or if it instakills).
This is especially made worse due to all spell effects combining into a glow that rivals a small sun (basically any 5+ fights have the main enemy completely obstructed in a bright glow).
It’s nice to have a mobile combat system with avoidance requirements, as long as you get a chance to actually avoid before you die. As primarily melee (guardian), usually I have no clue. In fact in larger encounters with many enemies I don’t even have a clue where the enemies are.